Page 29 of Heidi Lucy Loses Her Mind
Crap. What do I do? Can I clean it up? Yes, right?
I don’t want it here. I want it gone. I want everything in this café clean and spotless.
Except—what if it’s not mine? What if it has something to do with whoever gave me this gash?
“No,” I say to myself. “It’s reckless to assume. Let’s leave it for now and figure it out tomorrow.”
But now that I’ve noticed it, I can’t see anything else; that little smudge of blood is a neon sign, pulling my attention, making me feel dirty and itchy, and the panic that was rising in me earlier threatens once more.
“Okay,” I say, talking to myself once again, because I guess that’s a thing I do now. “I’ll do a quick clean. Just a sweep.” The police are done here. It should be fine.
I think that will help me feel better. Of course, what I wouldreallylove to do is douse this entire building in industrial cleaner or maybe hand sanitizer, but that feels unrealistic. It would take forever for the Roomba to do its job, too. A sweep will have to do for tonight.
So I grab the broom from the kitchen storage closet and then get to work. First, though, I put a record on the record player—it’s Gemma’s, but we keep it here so we can listen to music while we’re opening and closing. I nod to the beat for a second and tell myself I’m listening because I like the music, not because I’m scared of the silence. Then I’m off, sweeping like I’ve never swept before.
I am an avenging angel tonight, clutching desperately as I hunt for a level of clean that will keep the panic at bay. A little voice in my head that sounds an awful lot like Soren whispersThat’s not how it works, but I ignore this.
Sweeping carpet isn’t as effective as vacuuming, but I do my best anyway. When I reach the café section where the carpet turns into cheerful tile, I pick up the speed. I move tables. I move chairs. I even move the armchair that Soren always sits in.
And the entire time, I swallow my tears, forcing myself not to let them fall. Crying is not productive; it’s not going to help me accomplish anything. So I’m not going to let those tears out.
I’m mostly successful.
I keep sweeping, moving everything in my way. It’s not until I move the other armchair—the one next to the display windows—that I find anything of interest, not that I’m searching.
“What’s that?” I mutter, my eyes taking in the trash. I set the broom aside, balancing it against the wall, before bending over to pick it up.
At first I think it’s random junk, and some of it is—an old receipt, it looks like—but when I look closer, I see that there’s an envelope, too, and an attached sticky note.
My heart stutters a little bit when I read the spiky, black handwriting on the sticky:You’ll not get a penny more out of me, you old hag. I’ll make you regret this.
I read it again, and then another time, and then once more still. And with each pass of my eyes, my racing thoughts become increasingly tangled, and the darkness around me seems to grow darker.
Old hag?
I can feel my pulse thundering in my veins, which is stupid; I’m sitting here looking at an envelope. But my heart doesn’t seem to care; it beats faster and faster, a caged animal trying to escape from behind my ribs.
I hesitate for only a beat before I grab the corner of the sticky note. Part of me wants to drop this stuff back on the floor and pretend I never found it, because there’s an ominous feeling to this moment—an inevitability that makes me wonder if the entire universe has propelled me toward this time and this place just so that I can pick up this envelope.
The other part of me, the louder part, just wants to know what the heck is going on in my innocent little café.
I sell books and baked goods and delicious warm drinks. There is no place for the rest of this nonsense in my life, and I want to pluck it out by the roots.
So I peel the sticky note off with one shaking hand.
There, beneath the note and scrawled in the same spiky handwriting, are two letters:C. H.
“Carmina Hildegarde,” I whisper.
It has to be. Right?
I crane my neck around, looking at the table where Carmina was sitting. It’s maybe two arms’ length away; how did this stuff get all the way over here?
But my mind answers this question before I’m even done asking it, replaying the crowd of people gathered around and the rush of everyone leaving. It would have been easy for someone to accidentally kick this envelope when people started milling around. It absolutely could have skittered away under the chair.
I swallow, staring down at the envelope. There’s only one thing left to do: open it. And I bet I know what’s inside, judging by the note on the front and the shape of the contents.
I open the unsealed flap of the envelope with shaking fingers. Weirdly, bizarrely, my brain conjures up the image of little Charlie Bucket, opening his Wonka bar to see if he got a golden ticket—that’s how I peek at the contents of the envelope. Slowly, hesitantly, wanting to both hasten and prolong the moment of discovery.
