The words came out in a rush and so quietly that Allie had to strain to hear them. The subtext was obvious; she’d better believe the same.
Allie sighed. “Am I going to get a visit from a large man in an expensive suit looking for a lot of money?”
“No,” Joe told her indignantly. Paused. “Probably not.”
“Great. Did she tell you why she wants me here?”
“She had to leave her stuff to someone, right?”
“But why me?”
He snorted. “Why not you? All I know is…” He was watching the shadows again. “… she had me sign that paper and she let me have your name. And then she wasn’t here for a few days. And then you were here.”
“How many days?”
“Store’s been closed since last Friday.”
“I got the letter on Monday. She must’ve mailed it…”
“Before.” He scratched at the back of one hand. “Before she was gone. Yeah. Said she couldn’t trust the post to get it there after.”
“The letter said, if you’re reading this I’m dead, so she either knew she was going to die or she knew she was going to disappear.”
“Well, yeah.” Joe stared at her like she was slightly simple. “She knew things, didn’t she?”
“Good point.” She’d probably seen Allie accept and her reason for leaving things the way she had didn’t need to be any more complicated than that. Allie couldn’t decide if that took the pressure off or added some kind of unwanted destiny factor.
I’m your grandmother, Luke.
She dropped the fairy gold in the box, reached out to close it, and saw Joe swallow, prominent Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his throat.
“I’d go get coffee for your grandmother sometimes,” he said hurriedly when she paused. “You know, when she didn’t want to lock up the store.”
Allie glanced over at the closed sign still facing the street.
“But yeah, I guess I’m early today so, you know, I’ll just leave you to it.” Hands shoved into his pockets he turned away from the counter. And then back again. “Oh, and don’t be forgetting to mark that I got my bottle down in the special ledger. The accountant comes in every Friday afternoon to do the bookkeeping, and he gets right shitty if he’s got to ask about stuff. He’s old school.”
“Right. The special ledger.” Joe had gotten as far as the door and was shifting his weight from foot to foot as he waited for her to let him out and lock it behind him.
More than Joe seemed to be waiting.
“You know what?” Allie said slowly, feeling her way but growing more confident with every word that she was moving in the right direction. “A coffee sounds like a good idea.” She pulled a twenty from the cashbox. “And a muffin if Kenny’s got anything edible. And the same for you. I know it’s an imposition,” she added hurriedly before he could speak, “but I’m floundering here. If you don’t mind staying for a while…?”
“To help?”
“Yeah.”
“Here?”
“Yeah. You seem to know what’s going on. More than I do anyway.”
It was entirely possible that Joe was older than her grandmother, but just for a moment, the moment between uncertainty and his smile, he looked painfully young.
“How’d you take your coffee, then?” he asked, pulling the twenty from her grip.
“Black.”
“The Saskatoon berry muffins are killer.”
“Great.” Then she rethought it. “That is great, right? You weren’t warning me?”
“No, it’s great. Coffee and muffins, then. You don’t need to lock the door behind me, I’ll only be a tick.”
He looked solid through the door. Solid, and completely alone. Allie checked off a box in her mental actually-figured-out-what-Gran-wanted column. Feeding one of her strays wasn’t much, but it was a start.
“Wait a minute, you can’t be Irish.”
Joe picked the last of his muffin crumbs off the counter with one finger. “Leprechaun.”
“Okay, ethnically Irish, but you said you were raised by human parents.”
“In Ireland.”
“Oh. Right. Then what are you doing in Calgary?” Allie asked hurriedly, feeling a little stupid for having missed the obvious answer.
“Why not Calgary? Things are happening here. It’s a good place to start a new life.”
She didn’t point out that his new life seemed to suck a bit.
At ten, Allie turned the sign, opened the store, and went reluctantly back behind the counter. All three account books were up on the glass—one for the yoyos, one for the potions and the mailbox accounts, one for the store. “Okay. Let’s try an easy question. Did Gran ever explain why she kept the yoyo sales in a separate book?”
Joe shrugged. “Not big on explaining herself, your grandmother, but I’m guessing it’s because she’s got so many of them.”
There was the box of plastic, glow-in-the-dark yoyos on the counter, a box of old-fashioned wooden yoyos enameled in primary colors on one of the shelves next to three stacks of saucers that seemed to have lost their cups, and there was a box of miniature yoyos, each about as big around as a twoonie, on the floor next to a box of old musical scores.
Allie opened her mouth, about to protest that three boxes weren’t that many, then reconsidered. “There’s more than I can see from here, isn’t there?”
“In the storeroom.”
She drained the last drop of cold coffee and, as fortified as she was going to get, said, “Show me.”
He nodded toward the door. “What if someone comes in while we’re gone?”
“That’s a risk they’ll just have to take.”
“Don’t you mean a risk you’ll have to take?”
Allie thought about the monkey’s paw and tips of icebergs. “Nope.”
The basement had a packed dirt floor, stone walls patched in a couple of places with concrete blocks, and bare bulbs, dusty and dim, hanging from the underside of the floor joists. Piles of boxes filled nearly the entire space with only narrow passageways between them for access.
“This isn’t a storeroom,” Allie muttered, ducking under a spiderweb, “this is a horror movie cliché waiting to happen.”
The stained boxes nearest the stairs were packed with smaller, unopened boxes of yoyos.
“She only brought new ones up when the old boxes were completely emptied,” Joe offered, crouched by the trapdoor.
“And the rest of the stuff?”
“Stuff.”
“Specifically?”
“People bring your grandmother boxes of stuff, and she buys them. Bought them.” Allie could hear the frown in his voice as he changed verbs. “Used to buy them. You know, stuff like the last bit of crap you can’t get rid of at a yard sale or the odds and sods an estate auction won’t touch.”
That explained the smell. The storeroom reeked of other people’s lives, a melancholy mix of the stale perfumes left behind by withered dreams, lost hopes, and forgotten promises—with a faint hint of cat pee. And mold, Allie acknowledged, as she made her way carefully back up the steep stairs and headed into the tiny store bathroom to blow her nose on a handful of toilet paper.
“Your grandmother told me once that nine out of ten people throw away the answer all unawares like.” Joe closed the trapdoor and straightened, arching his back. “She also said nine out of ten people don’t know what the fuck the question is.” He turned, cupped both hands over his corduroy-covered crotch and scowled at his reflection in the mirror, his ears suddenly redder than his hair. “I hate it when it does that!”
Allie glanced over. “That’s why it does it. For the reaction.”
“It doesn’t bother you, then?”
She shrugged. “I have a lot of cousins; if you freak at a live frog in your lunch bag, next time it’s pepper in your pompoms.”
“What in your what?”
“Pepper in your pompoms.” Allie pointed at the mirror now showing her reflection in full cheerleader rig. “Red and gold,” she corrected, and the colors changed. “Most of the Gale girls are cheerleaders in high school. Even Gran.”