“In the dark, in the woods. Was there even a moon that night?”
“I don’t know what night it happened. I guess I can catch up to him and check.”
Violet had pulled out her phone and opened a maps application.
“Cedar Road. This here?”
She pointed to a small road surrounded on both sides by no roads at all. Cedar was one of those poorly paved barely-two-lane roads that were commonplace in Sorrow Falls and large portions of the entire valley. It was the kind of tributary Spaceship Road used to be, before it was Spaceship Road.
“Yeah, that’s it. By the way, I’m Rodney.” He extended his hand. Conservatively, he had met Violet on six prior occasions.
“Violet,” she said, shaking his hand. “How far up Cedar do you suppose they were?”
“Seriously, no idea.”
She zoomed in on the map, pulled it left and right.
“Where was Mr. Granger buried?”
“Violet, seriously.”
“I’m showing interest.”
“You’re creeping me out.”
She turned to Rodney. “So you don’t know.”
“No, but I get what you’re saying.”
“What’s she saying?” Annie asked.
“Peacock Cemetery’s just over that hill.”
“You are seriously both just messing with me on this, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Violet said. “That’s all.” She swiped the maps image to one side and put it down in front of Annie without saying anything about it.
“I’m sure this Rick was just drunk,” Vi said to Rodney.
Annie looked at where her friend stopped the map. Cedar Road ran more or less precisely between the cemetery and the field where Shippie rested.
This meant nothing, of course.
6
GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER
The conversation at the bowling alley soon devolved into an exchange of some of the gossip Annie picked up earlier that day, some of which Rodney even cared about. Then there was a pin jam on some far lane that needed immediate tending-to, and he was back to work.
They were on the road shortly after.
“Geez, Vi, I wanted you to engage in conversation, not act like a crazy person.”
“Sorry. You know I’m not good at this. I just thought it was interesting.”
“Yeah, well now I’m freaking out over zombies, thanks. Vampires I can handle.”
“Neither one is real.”
“I appreciate that, but if I’m going to be afraid of something that isn’t real I’d rather it be vampires. At least some of them are a sexy kind of not real. Zombies are just gross. Plus, what does the ship even have to do with any of this.”
“Nothing! I just thought… Never mind. I thought if this Rick fellow was going to make up something that happened in a certain place, he picked an interesting place.”
“It’s not that interesting. I can think of two other cemeteries and one pre-colonial burial ground around here, and I could pick almost any street and draw a straight line going from one of those sites, across the road I’d picked, ending at the ship. I mean I guess if I’m a zombie, and I really, really want to see the spaceship, I’d rather be buried in Peacock than Winterhill, so that’s smart thinking by Mr. Granger.”
“I doubt he had much say in it.”
“I’m kidding.”
“Oh.”
Annie’s phone vibrated. She pulled it out and discovered she’d been missing some texts.
where u?
u shd come home.
“Oops, mom’s looking.”
“Is she all right?” Vi asked.
“Yeah, she just wants me home. No emergency.”
With Vi. Heading home now. Driving.
It was ten minutes from the mall to the end of Main, and another twenty to the house. Violet went by way of Patience and Liberty instead of taking Spaceship Road, even though the route that took them past Shippie was largely clear of traffic by nightfall on most evenings. That may have been because it was harder to see the ship at night. The army had spotlights on it, but those didn’t help as much as they should have. Plus, sightseeing in the dark just wasn’t a thing.
It would have been faster, then, to take Spaceship Road, but Violet preferred the second route, or perhaps was just on automatic, since it also went past the road that led to her house. Vi’s default excitement level in regards to the ship was also much lower than Annie’s.
When they pulled up to the house, the spot behind the family Honda was taken by a black SUV.
“You sure, no emergency?” Violet asked.
“We have a code worked out, you know that,” Annie said. “And that doesn’t look like an ambulance.”
“No, that’s a government vehicle. Look at the plate.”
“Yeah,” Annie agreed. “Army car. I don’t really like this. Wanna come in?”
“No. Text me later.”
“You’re not curious?”
“I’m very curious. Text me later.”
Annie jumped out of the car and waited for Violet to release the trunk so she could extract her bike. The driver of the SUV—military man in plain clothes, she didn’t recognize him but he had the Look—was standing next to the car. He noticed her and pretended not to. She wondered if he called anyone indoors to notify them of her impending entrance.
She got the bike out after some amount of work and wheeled it to the front porch, which was where it lived. The inner door was ajar, but this was hardly unusual. They lived far enough from proper civilization that they rarely locked up.
Annie’s house was on a small street that got a decent amount of traffic only because it connected the northern side of a bowl valley to the southern side of the same valley. In the center of the bowl was farmland. The house was on the lip, so from her bedroom window on the second floor (above the front door) she could look down on the private farms of six families. It looked a whole lot prettier than it smelled, because someone was always spreading fertilizer down there, and the wind always seemed to blow it toward her room.
It wasn’t the sort of place Annie would intentionally bring a guest. This was the first thing she thought of when finding Edgar Somerville in her living room. He and the army man who had picked him up that morning at the diner were both there, drinking coffee, and talking to her mother.
Annie didn’t quite know what to make of this peculiar arrangement of humans, but she was pretty positive she wasn’t okay with it.
“There you are, honey,” her mother said. She got up and gave her daughter a hug, which got her close enough to whisper: “What have you been up to?”
Annie smiled and shook her head, to say I have no idea.
“Mom, you should sit down. Are you feeling okay?”
Her mother was the kind of thin that looked unhealthy, because it was. Carol Collins was not in any real sense a healthy woman, physically, and her mind was nearly as suspect at this stage. She was dressed in an assortment of scarves and a loose caftan and standing in a living room that smelled of pot smoke, which—if Annie’s somewhat acclimated nose could smell it—meant she’d had a joint recently. It was not a good time for the military to drop in unannounced. Not that there was ever a good time for that sort of thing.
“Oh I feel fine, Annie. Don’t worry. She worries.”
Edgar and Army Guy nodded politely. Annie could only imagine what they had been talking about before she got there.
The couch the guests were sitting on bore some similarities to the way Annie’s mom was dressed, in that it was covered in blankets and sheets—plus a couple of towels—and was maybe even being held together by all of it. Most of the couch springs had surrendered all of their potential energy years ago and were just there to keep a little space between the top and the bottom of the seating area. Despite this, it remained superbly comfortable, although perhaps not the best thing to be sitting on should the need to rise quickly present itself. It was no coincidence, then, that a fire extinguisher was bolted to the wall next to it: if there was a fire it might take less time to put the fire out than to get off the couch.