Everyone Dies Famous in a Small Town by Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock (general ebook reader .TXT) 📗

They had his ID and said they’d get in touch with his family, leaving Jane feeling like a real marine biologist and also sadder than she’d been in ages. She loved this beach, but maybe Zoe was right about its karma. And maybe there was a reason that the sea-shaken houses kept changing hands. Also, selfishly, she wished Martha could have seen firsthand that all those years of Jane studying bivalves had actually done some good.

As the ambulance pulled away, Jane walked behind it for a while, watching the lights blink and then fade out of sight. She fingered the postcard she’d found in Conrad’s pants pocket when she’d taken his clothes to be washed. It was addressed to someone named Ben, also in Granville, Colorado. It was a picture of a brilliant sunset and a view of the ocean. It could have been from anywhere, even California.

She’d read it a few times and felt an invisible hand twisting her stomach like wringing out a wet sock as she slid the postcard into her jacket before anyone else could see it.

It was the same feeling she’d had whenever Martha read her Zoe’s diaries.

She knew secrets were meant to stay secret, but if he didn’t remember anything or anyone, maybe she could help him connect with this part of his past, even if it was just a tiny gesture. She didn’t know that Conrad had never planned to mail that postcard, because once again, You don’t know what you don’t know.

So Jane dropped the card into the weathered red metal mailbox covered in bird poop. Then she thought about Zoe’s awful toothpaste all the way back to her house.

She also thought about secrets and memories.

Her mother was waiting with lavender tea, looking at Jane with questioning eyes, almost the way Zoe would have if she’d been around. Finding a boy with no past lying on the beach, well, Zoe wouldn’t have been surprised by that and would have expounded on karma sticking its gnarled little fingers into everything once again.

But Mama just stuck to the facts as she poured boiling water into their cups.

“Pretty impressive for a girl who taught herself everything there is to know about mollusks,” she said. “I’m really proud of you.”

Jane dunked her tea ball a few times and then passed it over for her mom to use.

“I was thinking maybe I have a future in marine biology after all. Maybe Martha isn’t the only one with a life somewhere else.”

Mama smiled a sad smile and said she thought it was a brilliant idea.

Jane thought about Conrad washing up on the beach. It fit with her mother’s unspoken theory that the rising and falling tide pretty much decided all of their fates. She had little to lose anymore by asking direct questions, so she pushed her luck one last time.

“So, we didn’t have the same father?”

“For someone who is practically a genius when it comes to bivalves, you certainly let Martha fill your head with strange ideas. Why on earth did you girls think that?”

“Because you and Zoe couldn’t stand each other. We thought it was a lifelong quarrel over…him. Whoever he was.”

“Jane, the woman talks to potato chips.”

“Well, now that you say it like that…”

They both laughed, but then Mama reached over and held Jane’s hands tightly in her own.

“Your father didn’t even know about you. I just didn’t think it was fair to make you think he might come looking.”

Jane had already figured this out, but she also wondered if it was her mother who wished he’d come looking. Why else would she insist on staying in this place when almost everyone else moved on? Mama did not believe in karma and her fingers were not gnarled, but they were warm, and holding them made Jane feel hopeful for both of them.

She thought again of a stranger named Conrad heading to a hospital all alone in an ambulance, with no idea who he was. At least he wasn’t in a coma, which was another symptom of amnesic shellfish poisoning.

Maybe this Ben person was someone who would come looking for Conrad, once he got the postcard.

All of this hope had emboldened her.

“Can I go visit Martha and Zoe in Colorado?”

Mama stared at her hard for a couple seconds. Jane squirmed, unable to read her expression.

Had Mama hoped Zoe was out of her life for good?

Her mother stood up and left the table.

Jane thought she might cry. She had known better than to press Mama like that.

In the next room she heard a dresser drawer open and then screech shut again. It was the heavy junk drawer, where she and Martha stashed anything interesting they found. She knew every broken shell in it, every odd-shaped rock, every piece of mottled beach glass. Their entire lives were there in the space of one sandy bureau drawer. Jane hadn’t opened it since Martha left. Mama knew she wouldn’t, not without her best friend to share it with.

It was a perfect hiding place.

A few seconds later she was back and sliding a bus ticket across the table toward Jane.

“It was supposed to be a surprise,” she said. “Of course you should go visit Martha.”

PARKING-LOT FLOWERS

Ben had picked up the hitchhiker on the edge of town before he’d realized how young she was. Maybe fifteen, probably a runaway, and he really didn’t need that. He so did not need that.

He’d finally gotten himself going, nudging his rusty Mustang out of town as if it were a reluctant horse by the same name. It was a feat that had required so much energy that picking up anyone could only be attributed to an exhausted lapse in judgment.

But how many times had he stood on the side of the road with his thumb out, in freezing rain, hoping against hope for a ride? It’s called “empathy,” he told himself. The ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes.

Hers weren’t shoes; they were leather boots with back zips,