Chapter 4 of 16·7 min read·That same afternoon through the following night
The Map Beneath the Flour
By the time we reached the bakery, Chief Miller had made up his mind to search for Brindle, and I had no idea whether that made me safer or easier to find.
He parked the cart beneath the awning. Clara opened the door before he knocked. Warm air touched my face, carrying the smell of onions and sweet dough. I had grown used to the bakery in pieces: the narrow bed, the copper pans, Clara’s voice moving from room to room. Coming back from the clinic made it feel larger, as if the street had pressed close around it while I was gone.
“Inside first,” Clara said. “Decisions after soup.”
“I can make decisions and eat soup,” Miller said.
“You can also wait until Toby has eaten.”
He looked at me. “She’s right.”
That was the first surprise. The second was that I wanted to smile.
Miller wheeled me to the table near the ovens. Clara took the blanket from my knees and replaced it with a dry one, then set a bowl in front of me. The broth had noodles in it this time. They were soft enough that I didn’t have to work at chewing.
Miller stayed by the door while I ate. He had left his umbrella beside the wall, where it dripped onto a tray. Water darkened the fur at the ends of his paws. He looked as if he belonged outside in the rain, guarding roads and gates. I kept expecting him to say that our walk home had been a mistake, that now he knew enough and the town had other business.
Instead, he said, “I’m going to ask around about the tower.”
The spoon stopped halfway to my mouth.
Clara was kneading dough at the long counter. Her paws slowed, but she did not turn toward me.
“Ask who?” I said.
“People who know the roads beyond town. The miller. The coach drivers. Anyone who’s traveled west or south.”
“Will you tell them my name?”
“No.” Miller took off his wet coat and hung it over the chair. “I’ll describe a road and a tower. I won’t say why I’m looking.”
“They might ask.”
“They will. I’ll lie.”
The bluntness of it made me look up.
Miller pulled the chair out and sat, folding his big paws over his stomach. “I’m sheriff. People expect me to know things. Sometimes that helps.”
“Sometimes it doesn’t.”
“No.”
Clara put a lump of dough on the floured board. “Are you telling Toby because he should know, or because you want permission?”
Next
Miller will check Oakhaven’s road records in the morning, while Toby waits to learn whether the northwest settlement is the place he escaped.
The room settled around that answer. The oven clicked as it heated. Outside, a wagon rolled over the wet street, its wheels making a hollow sound between the buildings.
I pushed the noodles around my bowl. Brindle’s name had belonged to a place where names were dangerous. Saying it here had changed nothing I could see. The walls remained upright. Clara still stood at the counter. Miller still sat across from me. Yet I kept imagining the word traveling through town, passing under doors and through chimneys until it reached the road.
“What if someone knows him?” I asked.
“Then I’ll find out what they know before they find out about you.”
“What if you find the place?”
Miller did not answer at once. He looked toward Clara, though she could not see his face.
“What happens then?” I asked.
“We decide what happens next.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s what I can promise.”
It was less than I wanted. It was more than I had ever received from someone who meant to keep me safe.
I ate the rest of the soup.
Afterward, Clara gave me a task that could be done sitting down. She brought a shallow wooden tray and poured a heap of dried beans into it. Small stones had mixed with them during storage, and I was supposed to pick the stones out.
“Your hands may be tired,” she said. “Stop when they are.”
“I can do it.”
“I know.”
She returned to the counter. The work was quiet. Beans clicked against wood. Every so often, someone entered the bakery and the bell above the door rang.
A stoat bought two rolls and asked whether the clinic had admitted a fox from the northern farms. Clara answered that Doctor Pell had not mentioned one. A pair of squirrels stood near the pastry case and stared at me until one of them remembered to pay. They spoke softly once they went outside.
I kept my head down. The beans were pale and smooth beneath my fingers. The stones were darker, easy to separate.
“Do you want to go back to the storeroom?” Clara asked after the customers left.
I listened to the empty bakery. “No.”
“All right.”
“I don’t want everyone to look at me.”
“I know.”
“But I don’t want to hide every time, either.”
Her paws became still on the counter. “Then we’ll practice staying.”
She said it like a recipe, something with steps and a reasonable amount of flour.
The bell rang again. This time Miller entered from the side passage, carrying a folded sheet of paper. I had not heard him leave.
“I spoke to Tavin at the livery,” he said. “He knows a road with white stones.”
My fingers closed around a bean.
“Where?” Clara asked.
“Northwest, past the old charcoal grounds. There’s a red-painted water tower near a logging settlement. It’s two days by wagon if the road is dry.”
The bean cracked between my fingers.
Miller set the paper on the table but kept his paw away from it. “Tavin hasn’t been there since spring. He says the tower is taller than most and sits beside a road that bends around a hill.”
“Is it the one?”
He looked at me. “I don’t know.”
That answer hurt more than a yes would have. If he had said no, the memory could remain behind me. If he had said yes, the place would have become a shape we could face. Instead it waited somewhere beyond the town, holding all its possibilities.
“What else do you remember?” Miller asked. “Only if you want to try.”
I stared at the paper. The lines were too small to mean anything yet. Clara had taught me the names of letters when I was little, before letters stopped being useful. I could recognize a few. Road. Mill. River. Most maps used marks instead of words.
“There was a hill,” I said. “The tower was on the other side of it.”
Miller reached for a pencil. “Which side did the road curve?”
I almost said I didn’t know. The answer had become a door I used whenever memory came too near.
Then I remembered the sound of rain against a tin roof. I remembered carrying a bucket past a fence with broken slats. Beyond the fence, the red tower had leaned above the trees. Its ladder faced the road.
“The ladder was toward the road,” I said. “The tower stood behind a fence. The stones were set along the ditch, not in the road.”
Miller marked the paper.
“Was there water nearby?”
“A creek.” My hand began to shake. I put it flat on the table. “On the left when you walked toward the tower.”
“From the road?”
“Yes.”
He made another mark. He did not ask why I had walked toward it or what had happened there. The pencil moved in short strokes, patient and careful.
Clara came around the counter. “That’s enough for today.”
“I can keep going.”
“I believe you.” She placed a cup of tea beside my hand. “Enough isn’t the same as all.”
The old words rose in my throat: Don’t stop. Don’t be difficult. Finish what you started.
I pushed the paper toward Miller instead. “Take it.”
He covered the map with one paw. “I will.”
I looked at the lines I had helped make. They were crooked. One of the marks had smeared beneath Miller’s thumb.
“Will you go there?”
“I’ll start with the nearer roads. I won’t leave town without arranging someone to stay here.”
“Who?”
“Deputy Sedge, if I can catch him before he volunteers for something foolish.”
The name meant nothing to me. Miller’s tone suggested it should mean something to him.
I picked up my tea. “Tell me before you go.”
He studied me for a moment. “You want to know?”
“I don’t want to be surprised.”
“That’s fair.”
Clara’s paw rested on the back of my chair. She did not touch my shoulder. I leaned against the wood until I could feel her there through it.
Miller folded the paper and tucked it inside his coat. “Tomorrow I’ll speak with the town clerk and check the old road records. After that, I’ll see what the weather’s done to the northwest route.”
“Can I look at the map?” I asked.
“Tomorrow.”
I wanted to argue. Instead, I nodded.
He rose. At the door, he turned back. “Toby.”
I looked at him.
“If we find Brindle, nobody takes you anywhere because he says so. We’ll talk first. You’ll be part of that decision.”
My tea had gone lukewarm. I held the cup between both hands.
“All right,” I said.
Miller left with the map under his coat.
That night Clara moved my bed closer to the bakery’s inner wall because the wind had found a crack beneath the back door. She checked the splint, tucked another blanket around my ankle, and asked whether I wanted the lamp left burning.
“Yes,” I said. “And leave the door open.”
“To the bakery?”
“So I can hear you.”
She stood quietly beside the bed. “I’ll be kneading dough at six.”
“I know.”
The door stayed open. I listened to her put away the cups, rinse the bowls, and walk across the floor. Beyond the wall, the town carried on in the rain. Somewhere northwest, a red tower waited beside a creek and a road lined with white stones.