Page 9 of Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“This one was excellent,” Madge said, tapping a cover that depicted a thick-haired man on horseback, his billowy white shirt unbuttoned nearly to his navel. “And I actually learned a lot about yellow fever.”

Joanna bought it. She’d tried modern romances but nothing post-1900 did anything for her, perhaps because she herself lived a sort of pre-1900 life, albeit with the blessings of indoor plumbing. It was hard to imagine wearing lace underwear and “sexting,” but easy to imagine wearing lots of complicated layers and rolling around in front of a fireplace.

Not that she’d ever managed anything like that. Her only (partnered) sexual experiences so far had been with the boys at the parties Esther had dragged her to during her early high school years. These make outs and sloppy-fingered fumblings hadn’t required anything of her beyond her willingness in the moment, and to seek out something real seemed pointless. There was no way to explain herself—no way to really know another person, or to let them know her—without explaining about the books. And that, she could not do.

Her mother’s store was in the same long brick building as the book shop, and Joanna glanced down the street at its awning, then paused by a parked truck to peer into the side mirror. Her mother tended to worry less if things looked good on the outside, but the best Joanna could manage now was to undo her long, fraying braid and shake her hair out around her shoulders. It was thick and slightly wavy, the light brown of buckwheathoney, and began immediately to float with static around her wool-clad shoulders. She considered putting on the green hat Cecily always said brought out the hazel in her eyes and decided against it; right now, she thought it would probably bring out the dark circles beneath them instead. She tried on a smile and abandoned it instantly. Her own dimples jolted her whenever she saw them. They made her look like Esther.

Bells jingled as Joanna pushed her way into the general store. As always, it smelled of incense and vitamins, a back-of-your-throat chalky smell that Joanna did not necessarily like but found herself missing when she was away from it. It was the scent of Cecily herself, potent, warm, healthy. Cecily had worked here through Joanna’s childhood and been promoted to manager a few years after she left Abe, and though it had started as a bulk health food co-op, it was gradually coming to resemble something closer to the kind of New Agey tchotchke stores one saw in the wealthier New England tourist towns: crystals and tarot cards infringing on the bins of organic oats; astrology workshops in addition to fermentation classes; “spiritual herb blends” taking over the looseleaf tea aisle.

There was one customer Joanna could see when she came in, an unfamiliar man looking at alpaca mittens, probably a tourist though it wasn’t quite ski season. Cecily herself was up by the vegetable cooler, carefully misting the parsley and cilantro with a spritzer full of water. Like Joanna she was tall, though unlike Joanna she had excellent posture and looked her height. She had high flat cheekbones and still spoke with the traces of a Germanic accent, though she hadn’t lived in Belgium in over forty years.

“My little baby!” she cried when she saw her daughter, and dropped the spritzer next to the broccoli so she could throw her arms around her.

The customer glanced up from the mittens to look askance at Joanna, who did not much resemble anyone’s baby, little or otherwise. Joanna didn’t mind his raised brows; she’d left embarrassment behind about ten thousand endearments ago. She hugged her mother back and then disentangled herself, letting Cecily reach for a lock of her hair so she could tut over the split ends.

“I could trim this for you in five seconds,” Cecily declared. “Four!” Then she gasped. “My love, what happened to your hand?”

“Oh, nothing—I cut it opening a can.”

“Did you clean it well?”

“Yes, I’m fine. Here, I picked up Esther’s postcards.”

Cecily’s expression didn’t change, but she turned away to pick up the spritzer and apply herself again to the vegetables. “Where is she now? Somewhere sunny with palm trees? In Barcelona, eating walnuts?”

“Do people eat a lot of walnuts in Barcelona?”

“I did when I was there,” Cecily said, “but that was the eighties for you.”

Joanna let this go. “No,” she said, “she’s not in Barcelona. She’s staying at the station.”

Cecily whirled mid-mist and caught the edge of Joanna’s coat with the spray. “What? What station?”

“The same station she’s been at for the past year,” Joanna said, startled by her mother’s reaction.

“In Antarctica?”

“Yes, where else?”

“No, you must have misread,” Cecily said. “Let me see.”

“Ready when you are,” the customer called from the counter.

Cecily hesitated, then shoved the spray bottle into Joanna’s hands and hurried to the front, narrowly avoiding a collision with a spinning rack of essential oils. Joanna followed more slowly. Usually Cecily was all salesperson charm,did you find what you were looking for,have you seen our new goat’s milk moisturizer,but now she packed the mittens and rang the man up without so much as a smile, as if impatient for him to leave. When he did, the door chimes ringing in his wake, Cecily put out a hand.

“The postcards, baby.”

Joanna gave them to her and Cecily set both on the countertop,murmuring to herself as she read first one, then the other. She pushed her sleek hair behind her ears, shook her head, and read them again, as if looking for something she’d missed.

“What is it?” Joanna said. Her mother looked more agitated than Joanna had seen her in years, and she felt a pulse of answering fear in her own chest, though she didn’t know what there was to be worried about. “What’s wrong?”

“She knows better,” Cecily said, “she knows better than to stay, she needs to—” She broke off, choking. Joanna willed herself still as Cecily turned her head and coughed harshly into her shoulder, a long-standing cough that had at first worried Joanna greatly. Now, though, she suspected it was put on. It only tended to crop up when they were talking about Esther or other things Cecily didn’t wish to discuss. Finally, Cecily caught her breath and stood with her eyes closed, hands on the postcards.

“What’s upsetting you?” Joanna said, and when Cecily didn’t answer, “Is it that she’s so far away? She’s always far away. Antarctica, Barcelona, it’s all the same distance, really.”

“It’s so remote,” Cecily said, and touched her throat. “Maybe that’s good? Maybe that’s a good thing.” She seemed to compose herself, shaking back her shoulders and smiling at Joanna. “What if I come over for dinner tonight, hmm? I’ll bring a lasagna, a bottle of wine, I’ll cut your hair on the porch like when you were a little girl...”

Joanna felt a sour knot form in her throat. “Mom,” she said. “Don’t.”

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