Chapter 5

I slept late, but at least when I woke up, I didn't have the weird moment of dislocation where I might have been ten years old again. I made coffee, scrolled around on my laptop until social media had made me sufficiently angry, then wandered out into the garden with my coffee cup.

The roses were beautiful, they really were. It wasn't too hot yet, and the humidity helped spread a light, delicious scent. The garden was lovely, just as Gran Mae had designed it. I just would have thought it was a lot lovelier if there were insects in it. I sipped my coffee, then padded over to the little white shed in the corner.

The door wasn't locked. I pulled it open, wondering if there was a clue inside as to the Mystery of the Nonexistent Arthropods. A leaking barrel of DDT, say. A promotional flyer from Permethrins Forever. Something.

All I found was a potting table covered in dust, some old terra-cotta pots, and a row of garden tools, most of which were now 50 percent rust by weight. "Come on, there's got to be some cobwebs at least…" I muttered, checking the corners.

There were not. I was standing in the one shed in the universe that was not inhabited by cobweb spiders. (Family Theridiidae. I don't actually know every arthropod family, but I always kinda liked that one's name because of the double i's in the middle.) This was deeply weird. There are cobweb spiders in everything. Every continent, pretty much every human dwelling, if you build it, a cobweb spider will show up. A dusty shed without them felt deeply unnatural.

I moved a stack of pots. Old newspapers spread over the table, yellowing with age. From 2003, according to the dates. Not long before Gran Mae died. She'd kept puttering around in the garden until the end, although she never planted anything but roses.

A flash of pink caught my eye. I picked up a small pair of jeweler's pliers, the plastic handles still bright. Gran Mae had used these to break the thorns off rose stems. I'd just been thinking of them yesterday, hadn't I?

There was nothing that immediately indicated why there wouldn't be any insects in the garden. No conveniently leaking pesticide barrels. I rubbed my forehead, probably leaving a smear of dust behind. The dusty shelves were full of glass jars. Could one be unlabeled DDT? Seemed unlikely, but you do find really weird stuff in people's sheds. Job security for future archaeologists, anyway.

I poked around. The dim, dusty light made it hard to tell what I was looking at, but there were no jars of strange liquid or suspicious granules. There was a baby food jar full of nails, which is possibly the only thing more common in sheds than cobweb spiders.

A small wrapped bundle looked promising until I unrolled it and found a dozen candles. They'd been partly burned down, but were otherwise just ordinary white candles. For use in case the power went out? Maybe? I had no idea why Gran Mae would keep them in the shed, though. If a tree's come down on a power line, you certainly don't want to go fumbling out to the shed looking for candles.

There was a bag of rock salt next to the candles. Hard on slugs and snails, but it didn't explain the insects. A quantity of salt that would damage insects would have also killed the roses, I imagine.

I stepped out of the shed and pulled the door closed behind me. While that had certainly been an exciting diversion, it didn't get me any closer to figuring out why the garden was an ecological dead zone. Salt and candles may ward off evil influences in some cultures, but I'm pretty sure that they weren't keeping aphids at bay.

I was halfway back to the deck when I saw a spark of red on the petals of a rose and peered closer. My heart leapt. An insect! They weren't completely gone from the yard!

Granted, it was an invasive Asian lady beetle, not one of my favorite leggy friends. They bite and they tend to swarm buildings, although you can't really blame them for that last one, because most ladybug species will swarm, given the right circumstances. But it was alive! It was here! (Mind you, I still didn't want to get too close. Asian lady beetles secrete smelly goop as a defense. They're no brown marmorated stink bug, but it's still not a terribly pleasant experience.)

"Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home…" I murmured. "Your house is on fire, your children are gone." Gran Mae used to sing that to the ladybugs. I remembered her pulling down a rose and showing me the ladybug, then singing the song. I must have been young, because I started to cry at the thought of the ladybug's house burning down. "It didn't really," she told me. "It's just a silly rhyme. Ladybugs don't live in houses. They live in the garden, and we want as many as we can get."

She had always liked them. She said they were the one good insect. She even bought bags of them to release in the garden to eat the aphids. Which made me wonder what this little guy was eating, or at least, what its larvae had been eating.

"Did you fly in from somewhere? There's no aphids for your babies here." I tilted the rose, watching the lady beetle climb between the petals. The stem between my fingers was absolutely clean, not a tiny green body in sight. I shook my head. "There should be a lot more of you," I said, "but there's nothing for you to eat. Or if not you, at least… you know. Two-spotted. Nine-spotted. Something." (Yes, I was standing here talking to a ladybug. I do that. Don't judge me.)

The ladybug was unimpressed. It reached the edge of the rose and its carapace snapped open to reveal the delicate wings underneath. "Why aren't there more of you?" I said plaintively. It didn't answer. I tilted the rose, jabbed myself on a thorn, and cursed. The rose snapped back and the ladybug flew away while I was sucking on my finger and thinking dark thoughts.

I went out into the front yard to check my texts. It was easy to tell when I got into a patch of good signal because my phone started chirping madly. Five texts from Mom, asking if I was okay, how I slept, if I was okay, to ping her when I got the texts, and apologizing for having bothered me.

Even for Mom, this was special. She was definitely more anxious than she had been. Either something was bothering her, or… well, I couldn't say for sure. I reassured her that I was alive, threw on clothes, and got my car keys. It was time to call my brother and get to the bottom of this.

Pondsboro has one good coffee shop. It probably has a name, but more importantly, it has the word COFFEE in large letters over the door. I went in and ordered something extravagant in the mocha genus, with extra whipped cream.

The barista was a woman so goth that she probably bled black mascara, but her coffee was top-notch. I sagged into a chair. "You have saved a life," I said.

"It's what I do." She sized me up. "New in town?"

"Visiting my mom. I grew up around here, but it's been a while."

"Well, we're open until seven on weekdays. And we have reliable Wi-Fi."

"You know your clientele." I set my laptop to download the next batch of photos for The Project, a task that would have strained Mom's house Wi-Fi to its limit, and went outside to make a phone call. (People who talk loudly on the phone in coffee shops are one of the minor banes of existence.) The street was deserted. I leaned against my car and punched the contact button.

It was still early in Arizona, but Brad answered the phone anyway. "Sam?"

I considered various greetings and methods for easing him into the conversation, but settled instead on, "Brad, what the hell is going on?"

He groaned over the phone line. "I have absolutely no idea. You see it too, though?"

"She's… jumpy. I don't know. Anxious. More than usual, I mean. Not just anxious that everybody's happy, but really anxious."

"Yeah." Brad sighed. "That's what I thought."

"And she's lost a lot of weight."

"I know. She says the doctor says she's fine."

"They always say that when you lose weight," I said grimly. "You could be shooting heroin twice a day and if you lost weight, it'd be ‘Just keep doing whatever you're doing!'"

Brad made a noncommittal noise. The men in my family all have fully functioning thyroids and never put on a drop of fat until they hit forty. I resent it greatly.

"Do you think something's wrong? Like, somebody blackmailing her or something?"

I stared at the sky. "Blackmail Mom? What kind of secrets could she have?"

"How should I know?" He sounded exasperated. "Okay, maybe not blackmail. Maybe she's got a stalker."

"She still leaves the front door unlocked," I said. "But okay, yeah, maybe."

"Do you know, she told Maria not to visit?"

"Whaaaat?" I actually pulled the phone away from my ear and stared at it, as if that would make the statement make sense. "But she loves Maria! She says she's the best thing that ever happened to you!"

Brad's voice softened. "She's not wrong there. I don't know what I'd do without her."

I grinned despite everything. My big strong he-man brother, former marine, had fallen in love with a tiny little Latina woman from Tucson, who he could pick up with one arm and who doted on him utterly. (And if you've never heard a man with a rural North Carolina accent speak Spanish, it is a feast for the ears.) "How is Maria?"

"Oh, she's doing great. But Mom doesn't want her visiting."

I leaned against the car, trying to make sense of it. The Confederate wedding flashed across my mind. "Is it a…" I looked around, making sure no one was around to hear me say something terribly shameful about my mother. "Is it a racist thing?"

"I don't know. That was my first thought, but it's Mom." His frustration came over the line loud and clear. I could practically see him dragging his hand over his jarhead haircut.

And he was right to be frustrated. Mom loved Maria. We'd had Thanksgiving in Tucson a couple years running, because I was working out of ASU and it was just easier for Mom to fly out to Arizona. Every time it had ended with Mom and Maria in the kitchen, drunk on wine and cackling together like loons, while Maria taught Mom all the really foul swear words in Spanish. Frankly, if Brad and Maria ever divorced, I was pretty sure Mom would keep Maria and tell Brad he was out of the will.

"What does Maria think?" I asked, staring up at the sky. A vulture circled overhead, probably wondering if I was dead yet or planning to become so in the near future.

Brad sighed. "She doesn't think it's a race thing."

"Oh thank god," I said involuntarily. Ultimately, I'm still just a white woman from the South, with the accompanying combination of hypersensitivity and total obliviousness. "What does she think it is?"

"She doesn't know. But she broke her foot last time we went out there—did you hear about that? One of those big glass-fronted cabinets, you know? The hinges went loose on one and fell down and landed on her foot. Broke it in three places, total mess."

I winced. "Yeesh. Is it better now?"

"Yeah, they took the pins out a couple months ago. She says she can feel when there's a rainstorm coming now, but fortunately that only happens a couple times a year out here."

"Heh." I missed the dry heat. In another month or two, the humidity would be high enough here that the state would feel like a giant armpit.

"Right. Anyway, after that happened, right before we left, Mom hugged her really hard and told her not to come back. Said it wasn't safe. Maria said she seemed genuinely scared for her."

The vulture was joined by another one, still circling overhead. They had big pale semicircles at the tips of their wings.

I didn't know how to deal with the idea of Mom being threatened, so I picked a different topic entirely. "Do you remember when we were little kids and Gran Mae would threaten us with the underground children?"

"The underground… Oh lord." His snort made the line crackle with static. "I'd forgotten about that. Brad, eat your carrots or the underground children will come for you."

"That's the one, yep." The vultures swung in their low circle. "Where did she get that, anyway?"

"No idea. People from that generation have all kinds of weird stories, don't they? Like if you wank, you get hair on your palms, and if you swallow chewing gum, it'll clog up your stomach until you die. And you don't even want to know the stuff Maria's grandmother told her about La Llorona coming for you if you're near water. She still crosses herself when she sees an owl."

I wondered what Maria would think of our resident vultures. "That's probably more like the underground children than the one about swallowing chewing gum."

"I always got them mixed up with the starving children, you know? Clean your plate, there's starving children in… I dunno, wherever they were having a famine at the time. Like if we left food on our plates, these children would come out of the ground and take it and then they'd want drinks to go with it and a straw for the drinks and…"

"Brad, that's the plot of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie."

He was silent for a moment, then said, "Son of a bitch. So it is. Another childhood trauma vanquished by science."

It was my turn to snort. "I just thought they were like the boogeyman. They lived underground and would come up and get you if you were bad."

"That's a lot more logical. I used to have nightmares about them."

"You did?"

"Yeah." He sounded embarrassed. "You were probably too little to remember. I really did think they'd come out of the ground. I just remember dreaming about these weird pale children, all white and twiggy, reaching for me."

"Gah. That sounds awful."

"Yeah, well. I was only six or seven, and you were a baby. I think Mom yelled at Gran Mae about filling my head with scary stories and she stopped for a bit, though."

I nodded, forgetting he couldn't see me. She obviously hadn't stopped completely, because I remembered the underground children too.

"I used to have nightmares about her," I offered. "That she was grabbing my hand and stabbing it with rose thorns, and telling me to let them taste me." I snorted. "Can you imagine?"

"Uh," said Brad. "Sam."

His voice had gone very odd suddenly. "What?" I said. "It was just a dream."

"No, it wasn't. That happened. When you were about five, I think."

"What?"

"I don't know what she said to you," said Brad. "I was watching from upstairs. I must have been eleven or twelve, and the window overlooks the garden. I saw her grab your hand and squeeze it around a rose stem. Then you started screaming and she let go and Mom came running."

"That sadistic old cow." My chest felt tight. I'd had nightmares about that for years.

"I tried to say something," said Brad, "but she'd already told Mom that you grabbed the rose yourself. You know how it is when you're a kid—you can't argue with an adult. You're always wrong and you end up having to apologize, no matter what. And you were five, so it wasn't like it was strange that you'd forget the thorns."

"Fuck."

"I'm sorry, Sam." He sounded genuinely miserable. "I didn't let you out of my sight for years after that when we were at her house. You were my baby sister and I should have protected you."

"I don't care about that." Any outrage I felt on behalf of child-me was swamped in the wrath that Brad, at eleven, was running himself ragged having to protect me from adults. "I don't remember it happening. She was always so careful about snapping the thorns off for bouquets, I never imagined… Christ, no wonder you hated her."

"So much. Living with her after Dad died… God. I was counting down the days until I could get out and enlist, but I couldn't until you and Mom were out too."

"I remember the screaming fights you'd have," I said dully. "But you never told Mom."

"How could I? She was working around the clock trying to get enough money that we could get out. And it wasn't like she could fix Gran Mae."

He'd never told me any of this. Then again, I suppose when you're sixteen, you don't tell your ten-year-old sister about your emotional struggles.

Of course, this brought us back to Mom. I took a deep breath and went for the question I'd been trying to avoid. "Do you think Mom's… do you think it might be in her head? Maybe an early symptom of something?" Words like dementia floated through my head but I didn't have the courage to say them out loud.

Brad was silent for a bit, then said, "I don't know. That's what I'm afraid of."

"Right." I nodded again. "Right, okay."

"Is it anything other than being jumpy?"

"Well… we were talking about Gran Mae, and she claimed she didn't remember her calling the woman at the end of the road the old witch."

Brad snorted explosively again. "She did that all the time! I don't even know that poor woman's real name!"

"Thank god you remember it too. I was starting to think I was…" I almost said going crazy and then it seemed like it would be in really poor taste, so I didn't.

"She bitched about it constantly. It was one of her favorite topics. Mom doesn't remember?"

"She says she doesn't. But I think it might be more rose-tinted glasses than actually forgetting." I told him my half-baked theory about her age and Gran Mae's death and Mom being in delayed mourning.

"I guess that's possible," he said, sounding doubtful. "I can't believe she's mourning that awful bitch, but brains are weird sometimes. What do we do about that?"

"Jesus, I dunno. I got into archaeology because live people were too much trouble."

"Maria says gringos are shit at mourning."

"She's not wrong there."

"Can you talk to Mom about Gran Mae? Maybe see if she wants to talk about it?"

I opened my mouth to say that I had tried to talk about Gran Mae and Mom hadn't seemed pleased, but I realized nearly everything I'd said had been critical. If Mom was genuinely missing her mother, then I should be sharing positive memories, right? Nobody responds well, when grieving, to, "Don't be sad, they were freaky and a little scary and had a Southern nostalgic racism thing going on and also I just found out they once impaled my hand for fun when I was a toddler."

"I guess I'll… see what I can do," I said. Positive memories. Right. Gran Mae hadn't exactly been an easy woman to live with, but surely I could think of something. Probably. If I had a few minutes.

"Call me any time," said Brad. "If you need money, tell me. I'll do anything I can. Hell, she could move in with us, if she needed to. Maria said she wouldn't mind."

"You live in a shoebox, Brad."

"Yeah. That's what Mom said too." He sighed.

"Well, at least she's not delusional about that," I said tartly. My brother made a sound that might have been a laugh or a protest, but he didn't argue, and I stared at the vultures circling until we said goodbye.

I didn't want to deal with this. I didn't want to be wondering if maybe Mom had a stalker or maybe she was depressed or maybe she was losing her marbles. I wanted to sit on the couch and classify bugs and watch vaguely rumpled British inspectors solve crimes based on the way that someone had parted their hair in a photo taken twenty years ago. I wanted this, very much, to not be happening.

But that's life for you. Hate it, complain about it, it's still happening.

Eventually I went back in, reclaimed my laptop, and got a refill on my floofy extravagant latte. I reassured Mom for the tenth time that I was okay and didn't need to come stay with her in the hotel, and drove home wondering what the hell to do next.

The vulture was back on the mailbox. I detoured around it, went in, sat on the couch, and made a list on my phone. It didn't actually accomplish anything, but at least I had a list at the end of it.

1. Mom has a stalker

2. Mom is depressed (maybe missing Gran Mae?)

3. Mom has dementia or similar

I stared at the list for a bit. The scientific method dictates that one form a hypothesis, determine how to test it, then discard or amend it in the light of the new data. I had three possible hypotheses, and now I had to figure out how to test them. And also determine what to do if any given one was true.

Well, the stalker one was easy, anyway. I would tear off his head and shit down the stump for daring to mess with my mother. (I considered writing this on the list, but decided that might be used against me at the eventual murder trial.)

(Probably this was bravado and I wouldn't actually do it. I'm a very peaceful person.)

(Usually.)

(Hypothetical fucker scared my mom.)

(Anyway.)

Number two was… well, not easy, but at least I had a road map for it. Talk to her about therapy or medication or other things that might help. And if it was belated grief, caused by reaching the same age as Gran Mae or what have you, try to help her work through that.

Number three was terrible and I didn't know what to do about it if it was true, but it's fundamentally medical and a doctor could either help or confirm or… something. I'd still have to get Mom in for tests. Maybe I could call her current doctor and ask if he could run them? Although doing that behind Mom's back seemed really sleazy, but I suppose the families of people who slowly lose their minds have to do it all the time. Probably there were online forums and support groups, something like that. There were probably lists of symptoms to watch for too. I could research it. I am a champion researcher. It's why they pay me the meager academic bucks.

So, with that in mind, I spent an incredibly depressing hour on my laptop looking up the symptoms of dementia. By the end of it, I was ready to weep for humanity, and also to check myself into a home the next time I lost my car keys.

Mom was out of the normal age range for the onset of schizophrenia. (I myself was in the prime age for onset in women. Yay, me. The internet reassured me that it was treatable and that there was no reason I couldn't live a perfectly fine life, but also that it involved a lifetime of treatment and something called "psychosocial therapy." This did not bode well for someone who had successfully stonewalled the school counselor.) She wasn't old enough for normal Alzheimer's, but early onset was definitely possible.

Anxiety was indeed a symptom, but I don't know if it was diagnostic, given that anxiety is a symptom of nearly everything, notably including having just spent an hour reading lists of symptoms of early onset Alzheimer's. Mom forgot things, sure, but she'd been doing that her whole life; witness the notes. There were not significantly more notes than usual, as far as I could tell, and she wasn't losing words and she could keep track of who the suspects were in any given mystery better than I could.

I decided that this was enough research for one night and that it was time for me to renew my acquaintance with Mr. Boxed Wine.

It was almost midnight when I heard a key in the lock and sat bolt upright on the couch. I'd been watching Inspector Lowell solve a series of clues hidden in Bible verses that led to the location of the ruined barn where the murderer was keeping his latest victim.

I'd only just had time to think, Oh god serial killer—no, don't be ridiculous, where would a serial killer get the key to the front door—it's got to be Mom—unless the serial killer killed Mom and took her keys, when the door opened and Mom walked in. (Look, I said that Mom is more anxious than I am, not that I'm immune to it.) She looked surprised to see me. "I thought you'd be in bed already, hon."

"Eh, couldn't sleep. I think my sleep schedule is still messed up. I thought you were going to spend another night at the hotel. Did the tour wrap early?"

"No, it was after ten by the time I got him back to his hotel." She stifled a yawn against the back of her hand. "But getting him to the airport is the hotel's problem, not mine."

"And you drove an hour home?"

Mom shrugged. "I didn't like the thought of you having to be here all by yourself."

"Mom, I'm thirty-two." I tried to soften it with a smile. "I can stay home alone. It's okay. Really."

"Oh, I know…" She dropped her purse. "Everything fine here?"

"Nice and n… quiet." Nice and normal had been on my lips, but I managed to change it at the last second. I hefted my wineglass. "You want any?"

"No, I'm going to go straight up to bed, I think." She yawned again, which had the knock-on effect of making me feel sleepier. "Sleep tight, hon."

I listened to the sound of her footsteps going upstairs, the door shutting, and the rumble of water in the pipes. On the screen, Inspector Lowell arrived at the last moment and managed to save the victim from falling into the running harvest combine. I finished off my wine and consoled myself that whatever was going on with Mom, it was unlikely to end in a combine accident, then took myself off to bed as well.