A Stranger in Town: a Rockton novel by Armstrong Kelley

Author:Armstrong, Kelley
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781989046319
Publisher: K.L.A. Fricke Inc
Published: 2021-02-02T00:00:00+00:00

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One advantage to the rapid turnover in Rockton is that most people don’t notice when the status quo changes. If we started allowing more picnics and hikes, they’d presume there’d been a reason why we hadn’t during their first year. It also means we can walk into town with a stranger and people only glance over in curiosity. As the only witness to twenty years of town history, Dalton tells me he can count on one hand the number of times a stranger passed the town borders. It’s not exactly a regular stream now, but people do come, and the council isn’t saying much about it, so we see no reason to sneak Edwin in the back door.

People have seen Felicity before, and so they only glance over with nods, their gazes resting on Edwin perhaps thinking that if not for his clothing, he would no more match their idea of a forest dweller than she does. He’s small but straight-backed and still strong, a gray-haired second-generation Chinese-Canadian who’d been a lawyer before coming to Rockton.

I don’t know Edwin’s exact history with the First Settlement. There are no records from that time—Rockton has always been cagey about its backstory. Edwin is cagier still—if I asked how he came to the First Settlement, he’d wonder what I hoped to gain from the information and, with the lack of records, how he could tailor his story to suit.

I know he’s been in the First Settlement since near its inception. I’ve heard a couple of variations on the story, the prevailing one being that he founded it, though Dalton’s grumbled that it seems more likely Edwin slid in and took over after the hard work was done.

With Émilie’s arrival, I have a way to get the truth. If Dalton is the witness to Rockton’s recent past, she is the archives. Of course, I could just ask her about Edwin. I have a feeling, though, that this will be much more interesting.

I take Edwin and Felicity to the police station and start coffee. As I make it, I tell him what happened to the tourists. I don’t see any point in dissembling. The information I wish to temporarily withhold is the death of the settlers. Obviously, I don’t care to give him more ammunition for his “riling up the hostiles” rhetoric, but more than that, well, someone staged their deaths to look like hostiles did it. That someone had a reason, and I suspect it was less about hiding murder than about laying a crime at the feet of the hostiles.

Look at these savages. They’re running wild, slaughtering hunters and tourists and settlers. Someone needs to do something about them.

Who’s bellowing that demand the loudest? The old man sitting in our police station. He has the most reason to stage a hostile attack. Stack a few more logs on the fire he’s already set blazing under our asses.

I hold out a cup of coffee. Edwin only looks at it disdainfully.

“I do not drink that,” he says.

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