twenty-two.
Inside Seconds, the air of the pawnshop was the same as most of its merchandise—used, old, sad.
Waiting impatiently for the one other customer in the place to leave, Marsden looked around, not even pretending to browse.
Late afternoon sun burned in through the cheap Roman shade that partially covered the front window, a mellow gold. The light had an old-time feel, but it was more washed-out than nostalgic, and it glided over the shelves full of things now in limbo. A clock with wooden animals inside, loaded on springs. Assorted porcelain tea sets with apparent certificates of authenticity. Small televisions, lamps, dartboards.
She knew each item was supposed to be worth something, to someone, somewhere. Maybe some of them were even on the rare side, were treasures in hiding.
But she was pretty sure most of it wouldn’t compare to a piece of jewelry, whether its value lay in being brought in and sold or carried out, newly purchased. Hadley would know this, too. She wondered how many times he’d stood where she was standing, waiting for the store to clear to show Fitz his latest find.
The bell over the entrance rang, and the lone customer disappeared through the door, a bad replica of a Tiffany lamp in hand.
Marsden walked up to the counter, where the shop owner still stood counting cash into the till from the lamp purchase. A small and wiry kind of guy, he was surrounded by a wreath of smoke from the cigarette clamped between his lips. Hair worn in a severe buzz cut, a blond fringe of a crown over a narrowed hazel gaze.
Marsden rarely came into Seconds—had no reason to, with nothing to buy and no money to buy anything with—but she knew who Fitz was, even if she’d never spoken to him before. Glory was small enough that not many faces went unnoticed. But now she was seeing him through different eyes, knowing he’d been one of her father’s best friends. She wanted to reach into his brain, take out his memories of Grant Eldridge, and have them be her own.
The counter was the kind with a glass top, its interior hollow to make room for display shelves. Marsden peered down and saw rows of jewelry, the gold of necklaces and the platinum of rings.
If Fitz asked, she could have told him the story behind too many of them, about the people Hadley had skimmed them from.
A necklace with a ruby pendant, its former owner a woman named Nicole Dremont. She’d lived three states over according to the tiny print of the covert column in the paper. She’d dumped a handful of soil into her purse.
A silver bracelet. Gina Laldeen, from California. She’d had a road map tucked into her pocket, directions to Glory indicated in bright red marker; covert dirt had darkened its folds.
A ring fat with inlaid stones had belonged to Sebastian Walsh, a local whose parking tickets, found in his wallet, revealed how much time he spent outside the casino. Needle tracks skewered the insides of both elbows, showing how often he was at the pharmacies. His palms had been coated with the covert—just as there was no way to tell if that had been intentional or he’d simply caught himself before falling, there was no way to tell if the overdose had been accidental or if some voice had drawn him to the land.
“What can I help you with?”
She glanced up, unsure of how to start. She had never seen a script on how to ask a stranger what they might be hiding about their old friend’s death. “My name is—”
“Marsden.” Fitz shut the till and met her gaze with his own, his expression curious. “Grant’s daughter.”
It shouldn’t have surprised her that he would know her, but it did. What else did he know? “Yes, I—”
“Does Shine know you’re here?” His expression was wary now, too.
Had her mother told her father’s friends to stay away after he was dead? Was that the explanation behind Fitz’s wariness? “No. Does it matter?”
“Not sure yet. If you’re looking for something specific, I can tell you what’s in the store. Is it a gift, or . . . ?”
“I have questions, actually—about my dad. So I guess what I’m looking for are answers.”
Fitz leaned back against the wall, exhaled cigarette smoke. “Your mom probably wouldn’t want you asking me. After your dad died, she was pretty clear she wanted us out of her life, which also meant out of yours. To Shine, we were just as bad as Grant’s gambling.”
“She doesn’t have to know.”
“Can’t you ask her whatever you need?”
“I have. She can’t help. Which is why I’m here.”
He shrugged. “Okay. Makes no real difference to me.”
“You guys were friends?”
“Sure, good ones. And Casper, and Eugene, and Quaid, too.” At the mention of the dead Quaid, Fitz crossed himself clumsily. “The five of us would go to Decks and just hang out, playing blackjack or whatever.”
“My dad always lost money.”
“We all did. And then we’d win some. That’s the game.”
“The night he died, were you there? With him, at Decks?”
“Of course.” Fitz’s face clouded and turned unhappy. “The four of us were with him, as usual. Why?”
“The papers never said. They just said he’d been there, gambling, before he ended up in the Indigo.”
“Well, we were there often enough that whoever the papers spoke to probably never thought to mention it. Like when you talk about the sky, you assume it’s blue, unless you say otherwise.”
“Did he leave alone?” Marsden watched him, this man her father would have trusted, and found herself hoping he hadn’t been wrong to do so. Fitz didn’t seem dangerous or even much of a liar. But he was also one of Glory’s, a product of a town built on stories.
“That night? No, we all left together. Or, more accurately, the four of us stayed while your dad was the one who left. Me and Quaid and Casper and Eugene turned back after we said goodbye to Grant out in the parking lot. The place was hopping, more so than normal—your dad had gone on a roll, and people had stuck around to watch. Dash came out and called us back, said it was too early to leave. But Grant didn’t change his mind, said he needed to leave.”
“That wasn’t in the papers, either. The part about Decks being especially full.”
Fitz smiled, but it was wry. “Sky’s blue, remember? This is Glory. There are gambling and card houses on every other block—there’s always someone having a winning night somewhere. Not news. Just like it’s not news when someone’s losing a week’s pay somewhere else.”
Marsden knew her father had had those nights. She’d seen Shine cry over them. “Did he win a lot that night?”
“Four grand.”
She was startled. Eight years ago, four grand would have gone a long way for a family of three with another baby coming. It would have done wonders toward appeasing a young mother who had more things to worry about than celebrate.
“Grant kept talking about how he couldn’t wait to tell your mom. I hadn’t seen him that happy in a long time. And you know, the guy didn’t win any more often than us, but it was sure something to watch when he did. As though those cards were talking to him directly. Or everyone else’s had turned transparent, just for him. So, yeah, no surprise that people gathered to watch. Just as it was never a surprise when some of those people decided they knew Grant like a friend, talking him up, wanting to absorb some of whatever luck he was having. That night was no different.”
She thought of that four grand. Her father’s empty pockets. “Who were they?”
“Just the same old guys who clung to everyone who had a winning hand. And the few out-of-towners who always end up drunk enough to do it too, forgetting they’re not locals. That night, there was this one guy watching Grant play, and I thought he was just one of those drive-bys. But then I overheard him and your dad talking. Turned out they knew each other, seemed to go back a bit together, even though I’d never seen the guy before. But that was Grant. Everyone claimed to know him.”
Shine had said the same thing, Marsden remembered. Grant was like that, making people love him too easily.
Shine had also said this of someone she’d known for a long time: Your father knew him, too. They were friendly enough.
Brom Innes.
The man she’d chosen to save her.
Marsden shuddered. Was it possible it’d been Brom there that night at Decks, watching those games of blackjack? Could he have waited for her father to leave, knowing he’d won big, then followed him along the darkened highway, the crash of the Indigo and the building storm keeping him faded, unnoticed in the background?
Brom, who had likely loved her mother in secret, because Grant Eldridge had been in the way?
The idea left her cold—robbery was one thing, murder something else entirely. She forced the ugly thought, the chance that for eight years she’d considered all the wrong things, away. “That guy, was his name Brom Innes?”
The shop owner lit a fresh cigarette. “Never asked, and he never told.”
“What did he look like? Average height, light-brown hair, pale-blue eyes?” Even her description was bland and forgettable, the way she would describe a bowl of oatmeal. Just the way Brom was.
Fitz scratched his head. “I can’t remember. I don’t know. Maybe?”
“If I brought a photo, could you recognize him, do you think?” Peaches had an instant camera she could borrow.
“Yeah, maybe.” He sounded doubtful. She didn’t blame him. Eight years, and she was asking him to recall oatmeal.
“You look a lot like Grant, you know,” Fitz continued. “He used to keep a photo of you in his wallet. Showed it around once in a while, like we all hadn’t seen it before.”
“He did?” It was such a normal thing to do, when their family hadn’t seemed very normal at all, and Marsden’s throat went tight.
“I mean, he never really talked about you or your mom all that much. It always left him moody or quiet. Everyone’s got their fair share of demons, right? With Grant, they were all to do with family.” Ash dropped from Fitz’s cigarette onto the glass counter, a gray snowstorm. His face turned embarrassed. “Sorry. But it was what it was.”
“No, it’s . . . fine.” And it was, though it was odd to hear someone talk about her father with more admiration than anger.
“They were his weakness, you know? Cards. Each time he walked out of Decks with less than he’d gone in with, he knew he’d failed you guys. He could go from feeling on top of the world to lower than dirt, all in the span of a game, and you’d just see his eyes change.”
“You don’t think it was an accident, him dying.” She knew Fitz would hear it as an accusation, but she blamed herself, too, for also believing what the town believed—that her father had walked into the Indigo all on his own.
“I don’t know what to believe. Just like we can never be sure what happened to all that money he’d won. Taken by the tide after the storm forced him into the river? Lost at some other gambling house that he stopped at on the way home, not knowing the blackjack gods had already turned their backs on him?” The heart of Fitz’s cigarette flamed volcano red, then white hot, and over it, the pity in his gaze was nearly as searing. “The thing is, those gods might have blessed Grant that night, him winning what he did, but they still weren’t a match for the demons your dad had living in his head.”
Outside the pawnshop, the sun had fallen low, a wide, hazy band of yellow slung across rooftops. The dust that filled the air was now road dust, the dust of summer heat, instead of the dust of the used, the old.
Marsden biked home, thinking of this mysterious man she now had to find, so she could blame him for everything. Even if that man turned out to be the one her mother had decided she needed, the man her father had believed a friend.