Written by RowanCarver

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, Charlotte 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. Charlotte 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.

Charlotte 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 kit. "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.

Allison scowled. "What?"

Charlotte stuttered. "Uh, nothing. I was thinking about going after work, but they close at five."

Allison crossed her arms and stuck the tongue in her cheek, then sighed. "I'll tell them you had a stomach ache. Could be your period but could also be appendicitis. I sent you to the doctor to get it checked out."

Charlotte was reaching for her bag already, mouthing her thanks before juggling her water bottle and keys, then heading for the exit.

"Whatever," Allison said. "See you Monday."

Charlotte didn't hear her. She left her coworker to sweat among the papers and listen to the banjo waiting on the phone line. When she noticed the flock of foremen in white hard hats smoking cigarettes (who were also masters of doing nothing at work), she remembered her ailment and limped to the Honda, clutching her stomach.

The Unicoi Gap History Museum and Library was established in 1957 near a particularly challenging stretch of hiking trails guilty of twisted ankles and busted knees. Made up of donated cabins that the owner claims date back to the Colonial era, the museum welcomes all tourists, schoolchildren, and curious locals brave enough to venture in the middle of nowhere just to watch disinterested college students spend their summers churning butter and quilting. Every young person on that side of Helen spent at least one dreadful season working there since the only other option was cashiering at the Dollar General thirty minutes away.

The museum was a time capsule with only a broken pay phone and a gravel parking lot imposing from modern times. Otherwise, colonial mountain life was preserved within its cabin walls. Charlotte read the first sentence of a sign explaining the site's history, the Honda creaking at her back, exhausted from the difficult trek through the mountains. She grew bored and headed for the first cabin. Grey would've read the whole thing, she thought.

A teenager plodded by. He was wearing trousers, leather boots with shiny black buttons, and a Black Sabbath t-shirt, a red coat draped over his arm. He shot a look at her that said, "Why are you here right before we close?" She thought twice about asking him which cabin had the fairy crosses.

She made her way through a model of a downtown area, passing a blacksmith, a girl weaving at a loom, and a woman taking a skillet of cornbread from a wood stove. Chickens ran through the cabin yards. The place was as beautiful as it was strange with its stone paths hiding under moss and trees craning their branches over the porches. Charlotte liked how peaceful it was, and understood why Greyson enjoyed visiting historical sites: they offered an opportunity to experience a simpler time without the threat of 18th century diseases.

The largest cabin had the words Visitor Center and Library carved above the door, which sounded promising. She weaved through the grass and then the homemade candles on the steps, squeaking open the door and expecting the relief of an AC only to find the cabin slightly warmer than it was outside, and notably more humid. Whenever she blinked, her mascara stuck her lashes together for a moment, and she had to pull hard to re-open her eyes.

The cabin was cozy in every sense of the word. Plush armchairs sat by the windows and invited Charlotte to read one of the many books surrounding them. Quilts draped the walls. A fireplace begged her to come back in the winter to enjoy an apple cider by its hearth. She had always lived in cities. First LA, then New York for college, then Atlanta for Greyson's treatments. After years of living in apartments and listening to city noise, she never thought that a cabin out in the middle of nowhere could feel so much like home.

A ceiling fan swirled dust strings through the air above her. She grabbed a brochure and fanned herself as she tiptoed through a souvenir shop of unfolded t-shirts and stacks of sew-on patches. Footsteps echoed hers at the back of the cabin. She stopped at the mouth of a black bear snarling from the floor, his legs splayed, tongue missing. Is that a real fur rug?

A man twanged, "Can I help you?" His accent was thicker than the shadow of his stomach.

Charlotte looked up from the black bear's yellow fangs to find Mountain Man Santa Claus staring at her while he emptied the morning's coffee grounds into a trash can. His beard was long enough to tap the bag. He wore the same red flannel shirt and overalls he was wearing in the picture with the fairy crosses and the little boy.

Charlotte cleared her throat. "Hi. So sorry to come in while you're closing."

Mountain Santa shook out a wad of coffee grounds. "Nah, not closing. Library's open until eight."

"Oh, okay." She adjusted the purse strap on her shoulder. "Well, I'm here because I found something and wanted to ask someone if it's...well, I guess, to see if it's real?"

"Found something?" He straightened, put the coffee basket on the side of a sink, and looped his thumbs through his suspenders. "Here at the museum?"

"No, I found it at my house?" She took the stone from her pocket and held it in her fist, the edges grazing her palm. "I think that it's a fairy cross."

Mountain Santa had bushy eyebrows so white, they were like mounds of snow above his eyes. The mounds rose. "Is that so? Could be. I can take a look at it. I'm Mike, by the way."

Charlotte stepped over the black bear to shake his hand, which was more like a calloused bear paw. "Charlotte. I'm from Atlanta, but moved here two years ago."

"Good to meet you, Ms. Charlotte. Is this your first time at the museum?"

Instead of cookies and milk, his breath smelled like stale coffee and dip. Charlotte tried not to flinch. "Yeah, I didn't know about this place until recently," she said. "I saw your fairy crosses on the website and thought I could come ask."

"That would be it over there." He said 'thar' instead of 'there,' and pointed at a display case, which he hobbled to with some difficulty. Charlotte figured asking about his limp would be impolite. Maybe it was from a work injury, a snake bite, or a British bullet.

A red curtain covered the case. Mike folded it back with such care, Charlotte believed he was unveiling the Holy Grail. There were boxes of fairy crosses inside placed neatly on felt trays. She laced her fingers behind her back to keep from pressing prints into the glass, peering at the stones. Tan, gray, red, some perfect, others lumpy enough to be imposters. One box held chunks of earth with many many crosses inside of them.

Greyson would've seen the stones as they were: staurelite, a mixture of iron, silicate, and aluminum pressed into a cross shape by the Earth's crust during the mountain's formation. Charlotte saw only a case full of tears.

"Beautiful," she said.

"Most of them come from Fairy Cross Park in Virginia, but a few come from around here." Mike tapped the glass over a red St. Andrew's cross. "You wanna show me what you got?"

"Oh." Charlotte looked at the stone in the sweat of her palm. "Yes, I guess so."

She placed it on the case, frowning. The stone's faint black cross painted in the center didn't resemble the others, and its shape was wrong. Round for the most part, but some edges were jagged, like something had taken a bite out of it. Her cheeks started to heat up with embarrassment. "It doesn't look like them," she said.

Mike leaned over the stone and shut one eye, then straightened. "Oh yeah, that's a fairy cross alright."

Charlotte's heart stopped sinking. "Really?"

"The ones in the case are filed to be shaped more like crosses, but when you first find them they look like what you got here." He picked up the stone and held it to the light. "That's a tiny one though. How'd you find it?"

"By my car this morning. I'd been reading up on them and knew what to look for, I guess."

"I could file it if you want. Make it more like the ones in the case. You could make a nice piece of jewelry out of it."

"That's alright."

"You sure?"

"Yeah. See, I lost my husband two years ago today. Brain tumor. When I found that cross by my car, it was like a gift from him or something. I don't want to alter it."

She said it with dry eyes. Telling strangers about Greyson was easy. She only had to suffer their sympathy once, and saying the words out loud offered a little catharsis. But telling people she knew was difficult because they started treating her like she was fragile. Every conversation started with some version of, "So sorry for your loss" or, "How are you doing? I mean, really doing?" And whenever they managed to talk about something else, she could tell they were struggling not to bring it up.

Mike opened a drawer and retrieved a felt pouch, then put Charlotte's stone inside of it, tugging the drawstrings closed. "Why don't you keep it in here for now and put it somewhere safe? Then if you decide later you want it shaped up for a necklace or something, come back here and I'll do it for free."

"That's really nice. Thank you."

A phone rang from the cabin office. Mike encouraged Charlotte to stay as long as she liked before shuffling off to answer it, directing her to a self-checkout system in the corner, which was the only computer in the museum. She walked through the shelves for a few minutes until the heat became unbearable, settling on a book with a painting of long-haired people dancing on the cover. She scanned it and tucked it in her purse, then waved goodbye to Mike, who was telling the person on the other end of the phone that their 18th-century demonstrations were not something they wanted to miss.

As she walked to the Honda, she wondered if Greyson managed to send her to the museum, guiding her on a treasure hunt of sorts by leaving all of these clues. She slid behind the steering wheel and cranked the engine, letting the AC cool the sweat on her face. The cross necklace swung from the rearview mirror while she reversed out of the parking space. She stopped at the exit to hold the necklace for a moment, imagining how it felt against her cheek whenever she hugged him. "You would've loved this place, Grey," she said.

WC: 2474