Of Blood and Bone (Chronicles of The One #2)(116)
He laughed, his face, hewed and weathered by nearly eighty years, rolling into it. “Secret’s out.”
“How’d you come up with Popsicles?”
“Had some molds come through. It was our Cybil who came up with it more than me.”
“Cybil?”
“She asked me what they were for, so I was telling her, and she wouldn’t quit until we tried making some. Two of us sampled the first ones yesterday.”
“And she didn’t say a thing to her sweaty mother.”
“My granddaughter knows how to keep a secret. We were going to make a bunch more, then take them on down to the kids at the summer program. I got another batch freezing now, but we’ve got some to sample. You want cherry, grape, or lemon?”
She had a flash of herself, eating a cup of lemon gelato at a street fair in New York. “You have lemon Popsicles?”
He winked at her, rose to go into the back. Her father-in-law didn’t move as fast as he once had, and Arlys imagined he had some aches and pains. But he never complained.
He brought her back a small, frozen spear with a stick through it. An actual stick, she noted, with the bark peeled off.
“Sticks come back,” he told Arlys as he handed it to her. “We spent a lot of time making them.”
“Ingenious.” She sampled. “Delicious!”
“Lemon juice, a little sweetener, water.”
“It’s the little things,” she told him.
“You’ve got a look in your eye that tells me you didn’t just come in to see me or snag a Popsicle.”
“Right, as usual. I ran into Petra and Fred’s two youngest. God, that baby is pretty. All that curly red hair. Anyway, I nudged Petra a little on Mina.”
“You’re good at nudging.”
“I’m a professional.”
“You are that. My son bagged himself a smart one.” He gave her a pat before he sat again. “She’ll talk to me a little—Mina. Every now and then I’ll take up some toy that comes through. She’ll take them for the boy, thank me, but she’s not the sort who asks you to come on in and sit for a visit.
“Place is clean as a whistle though,” he added as he fiddled with the lamp. “So’s the little boy. What did Petra have to say?”
“Among other things, she told me Mina goes out at night. Do you know anything about that?”
“I’ve heard somebody going out the back way from up there. I thought it was Petra. Teenage girl, maybe going out to meet a boy, or some other girls, or just to get out.”
He set his tools down. “Place is clean, like I said, but spare, too. Not much in it, and while she’ll take things for the boy, she won’t take any of the doodads for the apartment. Stuff for the walls, rugs, that sort of thing.”
“Cult mentality,” Arlys said.
“No question there. So I figured Petra was slipping out to have a little fun. And Denzel’s got the moon eyes for her.”
“Now why didn’t I know that?”
“You’re not the only professional nudger and snooper around here. So I figured it was Petra. Never crossed my mind Mina’d go out at night.”
“Petra says sometimes she takes the baby, but she often leaves him sleeping and goes out on her own. She still keeps separate from all of us, Bill. She didn’t come to the Fourth of July Memorial, or the Christmas party. I know she’s let Rachel examine the baby, but Rachel has to go to her. She won’t go to the clinic or the community kitchen, won’t work in the gardens. Petra gets the food and supplies, does the bartering. I don’t know how she’d manage without Petra running her errands and helping with the baby.”
“She’s not all the way right,” Bill said simply. “She may not have been before she got tangled up with that cult. And the way things are, probably won’t ever be all the way right.”
“That’s exactly my take, too.”
“She’s not the only one. We’ve got Lenny dancing naked down the street one day, and Fran Whiker digging up her backyard looking for buried treasure the next.”
“You’re not wrong.”
“What did Rachel say about the little boy?”
“Healthy, clean, happy. It’s the life he knows.” But little boys grew up, Arlys thought, like her own Theo, who’d taken to archery like Robin Hood.
Or Denzel, with moon eyes for Petra.
“She’s not breaking any laws or ordinances,” Arlys continued, “and she does her sewing to barter—or for Petra to barter.”
“But you don’t trust her.”
“I don’t. I know Will doesn’t. We haven’t had any trouble since that near ambush, and the odds are whoever helped the PWs plan that is long gone.”
“But,” Bill finished.
“But. Lenny and Fran have issues, but they’re part of the community. Mina just isn’t. Refuses to be.”
“I could slip out and follow her some night. See what she’s up to.”
“Let me talk to Will. I’ll let him know what Petra told me, see what he thinks.” She handed him back the stick, kissed his cheek. “Come to dinner tonight.”
“I’ll be there.”
The two-way he kept on gave a squawk.
Nora Roberts's Books
- Of Blood and Bone (Chronicles of The One #2)
- Nora Roberts
- Dark Witch (The Cousins O'Dwyer Trilogy #1)
- Blood Magick (The Cousins O'Dwyer Trilogy #3)
- Island of Glass (The Guardians Trilogy #3)
- Bay of Sighs (The Guardians Trilogy #2)
- Year One (Chronicles of The One #1)
- Stars of Fortune (The Guardians Trilogy, #1)
- The Obsession