Logan’s an only child—adopted, his parents will tell you any chance they get, our little miracle!—but they live in a four-bedroom split-level on the curve of a cul-de-sac. The windows are muffled in lacy curtains, so that all you can see from the porch are the blurred squares of family portraits on the walls, the beige shapes of people around a table. The doormat reads Blessed in swirly cursive.
I knock, maybe a little too hard. There’s a pause before I hear the reproachful ding of silverware set down, the patter of footsteps down the hall.
Logan’s mom is a wholesome blond woman with the bluish-white smile of a Realtor or a toothpaste ad. “Opal! We weren’t expecting you!”
Eden etiquette demands a good seven minutes of seesawing pleasantries back and forth before either of us approaches the point, but I don’t feel up to it tonight. Maybe Arthur is rubbing off on me. “Hey, Ashley. Can you tell Jasper to grab his stuff?”
A very slight tightening of the muscles around her mouth. “Oh, but Dan made chili! Why don’t you join us?”
“No, thanks.”
“But the boys are having such a nice time! They were working on those little movies of his . . . Logan’s always so happy to have Jasper over.” I bet he is; if Logan graduates high school, it will be because my brother carried him through every grade like a tiny, stoned baby bird. “And so are we. You know he’s welcome to stay as long as he likes.”
Her eyes are wide and sincere. They’re always inviting Jasper on family vacation and posting pictures on Facebook (“you have such big hearts ” someone comments) or coincidentally stopping by church functions and parading him around with whatever kids they’re fostering lately, like items they won at a charity auction. Jasper says it’s worth it for the high-speed internet and the full-size candy bars in the freezer; he also says I should mind my business.
I shrug at Ashley.
I can tell by the slight drawing-up of her shoulders that she would like to go coldly imperious on me—nobody on earth can do cold imperium like the girls in the county clerk’s office—but she’s never been quite sure where I stand in her personal chain of command. I’m neither a kid nor a parent, an awkward grown-up orphan who exists outside the comforting hierarchies of church and town, annual fundraisers and Avon parties.
I slouch uncivilly against her doorframe, still not speaking. She breaks. “I’ll just—” She scurries off, calling for Jasper. Teenage moans rise in two-part harmony. Chairs scrape sullenly.
Ashley returns. “He’s just packing up. Can we send you home with leftovers?” She extends a Tupperware with an air of aggressive largesse.
“No, thanks.”
“You sure?”
“Yep.”
She steps out onto the porch, plucking at the gold cross of her necklace. She nods at the truck parked crookedly in the drive. “That yours?”
“Yep.”
“Oh, it’s so cute! Me and Dan just love vintage. You know—” Her voice settles from bubbling to merely burbling. “You know, it looks sort of familiar.”
“Does it.”
“One of the Starlings—the one before the boy up there now—he used to drive around in a blue Chevy just like that.”
And I know I should give her some vague nonanswer like that so or did he now but instead I let my eyes meet hers and say, “I know,” just to watch her go pale.
“Oh, honey, I hope you don’t have anything to do with that place. My uncle told me it’s some kind of secret society, like a cult. I mean, it can’t be a real family—he says back in his day a Chinese couple moved in!” 18
“So . . .” I drawl the word out. “I shouldn’t have anything to do with this house because your uncle said, quote, a Chinese couple, unquote, lived there. That right?”
Uneven patches of red bloom on her cheeks. “That’s not what I—you’ve heard the stories.” I blink big guileless blinks until she leans closer, her voice now a vicious whisper. “Listen. You might not believe everything people say, but my Dan saw something with his own two eyes.” She pauses, as if hoping I’ll ask her to continue. I don’t, but it doesn’t matter. “It was the night that turbine blew—eleven, twelve years ago now. Well, at the time Dan drove for Frito-Lay’s—this was before we were even going out—and he refilled the vending machines at the plant. So he finishes up, he’s crossing the parking lot when he sees that very same Chevy.” She shoots my truck a hostile look. “And then, boom. The turbine blows.”
I remember the boom. It was the sort of sound you heard with your bones rather than your ears, a great silent heave in the atmosphere. Jasper slept through it, but I sat up for hours, watching the sickly orange of the sky above the plant and wondering how many funerals it meant (four).
Ashley is leaning even closer, dark and eager. “And after all the fire trucks and EMTs cleared off, and it was just Dan in the parking lot again, he went looking for the Chevy. It was gone, but there was a trail of blood leading up to where it was, and a whole pool where it sat. Dan said it gave him a chill.” A small silence, then: “And he said there were blackbirds everywhere, lined up on the light poles and power lines, watching him, dead silent.” I bet they weren’t blackbirds; I bet if you saw them in the light their feathers would have a queer iridescence, like used motor oil.
“It was a defect in the turbine.” My lips feel stiff, strangely cold. “There was a whole report.”
Ashley rubs a palm across the gold cross, smoothing it. “Dan saw what he saw. He reported it to the constable, but by the time they went asking around, both those Starlings were dead.”
I’ve spent more time than is strictly rational studying the portraits in the yellow parlor of Starling House. Arthur’s mother: hard-faced, strong, her knuckles scarred and swollen just like her son’s. His father: long-lashed and over-tall, like a bashful greyhound standing on his hind legs. Neither of them struck me as ecoterrorists or mass murderers, but what do I really know about them? What do I really know about Arthur, with his cold silences and secrets?
Ashley is watching me with an awful compassion in her face. “I’m just trying to look out for you, Opal. I wouldn’t trust a one of them. That young man—Alexander?—is likely just as bad as his parents, and twice as ugly, if you ask—”
“I’ll wait in the truck.” I walk back down the drive, berating myself. Why should I give a single lukewarm damn what anyone says about Arthur Starling? So he gave me a coat. So I’m driving his father’s truck, which he cleaned up just for me, which he touched as if it were a poorly healed scar, still tender. He can’t even bring himself to say good night.
Jasper slides into the passenger seat three minutes later, slamming the door hard enough to send paint chips skittering down the windshield. “Since when,” he says, with frankly dangerous calm, “do we have a truck.”
“Got it off the Rowe boys,” I lie, blandly.
He looks pointedly at the broken handle of the glove box, the sun-faded dashboard, the seams of the bench seat, which are splitting to reveal crustaceous layers of yellow foam, lightly fuzzed with mold. “You got ripped off.”
I turn the key in the ignition, already concerningly fond of the bronchial cough of the exhaust. “You don’t even know how much I paid.”
“You paid for this? Like, legal tender?” He cuts me off before I can make a case in the truck’s defense. “Is there some kind of emergency? Did your appendix burst? Because I can’t think why else you would see fit to drag me away from the dinner table—”
“I wanted pizza.”
A small nuclear reaction occurs in my peripheral vision. “Mr. Caldwell made chili—”
I slide a twenty out of my back pocket. “Real pizza.” Both of us are aware that this is a blatant and heartless bribe, that I am relying on his adolescent metabolism and the fact that Dan Caldwell uses bell peppers in his chili so it doesn’t get “too spicy.”
A moment of taut silence. Then, skeptically, “With wings?”
My phone buzzes halfway through the second box of pepperoni.