We’ll start with option three: the First Settlement. I’d much rather deal with Jacob or Cypher, but I will admit that someone in the settlement is more likely to recognize the workmanship. It might even come from there—after Rockton, they’re the largest community in the area.
Once April finishes the autopsy, I go into the waiting room to check on the baby. Jen starts passing her to me.
I lift my hands. “I can hold her if you have to do something, but I need to go talk to Phil.” I take the baby and pull her into a cuddle. Then I stop. “What’s that…” I sniff again and look at Jen.
“Why do you think I was handing her to you?” she says. “I’m about to teach you a valuable baby-care lesson. You can thank me later.”
Dalton walks in. “We need to—”
I hand him the baby. “She wants you.”
His brows arch, but he takes her. Then his nose wrinkles.
“Jen’s going to teach you how to change a diaper,” I say. “I’d love to help, but I need to talk to Phil.”
I hurry out the door before he can argue.
EIGHT
Phil isn’t at his house. I’ll admit to some relief at discovering that, even if it means I have to go find him. When he arrived—or was exiled here as our new town council rep—he’d stayed in his house as much as April stayed in hers.
Well, no, my sister spends most of her days in the clinic, where she interacts with residents, whether she wants to or not. Phil just stayed in his house. Waiting for a call from the council, I suspect, to tell him all was forgiven and he could come home. To his credit, when he realized that wasn’t happening, he stepped out and into his role.
It’s in Phil’s best interests to take a more active part in town life. Which does not mean he’s hanging holiday decorations or mulling cider for the weekly wassailing party. Phil is a corporate man. The kind of guy who was born with a cell phone in one hand, a clipboard in the other, and both eyes on the corporate ladder. He’s young—thirty—and ambitious as hell. Which makes Rockton his actual hell.
If there’s a ladder here, Dalton is ensconced at the top. With a weak sheriff, Phil might have been able to muscle through and crown himself King of Rockton. Phil knows better than to even try it with Dalton, which proves he has some brains to go with that ego and ambition.
Phil is slowly carving out his place, and it’s the one he’s most comfortable with. A managerial position in a town that really could use a manager. So, if Phil’s not home, then I’m most likely to find him managing. In the kitchens, analyzing production. In the shops, checking inventory levels. Or simply walking about town, making note of who is chatting on a porch when they’re supposed to be working.
I’m directed to the woodshed, where he was seen an hour ago. He’s made some adjustments to the winter-supply system, decreasing free allotments of heating wood while also decreasing the cost for extra. There’s been grumbling, but his theory is sound. If people get x logs per week free, then they burn x logs, whether they need them or not. This way, they’re encouraged to dress warmer or use extra blankets or even socialize more in the common areas, but if they really do want more home heat, the additional fee is reasonable.
These are the aspects of life in Rockton that Dalton just doesn’t have the time—or the inclination—to manage. It’s a matter of fine-tuning the overall system to balance conservation, labor, and resident happiness. Phil might see this as a hobby to occupy him while he waits for his release papers, but he really is helping.
“He came, he saw, he left again,” Kenny says when I walk into the small carpentry shop next to the lumber shed. Kenny grabs his crutches and leads me outside.
Kenny is our local carpenter. He used to also be our lead militia, and while we haven’t taken that title away, he’s only recently resumed patrols. Six months ago, he took a bullet for Storm. That bullet didn’t paralyze him, but he still needs crutches and leg braces. Will he always need them? That’s impossible even for my neurosurgeon sister to say. In six months, Kenny has graduated from bed to crutches. He’s working on regaining full mobility while understanding that may never come.
Outside the carpentry shed, he calls, “Sebastian!” The thump of splitting lumber stops, and a moment later, our youngest—and possibly most dangerous—resident appears. Sebastian is a clinically diagnosed sociopath who murdered his parents at the age of eleven and spent the next seven years locked up. Which probably means we shouldn’t be giving him an ax and sending him out to the woodpile alone. But Sebastian is … an interesting case.
“Hey, Casey,” he says as he jogs over, ax in hand. “You’re back early. Everything okay?”
“Pretty much. Mathias give you the day off?”
“Nah, I took it. He’s in a mood. I decided to chop wood and stay out of his way before we kill each other.” His eyes glint at that, almost self-deprecating recognition that—as we both know—this is an entirely valid concern, given the parties involved. “He’ll be glad to have Raoul back, though. He spent all morning snapping about how glad he is not to have that ‘mongrel’ underfoot, which means he misses him.”
“Well, Raoul is home, and I’m looking for Phil. Was he here?”
“Yep, he came to check the woodpiles. He left about twenty minutes ago. Said he was heading to the Roc to go over the alcohol inventory with Isabel. You want me to run grab him?”
“I’ve got it. Thanks.”
As Sebastian jogs back to his chopping, Kenny says, “He’s a good kid. Really good.”
I make a noncommittal noise. Of course, Kenny has no idea what Sebastian is or why he’s here. That’s on a need-to-know basis, and the only ones who need to know are myself, Dalton, and Mathias. And Sebastian is, in his way, a good kid. At least he’s trying to be, and in Rockton, that’s what counts.
Sebastian knows what he is, and he’s spent years in therapy for it. He’s continuing his rehabilitation here with Mathias, the town butcher who used to be a psychiatrist specializing in psychopathy and sociopathy … and who may be an expert on the subject in more than just a professional sense.
It’s Rockton. Everyone has a story. Everyone has shadows in their past. It’s what they do here that matters. Sebastian is a model citizen. Others are not, and they don’t have his excuse of mental illness.
Up here, what you were before—and what you are at heart—is not nearly as important as what you choose to be. At least for now, Sebastian chooses this path, and we’ll let him have it, while we stand watch in case that changes.
I head to the Roc. It’s one of two bars, which may seem unwise in such a small town. Northern communities often struggle with substance-abuse issues. Long cold winters. Limited entertainment options. The isolation and subsequent cabin fever. Rockton deals with that by regulating alcohol even more tightly than other commodities. Part of regulating it is having two bars. Two places to enjoy a social drink while being monitored by staff who will cut you off fast, because if you start a drunken brawl, both you and your server will spend a week on chopping duty.
There are also two bars because the Roc serves dual purpose as a brothel. Yes, brothel. Right now we have a hundred and forty men and thirty-two women. I’m still not convinced that “brothel” is the way to handle that disparity, but I’m a lot more willing to concede the possibility than I was when I first moved in.