It could be a nightmare. I’ve seen Odell lurking around a couple of times in the past few months. Like you, he must think the coast is clear.”
Emma stared at her. “This is insane.”
“You shouldn’t have asked. It’s what I think. You were as much one of your mother’s victims as I was. Why do you want to come back?”
“I don’t, but you’ve made up this whole scenario, and you’re willing to treat me as if it’s true?”
“If you aren’t going to live here, you can’t prove you’re trustworthy. You’re just someone who owns a great house on the mountain, but you don’t want to live in it.”
“And if I did come back, I’d be a troublemaker?”
“You were before.”
She hadn’t been so much a troublemaker as someone who attracted trouble. She didn’t know how many times she’d cried her way home because Noah had abandoned her for a family crisis. He was old enough to handle his life. She hadn’t been.
“Show me the balloon thing again.”
“I can get someone else.”
“I said I’d do it.” For a second Emma was tempted to shout that she’d stay and prove her fellow citizens were just killing time with soap operas about her life. But Marcy had skirted the truth, and Emma didn’t want to be part of those nearly true stories again. It didn’t mean she couldn’t act like any other Halloween-festival volunteer. A normal person who lived in Bliss, Tennessee.
Until Owen finished the work on Nan’s house.
Marcy showed her again before she went on to her more important errands. Emma had a few false starts, but she concentrated on her work and ignored any sign of curiosity from her former friends and neighbors.
She slipped an orange balloon over the nozzle on the tank. As she activated the pump, the balloon expanded, and a cat swelled to arching life on its side. The trick was getting the thing off and tying a ribbon around it. She had a pile of balloons to finish before Owen was ready to leave for his paying job. At her house.
Peter Franklin, toddler son of another volunteer, kept leaving the petting zoo set up on the courthouse lawn, to help Emma collect runaway balloons that popped off the nozzle before she could tie them. Emma wrestled the cat balloon into submission and started a black one decorated with a happy, non-threatening ghost.
She whipped it off the nozzle, held it to her stomach and roped it with a long length of ribbon.
“That ghost isn’t scary,” Peter said. “We aren’t babies, you know.”
“You have a baby sister,” Emma said. “Your mom told me so the last time she asked you to stay inside the petting zoo.”
He ignored her less than subtle reminder. While she wouldn’t let the little runaway escape, the last thing she needed was Peter’s mom accusing her of putting a kindergartner to work.
“My little sister has a ghost of her own. Mom pretends it’s an imaginary friend, but Becca and I talk to Sebastian all the time.” He scratched his nose. “Becca tells me what Sebastian says.”
“That’s pretty creepy. How many other Sebastians do you know?”
“Just Becca’s. He’s pretty bossy. Like you.” Peter offered her a purple ribbon as a shadow crossed her arm.
Emma turned and froze, but Peter held up his arms to Noah.
“Hey, kiddo.” Without so much as a glance at Emma, Noah scooped Peter up and deposited him inside the fence where a goat immediately took a gentle nibble of his hair. “Your mom says you love the goats and llamas.”
“Llamas spit.” Peter stopped and gathered some saliva in his mouth. “Like this,” he said with an impressive display. Emma barely kept herself from leaping out of the line of fire, but Noah stuck like glue to the tall, leaf-strewn grass, and Peter stuck out his chest. “My dad taught me.”
“Your dad?” Emma looked around for the missing father. So many new people had come to Bliss in the past few years.
“Ted Franklin. He’s deployed,” Noah said, “for the second time. He went first the week after Peter was born.”
“He isn’t home much,” Peter said, looking strong, sounding wistful.
“I say we have a spitting contest right here and now,” Emma said. “So you’ll be in practice when he gets home again.”
Peter’s tiny fist shot into the air as he yelled “Yes!”
Noah stared at Emma as if he’d never seen her before, but he offered Peter a fist bump. Emma considered him brave for touching the little guy’s hand if the boy practiced his spitting skills at all.
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