Page 13 of Deathmarch
“Five minutes isn’t going to make a difference,” Kennan told her as he started pouring drinks.
Suddenly, Allie’s dinner tasted even better. She might even have smirked a little, which Brittany immediately caught.
“Dumpster girl,” she said, covering it with a cough, but didn’t go any further than that, which Allie strongly suspected had to do with Kennan staying behind the bar, within hearing distance.
Allie did her best to keep the peace by ignoring the women, until finally their ride arrived and off they went.
Dakota couldn’t resist calling back a “Be careful with riding a bike in the snow!” But after they piled out the door, just about falling over laughing, Allie got a chance to fully relax.
She finished her food, everything as tasty as she remembered, then she leaned back in her booth to watch the door. Fifteen minutes ticked by. Twenty. She curled her toes in the boots, the tips a little too narrow, all right for a short time when she was doing a show, but not so great for long-time wear. She wanted to be out of them.
Rose swung by. “Dessert?”
“No. Thank you. The food was amazing. Exactly like I remembered.”
And so was everything else. Allie was tired of people watching her as if she was the night’s entertainment, talking about her in lowered voices. So as Rose walked away, Allie pushed to her feet and strode through the pub with a swagger, in ringing spurs. Then she wrestled into her coat and gave her audience a jaunty wave before she left the stage.
She trudged through the inch of snow that had collected on the sidewalk since someone had last shoveled. At least she wasn’t freezing now that a hot meal was working in her belly. She reached the B and B without frostbite, or spotting Harper. Hopefully, he would just drop her car and purse at the B and B and leave.
Allie used the broom by the front door to brush off her boots before shaking herself to dislodge the snow from her coat and hat. As she walked into the meticulously restored gingerbread Victorian’s foyer, the bell above the door rang, bringingShannon O’Brian from the back.
“Oh, hello there.” Shannon crossed the dining room. “You must be Allyssa.” She hurried across the parlor next, then a brief pause, a widening of blue eyes as she reached her guest. “Oh! Allie Bianchi! I know you. I didn’t make the connection when I saw your name on the reservation. It’s been so long. For some reason, I thought you moved to the West Coast.”
She wore a shapeless dress that completely hid her figure, topped with a hand-embroidered apron. With her gray-streaked hair pulled back in an old-fashioned bun, she looked a lot like Allie’s favorite cartoon grandmother. All she was missing was a yellow bird in a cage and a cat named Sylvester.
“Wait,” she said, holding up her index finger. “No. That’s Allison Burano. You were in the same class, weren’t you?”
“Two classes above me.”
“I remember now.” The grandmotherly smile disappeared. “You ran off. That’s right. Just disappeared one day. No note, no anything. You know, I was quite concerned.”
“I’m sorry.” Allie had mowed the lawn around the B and B from time to time, when her father had been too drunk to show up for the job, but it hadn’t occurred to her that anyone would miss her, let alone worry about her.
Shannon waved away the apology. “I figured it had something to do with Tony.” She gave a heavy sigh, then waved that away too. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Five years? Oh, goodness, no. It must be closer to ten. You’ve grown up. You look like your grandmother, God bless her soul.”
Allie had no idea what to say to that. She’d never known either one of her grandmothers. Her only family had always been her father.
Shannon crossed the foyer to the stairs, beckoning. “I started a fire in your room.”
Allie could have kissed her. And also, Shannon was the first person so far not to judge Allie for her spurs or ask her about her horse, just accepting her as crazily dressed as she was, which Allie appreciated.
“Thank you, Mrs. O’Brian. Do you need me to sign in? Give a credit card?” Although that would have to wait until Harper showed up with her purse.
“You can sign the guest book in the morning. You should warm up first. And you’re all paid up. The Historical Society took care of that already.”
One of the reasons Allie had taken the booking. She never refused a job if they comped her lodgings. And besides, she’d just had a cancellation. And Broslin had been on her way.
She followed Shannon up the stairs, and that was when she came across the first jar of glass eyes, on a shelf. Oh God, she’d forgotten the jars full of eyes all over the place.
Shannon caught her gaze and sighed, stopping for a second. “I don’t have the heart to throw them out. The guests don’t seem to be bothered.”
The first time Allie had been inside the house, the eyes had scared her. Then Shannon had explained that her father had been a glassblower who specialized in glass eyes for the US Army, for vets who were injured in war. Every eye the man created was patterned after the eye of someone in his family. The blue ones were Shannon’s, but there were also hundreds that were the eyes of her mother, her brothers, her sisters. When Shannon’s father had died and his equipment was sold, the buyer didn’t want the eyes. Neither did the Army, which had switched to machine-made by then, ones that matched the actual patient and weren’t generic.
“One young couple who stayed here before Christmas took a bunch of pictures of them,” Shannon said.
“You’d better watch it or you’ll end up an Instagram celebrity.”
“I wouldn’t mind if it brought me more guests.” Shannon started up the stairs again with a little groan and a limp.
