Fairy Crosses

Chapter Three

Written by Rowan Carver

Charlotte mastered the art of not doing her job a long time ago. Having a manager adept at the same skill helped. The rules for an effective construction office assistant were simple: make sure the guys get paid, keep the state inspectors off the company's ass, and dodge lawsuits. "Do these three things and you'll never get fired," Allison said. "Whatever else you do on the clock? No one gives a shit."

Charlotte kept her instructions on a sticky note folded up and stashed in the pen holder. The wad of neon pink paper was her Bible.

Allison listened to a contractor barking on the other end of the office phone. His accent was so thick, Charlie thought she was listening to bluegrass music. The modular hummed around them with a wretched AC that, like the girls, was also really good at not working. Charlie blotted the foundation on her cheeks with a napkin and prayed her mascara wasn't melting. The clock at the corner of her computer trudged toward three p.m.

She minimized a neglected spreadsheet and pulled up her search engine, typing, "Fairy Crosses, Blue Ridge Mountains," into the bar. Even though it didn't matter if Allison knew what she was doing, Charlotte peeked over her monitor to check she wasn't paying attention. Allison was twirling the phone cord around her finger, checking her nails, and drawling into the receiver, "Sir, we don't renegotiate contracts. Even if we did, you'd have to contact the paralegal's office at corporate."

The banjo on the other end of the phone line grew angrier. Charlie gave Allison two thumbs up over the monitor. Allison answered with a middle finger.

Charlie dug in her pocket for the small gray stone and held it to the images on her screen, which showed stones of different shades cut into perfect crosses. The dark lines on her stone were too fuzzy in comparison and difficult to see.

She sighed, put it back in her pocket, and sank in her chair. It's nothing but a stupid piece of gravel, she thought. If imagining her husband was already a habit, then imagining a fairy cross too was bound to happen at some point.

The stone bothered her anyway. She was wary of its weight in her pocket, although the skinny jeans pressing the rock to her leg didn't help. A few minutes after fighting with the spreadsheet some more, she pulled up the search engine again and typed, "history museum near me" and clicked the first link.

"Unicoi Gap History Museum and Library," she muttered, scanning a webpage that hadn't been updated since 2002. Most of the pictures wouldn't load. A few showed cabins behind a parking lot. The banner would scroll to the "missing image" symbol, and then to a photo of neckbearded men in British uniforms aiming wooden guns at the camera. Purple text shouted Colonial Era Re-Enactments. Sign up here! Charlotte wasn't sure if it was inviting her to come watch or participate.

"Cute," she said.

Allison leaned around her computer, the rhinestone piercing in her nose catching the sunlight. "What was that?"

"Aren't you on the phone?"

"Put him on hold. What are you looking at?"

Charlotte flipped her monitor around to show Allison a fat man in overalls playing guitar to a woman eating a peach. "This history museum," she said. "Grey would've loved it."
Allison got this childish look in her eye, and it reminded Charlie that underneath the layers of family drama and alcohol abuse, Allison was still a sweet, dorky little kid. "School took us there in third grade. They teach you how to make, like, bonnets and stuff."
"Sounds relaxing." Charlotte glanced at the webpage, the banner scrolling through photos, and gaped at the photo of fairy crosses. An old man pointed at them while a boy stood on his tiptoes to see, the man's beard dusting the display case. Many of the stones were identical to the one in her pocket.