Chapter 8: Stolen Shells

I took the skiff home at midnight with the video playing on a loop in my head.

At six on Saturday morning, I was standing in Magazine A with a clipboard and a headlamp.

Magazine A is where I keep everything that isn't Labor Day. Wedding stock, small shells, last season's leftovers.

It's a steel box buried in a dirt berm, cool and dry, smelling like cardboard and black powder.

Patty stood in the door with two coffees.

"You want me to count with you?"

"I want you to read me the log."

She pulled up the inventory app on the shop tablet and read off the numbers row by row.

I followed along.

Three-inch peonies, twelve cases. All there.

Four-inch crossettes, eight cases. All there.

Then I got to the bottom shelf, the blue.

The blue is mine.

I built that color over three winters in the back of the shop, with the doors open and the snow coming in.

I kept mixing until I got the one that hangs in the air and won't fade.

I'd made sixty of the four-inch blue peonies last fall.

Twelve went over to Hayes's magazine with the Labor Day stock. Forty-eight had been sitting on that shelf.

There were six.

I checked them again with my finger on each one. Six.

"Patty."

She stopped reading.

"Forty-two shells are gone."

She came in and looked at the shelf with her headlamp. She didn't say anything for a long time.

Then she looked back at the tablet and scrolled.

"They're logged out," she said. "The Friday night before your party. Eleven forty-eight p.m."

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