Page 41 of Nothing Ever Happens Here

Before I can scream, my phone buzzes inside my pocket and makes me jump.

“Fuck!” I hold my chest and recover my breath and then fish my phone from my pocket and look at it. A text. From an unknown number. I stare at it in utter disbelief when I read what it says.

Stop looking for me.

16

SHELBY

A howling wind rattles the windowpanes in their frames as I sit on the living room floor with my laptop perched on the coffee table, looking at new security systems online. Pops and June are eating waffles at the kitchen counter. Clay lets them make smiley faces on top with blueberries and M&M’s because it’s Sunday, and because Poppy can have whatever she wants after what she’s been through, and that’s fine by me.

Yesterday Clay said he’d take the day off and stay with me, but we really can’t afford to close the bait shop for a day. And, more importantly, I refuse to let this monster make me feel afraid in my own home. Then he wins. At least that’s what I keep repeating to myself and everyone else, but of course I’m terrified. Maybe youdolet the monster win. Maybe that’s why there are panic rooms and restraining orders and pepper spray self-defense classes, and keep-your-eyes-on-your-drink rules,and walk-home-with-a-buddy advice, and Tasers, and house alarms. We are always fighting against the fear, and maybe at this point I should just run to Mexico, buy a beach condo, change all of our names, and let him win.

But here I still am. After the attack, life went on, and we are pretending the best we can that life is not crumbling around us. Sometimes I do think more realistically about running. I think about actually taking the girls and driving south until I feel the sun on my face and we land somewhere warm and safe and far away. And sure, maybe I would commit to running if I could afford to—if the girls weren’t in school and we didn’t have a business to run and if we had any savings, maybe. But even if I did run, if someone is really after me, deeply and personally gunning forme,of all the damn people in the world, andfor whatever insane reason, wouldn’t they follow? Would I really be safe anywhere?

It’s Sunday now, so we’ll open the shop for half a day. But since Poppy is probably too traumatized to go back there, I don’t know what to do with the hours in front of me when Clay is gone. The security cameras around the house were cut—the wires clipped in two, the cameras removed completely. The power to the house was shut off by the breaker in the garage just like at the Oleander’s, but this wasn’t torched. The garage was unlocked so the psychopath just got in and turned it off. I imagine so that there would be no security footage of them to recover.

I can still set the alarm to sound off without the cameras, but that does little to persuade me to stay here alone with the girls all day—not unless I can see what’s outside. I’m looking at motion sensor–activated floodlights online and doubling the cameras and learning about tamper alarms and backup power devices and all sorts of things you don’t imagine needing to know when you settle your life into the middle of safe, small-town nowheresville.

“Billy can install it,” Clay says, wiping his hands on a kitchen towel and picking up his coffee mug from the side table next to his recliner.

“What?” I ask, wondering where Billy’s name sprang from.

“He’s been a contractor and does electrical and plumbing stuff. I’m just saying, to save money, we can see if he’ll install whatever you get,” he says, and there is something I don’t like about the way he says “whatever you get,” like it’s my sole decision to waste our money on security equipment we can’t afford, rather than a life and death necessity, even though I’m sure that’s not how he meant it to come off.

“There are instructions,” I say. “I can do it.” He raises his eyebrows at this, but knows it’s not the time to argue with me.

“You sure you don’t want to come with to the bait shop? Maybe it’ll be good for Poppy to have us not make a big thing about going back—just act like it’s fine,” he says, and he has a point. Maybe I’m the one who can’t stand the thought of it right now, and maybe she won’t associate the warm shop that holds half her childhood memories with what happened outside of it on that dark ice, but today is not the day to test that. My nerves are frayed and my heart pounds from the constant anxiety of it all as it is.

“Actually, can you just drop us at the Ole today? The girls want to play with Gus and I have some paperwork to catch up on,” I say, because of course the girls will always say yes to a puppy and all the Sour Patch Kids Herb can stuff them with, and I’ll feel safer with everyone around. Clay seems relieved at the idea of this too, because he kisses me on the top of the head and tells me he’ll pack lunches for the girls before he goes.

By 10:00 a.m., Poppy and June are at the card table in the rec room where a new jigsaw has been started—it’sE.T.and has Elliot bicycling in front of the moon, and they quietly push pieces together and eat from the plastic candy canes filled with Skittles that Herb gave them while Gus chews a bully stick under Poppy’s chair,but I don’t see any sign of the regular gang this morning. Oliver from room 16 is mixing himself a Swiss Miss hot chocolate packet by the coffee station, and Wendy from room 11 is watchingAncient Alienson the television and playing solitaire on the coffee table.

I ask if Heather has been in this morning and Wendy says “beats me,” so I make my way down the hall and peer in to open residents’ doors. I only see Ed in his Viking jersey watching pregame coverage and already arguing with the sportscasters on his TV, and Kitty, who hides her vape pen when she sees me, and who is talking very loudly on the phone to her sister about how Rodney’s only using her for her pension, and does she want her to sign up on Match.com and try to catfish him to prove it?

I keep walking down to Herb’s room and try to think of which Rodney she might be talking about. It must be Rodney Galindo, because I heard Rodney Moyer moved to Ann Arbor and nobody calls him Rodney, just Rod. I stop and take a long breath when I hear voices coming from inside Mort’s room.

The door is cracked, so I tap on it with my knuckle and push it open. I’m taken aback to see not only Herb, Flor, and Millie there, but also Evan, who isn’t even scheduled to work today, and Heather of all people, all huddled together, with low voices and concerned looks about their faces.

“Am I interrupting something?” I ask, and Millie yelps. Everyone else whips around, startled.

“It’s Sunday,” Florence says factually.

“The girls wanted to play with Gus,” I say, but I know they can see through that. They exchange strange looks I can’t decipher, and Heather says she was just about to go make the rounds, but before she can even stand, I point at the computer table next to Mort and gasp.

“That’s my phone!”

“But it’s Sunday, and you’re not supposed to be here, so we haven’t figured out how to tell you about this yet,” Herb says.I pick up the phone and hold it to my chest, looking at everyone defensively. They all look back at me with sympathy in their eyes, and Flor pats the spot on Mort’s bed next to her. I just stand, hand on hip, not sure who to aim my glare at.

“What they hell, guys?” I say, and Mort motions again for me to sit, so I do.

“We interviewed Detective Chipped Beef last night, and Herb found this in the butt crack of the man’s couch,” Millie says from her spot in Mort’s window seat. She picks her teeth with a toothpick and shrugs.

Herb explains the interview idea for the podcast and how they recorded some generic statements from Riley and didn’t expect much until he found this.

“In his couch?” I ask again.

“I told them they should put it back,” Millie says. “I’ve seen one too many horror movies to know that if Riley’s a murderer and he notices his trophy is missing…who knows which one of us is next? Probably Herb, though.”

---