Chapter 13
The only thing that had changed in the store right inside the barn doors since Iris last saw it was a thick layer of dust. Shelves made of pine stained brown covered the walls, still piled high with tourist junk. Wooden whistles and flimsy knives, cheap harmonicas, rough-edged cap guns with rolls of red tape for bullets.
Iris’s parents told her this stuff was antiquated garbage when her grandparents were alive, already mass produced overseas. But strangers who found their way to Maple Ridge bought handfuls of it. Rotating stands full of postcards, books, and download cards for screechy mountain music dotted the center of the rough-hewn hardwood floor. The gummy filth over everything looked like no one had found their way up here for a long, long time.
The only spaces cleared
