Page 9 of Never Landing

She looked up as I watched, and winked at me. “Don’t you worry, young man, I know how to handle a cucumber.”

I had to work not to wince at what had to be an unintentional innuendo. Right? “Of course, ma’am.”

“You call me Marsha,” she insisted. “And that old coot who’s pretending he can’t hear anyone who asks for help is Ezra.”

“You let me work, woman,” he called over, though he had a grin on his face. “The customers leave me be, so I don’t know why you’ve got to make everything harder.”

She absolutely cackled at that, shooting back that she liked things hard, and he stopped and facepalmed.

Dear gods. Theyweresexual innuendos.

Were they a hundred, or twelve?

“It’s young Mr. Bailey, isn’t it?” Marsha asked, dragging my attention, however unwillingly, back to her. “Living in Mimi’s old house?”

It was weird hearing my grandmother called a real name, let alone a nickname for one. My parents had both always called her “Mother,” not “Mom” or “Marilyn” or anything even mildly less formal. So the least formal thing I’d ever heard her called had been “Grandma,” by myself.

I nodded. “Yeah, I...think I am, anyway. I’m a little worried the place is going to fall apart under me, but I guess that just means it’s good I arrived when I did. I didn’t realize the house was in such awful shape.”

Marsha’s wicked expression turned soft and sympathetic, and she nodded. “Mimi started to struggle at keeping the house up at the end, poor dear. And now it’s been a couple years, so everything is even worse. We all tried to help while she was alive, but”—she motioned to a bulletin board posted at the front of the store—“as you can see, everyone in Cider Landing is looking for a handyperson these days.”

I glanced the board over, and sure enough, it was covered with requests. Carpentry, drywall, painting...Was there no one at all in town who fixed things? That was going to be a problem for me. I could get someone to come in from the nearest town, but I suspected that was going to be ridiculously expensive. Expensive, while I was in the middle of considering leaving my job.

Fuck me.

I shook it off and turned back to her. “I saw a kid out behind my house when I got here. He, um, he reminded me of an old friend of mine. Peter. You don’t remember him, do you?”

She cocked her head to one side, considering. “The last Peter I knew in town was Peter Hawking. Strange man. Town doctor for years and years. But he was old when I was a girl. No Peters I know of now.”

“I remember him,” Ezra said, coming over to set one of the watermelons with my groceries, even though I hadn’t taken one when I’d chosen my food. They did look excellent, though—odd, for this time of year. “Worked hard to make it okay to have a head doctor here in town, even way back when I was a boy. Everyone said it was because his mother went round the bend, so he wanted people to have help with their brains.”

Given they were talking about small-town America in...hell, I didn’t know, anywhere between the thirties and the seventies, that was impressive. There were grown-ass progressive city-dwellers I knew currently, who still thought psychology was the next best thing to witchcraft.

“I remember the stories,” Marsha said, staring off into space, eyes seeing something much farther than the back wall of the shop. “She kept telling everyone that the fairies had stolen her son, even though he was right there. Poor man. She never did accept him.”

I shivered at the thought. My mother had never been the most demonstrably loving person, but to have a mother who outright said I wasn’t her child? That was true nightmare fodder. If he’d managed to go become a doctor after that and change things for the residents of Cider Landing regarding their mental health, he had been a hell of a man.

Marsha shook her head. “Anyway. Nope. No Peters in town I know of. No Petes. No Peteys. Sorry.”

I sighed and frowned, crossing my arms over my chest. “He was here, though. When we lived here fifteen years ago, my best friend’s name was Peter. I don’t think he was driving in from the next town over, since we were fourteen at the time.”

Marsha didn’t look surprised or even seem to reconsider whether she was right or not, just shook her head and gave a light-hearted shrug. “Maybe he’s one of those fairies that stole Mrs. Hawking’s son.”

Ezra’s expression was sympathetic as he stuffed the melon into my cart along with the bags of groceries, but he didn’t say anything.

I opened my mouth to tell him I hadn’t bought the melon, but he shook his head and patted me on the shoulder. “It’s Cider Landing, kiddo. Sometimes imaginary friends are less imaginary than our parents think.”

Marsha laughed, and as I left, turned and spoke to her husband. “You know, I had had an imaginary friend as a child. Aurora, the forest princess. I’d almost entirely forgotten that.”

When I looked back at Ezra, his smile was strained and sad as he looked at his wife.

I couldn’t get that expression out of my head the whole drive home, or as I unloaded the groceries into the kitchen cabinets and fridge—a fridge that thankfully still worked, even if it sounded a little like it had a jet engine instead of a tiny home appliance motor.

Finally finished, I decided I needed to wash Grandma’s kitchenware. I was sure she’d done it before putting everything away, but that had been years ago, and since, they’d been sitting in the cabinets gathering dust.

Just as I finished the first load of dishes and started the old dishwasher, I caught a flash of something white out in the backyard. Lace?

Yes, lace. A frothy white lace dress, on a little girl with perfect golden curls.

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