of them. The peer pressure factor's way up all of a sudden.' She sighed, started again spreading the moisturizer on her face. 'I don't like it.'
Bill was silent for a moment. 'We made a mistake,' he said finally, and his voice was serious. 'We never should've let Sam work at The Store.'
She'd been thinking the same thing, but it felt strange hearing him say it, and she felt obligated to defend her daughter. 'It's what she wants to do.
Besides, she's eighteen. She's an adult. She has to live her own life.'
'She may be eighteen,' Bill said, 'but she's not an adult. And as long as she lives in our house, under our roof, she's going to follow our rules.'
'So you want her to quit?'
Bill looked at her. 'Don't you?'
'I don't think it's my decision to make.'
He sighed. 'You're right.' He leaned back against the headboard, looked up at the ceiling. 'I don't know what to do.'
Ginny put down the jar of moisturizer and scooted next to him on the bed.
She put a hand on his leg. 'Maybe we should both talk to her.'
'No. She does need to earn money for college. Besides, if we forbid her to work, she'll just resent us for it. She might even do something . . . I don't know, drastic.'
Ginny smiled. 'Are you sure you don't have her confused with Shannon?'
'Sam's more like her every day.'
So he'd noticed, too. Ginny thought of the way Sam had treated that customer at The Store, the almost surly attitude she'd had around the house lately. This behavior wasn't like their daughter, and it worried her. 'Maybe she'll figure it out for herself,' Ginny suggested. 'Maybe she'll quit on her own.'
'Maybe,' Bill said doubtfully. 'I hope so.'
'I do, too,' Ginny said, and a chill passed through her as she thought of the black convoy. She snuggled closer to Bill. 'I do, too.'
TWELVE
1
Aaron Jefcoat sat in his police cruiser, in the parking lot of Len's Donuts, finishing an apple fritter before beginning his midnight tour of the town. He'd had over a week to think about it, but he still wasn't sure how he felt about his wife working. He glanced over at the photo of Virginia he'd mounted in a clear plastic frame atop the dashboard. The picture had been taken a long time ago, before she'd had the boys, and she looked damn good in it. She still looked damn good, he thought, but the photo captured her in her prime, the way she'd looked when he'd married her, and it was a reminder, in case he ever forgot, of the way she had changed his life.
She'd had a job when they'd met. She'd been a carhop at Big Daddy's Diner, the old teenage hangout that had been torn down in the seventies to make room for KFC. But she'd quit working when they'd married to become a housewife, and she'd been responsible for taking care of the house, and later the kids, while he brought home the bacon.
It had been a fair division of labor, and it had worked now for over twenty-five years, but last week, all of a sudden, Virginia had decided that she wanted to go back to work. She wanted to get a job at The Store.
His initial reaction was to say no. He knew she'd been a little bored the past year, a little restless, and with the boys gone she didn't have as much to do, but he knew she'd get used to it. This was a transitional period, he told her. It would probably take a while to adjust.
She didn't want to adjust, she told him. She wanted to get a job.
He was against the idea, but he hadn't actually come out and forbidden her to work. Ten years ago, he would have. But women these days didn't act the way they used to. Times had changed. All he had to do was look at what had happened to his friend Ken. Ken's situation was almost identical to his own. A year or so ago, after his daughter had gone off to college, Ken's wife, suffering from the empty-nest syndrome, had wanted to get a job. He had forbidden her to do so, and there'd been nothing but headaches and heartaches for him after that. Finally, she'd threatened to leave him, and Ken had given in and let her go to work.
Aaron didn't want the same thing to happen with Virginia.
So he pretty much had to let her work.
And he still wasn't sure how he felt about that.
He finished his fritter, wiped his fingers on the napkin in his lap, and started up the cruiser.
Time for the tour.
When he'd first been assigned the graveyard shift, he'd hated it. On a purely physical level, his body had had a tough time coping with the change in sleep patterns, and he'd lain awake all day in his bed, while he was supposed to be sleeping, and dozed half the night in his patrol car, while he was supposed to be on duty. Not that it made much of a difference if he slept. Juniper rolled up its carpets at six and was for all intents and purposes dead to the world after dark. Len's Donuts was open all night, but he was usually the only customer, and it was a rare shift indeed when he saw even one other vehicle on the streets once the theater emptied at ten.
He supposed that was why he'd grown to like graveyard. He got paid more than he would if he worked day shift or swing, and there was a hell of a lot less to do. The way it worked out, he was able to spend more time with his family than he ever had before, and if that meant that he sometimes caught a few Z's during the early morning downtime, well, it didn't harm anyone.
Aaron took a slow, leisurely drive up and down the streets of Juniper. As usual, he saw no people, no cars, no movement. Everyone was asleep, snug in their beds, and he smiled to himself as he drove past his own house and thought of Virginia sacked out, snoring lightly in that cute little way she had. His eyes swept the street before him. Here and there, porch lights had been left on to ward off prowlers. Through an occasional curtain he could see the flickering blue light of a television that had not been turned off.
He felt protective of the town as he cruised its streets, as though he was a proud papa and all of the people were his children. It was a strangely comforting feeling, and at times like this he was glad he'd gone against his parents' wishes and become a police officer.
He drove down the dirt back roads at the east end of the town limits, then cut north through Creekside Acres in order to get to the highway. Turning left on the highway, he saw, through the driver's window of the cruiser, the square black bulk of The Store.
It was a shame, he thought, that they'd had to build The Store here. It seemed to him that it would've made more sense to build on that vacant lot next to the Tire Barn, maybe buy out and tear down some of those eyesore trailers set up there. But instead they'd built it in the meadow where he used to take his dates, back before he'd met Virginia. Even the hillside where he used to spread his picnic blanket had been blasted and flattened.
The next generation wouldn't know that the meadow had ever existed.
It was a damn shame.
And now Virginia wanted to work here.
He pulled into the Store parking lot, intending to take a quick spin around before continuing back toward Main.
Instantly, he slowed the car. The lights in the parking lot were off, but the moon was full and he could see small unmoving lumps on the asphalt: the forms of dead animals. He rode the brake as the cruiser slowly crept forward.
He'd heard about this before, but he hadn't really believed it. Forest Everson had told him that there'd been a lot of croaked critters found on the property when The Store was being built -- and Forest was the one who'd handled that dead transient case -- but Aaron still hadn't put much stock in those tales. He figured it was like those full-moon stories, that crap about more crimes occurring when the moon was full. He knew that wasn't true.
But there was a full moon tonight.
And there were dead animals in the parking lot.
He drove the cruiser slowly through the lot, glancing through the window at the bodies. There was a possum, a dog, what looked like a baby javelina, two crows, a bobcat. It was an amazingly diverse group of animals, and they all appeared unharmed and untouched. It was like they'd simply crawled onto the parking lot to die.
Forest had told him that as well, and he'd dismissed it at the time, but he felt an unfamiliar tingle in the hairs at the nape of his neck as he stared at the dead animals.
