The Valley and the Flood

by Rebecca Mahoney

  She doesn’t wait for me to answer. She barely waits for the question to sink in. “Hospitality. It’s what this town was built on: a shelter from the storms of the world, or so I keep hearing. We even enshrined it into our charter not too long ago: to never turn away a soul in need, unless our every effort to help them has failed.

  “But by the time we’ve made our efforts with what you’ve brought, my dear,” she says, “it could be too late for us. Do you understand?”

  I swallow. My mouth is as dry as my throat. “If that’s true,” I say, “then I think you can ignore your charter.”

  But she doesn’t smile this time. “If,” she repeats, low. “So you don’t believe it?”

  I start to tell her no. The truth slips out instead. “I don’t know what I believe.”

  I could take that sympathetic purse of her mouth as genuine. But I think I’d be wrong.

  “If you’re hearing me,” she says, “and I think you are, we don’t need to bother with that charter, you and I. We can solve this little problem by close of business.”

  “Meaning what?” I say.

  “You haven’t spoken to the sheriff yet,” she says. I can’t stop the little shake of my head. “She’ll be along soon, I imagine. We’re both meant to talk to you today, we could agree on that much. And she’ll try to convince you that something can be done. She’ll tell you that what you brought was always meant to return. That it’s our responsibility to help. No matter what that means for us. Are we still understanding each other, Rose?”

  “I—I think we are.”

  “Good,” Mayor Williams says. “Because you’ll see how easy it is to get swept into the romance of this town, its purpose. I had my own regrettable dabblings long ago. All I ask is that you remember this. The sheriff has the means to stop this tragedy. She just chooses not to.”

  She smiles beatifically. And she never for a second looks away. “But if you told Sheriff Jones you wanted rid of it, she’d have no choice.”

  It sounds simple enough. But the way she says it sends a chill through me.

  “And if I just left?” I say.

  “I’m afraid that’s not one of the choices, dear.” Something in her smile hardens. “You’ve heard, haven’t you? There’s a pull to Lotus Valley. Like an ocean’s current, drawing us in. And this flood feels that more keenly than anyone. Now that you’ve led them here—they won’t simply turn back and follow you out. You may be intriguing to them, but this town is more intriguing by far.

  “And besides,” she says, “it found you out there. It chose to follow you. If you left without resolving this, who’s to say it wouldn’t find you again someday?”

  Sutton Avenue isn’t here. I can’t see it, anyway. But when I breathe in, I feel the cold, clammy air.

  She’s trying to scare me. But I know she’s right. I could go on not believing Cassie. I could discount half the things I’ve seen here. I could leave this place and try to trust that I didn’t destroy it.

  But something is following me. I can’t deny that anymore. And once it’s finished here, it could follow me home. To Mom, and Dan, and Sammy.

  There’s a long, loud rush of blood through my ears. Loud enough that I don’t hear the music until the car careens around the corner.

  TONIGHT, I’M GONNA HAVE MYSELF

  A REAL GOOD TIME

  I FEEL ALIIII-I-I-IIIIIVE

  As the beat-up Dodge screeches in front of the house, I turn back to Mayor Williams. “I want it gone,” I murmur.

  She slides a business card into my hand and whispers, “Talk to Sheriff Jones. Hear her out, by all means. But more importantly, see her methods. Ensure that you have the resolve.”

  “I have the resolve,” I shoot back. “There’s something I need to do. But I’ll call you after.”

  I didn’t know how hollow that smile was until right this second, when her face lights up.

  “You’ve got yourself a deal,” she says.

  The passenger’s door sails open, nearly flattening the mailbox. And I tuck the business card into my pocket and out of sight.

  “Rose?” Alex Harper from the sheriff’s office calls out. Even from across the lawn, I see the furrow in his pale, delicate features. “Is everything okay?”

  Mayor Williams has a beauty queen’s wave. “Just introducing myself.”

  The furrow deepens, but the tone remains the same. “I was asking Rose, ma’am.”

  The mayor lets out a single startled laugh, leaning forward to peer past Alex. “And how are you, Felix? Feeling good about your decision?”

  Over Alex’s shoulder, I can make out Felix Sohrabi’s queasy smile in the driver’s seat. “As good as I feel about any of my decisions, Ms. W.”

  “Don’t let me keep you.” The mayor makes a show of stepping out of my path. And as I walk past, I feel a light brush against my shoulder. “But don’t forget.”

  I can see her in the rearview mirror as I slide into the back seat. I don’t think she moves once as we pull away.

  For a long moment, I forget to be anxious about Felix’s driving. But I get there eventually.

  “Are you okay?” Alex asks. It takes me a second to remember that he’s asking about the mayor, not about my fingernails curling into the shredded back seat.

  “Fine,” I say. “She wanted to talk.” They both make little noises of assent, and we lapse back into silence.

  “Thanks for the ride?” I add.

  “Oh, you know, yeah,” Felix says.

  We make our way out of the housing development and toward the city, and I drum my fingers against my kneecaps and concentrate on breathing. Felix is, to put it mildly, not a careful driver. No one’s on the road, though, so it should be fine. That’s what I keep telling myself.

  “You can’t talk to her like that,” Felix finally mumbles.

  “Like what,” Alex says, crisply enough that it’s clear he already knows what.

  “Allie”—Felix lets out a long, controlled breath—“we have to be civil to her if we want her to—”

  “She’s a hypocrite,” Alex interrupts quietly.

  “Did you hear me say she wasn’t?” Felix says.

  “I’m not going to let her—”

  “I don’t see you letting her do anything,” Felix says.

  Alex only raises his voice a little. But I have the feeling that for him, this is a shout. “I’m not going to let her spin me as some victim for her—”

  The word cuts off in a little half-suppressed cough. And Felix, with the intensity of someone who’s had to say this more than once, blurts out, “Will you please use your inhaler?”

  “I’m good,” Alex says. “Thank you.”

  “What, are you self-conscious?” Felix turns to look at me. “Rose, could you look away for about ten seconds?”

  “Felix,” Alex says, now through his teeth. “Watch the road, please?”

  “There’s no shame in it,” Felix says. “I mean, look at this car, it’s practically a biohazard—”

  Alex’s sigh doesn’t sound particularly short of breath. “I’ve been dealing with asthma at least four times longer than I’ve been dealing with you. Trust me, if I can’t breathe, you’ll be the first—”

  I shift in my seat, and catching sight of me out of the corner of his eye, Alex stills. “Sorry,” he mumbles, glancing over his shoulder.

  “Yeah.” Felix flashes a wobbly grin. “And sorry about the . . . welcome.”

  “No,” I say, more of a laugh than a word. “It’s fine. It’s actually . . . kind of a relief, to see what you were all being so weird about.”

  Felix grimaces. “In our defense, if you had her for freshman history, you’d be weird, too.”

  I wince. “Ouch.”

  “Thank you for your support in this difficult time,” Felix says, startling a more genuine
laugh out of me. Another awkward beat. “So. You’re the mysterious stranger, huh?”

  I wiggle my fingers in a weak wave. “Yo.”

  “I expected someone more . . .” Felix takes a hand off the wheel to make a vague gesture. “Ominous?”

  “You’ve, ah,” I say, “been very nice for someone who knows what I’m doing here.”

  “Listen,” Felix says, sailing past a stop sign, “we aren’t from Lotus Valley originally. I’ve been here for two years, and I still don’t understand half the stuff that comes out of people’s mouths. Do I get this whole prophecy thing? No. Do I have questions? Boy, do I ever. Am I going to go along with it? Signs point to yes.”

  “Taking things in stride is one thing,” I say slowly. “But how many people agree with your mayor?”

  Felix and Alex exchange a quick look. “It’s . . .” Alex says. “Maybe about fifty-fifty.”

  “Ouch,” I say again, much quieter this time.

  “Tends to fall along age lines, too,” Felix says. “People under thirty-five, especially kids our age, are more likely to support Ms. Jones, while older residents are more likely to support Ms. Williams.” He throws an exasperated look over his shoulder. “Typical, right? We’re the ones who’ll be living here for the next seventy years, and yet the octogenarians want to leave us with the worst resident-neighbor relations possible.”

  “They’re good people. Most of them are.” Alex looks at me through the overhead mirror. I don’t miss the shadow that passes over his expression. “And not all of them want what the mayor wants.”

  “She has to be careful,” Felix agrees. “It’s not like the neighbors vote or anything, but they’re still her constituents. Technically.”

  “And not all of her supporters feel the same way,” Alex says. “Some of them agree with her that the neighbors have been allowed too much leeway. Some of them are fine with them as long as they keep quiet and stay out of the way. And some of them are—well. Some of them are just worried about what would happen if we tried to overturn the charter.”

  “Mostly because there were some decidedly scary characters negotiating that charter,” Felix says with a shudder. “There are things her supporters agree on, though. Wanting you gone, for one.”

  I smile weakly. “That’s one way to unite the people.”

  Alex’s smile is apologetic. “You should be careful who you talk to. There are people who might feel differently if they knew everything. There are people who might even benefit from you being here.”

  “Benefit how?” I ask.

  Alex shifts in his seat. “Ms. Jones didn’t say.”

  Felix snorts. “How totally unlike our dear sheriff.”

  “Don’t start,” Alex says.

  Felix raises his hands defensively. Not the best thing to do when you’re driving. But before I can say anything, he puts them back on the wheel. “So, okay,” he says over his shoulder to me. “Apparently she and Cassie knew the whole time that the flood was meant to roll in on New Year’s Day, but not which year? I get keeping that quiet from the town. You don’t want to panic people, or whatever. But it would have been cool if la capitana gave her interns a heads-up.”

  “How long have you been interning for her?” I ask.

  “Seven months,” Felix says.

  “Seven years,” Alex says at the same time.

  I blink. Alex doesn’t look old enough to be interning now.

  “Seven—” I take a minute to lower my voice. “You started interning when you were eight?”

  “Nine,” Alex says. “And I wasn’t really interning, just running errands for Ms. Jones.”

  “Still,” I say. “Did you, like, go to career day and never look back?”

  “It just worked out that way.” Alex tugs absently on his seat belt. “She would have had to keep an eye on me, anyway—”

  Felix looks at him. It doesn’t look like he’s warning him, I guess, but he looks serious—which is warning enough.

  “We should be there in ten minutes,” Alex finally says.

  He hesitates, his head already half turned away. “Rose,” he says. “We told you before to be careful what you tell people. But Mayor Williams . . . you should always assume that she already knows.”

  I blink. “Why would she know?”

  “She claims she can’t do it anymore,” Felix says quickly. “But she could have just been saying that for the election . . .”

  “When she was younger,” Alex picks up, “she was good enough that even now, she’s still considered the most accurate prophet in Lotus Valley.”

  I watch them for a moment. Maybe I’m missing something. “Does that mean she’s better than Cassie?”

  Felix snorts. “Don’t let Cassie hear you say that.”

  “But if she is,” I press on, “then what if she’s seen what’s coming?”

  “Well,” Felix says, “that’s why Ms. Jones believes she really lost her abilities. She says Williams isn’t a bad person. And if she’s seen something that could help, she’d tell us, no matter how much she disagreed with us.”

  “Then again,” Alex says, quietly enough that it might be to himself, “Ms. Jones sees the best in people.”

  They both watch the road, and I stare at the back of their heads for a long moment, waiting for them to elaborate. But they exchange a quick, uneasy glance, and they stop talking.

  “You can turn the music back on,” I say.

  Felix flashes a smug smile as he fires up the stereo. “See? Everyone loves Queen.”

  “Drive the car, Felix,” Alex replies.

  * * *

  —

  WITHOUT A CONVERSATION to distract me, I find myself watching the tower instead, growing closer and closer. I rub at my thigh, the friction of my palm creating a simmering heat around Mayor Williams’s business card in my pocket.

  The building we pull up to doesn’t look like a radio station—it’s pretty clearly a school. It’s cut in the same clean, angular lines as the houses of Lethe Ridge and is as polished as if it was built yesterday. And yet rising straight up from the center is a radio tower that, supposedly, hasn’t been used since 1973.

  “Ah,” Alex says. It’s almost too quiet to be heard, but Felix’s head snaps toward him.

  “What is it?” he says, barely a question.

  “Nothing,” Alex says.

  Felix puts the car in park, still watching Alex. His hand twitches off the wheel, gets halfway to reaching the passenger’s seat, but at the last moment, he drops it to the center console instead. “It’s okay,” he says haltingly. “We’re not going inside.”

  I don’t have time to wonder about it. Because it’s then that I notice the woman standing in the shadow of the building: early thirties, in a sundress and a crisp orange blazer, with a twist-out that falls a few inches above her shoulders and bright blush contoured across her high, dark cheekbones. She holds a closed parasol at her side, tapping it in an aimless rhythm on the ground. She looks like she’s stepped out of a Fashion Week candid. And there’s no question as to who she is.

  “Hi there.” The sheriff smiles without showing her teeth. “Rose, I take it?”

  For lack of anything more intelligent to do, I nod.

  “Christie Jones,” she says. “Now, why don’t you follow me inside? We’re already running on Felix-time this morning, so we should get right to it.”

  “We were driving carefully,” Felix says.

  “We were not,” Alex says.

  Sheriff Jones motions for me to follow her. “If we wait for them to stop bickering, we’ll be here until the heat death of the universe.”

  I catch Felix’s and Alex’s gazes flickering from each other to the two of us as the doors swing closed behind me, and I have a brief second to connect the dots. We’re not going inside, Felix told Alex. But apparently, I am.


  We step inside the front hallway and into the school. A series of windows dot the hallway, flooding long swatches with late-morning light that doesn’t reach the shadows in between. Sheriff Jones steps around the sunlight as she walks.

  “You’re not exactly what I expected,” she says.

  “Everyone keeps saying that,” I mumble. My shadow curves along the wall as I pass a window.

  She throws her head back and laughs, a bright, clear sound. “I just figured you’d be—I don’t know. More imposing? But I guess you really are a kid, aren’t you?”

  “Well . . .” I fall a few steps farther behind. “Sorry?”

  “Do you know how much time I’ve spent looking for you in the past five years?” she says, her voice still light. “Or more to the point, do you know how much of my life I’ll spend apologizing to my wife’s parents when this is over? All this time we’ve been telling them we can’t spend the holidays with them because I’m allergic to their cats.”

  “Sheriff Jones—” I start.

  “Christie, please,” she says. “Formalities give me hives. So Maggie Williams talked to you already, huh?”

  “How did you know that?” I say. I thought the mayor was the psychic one. Honestly, if they’re all psychic, I’m leaving.

  “A good guess. You’ve got that post–Maggie Williams look on your face,” she says. “She must have been excited that she got to you first, before I got in your head.” She dips her tone and waggles her fingers, her eyes fluttering into a devastating eye roll. I like her, despite myself. Gaby would be obsessed with her.

  “She was,” I confirm, smiling a little.

  “And are you considering her offer?” Sheriff Jones says, just as casually.

  My stomach drops. I don’t mean for it to show on my face, but it must, because she grins. “It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me what you discussed with her if you don’t want to. We’re here to talk, that’s all.”

  “I understand that,” I say. “But why are we here here?”

  “This is where you wanted to be, right?” she says. “I was told you wanted to see the old radio station.”

  “Well,” I say. “Can I be honest?”