“Where did he find this?” she asked herself.
Amber was holding the phone in her hand, about to call him. She decided not to reach out. In an hour or two, she might figure out the mysterious book, but if she reached out to Ricky he would probably take that as an invitation to keep bothering her. It would be best for her to see if she could understand the book on her own first.
The door behind her closed. Shawn didn’t say a word to her this time.
Amber picked up the book and walked inside.
“What do you have there?” Evelyn asked.
She was sitting at the kitchen table with a bowl of nuts in front of her. Evelyn always insisted in putting out food for guests—it was only polite.
“Just a book,” Amber said. She put it down on the table and went to throw away the envelope and get a glass of water. When she turned back around, Evelyn had the book on her lap, running her fingers over it with her head pointed down, almost like she was reading it.
“This is an old book. Hand made, isn’t it?”
“I suppose.”
“Your new boyfriend sent it?”
Amber sighed. “Ricky is barely a friend, let alone boyfriend.”
“You need to pay attention to anyone who gets under your skin like that, Amber. If your head is making such a strong reaction, it’s overruling your…”
“Stop, Evelyn. Stop talking about my head like it’s separate from me. I know how I feel about Ricky. I took your advice and I’m trying to leave all that stuff behind me. The reason I’m so terse with him on the phone is because he keeps trying to rope me back into that drama.”
“Fair enough,” she said, putting the book back on the table and trading it for one of the nuts. She cracked it with her teeth and then pulled it apart. “What’s the book about?”
“More nonsense. Did you figure out what you want from the store?”
“Shawn beat you to it. He already brought what I wanted.”
“Great. I’ll be in my room.”
Amber turned in the door and went back to grab the book. She didn’t want to forget to return it. With that in mind, she went back to the trash and fished out the envelope that she had thrown away.
# # #
Amber cursed herself when she woke up.
It was dark out. Somehow, she had fallen asleep. It was her first weekend off from working nights and she wasn’t completely adjusted to her nocturnal schedule and now she had messed it all up. Amber was in a foul mood as she tidied up her bedroom and stuffed dirty laundry into her bag.
Still foggy from her nap, she wasn’t thinking clearly. She didn’t have to haul everything down to the laundromat. While Amber was in Maine, Evelyn had finally gotten her washing machine fixed. Of course that meant that she wouldn’t be able to do laundry in the middle of the night as well. The washing machine shared a wall with Evelyn’s room and that woman heard everything.
Amber slung the bag over her shoulder and decided to leave her laundry on top of the machine and do it first thing in the morning.
She knew something was wrong as soon as she exited her room.
Evelyn’s door was open. The light was off in Evelyn’s bedroom, but that didn’t mean anything. Evelyn never turned on the lights in her bedroom. Half of the bulbs in there didn’t even work.
“Cousin Evelyn?” Amber asked.
She approached the open door slowly.
All she could think about was how she had fallen asleep without putting any seeds in front of the door. If Evelyn had been attacked by monsters, Amber would never forgive herself. With one knuckle, she rapped on the door.
“Evelyn?”
There was no answer.
Amber paused, trying to think of a way that she could avoid going in the room. The only person she could think to call was Shawn, and there was no way she was going to do that. Her legs just wouldn’t carry her forward, so she retreated instead. Amber put her bag of laundry on top of the washing machine and crouched to fetch the sharpened stake that she had stashed behind it. With that in hand, she felt more brave.
A deep breath later, she was standing back in the doorway.
“Evelyn,” she whispered.
Using the stake, she reached in through the gap between the door and the frame and she flicked on the lights in there. Her cousin was halfway on the bed, with her legs and one arm draped over the side. Amber dropped the stake and rushed forward.
“Oh, Evelyn, no,” she said.
The tears that began to fall were mostly for her cousin. Some were for herself, and the way that their last conversation had gone. It wasn’t so much what she had said, but the anger she had felt towards Evelyn. She couldn’t live with the idea that they had left things that way.
“Please don’t be gone,” she whispered. “Not yet. We have plans, remember? You wanted to go see Cousin Ruth in the spring. We were going to go down to the ocean and listen to the waves break.”
Amber only let herself indulge in her grief for a few minutes. She pulled Evelyn up onto the bed and posed her in a dignified way. It wasn’t unusual to see Evelyn laying on top of the afghan, fully dressed. That was the way she liked to nap. Before calling anyone, she spread a throw blanket over her cousin, to hide the stain that
