Page 116 of Bless This Hot Mess

Japheth looked back at the husk of WWJD, the burnedbrick façade framing a slice of cloudy sky. He thought about Emma-Lou in her office, her laugh echoing in the hallway, the way she’d said, ‘Trinity, you’re gonna shake this town up one remixed hymn at a time.’ He thought about Rino’s mouth on his under the bridge, the way the world had narrowed to the press of lips and the smell of cologne and river water, and of Rino’s promise, and Japheth’s prayer that he really wasn’t a monster, simply misunderstood.

“We find her,” Japheth said, the words small but firm. “We find out what really happened. We don’t accuse anyone until we know. Not Rino, not the Ferraris. We follow the clues. We use our five senses, and we find a way to keep singing and keep saving the souls of Greater Napanee. Somehow. It’s what Emma-Lou would want us to do.”

“And if whoever did this comes to stop us from asking questions?” Carrington asked quietly.

Japheth swallowed, feeling the ash-dry air catch in his throat. They stood there a moment longer, five small figures in the ruins of a big dream. A gust of wind swept through, lifting ash into a brief, ghostly whirl that danced between them and then disappeared. For half a second, Japheth could have sworn he saw the outline of a woman in the grey cloud–a flash of bouncing curls, the gleam of eyes that had of late too often looked sad, and a long, outstretched arm pointing a finger. He blinked, and it was gone. He glanced at Rebekkah, “Did you see…”

“No,” Rebekkah said quickly. “Yes. Maybe. William Shatner! Barnacles! Fudge Nuggets! Schnookerdookies! Fuck!”

They all glanced at Rebekkah and given the day they’d all had, allowed her some grace. Carrington shivered, wrapping their coat tighter. “I don’t like that this place still feels… occupied,” they admitted. “Like the story isn’t finished, and we’re standing in the middle of the last chapter without a script.”

Suwarna clicked her pen closed with the finality of a gavel. “Alright,” she said, “we’ve trespassed, we’ve grieved, we’ve played sensory Clue. Whoever set this fire is still a question mark. Emma-Lou is still missing. Our livelihoods are in limbo. I propose we leave before someone in uniform adds ‘arson scene tampering’ to our résumés.”

They retraced their steps carefully, ducking under the tape one by one. At the edge of the lot, Japheth turned back for one last look. The station’s burned-out windows stared at him like empty eye sockets. He wondered exactly what they had witnessed.

Chapter 16

Ashes,Answers and Emma-Lou

If Greater Napanee had a weather report for emotional turbulence, today’s forecast would read: unexpected returns, scattered revelations, and a 90% chance of waterworks.

By the time the sun hauled itself over the Land O’ Lakes horizon, Greater Napanee had already decided Emma-Lou Burns was dead. People were subtle about it, in the way small-town people are subtle: casseroles left anonymously on her porch, with names and numbers written in marker on masking tape at the bottom of the dish for safe return and ensured recognition of a good deed, murmuredpoor dear’s in the Bulk Barn aisles, church ladies praying for all the lost sheep while staring indelicately at her usual pew, now empty. The burned-out skeleton of WWJD stood like a tombstone at the edge of town, and in the way any reasonable whodunnit should remain unsolved to the fury of its reader/listener, the heiress to the airwaves was meant to vanish with it. The story could then be resurrected as a true crime podcast or a limited run TV series to a new generation who could become equallyenraged at the audacity of a producer to tell a story with no conclusive ending. That is not this story. You will leave satiated from a tale of two tyrants and the pluck with which they pillaged and plundered to their own peril. Odds laid and lots drawn? Wisdom! Let us be attentive and begin.

Instead of vanishing, on a cool gold morning that smelled like wet pavement and percolated coffee, she walked right back into town singing. Emma-Lou wore black as it was de rigueur for her day’s destination but the à la mode way in which she’d assembled it turned heads in a small town like Napanee. Or maybe it was that she was singing. Or maybe it was that she was, in fact, alive.

She wore a sensible black pencil skirt that had seen every church potluck for a decade; thick black tights with one invisible run only she knew about; a black blouse with oversized puffy sleeves and tiny pearl buttons her mother had sewn on herself; a large black hat topped with a three-masted and rigged ghost ship swirling in a sea of black lace; a partial veil studded with onyx fluttering over one eye. To ward off the morning chill, she’d thrown a long black trench coat that made her look, depending on the angle, like either a detective or a ghoul in a community theatre production ofA Christmas Carol.

Her blond hair, usually teased into a radio-appropriate bouffant, was in a long braid that she’d wrapped like a noose around her throat. Whether this was because she’d forgotten a scarf or if it was a subconscious manifestation of something more sinister, we’ll just have to wait to see. She’d scraped on lipstick from the bottom of the tube in the bathroom mirror that morning, and it listed sadly starboard, but it may have been an illusion given the way the sail-less ship atop her head trembled and swayed as she fearlessly faced the town.

Her boots were dusty. Her eyes were wet.

She came in from the highway, where the Tim Hortons gave way to modest brick homes and the occasional ambitious bungalow, and she began to sing before she realized she was doing it. It started as a hum, then a phrase, and then the words unspooled from somewhere between her diaphragm and her grief.

“Who keeps a lantern lit,” she sang softly, “when the ones who taught her how… are swallowed by a story that the town believes for now?”

She passed Mrs. Hilderman, who was sweeping her driveway in a housecoat and curlers. The broom froze mid-sweep as the older woman breathed in disbelief, “Emma-Lou?”

Emma-Lou lifted two fingers in a trembling little salute, kept walking, and kept singing, “Who trades in all her secrets for a single honest day? Who decides she’d rather build a bridge than burn it all away?”

She walked by the Credit Union of Christ (which had recently rebranded to CUC Financial after several letters from the federal regulator). The automatic doors wheezed, and the manager stood there with a coffee, blinking like she’d seen a ghost.

“Morning Erin,” Emma-Lou called, her voice catching, then strengthening. “I’d like to close out the WWJD accounts today.”

“No more donations?” She stared at Emma-Lou as if considering whether to start the transaction or call the priest for an exorcism.

“No more drama, I’m done,” Emma-Lou said simply.

As Emma-Lou exited CUC Financial, the town stirred around her. A dog swimming in an Easter Egg sweater barked irritably and understandably. Someone honked hello. Teens inhoodies paused outside the video rental place, their Walkmans dangling, watching the strange funeral procession of one. As she passed the bakery, warm sugar and yeast gusted out at her, mixing with the charred phantom smell of smoke that lived permanently now somewhere in her chest. She reached the stretch of sidewalk parallel with the ruins of WWJD and stopped walking.

The building had once been charming in an outdated way, a two-storey brick shoebox with a teal awning that read WWJD 96.5What Would Jesus Do?.Now what remained of the awning drooped and was melted into ribbons. The chalked Bible verses that Carrington used to write on the sandwich board out front had been scorched into illegible smudges. The windows were punched out, jagged teeth of glass framing darkness within. The roof was gone. The interior was a blackened, collapsed throat.

She could see the lobby desk, or what was left of it; Carrington’s receptionist chair, half-melted into something that looked like modern art; the twisted ruin of the fax machine that had once spit out lawyer’s letters and baking sale announcements in equal measure toward the end.

There, in the centre of it all, stood her people. They looked, Emma-Lou thought, like the cast of a very queer reboot ofScooby-Doo, standing in a tight circle in a haunted radio station. Her song caught in her throat. For a moment they all just stared at each other, the silence between them thick with questions and wonder. Then Rebekkah shrieked.

“Emma-Lou?!” she cried, and the name cracked like adolescence on the hyphenation.

“Sweet Mother Mary on marmalade toast,” Ronald breathed. “You’re alive.”