That night after Luke had gone to bed, Margot washed dishes until one side of the sink was empty, then she sat at the kitchen table and made a list. She needed to make a copy of Luke’s house key for herself and organize his medications. She needed to clean the kitchen and living room and stock up on toilet paper and paper towels, both of which he seemed to be almost out of. She’d read somewhere that putting labels on things, like what was inside the kitchen cabinets, would help him navigate the house when memory failed him, so she wanted to do that as well. Also, with all the time it had taken to move to Wakarusa, she’d fallen about a week behind on work and needed to pump out some articles that weren’t complete garbage. She added Do your job to the list. Then, at the bottom, she wrote a reminder to herself to call the subletter she’d found for her apartment in Indianapolis. He’d sounded unnervingly wishy-washy the last time they spoke and she needed him to move in, make his first rental payment. Otherwise she’d owe a full month’s rental payment for a place where she was no longer living. Just looking at the list made Margot tired, but she’d have more time tomorrow.
But by the next day, the town was abuzz with what had happened—the news of it ripping through Wakarusa like a storm cloud—and it was hard to get anything done at all.
* * *
—
Margot first noticed something was off the next morning at the pharmacy. She’d left Luke a few minutes earlier nursing a cup of coffee and doing the book of crosswords she’d brought from Indianapolis because she’d read they could help keep him sharp. A bell above the shop’s door announced her arrival, so even though no one was behind the counter when she walked in, she assumed the pharmacist would appear soon. She stood by the counter, running her fingers absently along the bags of cough drops on display, the indistinct sounds of a TV coming from the back.
“Excuse me?” she called when no one had showed after a minute. “Hello?” She waited. Still, there was nothing. “He-llo?”
Finally, she heard a movement in the back, then a man poked his head around one of the aisles. “Oh!” he said, plucking a pair of glasses hanging from a chain around his neck. He settled them on the bridge of his nose, squinted, hurried over. “Sorry ’bout that. I got caught up in the news, you know. Terrible what’s happened, isn’t it?” But before Margot could respond, he jerked his head back as if just now seeing her for the first time. “Not often I see an unfamiliar face in here.”
Margot smiled. “I’m here to pick up some prescriptions for my uncle.” She twisted her backpack around to the front, so she could pull the two orange bottles from the pocket. Earlier, she’d sifted through the mess of bottles Luke had accumulated, and to her relief, most of them were for the same drug, different month. She’d organized them all into three current prescriptions, two of which needed refills: one that seemed to be a statin, one for blood pressure, and one for blood sugar.
“Who’s your uncle?” the pharmacist asked.
Margot placed the two bottles atop the counter. “Luke Davies.”
The man’s eyebrows shot high on his forehead. “You’re Luke and Rebecca’s niece? That must mean you’re Margot.”
His expression was more curiosity than friendliness, but Margot returned it with a smile nonetheless. “That’s me.”
“I’m so sorry about your aunt, dear. That cancer was so fast. And my goodness, I haven’t seen your folks in ages. Good people, though, good people. How’re they?”
Her smile tightened, but only a bit. She’d known this was coming from the moment she made the decision to move back. The uncertain look about Luke and Rebecca, the fawning one for her mom and dad. Her parents had been the perfect Wakarusa residents until the moment they moved away, which was ostensibly for her dad’s exciting new job in Cincinnati, but was really so he could go to rehab, which not only didn’t work, but turned him resentful and meaner than before.
“They’re great,” she said to the pharmacist. “Do you think you could help me out with these prescriptions? I’ve heard of a statin before, but is that for your heart or your cholesterol?”
Margot waited for what seemed like far too long for the man to fill two simple prescriptions, and when he came back, he looked flustered and anxious, frowning distractedly as he stapled her little white bag shut. And then, as she was walking out, she passed a woman on her way in, a phone pressed hard to her ear. The woman was so absorbed in her conversation she didn’t seem to see Margot at all. But just before the door closed behind her, Margot heard the woman say, “I know. I told you. The Jacobses are innocent.”
Margot snapped her head around to look at the woman through the glass, frowning. Maybe she just misheard her. The name was probably just at the top of Margot’s mind because she was back after all this time. It was impossible to be in Wakarusa and not think about the Jacobs family. Plus, the woman’s voice had sounded urgent, and the Jacobs story was two decades old. Still, Margot had the urge to go back through the door and ask the woman what she was talking about, but the idea of willfully inserting herself into this town’s rumor mill stopped her. She’d just look it up on her phone.
Her Google search in the car yielded no new results, so she put it out of her mind. She had too much to think about already anyway.
The rest of the day passed in a blur of cleaning. She did dishes and scrubbed counters and collected an entire trash bag full of soda cans, used paper towels, food wrappers. When she walked into her uncle’s bedroom that afternoon as he went for a walk, she clamped a hand over her nose and mouth. His bedsheets smelled sour with the accumulated scent of human, with sweat and urine. She didn’t even bother washing them, just threw them out and bought fresh ones from the Walmart in the nearby town of Elkhart.
She was so distracted in fact that she’d forgotten about the incident at the pharmacy entirely until she walked into Shorty’s Bar & Grill that evening to pick up dinner for her and Luke. She’d have to get her uncle off a diet of pizza and burgers eventually, but she hadn’t yet made it to the grocery store, so takeout would have to do for the time being.
The restaurant was packed, tables full of people, their heads bent in animated conversation. The TV in the corner was tuned to a news station, but the collective din was drowning out whatever the two newscasters on screen were saying. Margot approached the bar, crowded with customers, and tried to catch the bartender’s eye. But the woman was focused on the man across from her, her arms crossed and eyes wide, nodding along as he spoke, gesticulating wildly with his beer as he did. “…exactly what I thought all along!” Margot heard him say.
She waved in the bartender’s direction. “?’Scuse me?”
The woman behind the bar turned her head to look at her. “Hold that thought, Larry,” she said to the man, then made her way over. “What can I get you, hon?” she asked Margot. She looked as if she were fifty, but Margot suspected she was probably closer to a rough forty. Her skin was like worn leather, her hair the consistency of straw.
“Hi, I’m picking up a to-go order for—”
“Holy shit!” the bartender exclaimed so suddenly Margot jumped. “A to-go order for Margot! You’re Margot Davies.” In her periphery, Margot saw a line of heads swivel in her direction. She forced her wince into a smile. The pharmacist had worked fast. It had been less than seven hours since she’d told him her name.
“Hi.”
“How’re your folks? Gosh, I haven’t seen Adam and Bethany for ages!” The bartender’s face dropped dramatically. “I miss them. Will you tell them Linda says hi?”
Margot nodded. “Sure. Yeah, course.”
“Oh my god!” Linda exclaimed, then her voice dropped an octave as she said, “Is this why you’re here?”
“Um.” Margot shook her head. “Is what why I’m here?”
“Well, the story of course. You’re a reporter, aren’t you?”
“Yes…” Margot was so thrown by how much this stranger seemed to know about her, she was having trouble following the conversation. “What story? What’s going on?”
Linda’s eyebrows shot up. “You mean you don’t know?” She whirled around, looking for something, and finally her gaze landed upon a TV remote beside an open jar of maraschino cherries. She grabbed it up and pointed it at the TV. On the screen, the volume bar grew.