Chapter 39: Received in Full

"Don't enter the grove," Callum told the phone. Sau-lin still had his hand. Neither of them had decided that. "I'm at the fence," Mara said. "Not in it." "Wait at the road. We'll come after noon." "Noon." The call ended. The pull under Sau-lin's left foot had strengthened since Mara named Lincoln Park. It ran through the floorboards and west under the city, a buried cord drawing tight. Callum let go of her hand slowly, like a man putting down something hot that he intended to pick up again. His shirt was correctly buttoned now. She regretted Jo's interruption on aesthetic grounds. At the rear table, Jo had covered every surface with papers from Winnie's mother's boxes, leaving no safe place for tea, elbows, or the shop calculator Winnie insisted was superior to Jo's spreadsheet. A box of pineapple buns sat by the register, and Sau-lin, who had tasted a…