“I just assumed—”
And then, out of the darkness by the door where the lights don’t reach, “It’s me. Okay? It’s me. I’m the other one. I’m sorry, guys.” This to the barflies. “You know—I hope you know—I’ll do whatever I can to support you. But I owe her. And I … believe her. It’s me.”
I didn’t see Omar come in. Nora obviously didn’t either. She looks not just stunned but like she might actually fall over. In fact, apparently no one noticed Omar’s entrance, everyone too busy arguing, stating their cases, standing up to Nora’s dressing-down. Now he’s standing behind me, behind all of us, and everyone’s turned to look at him.
“You can’t not have taken your name off the suit,” Nora sputters. “You were never on to begin with.”
That he understands this, which even I don’t follow at first, is saying something. “I signed on a couple weeks back. I told Russell not to tell you. Didn’t want to make a big deal. But it was time.”
There has been attrition over the years as people died or moved away. There have been abstainers, like Pastor Jeff, who believes in heavenly justice rather than the earthly variety. But it’s always been Omar’s holding out that’s most rankled her. He’s the one whose name and title seem like they would lend the whole thing weight and import. He’s as wronged as anyone. But he’s always refused, claimed he has to remain impartial, be available to appear as a witness instead should it ever come to that.
“Why?” She has actual tears in her eyes. “I mean, why now?”
He walks straight toward her like he honestly can’t help himself. Stops a few feet away and looks awkward and embarrassed. Smiles nervously around at everyone. Decides he doesn’t care and not only comes up to the bar but ducks under the flap and right over to her, inches away. Holds his hands out toward her then pulls them back in fists then tucks them in the back pockets of his jeans. “You were right. We can’t just let them back like nothing happened. Everything happened. They have to know we know it. They have to know we’re watching this time, paying attention.”
“What happened to ‘We have to be nice to them because it’s our best shot at being treated well’?”
“We tried that already. It didn’t work out that great. So I’m standing with you. We’ll try something else this time.”
“Tried that too,” Hobart grunts. “We’ve been suing them sixteen years now.”
“Omar has a job too, you know,” Tom says.
“You want it?” Omar’s standard response, but he hasn’t taken his eyes off Nora.
And I see why. She glows, like her face is lit up from inside. She stands looking at him for a while, letting him look back, letting him stand close, their eyes holding, but neither of them saying anything more. Then she points at a place on the other side of the bar with her chin, and he ducks back under and doesn’t meet anyone’s eyes—never mind every single one is on him—and slumps onto the stool she picked for him, battered, like he’s swapped the weight of one world for another, but unbeaten as yet.
She brings him a beer and a bowl of pretzels, a meager offering maybe but an offering nonetheless.
“Thank you, Omar.”
“Anytime, Nora.”
She raises an eyebrow at him.
“Well,” he hedges, “at least this time.”
One
“So!” Petra says, eyes shining, an unmeasurably small amount of time after River gives me the folder with the emails and leaves the cafeteria. “Read them!”
“Not yet.”
“What do you mean ‘Not yet’?!” Shrieking.
“You sound like Monday,” I inform her.
“I DO NOT SOUND LIKE MONDAY!” she disagrees.
“I have to wait for her.”
“Who?”
“Monday.”
“Why?”
“And Mirabel.”
“Who drove you all the way to and from Greenborough?”
“We studied on the way,” I say.
“Compendiously,” she says.
“They’re my sisters.”
“So am I.”
“Tomorrow,” I promise, because she’s right about that part. “Tomorrow I’ll tell you everything.”
* * *
Pooh also opens with “So! Read them!”
“I’m waiting for my sisters.”
“What about me?”
“I’ll tell you tomorrow.”
“What if I’m dead tomorrow?”
“Then you won’t care anymore.”
“Nothing exciting ever happens in Bourne.”
I nod. She’s not wrong.
“And when it does, it’s because everyone’s being poisoned,” she allows, “which is almost worse.”
I nod some more.
“Why did you even come by if you weren’t going to let me see?”
“To give you incentive not to die before tomorrow,” I tell her.
* * *
On the way up my own driveway, I run into Apple Templeton. She’s on her way out of my front door. She looks surprised to see me, but not half as surprised as I am to see her—I live here, after all—and I worry that if she looked at me closely she would see at once that her son picked me, picked us, that he betrayed her family to help mine, that I hold in my hands a thing he gave me which might break open the lawsuit, bring Belsum to its knees, and change everything forever. But as soon as her eyes meet mine, she looks away.
Inside, I find Monday reorganizing the periodical section, which lives under the bathroom sink. It’s mostly old magazines from the eighties, many missing covers, most missing pages, all water damaged and molding. Usually she arranges them by topic. Sometimes by color. Today, though, she seems to be going for alphabetical by the first name of the issue’s first contributor.
“So things didn’t go well with Apple?”
“We played Truth or Dare and a Lie.”
Well, one of them did probably. “Why was she here?”
“She wants River to leave Bourne.”
“Leave?” My chest feels strange.
“She does not want him settling in. She does not want him to forget his plan to go.”
“Was she here to see me?” I knew it from her face in the driveway.
“Why would she be here to see you?”
Because she knows he’s helping us, knows what he told me at the dam, knows what he delivered in the cafeteria. She knows we’ve spent time together and everything’s changing, and she wants it to stop.
“I don’t know,” I lie.
“She came to borrow books about how to get your son into college when his grandfather is rich but evil and his parents steal other people’s libraries.”
Oh. Strange as this sounds, it actually makes more sense than what I was thinking (though even for Monday, this would be a hard title to find).
“He gave us something.” I show her my folder.
“What is it?”
“An email thread.”
“What does it say?”