“News,” he says, and the table stills.
He sets his phone flat on the wood, screen up, and spins it so it faces the middle. A photo of a newspaper page. Local, cheap ink, a headline about the school board.
“Marlene Pickett got her teeth into the scholarship fund. She pulled the financials. Which she was legally entitled to do the whole time and never had a reason to until someone painted one on a wall. She found inconsistencies. Disbursements that don't match recipients. Interview expenses with no receipts. Two finalists from three years ago that no school in the county has any record of.” He lets that sit. “The board voted last night. Emergency session. Samuel Harlan is suspended pending review.”
Nobody cheers. I look at Rowe. He's gone very still, both hands flat on the table.
“Suspended,” he says. “Notremoved.”
“Suspended is the crack in the dam.” Silas takes his phone back. “The review means auditors. Auditors mean the diner talks. By Tuesday, the casserole women will have chosen sides, and the side they choose is never the man under audit. His church already pulled him off the reading rotation. It was done quietly, but Marlene isn't a quiet woman, so it won't stay quiet.” His mouth curves, cold. “By the time he disappears, half this town will believe he ran.”
“It's a start,” Logan says, low.
“It's exactly on schedule.” Elias rises, coffee finished, and rests both hands on the head of his cane. “Anything else?”
“One thing.” Silas stands too, and for the first time this morning, there's something almost boyish underneath his smirk. “I'm expecting a special delivery this afternoon. For the act. Nobody needs to concern themselves with it.”
“That means everyone should concern themselves with it,” Nova says.
“It means the opposite of that, little fugitive.”
“It has never once meant the opposite of that,” she counters deadpan.
He kisses the top of her head on his way past, and the meeting dissolves into noise and motion and Cole stealing the bacon off Jonah's abandoned plate.
Rowe waits for me, and we walk into the morning together, ten inches apart, and I am ridiculously, dangerously happy.
The special deliveryscreams at four in the afternoon.
I'm elbow-deep in Rome's foot care—his pads need checking twice a week at his age, and he tolerates it fromme now, which still makes my chest do stupid things—when a sound like a murdered woman rips across the lot. I freeze. Rome doesn't even flick an ear.
“What,” I say, “was that?”
Rowe leans on the rail, unbothered. “Silas's delivery.”
The scream comes again. Then an answering scream. Then a third voice joins in, and I abandon Rome's foot and jog around the equipment trailer to find a crate the size of a garden shed and Silas standing beside it with a clipboard and a man in a delivery uniform who clearly wants to leave.
Inside the crate, iridescent and furious, are peacocks.
“You boughtpeacocks.”
“I acquired peacocks.” Silas signs the clipboard without looking at me. “Four hens, two males. They walk the stage during the levitation. Very dramatic. Very biblical.”
“They're going to scream every dawn for the rest of your life.”
“Everything worthwhile does.”
By evening, they've claimed the strip of grass behind the menagerie tents like feathered landlords, and one of the males has already fanned at Cleopatra through the fence and been ignored so thoroughly I almost felt bad for him. I find a dropped tail feather in the grass at dusk—longer than my arm, the eye green and bronze and impossibly beautiful—and I carry it around for the rest of the day like a kid with a prize.
The only sour note comes at dinner, when I pull out my phone and Rowe's hand appears in my peripheral vision, hovering.
“Not yet,” he says gently.
“I was just going to text her. Not about… anything. Just that I'm okay.”
“Wren.” His voice stays soft. “No one can know you ranout of the practice in a torn blouse yesterday.” He holds my eyes. “A few more days. When the news breaks, you call her, and you're as shocked as anyone. And then you never have to lie to her again.”
I put the phone away.