Page 1 of Nothing Ever Happens Here

1

SHELBY

It’s a death omen.The words pierce the evening air and then are lost in the surrounding laughter and chatter. The words are meaningless to me as I hold my wineglass against the light of a flickering candle on the table and examine the hairline fracture in the glass. It’s a brisk October night, but in northern Minnesota that means heavy coat weather and a rush to enjoy anything outside before six months of winter, so it’s a perfect excuse to have a girls’ dinner at Groucho’s—the kind of place with a showy outdoor pizza oven and heat lamps on the eclectic back patio with its mismatched tables and chairs and cozy firepit.

When we clinked glasses—cheers to Rowan, soon heading back to Boston after a school break—mine cracked.

“Death omen?” Mack repeats.

“Yeah. If you break a glass during a toast, someone’s gonna die.It’s a thing,” Rowan says. “I’ll take it for you.” She holds her hand out for my glass. Mack slaps it down.

“Not twenty-one until September, no you may not, and is this what I’m paying tuition for? You’re learning about death omens?”

“Yep,” she says, and then a horrified expression blooms on her face when I still sip out of the glass of wine. “Don’t drink it for God’s sake! You’ll shred your intestines. See, death omen. I told ya.”

“It’s a tiny crack. Shhh. You’re freakin’ the girls out,” I say, because my four-year-old twins sit eating cheese pizza with plastic bibs and coloring mats next to us. Fine, they’re paying no attention, but still.

“Right.” Rowan smiles and I motion for the waiter to replace my glass. After many years and more of our life savings than we could afford to spare, I finally got pregnant at forty-one. And yes, I absolutely make sure it’s known far and wide—from Fargo to Duluth—that those girls are God’s most perfect creations. My miracle children. They can joke that it’s surprising that I don’t have an actual bullhorn to make daily announcements within the town square about how these girls are unfuckwithable. But it’s nice, actually. You make a big enough deal about something for long enough and it has a ripple effect. People treat them like they are made of glass, and it’s just the way I like it.

“Well, Leo promised to not get drunk at the Royal Oak tonight and to be home on the couch with popcorn popped by the time I get back,” Mack says, scanning the QR code on the bill to pay the tab.

“Do you know nothing about PFCs?” Rowan asks.

“Yes, you told me,” Mack replies, sipping the last of her wine and standing, so Rowan aims her soapbox lecture at me instead.

“They’re the carcinogens in microwaved popcorn bags. You’re literally eating cancer when you make that shit.”

“Language,” Mack says, nodding to the twins. “She’s taking an ecofeminist class.”

“I see. Well. I think it’s past someone’s bedtime anyway,” I say to the girls, and Poppy shakes her head and looks like she might start to pitch a fit. I give Rowan a side hug. “The wind is picking up too, so get home before that storm gets going.” Mack kisses me on the cheek and before they make their way out of the courtyard, suddenly June is in full hysterics because she left Bertha the stuffed badger at the cafe earlier. I flag Mack back over, but she doesn’t hear me, so I take the girls by their arms and rush out to the lot before she can drive off. Thank God, because the thought of June without Bertha for the night makes me shudder. She’s already pulling away from me to lie face down on the ground next to Mack’s car and howl.

“We have a badger situation,” I tell Mack. “She put Bertha in a highchair at one of the booths. Sorry.” Mack slips the cafe key off her ring with an amused smile and tells me to leave it under the mat when I’m done.

When I pull up to the Firefly Cafe, a chilly wind kicks up dust in the parking lot and makes a whistling sound through the bending trees. I leave the car running with the heat on and whisper to the girls that I’ll be back in thirty seconds, even though they are both fast asleep already. I jog up to the front door and use the flashlight on my phone to see the lock. It takes some fiddling before I manage to get it open. The wind becomes so strong, I practically fall into the front entry when the door pushes inward. I see Bertha right away. She’s in a booster seat with a plate of blueberry pie still placed in front of her. I’m sure one of the college kids Mack hired must have closed up, because she wouldn’t have left all that there overnight just to be cute. I start to rush over to grab the stuffed animal when I suddenly stop cold.

There’s a figure behind the register. The file cabinet under the counter is open and papers are pulled out.

“God, you scared the shit out of me,” I say, assuming it’s Leo. Because who else would have a key? The door was locked. And who else would be going through their files? But the figure doesn’t respond. When he steps out of the darkness and into the beam of my phone light, I see he’s wearing a thick ski mask and he’s dressed in black, and my body begins to tremble uncontrollably. I hold Bertha to my chest and take a step backward. I look to the front door, assessing quickly if I could sprint to it before he could get me, but what if he has a…

And then, with gloved hands, he points something shiny and metal that I can scarcely see in the darkness, but I get enough of a glimpse to know it means I’m seriously fucked.

“Turn that light off!” I blink at him in shock. “Now!” I obey. “Get back there,” he says, motioning to the kitchen and glancing toward the front window to make sure nobody is there—no cars are passing.

“Leo?” I say one more time because, for a moment, I think it sounds like it could be him, although the voice is too distorted to tell. His clothes are baggy and oversized so it could be anyone. I can’t tell from the shape or size, and for just a brief moment I think maybe this is a joke.

“Fucking go!” he screams, and then the panic officially sets in. I’m not dreaming, and it isn’t a joke.

“Please!” I start to plead. “Um… Do you…? What are you looking for? What do you want? I know Mackenzie—Mack. And, and, and Leo—the owners. They’ll— I know they’ll give you whatever you want if you just don’t… If nobody gets hurt. I know they will. Just tell me what you want.” He doesn’t reply. Instead, he starts slowly walking toward me so I am forced to move—to walk toward the back kitchen like he wants. My whole body shakes as I look out the front window at my car with my babies sleeping in the back seat. I swallow down a sob and put my hands up as he moves toward me. I expect him to just direct me to move, but he suddenly grabs me by the arm and pats me down,looking for a weapon or something like they do at airport security. Then he pushes me hard through the double swinging doors to the kitchen, where I lose my footing and barely catch myself before I fall.

The kitchen is dim, lit only by the small lamp on Mack’s desk on the back wall where she keeps her cookbooks and recipe cards. The lamp’s base is made of brass and shaped like a mouse reaching up and screwing in the light bulb. It was a white elephant gift that she ended up loving. I stare at the familiarity of it in this strange moment with longing, as if it can somehow help me. As if it can stop whatever terrible thing is about to happen. Adrenaline surges through me. I keep my eyes on the man, confused about what he wants. He seems unsure himself about what he’s going to do.

“Take your clothes off,” he says suddenly.

“Oh God. No. My babies. My babies are outside,” I whisper because the words are barely able to come out of my mouth. The reality of what’s happening is choking me.

“Do it. I don’t have all night.”

“Please,” I beg. Tears are starting to roll down my face now. “Please, anything you want. I— Whatever you came for, just tell me and I’ll…” He slams the gun down on a steel prep table, and the sound is deafening. He points it at me again, and I think of sweet June and Poppy and how, maybe if I just do what he says, he’ll let me go. I can’t see his face, so that’s good, I think. That means he might let me go, because I could never identify him. That’s giving me a flicker of hope, so I have to do whatever he wants. The girls are, impossibly, only feet away from me behind this cafe wall, asleep to the sound of the humming car motor and a sleep story I put on in the car, “The Pumpkin Pie and the Blustery Day.” It always makes them sleepy. Oh God, the thought of them makes me start to hyperventilate.

---