All Good People Here(42)

She banged her palm against the door. “Uncle Luke! It’s me! Your niece, Margot.”

Nothing.

“Uncle Luke! Are you there? Please open the door.”

Still, nothing.

“Shit,” she hissed. She pulled her phone from her backpack and called his cell, but he didn’t answer. He didn’t answer the house phone either. “Shit, shit, shit.”

She stepped off the little concrete landing onto the ground next to it, then tromped around the bushes lining the house’s exterior. When she made it to the window that looked into the kitchen, she pressed her face against the screen, cupping her hands around her eyes to peer inside, but the kitchen was dark and empty. She walked around the corner of the house, the bushes scraping against her thighs through her skirt. Along this wall was another window, but the ground had sloped down and she had to stand on her tiptoes to look through.

When she did, her shoulders sank in relief. “Thank fucking God.”

There, in the living room, sitting on the couch and watching TV, was Luke.

Back at the front door, she knocked again. “Uncle Luke!” she called, trying to make her voice both loud and calm. “Can I come in? It’s me, Margot.”

And then, finally, there was the thunk of the dead bolt, the creak as the door slowly opened. In the sliver of space between the door and its frame, Luke peered out at her.

“Kid?” His gaze darted from her face to the yard and the road behind her. “Thank God you’re here. Come in.” The hard, worried line between his eyes made Margot’s heart beat faster. What was going on? He ushered her through the doorway quickly, and the moment she was inside, he clicked the door shut and twisted the dead bolt back into place. “Where’s Rebecca?” he said. “I thought she was walking you home from school today.”

Margot blinked, reorienting. While she always felt a sting to discover her uncle was lost in another time, what she felt most keenly now was relief. She was relieved to have him home and safe, relieved to know where exactly he was in the past. “Oh,” she said. “I was fine by myself.”

Luke shook his head. “No. I don’t like you walking home alone. Not now. Not after what happened to January.”

The name struck Margot like a slap. She swallowed, nodded.

“There are bad people in the world,” her uncle said, his voice uncharacteristically hard. “Okay? You have to be careful.”

And even though Margot knew he was stuck twenty-five years in the past, even though she knew none of what he was saying made sense anymore, his words still slipped up her spine like a shiver.

In the car now, she switched her phone from one ear to the other. “Yeah, I’m fine,” she told Linda. “I just had a long night. What’s up?”

“Mm,” Linda said. “You know my cousin swears by that pill. What’s it called? Ambien? Says it makes her sleep like a baby. You could try that.”

“Yeah. Maybe I will. So…what’s up, Linda?”

“Well, little miss busy bee, I think I might’ve found you a lead.”

“To Jace? Wow. You work fast.” It’d been less than twenty-four hours since she’d asked Linda for her help.

“Told you I was good.” Margot could hear the smile in her voice. “I spread the word to a bunch of people yesterday, and a few minutes ago, Abby Mason—you know Abby, don’t ya? Knows everything about everyone?” Before Margot could respond, Linda had already continued. “Anyways, Abby just walked in and told me that she heard from Brittany Lohman who heard it from Ryan Bailey that I said you were looking for Jace Jacobs. She said that Jace was kind of a loner, but she remembers one guy he ran around with. Name is Eli Blum.”

Margot scanned her mental catalog of kids she’d gone to school with. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Well, it wouldn’t. He and his folks moved here ’bout five years after January…” She trailed off. “You two were ships in the night. Anyway, Eli’s a bit of a…odd bird, if you know what I mean.”

Margot did not know what she meant. In a place where anything other than mainstream Christian Americana was odd, the possibilities were endless. “Right. And did Abby have any idea where Eli is now?”

Linda chuckled. “I keep forgetting you been gone for so many years. Everybody knows Eli Blum works at Burton’s on West Waterford.”

Margot raised her eyebrows. She’d assumed an “odd bird” would’ve moved away by now, but West Waterford Street was three minutes away, tops. It was, she realized, on the way to the hardware store. She shot an anxious glance at her backpack pocket where she’d stashed Luke’s house key. She didn’t ever want a repeat of last night, but talking to Eli wouldn’t take long. She’d just pop over to Burton’s and make a copy of the key after.

“By the way,” Margot said. “What’s Burton’s?”

“Well, the DVD rental place, of course.”

“Right. Of course.”



* * *



—

Walking into Burton’s DVDs was like walking into the past. The walls were covered in old movie posters—A Clockwork Orange, Black Snake Moan—and the glass counter had been decorated in a collage of photos hand-cut from magazines. The guy reading a book behind the cash register—Eli, Margot assumed—looked straight out of the nineties. Around Margot’s age, he had dyed black hair that hung over one eye, a silver nose ring, and he was probably the only person in this town who had tattoos.