Black Locust Letters Read Online Free PDF Page B

nice thought but Betty would never be able to go to Pearl for
help. If she needed help, Pearl was the last one who could provide
it. “Anything new with Karl? Any chance of getting out of
Sanctuary?”
    Pearl blinked. “I'd forgotten! And I was so keen on telling
you, too.” She lowered her voice and said, “There's talk that the
Cold War isn't as cold as they all say it is. Some battalions are
mobilizing, and we haven't heard one way or the other, but there's
a good chance that we'll be next. They're moving some families to
Texas. Big air base there, as I understand it, but Karl thinks we
might move out to Nevada since that's where he's been flown in to
work on testing sites, but he doesn't look too happy about the
idea.”
    Pearl sighed dramatically. “He says he doesn't like how
quickly they've said it's all safe, but really, there's a lot of
open air there and so much of it is sun. How I can't stand the
cloudy days here, and the snow! It's intolerable.”
    “ I
like the snow. We always had such fun making snowmen.”
    Pearl's eyes glistened at the memory. “You liked to make
them, I liked to give them hats and scarves and buttons for
eyes.”
    “ We
had a whole army of them once.”
    Pearl laughed. “And then the g-men ran around poking holes in
them with prods to check for explosives! How stupid they
were.”
    Betty chuckled, but she felt sad and so very, very bereft.
Here was what she had left behind. A cheery friend, a wealth of
memories, and a treasure trove of golden times. It was all corroded
now, as surely as she had poured acid on them. Well, so she would
have to be careful.
    Though she hadn't put together much from this conversation,
the news about troop movement and weapons testing were real gems,
things that Pearl might be scolded for revealing later. But with
her, they could do no more than be annoyed for having shared the
intelligence with her. Pearl had never been one to have a complex
understanding of the world.
    “ Look at the time. You've kept me here longer than I really
should be,” Pearl said, and Betty agreed it was time to
leave.
    While she paid, she caught the gaze of a shrewd lady, and the
look in those eyes was hostile.
    Betty hastened to be about her business, leaving the café
eagerly, and hitting the sidewalk with palpable relief. She had
household errands to run, things like bread and onions to buy,
because she did not stop eating simply because she was
investigating a murder.
    The
market at Sunny Glenn was once made of metal and concrete. The old
market's support poles twisted into orchard trees, and the tarp
that used to stretch between them was now a canopy of branches
hunched under pears, nectarines, and cherries. Their roots cracked
the slab of a floor into gray mosaic, where zucchini and honeydew
melons thrived. It was here the residents of Sunny Glen went for
their nourishment, if they weren't in the mood for fresh liver from
the dock shops.
    Sunny Glenn's market hummed with commerce as though there had
not been a murder in the days prior. The sky was clear, hot, a
throwback to pleasant summer days and people crammed to the streets
to enjoy the shortened daylight hours. Betty noticed one thing
above all else: She seemed to be the only human, and Never Weres
stared as though she had missed the public service announcement
warning humans away.
    Perhaps she had. Alpha's day hosts no longer made sense, an
inside joke she was on the outside of. But Welch made no more
sense.
    In
all her hours of listening, she had prepared her garden for winter
with the radio blaring out the window, she had cleaned her charcoal
grill, her house was so spotless she distinctly saw bogey
footprints every morning and now knew his usual routine (out from
by the fire, to the potted plant which always looked ill no matter
what, to the ice box, to the trash bin, snooping around her now
empty yarn basket then back to his hole), and it was that empty
basket which now brought her here.
    Jenny had the best,