The Valley and the Flood by Rebecca Mahoney (10 best books of all time TXT) 📗

happen again. But that doesn’t stop the sour, sick feeling that’s curled into your stomach since.

Sammy watches, rapt, as the therapist leans forward onto his elbows. When you remember the earthquake, he intones, do you feel as if you’re reliving it?

Jae-hyun flashes a wide, fake grin. Not at all, he says.

There’s a musical cue like a person leaning their entire weight on a piano. Sammy laughs. Your laugh comes slower.

You lean forward and tap the spacebar to pause. At Sammy’s little noise of protest, you say, “Water. I’ll be right back.”

All the windows are still open: in the living room, the kitchen, the hallway. It doesn’t help with the heat. It just leaves you feeling like the walls aren’t walls, like the apartment is bleeding into the outside world. You leave the lights off as you walk. You can see everything going on out there. They can’t see you.

You love that show. You love watching it with Sammy even more. So you should feel better than you do now. You shouldn’t feel the heat and Sammy’s fidgeting and every snatch of a voice outside ricocheting off the insides of your chest.

Do you feel as if you’re reliving it?

Note to self: Don’t think about Marin’s party. Even if you can’t stop thinking about it. How it feels whenever you think of that voicemail. What you’re feeling right now. Like the air in your lungs is damp and cold. Like the floor is gone, and you’re just tumbling through negative space.

What you’re feeling has a name. Or, to be more precise, four letters.

“Oh,” you whisper through your fingers. “Oh, shit.”

So. Now that we’re all on the same page. Let’s begin.

Ten THE FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE

THE GUTS OF the cassette are tangled in the belly of the tape player somewhere. It’s not torn, but it will be if we try to take it out. We leave it where it is.

We do, however, find the little circular goldenrod sticker on the bottom left of the tape player. As identifying features go, it’s not very specific. Unless, of course, you do odd jobs for a small town sheriff’s department on afternoons and weekends. Alex takes one look at it and identifies it as a price marker from Paul’s Pawn and Loan.

Alex has one more thing, too. The phone number for a respected member of the community who can imitate the voice of any lost loved one you desire.

Or, more precisely, for her booking agent.

Mockingbird Productions, chirps a distant voice through the phone. What do you yearn for?

Paul’s Pawn and Loan is a quiet storefront in an empty strip mall, with a collection so mismatched it has to be deliberate. Paul himself is a short, owlish man who moves slowly and blinks even slower. “I haven’t seen you before,” he says to me, leaning in a little as he squints.

I’m from that one cataclysmic prophecy, maybe you’ve heard of me seems like a longer conversation than we’d like to have right now. “I’m visiting,” I say, cradling the tape player in my arms.

He turns creakily. “And you two work for the sheriff?”

“Felix Sohrabi,” Felix says. “And this is Alli—”

“Alex Harper,” Alex says quickly, dipping the phone just below his ear. He’s on hold. He’s been on hold for the past five minutes. “I know this is a strange request, but if you could tell us anything about the person who bought this—”

“It’s no trouble,” Paul says with a serene smile. “Anything for Christie Jones. Could you hand that here, miss?”

I keep it steady as I place it into his hands. “There’s a cassette caught inside,” I mumble to the counter. “Please be careful with it.” With a slow nod, he disappears behind the back curtain, leaving the four of us standing on the shop floor.

Well, three. Cassie waits outside, her back to the window, perfectly still as she watches the strip mall parking lot.

“I’m telling you,” Felix says. It sounds halfhearted. “People aren’t going to take us seriously if our names rhyme.”

“I was here first,” Alex says mildly. “Change your own name.”

“I don’t have any good nicknames,” Felix says.

Alex doesn’t hesitate. “The Sohrabinator.”

Felix stares in silence for a good twenty seconds. “Holy shit,” he says softly.

Alex turns his attention back to his phone, currently spitting out a tinny, staticky sound.

“This is ridiculous,” Felix suddenly blurts out. “You don’t have to talk to her.”

“Would you like to, then?” Alex snaps back. I notice then that his knuckles are white around the edges of his phone. “I’m still on hold.”

Felix falters. And slowly, he turns his attention back to the shelves.

Faintly, I hear a voice with a questioning lilt, and Alex jerks up straight. “Yes, I’m still here. Did you—”

The woman’s voice cuts him off. Even without hearing the words, I pick up on the perky chirp in her tone. “Three tomorrow,” Alex mumbles. “That’s the earliest you could—I think you know what the situa—”

The voice interrupts again. Whatever explanation she gives, Alex looks less than impressed. “Yes, I understand,” he says. “Yes, I know where. Thank you.”

“She can’t take us until tomorrow?” Felix says, before Alex can completely hang up.

“Her staff would like us to remember that this is a busy time of year,” Alex says wearily.

“She’s messing with us,” Felix says.

“She is,” Alex says. “But there’s nothing we can do about that.”

It goes quiet after that. It leaves me without much to do but stare at the counter and try to ignore the rustling behind me as Felix sifts through one of the shelves of merchandise. His fidgeting is, at least, preferable to the echo of that tape still ringing in my ears.

I glance over my shoulder to the window. Cassie told me there was no way we could have heard the same thing on that tape. But she never did tell me what it was she heard.

Suddenly, there’s a loud crackle behind me, and a grainy mechanical voice bellows, YOU’RE BREAKIN’ MY NECK.

I whip around so fast, I have