There’s also a soft ice-cream machine with levers for chocolate, vanilla, and twists, and a selection of two sorbets. In the very center of the menu, inside a box with jagged edges like a bright blue starburst, is the shop’s featured flavor: Chocolate Caramel Popcorn.
“I want two scoops of Peanut Butter Cup,” Paisley says, but her words wash over me. I’m still fixed on the menu board, that bright blue box advertising something I’d never usually order. But I can taste the flavor at the back of my mouth, coating my tongue like a memory. Chocolate Caramel Popcorn. I stare until my eyes lose focus, until the words squiggle and pulse against the blackness like a lighthouse in a storm. Suddenly I’m a little light-headed, and I lean my hip against the glass to keep my balance.
“Always get a waffle cone,” Paisley advises, and I force myself to tear my eyes away from the menu, focus on her. “Mr. Jenkins fills the bottom with hard chocolate so the ice cream doesn’t leak.”
“Shop secret,” says the man behind the counter, his deep, earthy voice snapping me back to reality. He straightens up and leans slightly forward, over the glass, to give Paisley a grin. “But your friend will find out soon enough.”
He’s in his fifties, I’d guess, ruddy cheeks studded with black points of stubble. His crisp white smock reads Lou Jenkins in curvy embroidery. I raise my eyes to meet his, which are hazel and creased with kind lines. In that moment, his expression changes, geniality sliding away into something between awe and dread.
“Zoe?” he splutters.
Before I can figure out how to respond, Paisley cuts in, her voice like a chime. “This is Anna Cicconi. She’s from Bay Ridge, in Brooklyn, New York. Anna is my au pair for the summer.”
Lou Jenkins takes a small step back, taking me in. He runs his hand across his face, in a gesture that makes my mind skip back to the other day on the beach, Kyle the lifeguard peering under the umbrella, his hand tracing the same bewildered route across his eyelids and cheeks. Christ, I’m sorry. I thought you were someone else.
“Who’s Zoe?” Nerves bunch in a tight knot in my stomach. I gather my hair back self-consciously, slip an elastic from my wrist, and twist it up into a messy knot on top of my head.
“Zoe Spanos disappeared last January,” Paisley supplies. “No one knows what happened to her.”
“That’s horrible. From Herron Mills?”
“She grew up here,” Lou explains. His face has not yet regained its formerly jovial glow, but at least he’s stopped looking at me like I’m a ghost. “She was in college, home on winter break. She went out on New Year’s Eve, and her family hasn’t heard from her since.”
“And I look like her?” I ask, the need to name the elephant in the room burning hot in my throat.
Paisley nods eagerly, like this is a game we’re all playing and not some highly cryptic coincidence. “I think it’s mostly your hair. And your face.”
I laugh, the tension bubbling up, then bursting like the sharp crack of gum against my lips. “Just my hair and face?”
Lou tilts his chin to the side. “With your hair up, there’s less of a resemblance. And she has more of an olive complexion. But you two could be sisters.” He smiles. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. Everyone in Herron Mills has been a little on edge since Zoe disappeared.”
I do the mental math back to New Year’s Eve. That was nearly six months ago. I don’t know a whole lot about missing girls, but I’m pretty sure the odds she’ll show up alive after this much time must be pretty slim.
“Can I get you ladies some ice cream?” Lou asks, a burst of energy filling his voice like he’s clutching some invisible steering wheel, directing us onto a new course. “Or maybe a coffee or tea?”
Paisley gives him her order, and while the rational part of my brain says to ask for black coffee, which is probably the only thing I can stomach after that exchange, I hear myself ordering a scoop of the Chocolate Caramel Popcorn.
“Waffle cone?” Lou asks.
“Just a cup,” I reply, then assure Paisley I’ll order a cone next time, if she promises future trips to Jenkins’ can be scheduled for after lunch.
* * *
Outside, the street is drenched in crisp white sunlight, and the strange encounter in the shop rolls off my shoulders