“How is Iris doing?” she asked.
“I–I’m not sure. There are a lot of things I have to figure out. She’s not really — uh—”
“Normal? Then I guess she is doing the same as before.
It was very decent of you to come,” Mrs. Fleming added.
“There aren’t a lot of young people who would visit their batty aunt.”
“I didn’t come for that reason.” It seemed as if I had given this spiel a hundred times since arriving. “Uncle Will invited me. He said there were some family things to talk about, so I came expecting to see him.”
“You mean you didn’t know? Oh, I’m sorry! I’m so sorry.
Someone should have informed you.”
“According to Aunt Iris, Uncle Will should have.”
She smiled a little. “How long will you be staying?”
“I don’t know yet. I have college orientation in August.”
“So you’re looking for a summer job.”
What could I say? No, I’m as paranoid as Aunt Iris and think people are following me. .
“Yes, but the truth is, I don’t have the experience you want.
I worked at Panera Bread for two years — you know, handling bagels, sandwiches, that kind of thing.”
“I see. And how many bagels a week would you say you dropped?”
“I had a counter in front of me. There was no place to drop them.”
She laughed a tinkly laugh that seemed too girlish to go with her businesslike appearance. “You’re hired.”
“Excuse me?”
“Honesty is important. And I need an employee who knows how to position herself so she doesn’t drop things. Of course,” she added, “Zack would advise you not to take this job.”
“Why?” I asked bluntly.
That tinkly laugh again. “I’m a tough stepmother and a tough employer. Sometimes we’re swamped, other times it’s slow. When it is, I’ll expect you to help with cleaning, inventory, whatever I need. There is no slacking off in my shop. And there is certainly no socializing, no little visits from friends.”
I thought fast. Aunt Iris’s problems weren’t going to be solved in a week, probably not in several weeks.
“What were you paid at Panera?”
I told her.
“I can match that. And on the bright side,” she went on, “I would understand if you have an emergency involving Iris and couldn’t come to work. I also know you will be leaving for school. You realize, of course, no one in town will hire you if they think you are leaving in August. But some help now will get me through the longest days of the tourist season.”
Working in a shop might keep me sane; it would definitely keep me in air-conditioning. It would give me extra money for college — and a new muffler. The only strange thing was Mrs. Fleming’s connection to Zack. But I liked her. She was no-nonsense and blunt, the kind of person I found easy to get along with.
“I’m thinking ten to five Wednesday through Saturday, twelve to five on Sunday.” She cocked her head.
“Interested?”
“Yes.”
“When can you start?”
“Wednesday.”
“Training tomorrow,” she said.
“Okay.”
She folded her arms and appeared pleased. “It will be worth your time, Anna. If you do the job well, I’ll teach you more than clerking a store. You’ll learn how to run your own business.”
“Awesome.”
“There’s a small lot in the back for parking. Don’t block me in. See you tomorrow.”
A few minutes later I was hurrying home to Aunt Iris’s.
Zack’s friend must have given up the game. Aunt Iris was out, so I got to enjoy the rest of my doughnuts on the kitchen stoop, gazing at the creek. At noon I roared off to the gas station to get a new muffler, then drove more quietly to Tilby’s Dream.
The old farm lay along Oyster Creek on the eastern bank, like the O’Neill house, but on the other side of Scarborough Road, past the bridge. “Can’t miss it,” the sheriff had told me. “Got a big old tulip poplar on the corner”—whatever a tulip poplar was. I drove slowly, looking at every large tree I passed — there were a lot — and finally turned onto the first paved road I saw.
McManus had said to go almost to the end, then turn right on an unmarked dirt road, hidden by trees. Mrs. FlemingMarcy, as I was supposed to call her — had looked at my penciled map and said the road was used for hayrides in the fall, but she couldn’t remember any kind of landmark helpful for a girl like me who was used to road signs and marked intersections. I drove more than a mile through golden green fields of soy and corn, then spotted a grove of trees that might be camouflaging a dirt road. Since I had been warned about potholes, I pulled over and got out to walk.
I knew I was in the right place when I saw the deep tracks made by heavy equipment that had passed through recently — fire trucks, I assumed. The trees that lined both sides of the road had been planted at even intervals, perhaps to make a shady avenue, but were now overgrown with shrubs, vines, and smaller trees. Although it wasn’t wilderness, to a city person it was the middle of nowhere. There wasn’t even the distant whoosh of traffic that afternoon, the cornfields and trees shielding the road from every sound but that of insects.
After ten minutes of walking, I reached the site. In my dreams I had come in darkness; now the site was bathed in sunlight, but the smell was the same — pine and sour ashes.
It was unnerving to feel that a place was very familiar when I had never physically set foot on it.
I surveyed the area surrounded by yellow police tape. The scorched ground was sandy with pieces of shell embedded in it, oyster shells, like those on Aunt Iris’s driveway.
Perhaps there had been a building here once. On either side of the clearing were fields. The one on the right was nothing but dried stalks and was hemmed with a stand of pine; the one on the left stretched to distant woods with row after row of green soy.
The dirt road continued past the burn site and through another avenue of trees. I recalled the sounds of sirens and running feet from my first dream. If fire trucks had entered from one direction, it would have been easy for the kids setting the blaze to exit through the other. It seemed an ideal place for arson.
I ducked under the police tape and walked to the center of the cordoned-off area. Standing there, I turned slowly, my eyes sweeping the landscape. It was like looking at something in a wavy mirror, like looking at your living room reflected in a Christmas ball, finding it both strange and familiar. Somehow, the image of this place had gotten inside my head. Somehow, it had rooted in my brain before I had seen the place for real, and it scared me.
WHEN I ARRIVED home at dinnertime, Aunt Iris was sitting at the kitchen table making a sandwich. “You’re back,” she said, sounding surprised.
I was about to explain who I was and why I was here, then decided it wasn’t worth the trouble, as long as she thought I was myself or my mother. “I got a job, Aunt Iris. And I’ve been to the grocery store.”
“We have plenty of food,” she replied.
I eyed the two pieces of slimy meat she had just laid on her bread and the mayo jar with yellow, crusty stuff inside the rim. “Thanks, but I don’t want to be mooching off of you. I bought one of those already-cooked rotisserie chickens.
Want to try it?”
Without waiting for her response, I slid her sandwich plate to the side and placed the plastic container with chicken in front of her. She studied it for a moment, then picked up the butcher knife she’d been using and hacked off a leg.
“Where will you be working, Anna?”
So she did know who I was. “At a store called Always Christmas.”
