That was about it until you got behind the counter, where three little desks stood in a row. They were covered with papers—exactly the papers I was looking for. This was what The Stars and Stripes looked like before it became an actual newspaper—when it was still something closer to the town gossip.
“What are you doing in here, Ethan?”
I turned around, startled, my hands up at my sides as if I’d just been busted for breaking and entering—which, in a way, I had.
“Mom?”
She was standing behind me in the empty office, on the other side of the counter.
“Nothing.” It was all I could say. I shouldn’t have been surprised. She knew how to cross. After all, she was the one who’d helped me find my way back to the Mortal realm.
Still, I hadn’t expected to find her here.
“You’re not doing ‘nothing,’ unless you’ve decided to become a journalist and report on life from the Great Beyond. Which, considering how many times I tried to get you to join the staff of The Jackson Stonewaller, doesn’t seem likely.”
Yeah, okay. I had never wanted to eat my lunch in there with the school newspaper staff. Not when I could be in the lunchroom with Link and the guys from the basketball team.
The things I thought were important back then seemed so stupid now.
“No, ma’am.”
“Ethan, please. Why are you here?”
“I guess I could ask you the same question.” My mom shot me a look. “I’m not looking for a job at the paper. I just want to help out on one little section.”
“That’s not a good idea.” She spread her hands on the counter in front of me.
“Why not? You were the one sending me all those Shadowing Songs. It’s practically the same thing. This is just a little more—direct.”
“What are you planning to do? Write Lena a want ad and publish it in the paper? ‘Wanted, one Caster girlfriend. Preferably named Lena Duchannes’?”
I shrugged. “That wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, but it could work.”
“You can’t. You can barely pick up a pencil in this realm. You don’t have physics working on your behalf as a Sheer. Around here, picking up a feather is harder than dragging a two-by-four down the street with your pinkie.”
“Can you do it?”
She shrugged. “Maybe.”
I looked at her meaningfully. “Mom, I want her to know I’m all right. I want her to know I’m here—like you wanted to let me know when you left the code in the books in the study. Now I have to find a way to tell her.”
My mom walked around the counter slowly, without saying a word for a long minute. She watched as I moved across the room toward the piles of newsprint.
“Are you sure about this?” She sounded hesitant.
“Are you going to help me or not?”
She came and stood next to me, which was her way of answering. We began to read the next issue of The Stars and Stripes, laid out all over every surface. I leaned over the papers on the nearest desk. “Apparently, the Ladies Auxiliary of Gatlin County is starting a book club called the Read & Giggle.”
“Your Aunt Marian is going to be thrilled to hear that; the last time she tried to start a book club, nobody could agree on a book, and they had to disband after the first meeting.” My mom had a wicked glint in her eye. “But not until they voted to spike the lemonade with a big box of wine. Just about everyone agreed on that.”
I kept going. “Well, I hope the Read & Giggle doesn’t end up the same way, but if it does, don’t worry. They’re also starting a table tennis club called the Hit & Giggle.”
“And look at that.” She pointed over my arm. “Their supper club is called the Dine & Giggle.”
I stifled a laugh, pointing. “You missed the best one. They’re renaming the Gatlin Cotillion to—wait for it—the Wiggle & Giggle.”
We went through the rest of the paper, having about as good a time as two Sheers stuck in a small-town newspaper office could ask for. It was like a scrapbook of our life together, all glued onto a whole bunch of newsprint. The Kiwanis Club was getting ready for its annual pancake breakfast, where the pancakes were raw and liquid in the middle, the way my dad liked them best. Gardens of Eden had won Main Street Window of the Month, which it did pretty much every month, since there weren’t all that many windows on Main anymore.
It only got better as we read on. A wild hen was roosting in the Santa’s sled that Mr. Asher had put up as part of his light-up lawn display, which was awesome, because the Ashers’ holiday displays were infamous. One year Mrs. Asher even put lipstick on Emily’s Baby Cuddles Jesus because she didn’t think his mouth showed up well enough in the dark. When my mom tried to ask her about it with a straight face, Mrs. Asher said, “You can’t just expect to shout hosannas and have everyone get the message, Lila. Lord have mercy, half the folks around here don’t even know what hosanna means.” When my mom pressed her further, it was obvious Mrs. Asher didn’t either. After that, she never invited us to her house again.
The rest of it was the news you’d expect around here, the kind that never changed even when it always changed. Animal Control had picked up a lost cat; Bud Clayton had won the Carolina Duck-Calling Contest. The Summerville Pawnshop was running a special, Big B’s Vinyl Siding and Windows was shutting down, and the Quik-Chik Leadership Scholarship competition was heating up.