When she was young, she had always enjoyed visiting the library. Be it the local aisles or the one at her school, the selection of books had always served to scintillate and urge her to learn something more; it was no wonder, then, that she had grown up yearning to learn. She liked to learn about people, about their lives, about their secrets and their struggles. She liked to read more, assess with fresh eyes, and possess a wide variety of awarenesses that would allow her to view anything and everything with some measure of interest.
She had always remembered, from her time in the library, holding the massive cover of the annual edition of Ripleyâs and Guiness flat against her palms. Ripleyâs, especially, had always been of interest. Growing up in a town like Pleasance meant that oddities to some were daily occurances to others; everyone had a ghost story, a two-headed farm animal, a distant relative that had come to the town from an old cirque and never left. Casey and Everett had always asked her about Ripleyâs, always shown some sort of amused interest in the way sheâd regurgitate what odd facts sheâd learned and the stories within.
It was no wonder then, that on that cool, fall day, she found herself at the steps of the Museum of Small Wonders. Pleasanceâs very own Ripleyâs-adjacent feature.
Most of the time, she heard about it from the tourists. Today though, she thought to begin her annual walk - the urge always possessed her in the fall to reacquaint herself with her town, to stroll north to south and east to west and account for everything and everyone. She might have been a good cop, once. Now, she could only bear to work independent of others. Setting her own hours, endangering only herself in the field. In the Museum, she could hear the sound of glass being swept. The broken window outside catching her eye on the way in. The destruction of local property piqued her interest, and made her heart ache.
Bundled up to her chin in a peacoat and a patterned scarf, she looked in upon Marion Rhodes. The child of the sequoias. The same child that had appeared in the wake of her brotherâs blood being spilled in that grove. She never knew what to make of him, nor had she ever interacted much with him. The Museum had been around for over a decade, and sheâd never been able to set food inside of it. It was time, she thought, to change that.
âGood afternoon to you, Mister Rhodes.â She said, when he allowed her to stay. Whateverâd gone through his mind, she wouldnât pretend to know. âI saw you were having trouble with the window. Could I help?â Because regardless of her fears and her concerns, he was a resident of her beloved town. That meant sheâd do whatever it took, to do right.
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He caught himself before he asked is it really a good afternoon. But he didn't - because it wasn't her fault that he wasn't having a good afternoon and that one of the locals had broken the window into his museum and caused damage to some of the exhibits. No, it wasn't her fault at all, so he guarded what he said, truly thinking before he spoke. He looked down at the mess and sighed, his shoulders sagging under the weight of ... everything. He knew that he could handle the cleaning up, as he'd done it a few times before, and he knew that he could get the animals fixed and call the insurance company, but he didn't want to have to. He made a museum for people to enjoy.
"I don't know why people take such umbrage over the museum" he signed/spoke in tandem. "if they don't like it, they can simply not come here, but instead, they answer what they don't like with violence. If curses were real, and I had the ability to pay the cost, I'd very much like to make their tea cold and their deserts either slightly overbaked or underbaked," It was the worst that he could think of in the moment.
Had she been anyone but Casey's sister, he would have denied her the chance to help him, taking that from her instead of accepting friendly assistance, but he felt like he owed her. As though Casey's murder had been the key to allow him to come to Pleasance in the first place. Casey, Sean and the other three. So, he held the broom out to her, this time not signing as he spoke, "If you don't mind - then I can go to the shed and get the winterizing plastic, it'll have to do until the glass can be imported and fixed."
He looked to the broken window, how they managed to smash the entire window he didn't know - perhaps they were more determined than he thought. "You wouldn't happen to know about how I could get a security system..." he asked outloud, even though he meant for it to stay internal.