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Chapter 10

J uliana did like itself a party. A to-do , as Mayor Dixie called them.

I was constantly fielding a barrage of invitations to luncheons, book clubs, hoedowns, crawfish boils, cookouts, cocktail hours, and Fourth-of-July block parties. Most of the invitations came by word-of-mouth or evites. Most, I declined. I needed to be at the restaurant as much as possible, at least in the early days. And Peter wasn’t exactly in the party-going mood.

Mayor Dixie’s dinner party invitation for the new citizens of Juliana came the old-fashioned way, through the mail, elegant print on heavy card stock in a creamy envelope. Our names and address were written in flawless calligraphy. After dinner Mere went off with my Joy of Cooking under her arm and Peter started on the dishes. I propped the invitation against the candle holder on the kitchen table.

He picked it up and scanned it, then putting it back down without saying a word, stacked his plate on top of mine and went back to the sink. He ran the water, so hot that steam billowed up around his shoulders.

I folded my napkin calmly. “I think we should go.”

“Can’t. I have appointments.”

“It’s at seven P.M. You don’t have appointments that late.”

“Sometimes I do.”

This was news to me. “With who?”

He shut off the water. “I can’t tell you.”

Now he was just being difficult. But two could play that game. “Okay,” I said, calmly, coolly. “Can you reschedule?”

“I’d rather not.” He was going at one of the pots now, a dish towel flung over his shoulder.

“Just for one night.”

“I’d rather not. The patient . . .” He leaned against the sink. “Consistency is an issue. I don’t want to cancel on them.”

“You know, people in this town are making an effort with us, Peter. With you. You’ve been asked to skeet shoots, quail hunts. A crappie—”

“It’s croppie .”

“It’s crappie . As in crap . A crappie fishing weekend on the famous, uncontaminated, ecologically balanced Cleburne Lake, by Mr. James Cleburne himself. Which you turned down.”

He turned suddenly, whipping off the dish towel. “You want me to go fishing with Jamie Cleburne? Seriously?”

“Why not? You could use some friends around here.”

He seemed oddly amused by this.

“What?”

“I don’t think it’s me Jamie Cleburne wants to be friends with.”

I laughed, which sounded guilty even to my ears. “That’s ridiculous. I’m sure he wants to be friends with both of us.”

His comment was out of character. Peter had an immensely reasonable view of relationships and marriage and the way normal human beings operated, and because of that, I’d never before felt any guilt over a random, biological pull toward another man. But now he was looking at me like he couldn’t figure me out.

“Right,” he said.

“What are you trying to say, Peter?”

He shook his head. “Why didn’t you tell me about him? About Jamie?”

“What about him?”

“Why have you never mentioned that he comes into the café every morning?”

I shrugged. “A lot of people come in every day. We call them regulars.” But I was covering. There was a reason I hadn’t mentioned Jamie’s presence at my bar every morning. It was because I was starting to depend on it. Starting to like it just a little too much. “You said it yourself. Jamie and I are friends. Just friends.”

He turned back to the pots in the sink.

“I just want to go to a party with my husband, Peter. I just want to feel like we’re both a part of this town. That’s all.”

He kept his back to me, scrubbing like his life depended on it.

* * *

The following week, one bright, hot morning after the breakfast rush, I asked Jamie if he knew anything about Lilah and the Catawampus story.

He rolled his eyes. “Ignore Lilah. She’s into all that woo-woo stuff. Crystals, astrology, Native myths.” He held up a hand, like he was testifying at church. “She told me she had a ghost in her house once.”

I thought of old George Davenport, his mind disintegrating with dementia, throwing a can of paint at the statue of little Juliana Minette. Of Peter’s insomnia. Mere’s dreams and mine. For the children, Wren Street had carved in the baseboard. If any house was haunted in this town, it was mine. ...

An image, horrible and grisly, flashed in my head. A young girl. I pushed it away.

Still, my scalp prickled painfully. I couldn’t resist the pull of the macabre. And my house really did appear to be in the center of it.

“What happened to Juliana Minette? What did she die of?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. But she died long before the Minettes founded the town.” He studied me. “What makes you ask that? Is something wrong?”

“Nothing,” I said briskly. “Back in a second. I’ve got to run to the back and grab some to-go boxes.” I ran into the kitchen, breathless, heart hammering, and flattened myself against the fridge.

I gulped and shut my eyes, trying to banish the image that had flashed before me seconds ago. Little, dead Juliana Minette; her rotted corpse, gray and glistening, with strips of sinew hanging loose and bright white bone shining through. Her fingernails were yellowed and flaking away. Her hair stringy and snarled. She bared her baby teeth, her jaw unhinging as if she yearned to consume something she saw.

Somehow, I knew. What she wanted was me.

* * *

The one invitation I definitely couldn’t refuse but could handle without Peter was a meet-and-greet at Juliana Elementary School, held in the summer for the new members of the Initiative. That day, I left work an hour and a half after Billie’s opened, ran home to shower and change into dark denim overalls over a lacey blouse and my requisite black Doc Martens. I headed over to Lilah’s so the four of us could go together.

Lilah and Temperance walked with Mere and me the three blocks to the school, the girls chattering the whole way. Lilah was in a gossiping mood, going on about the staff drama at the home goods store where she’d started to sell her homemade jewelry.

I was distracted. Maybe it was the Catawampus issue. I’d told Peter that Jamie thought Lilah was harmless, but he hadn’t been satisfied. Regardless, it wasn’t going to help matters to bring it up now. Lilah might be a bit of a kook, but she was my friend, and I didn’t want to jeopardize that.

Still, I felt antsy as we walked. A little like I was being watched. A couple of times, I looked over my shoulder, but there was no one there. I shook off the feeling. Little, dead Juliana Minette wasn’t watching me nor were a pack of singing children led by a creepy old woman. This was just what it was like to live in a small town. People knew you. They watched you. You weren’t just another one of the invisible ants like in New York. I just had to get used to it, that was all.

Juliana Elementary was just as storybook-quaint as the rest of the town. An old limestone building just a quarter of a mile from the square with an imposing scrolled facade and matching persimmon trees on either side of the front walk that led up to it. Inside, you could smell the mustiness, but the marble floors were polished, and the old, crank-out windows sparkled. The kindergarten, first, second, and third grades were located just down the first hall to the left of the main office. When we walked into the classroom with both Mere’s and Temperance’s names on the list by the door, I found myself looking into the face of Alice Tilton.

She wore a yellow dress, her blond hair pulled back in a clip. Mere raced right up to her, hugged her, then ran off to investigate the cozy, colorful room.

“I thought you were a third-grade teacher,” I blurted, realizing belatedly that I probably sounded disappointed.

“I was,” Alice said. “They moved me this year because one of the new Initiative residents also taught third.”

“Oh.” I pasted a smile on my face, hoping she hadn’t picked up on my attitude.

“It’s fine. I was ready for a change.” She turned her gaze to watch Mere and Temperance who were digging in a wicker dress-up box. “I’m excited to have Meredith in my class.”

“I’m glad to hear that.” I nodded. “She does read really well. Above her grade level, actually.”

“The principal filled me in. And I want to assure you I have experience in all sorts of challenges our kids face, even if it’s the kind where they need more advanced material to keep them engaged.”

Okay, I liked the way she said our kids. Against my will, I felt a small rush of warmth. “I just want her to love learning, that’s all.”

Alice met my gaze. “Oh, if there’s anything I can promise you, it’s that all my kids love school. At least the year of it they spend with me.”

It was obvious to me that Mere already felt at home in Alice’s classroom. She and Temperance had made their way from the play center to the math center to the reading rug where racks of books were arranged around a colorful circular rag rug. They’d both plucked books and were sprawled out reading.

“I am concerned about something else, though,” Alice said in a low voice.

I turned to find her watching me, face tense.

“I think we might have a conflict of interest.”

“About what?” My heart had gone into overdrive. Was she talking about my friendship with Jamie? Did she somehow feel that we were in competition?

“I’m seeing Peter,” she said.

For one split second, I thought she was telling me that she was dating my husband, and I let out a bark of wildly inappropriate laughter. The next instant, I realized I had missed the point entirely. My face turned blood red, and I clapped my hand over my mouth.

“No, no, no,” she said in a rush. “I mean he’s my therapist. I just wasn’t sure if that was okay. Me meeting with him and having his daughter—your daughter—in my class.”

“Right.” I thought fast. “Yeah, okay, I will admit, this is a new one for me.”

Peter hadn’t told me he’d begun meeting with locals. Not that he was obligated to. In fact, quite the opposite was true. He wasn’t allowed to divulge the identity of his clients, in order to protect their privacy. I knew this. I was accustomed to this. So why was I freaking out? Hadn’t I expected this transition? Hoped for it, in fact? I wanted Peter to finally start to settle into Juliana. To love it as much as Mere and I did.

“It’s fine,” I said firmly. “It’s his job. He’s a therapist. And it’s fine that he’s your therapist—I mean, fine with me.”

“We did talk about it,” she said. “Meredith being in my class. He said it was probably not ideal, but that it didn’t violate any standards.”

“Okay.”

“I just wanted to lay out all the cards.” Her face had gone bright red, now matching mine, and a lock of blond hair had fallen across her forehead. She looked nervous. It was possible she was just being respectful, but something about it didn’t sit well with me. Like there was something she was hiding from me. Something, possibly, that she felt guilty about.

I turned toward Mere and Temperance and tried not to think about the fact that one more aspect of living in this town had suddenly gotten weird. Add it to the ever-growing list, I thought, of the downsides of small-town life.