Chapter 1
“Let’s be clear about one thing, Seamus,” I said, giving the bull mastiff the French fry he had been whining about since I pulled it out of the bag. “Just because I’m feeding you doesn’t mean you’re my dog.”
I wasn’t trying to be mean, but I didn’t want him to start getting all attached just because I gave him a stupid French fry, either. In truth, there didn’t seem to be much danger of that; he inhaled the fry and continued to remain indifferent to me, which was really best for everyone.
It was at that moment that the steering wheel in Judd’s tattered old sky-blue Chevy pickup truck began to rattle. I hadn’t wanted that stupid truck and I didn’t particularly like it, but I’d gotten stuck with it anyway. Much like Seamus.
“C’mon, you stupid—” I banged my fist on the steering wheel, and it stopped rattling.
“Hey,” Judd admonished from the spot between me and Seamus where he crouched. “Be gentle with my girl.”
“You talking to me or the truck?” I said, giving him deadly side-eye.
He made that answer clear by patting the truck’s dash. “This truck is awesome. Perfect to haul home all those garage sale chairs and tables. I’m gonna refinish them, baby, sell ’em at a yuge profit, and we’ll be livin’ like kings.”
“It’s huge, not yuge, and you never did bring home a single piece of furniture. You couldn’t keep your word if it was sewn into your underwear, and I hate this stupid truck.” To make my point, I downshifted from fifth gear to fourth, letting the gears grind as I deliberately jammed my elbow into Judd’s gut.
Not that Judd had a gut anymore. He was dead.
“You do know that, right?” I said. “You’re dead. I’m a widow. Move on already, would you?”
“I’ve moved on,” he said, his South Boston accent just as thick as ever. Even in death, he talked like he had a mouth full of peanut butter. “I’m dead. It’s you who’s keeping me here.”
He pronounced here with two syllables. He-ah. You’d think if I had to be haunted by the imagined ghost of my dead ex-husband, I’d at least give him a reasonable accent. British, maybe. I shot him a sideways look.
“Say ‘jolly good,’” I commanded.
He laughed. “You got a wicked sense of yumor, Ellie.”
“It’s humor. Hu-mor. With an h.” I stuffed a fry in my mouth. Seamus whined again.
“I don’t care what you say,” Judd said, and shot me a sidelong glance, his eyes glinting with yumor. You had to give Judd that; no matter what he was doing, he always had a great time doing it. “You still love me, and you know it.”
I glanced in the rearview and saw his cocky smile, the very smile I’d fallen for way back in the day when I was too young and stupid to know better.
“Shut up.” I gave Seamus another fry, and he wolfed it down with such enthusiasm that I had to check my hand quickly to be sure all my fingers were still there. They were. They were covered in slobber, but they were still there. With the luck I’d had lately, I guessed I should be grateful. I wiped my hands on my jeans and took the left onto Wildwood Lane, which sounded like it should be really nice, but in reality it looked like the kind of abandoned dirt road where they shoot those the-missing-girl-was-last-seen-here pieces for the local news.
“Are you kidding me with this, Judd?” My heart started racing in response to the panic rushing through my veins. “What the hell kind of place did you buy, anyway?”
Judd leaned forward, grinning like the charming asshole he’d been in life. “Wait for it, baby. You’re gonna love it.”
“I doubt that,” I said, but when I looked to Judd, he was gone, and I was alone in his stupid truck with hergoddamned dog, on my way to the only thing I had left to my name, thanks to him.
I hit my foot to the gas, a move which had little actual effect on how fast that old rust heap moved but which did provide some emotional payoff. While I was distracted, Seamus stuffed his massive nose into the fast-food bag and ripped it to shreds. My burger, wrapper and all, was gone in two bites.
“Son of a bitch.”
Seamus, as usual, ignored me.
The mailbox was not “rust-colored” as the real estate paperwork had claimed, but rather rust-covered, which I’d like to state for the record, is different. I wanted to drive past it, but unfortunately, the number 144 was clearly painted onto the wooden stake the mailbox was impaled upon, and I couldn’t pretend I hadn’t seen it.
“Home sweet home,” I muttered, and turned down the dirt driveway, although calling it a driveway was a little generous. It was more a visible suggestion that once or twice some sort of vehicle had accessed the house this way. The branches and leaves slapped at Judd’s stupid truck and eventually cleared away to reveal the glorified shack that turned out to be the only thing my dead husband owned that his debt hadn’t eaten.
Well, that, his dumb truck, and his girlfriend’s dog.
I stopped the truck, turned it off, and stared at my future, such as it was.
At least you’ll have a place to live, the estate lawyer had told me last month as he closed his leather briefcase and lifted it off the table in the diner where we’d met up. In cases where a husband leaves this kind of debt behind, I’ve seen widows left without anything. Or worse, with nothing, and bills left to pay. Considering how things could have gone, you’re actually pretty lucky.
Yeah, that was me. Lucky.
I tightened my grip on the steering wheel, staring through the windshield and thinking.
“You don’t suppose…” I said to Seamus. “I mean … you don’t think Judd was running some kind of scam out here, do you?”
The dog, apparently uninterested in the why behind Judd’s real estate ventures, ignored me, but my mind kept picking at the problem. Judd had traveled a bit, and like most wives of small-time con men, I hadn’t asked a lot of questions for fear of getting the truth. Had he been out here, working a scam, during some of those absences? But why? Nodaway Falls, despite the name, had no real falls to boast of; there was little to no tourist traffic, and even less local industry. It was an hour and a half from Buffalo and a whisper away from the Pennsylvania border; the land itself was worth little more than Judd’s stupid truck. Not to mention that there were plenty of easy pickins on the one-hour route between Taunton, the small town in southwestern Massachusetts where he’d parked me after we got married, and Boston, where the rich and stupid came to get fleeced by the smart and lazy. The drive to Nodaway Falls, which based on appearances was not a super wealthy community, was eight and a half hours. If Judd had been out here working a scam, it had been for something other than money, because nothing he’d get out here would have covered the gas.
I looked at Seamus and he panted at me, sated and slobbery in the midsummer heat. I wondered if he had eaten the girlfriend’s lunches, too.
“Dumb dog,” I said, and kicked open the driver’s-side door. I stepped out onto a patchy clearing that passed for a front yard, and stared at the run-down shack that was now all mine. It had shutters that were actual shutters, not just decoration, covered in peeling green paint. They might not be terrible with an updated color, maybe. The multipaned front windows were so old that even from what was passing for my front yard, I could see that they hadn’t been replaced in at least fifty years. The place was small, about nine hundred square feet, with two bedrooms and one full bath. Not grand by any standards, but hell, it had a roof and a fenced side yard for Seamus, and I wasn’t exactly in a position to be picky.
Seamus lumbered out of the truck and stood by my side. His head came up well past my hips. The monstrous canine was a hundred and fifty pounds, more horse than dog. What kind of woman would buy a dog like that, anyway?
Of course, I knew exactly what kind of woman. The Christy McNagle kind of woman, the kind of woman who gets her blond from a bottle and her sexual ya-yas from my husband.
Former husband, I thought. Dead husband.
I looked down at Seamus and contemplated him for a bit. It was nicer to think about the stupid dog than it was to think about Christy McNagle and Judd doing whatever it was they were doing together while I was oblivious and stupid.
“Go on, dog.” I nudged him with my knee. “Run around. Get some exercise.”
He looked up at me and licked his slobbering jaws, retrieving a sesame seed that had stuck to his nose. He let out a little huff of impatience and lay down in the dirt, settling his big dumb boulder of a head on his front paws.
“Yeah,” I said on a sigh. “I know how you feel.”
I stared at the house. I didn’t want to open that door, didn’t want to see what was inside, but I didn’t want to sleep outside, either. My dusty, used-to-be-white Keds moved forward step by step, and eventually, I found myself putting the key in the lock. Before I turned it, I looked back at Seamus, who was still lying on the dirt, watching me.
“Coward,” I said, and turned the knob.
I had taken a chunk out of my dwindling checking account to hire someone to clean the place. I’d started accounts with the gas and electric companies while staying at Judd’s sister’s house in Providence, so at least there would be lights and hot water. It was dark inside and I hit the ancient push-button switch. To my utter surprise, it didn’t set off a fire, and the ceiling dome light actually turned on, if a little reluctantly.
“See, what’d I tell you?” Judd said from over my shoulder. “It’s not so bad, right? I got the furniture and appliances included in the deal.”
I ignored him. He was dead. And, according to Dr. Fliegel, he was just my imagination anyway, a hallucination I made up to work through the grief. He wasn’t even a real ghost. A real ghost could tell you why, could explain, could apologize. All fake-ghost Judd did was the same stuff he did when he was alive; smile, charm, and lie.
I turned away from Judd, focusing my attention on the place. It really wasn’t that bad. To my right was the living room; it was small, but it had a woodstove in the center of the far wall and what looked like usable, if old, hardwood floors.
“You just buff those up, stain ’em, seal ’em, they’re good as new,” Judd said.
“Where did you even get that money?” I asked. “You paid a hundred thousand dollars in cash for this place, but can’t buy a decent truck. What the hell is that about, Judd?”
He grinned at me, and dodged the question. “I’m a man of mystery, baby.”
“Shut up,” I said absently as I surveyed the place. To one side of the woodstove was an overstuffed chair next to a standing lamp; a reading area. To the other side was a writing desk. In front was a beige La-Z-Boy that had seen better days, and a floral Victorian couch that made your back hurt just to look at it. No television, but that didn’t matter much. As soon as I got the wi-fi hooked up, I could watch movies on my laptop.
“What do you think, Seamus?” I asked the dog. “You think it’ll work?”
He ignored me.
I looked to the left; there was an eat-in kitchen, also small, but kind of quaint, separated from the cooking area by a peninsula counter that cut the space in half. The dining half had a small farmhouse table with four wooden chairs, no seat cushions. Lace curtains hung over the windows, unmoving in the stilted summer air. I walked to the window, and with a significant amount of effort and cursing, got it open. It didn’t let much fresh air in, but it was a start.
I moved farther into the kitchen. The lumbering yellow appliances looked like they were straight off the set of I Love Lucy, with a big double-oven gas stove, and a yellow refrigerator with soft, rounded edges.
“Coldspot,” I said, reading the script logo written in metal on the door, and noticed that Seamus was suddenly at my heels. Of course he’d be here now; I was about to open a fridge, and the opportunity to eat more of my food was apparently too big to resist.
“It’s an antique,” Judd said, leaning one ghostly hip against the counter. “I bet it even works. Go on, open it.”
I pulled the large silver lever, half expecting it to fall off in my hand, but the door opened easily. I stuck my hand inside the fridge; it was legitimately cold in there. The freezer chest—I knew what to call it because it had FREEZER CHEST written in scripty metallic lettering on the plastic door—was a separate compartment tucked away up top, but when I pulled the plastic door down and peered inside, I saw that someone had put in modern ice cube trays, and the cubes were frozen solid.
Huh, I thought, closing the fridge. Must have been the cleaning service. My eyes teared up suddenly, and my throat tightened with emotion. It was a small kindness, but when things were bad, it was the small kindnesses that did you in.
“A little work,” Judd said, moving into the living room, “a little elbow grease, a little TLC, and this place is going to be our dream, Ellie.”
I wiped my eyes, leaned against the oven, and looked out the front windows. In my imagination, I saw pale yellow curtains flowing in the breeze, and fresh cushions on the chairs.
Yeah, maybe, I thought.
I headed down the hallway. The bathroom had mint-green walls with white ceramic tile halfway up, and was oddly large considering the dimensions of the rest of the house. The floor had white honeycomb tiles with dark blue ones marking out little daisy shapes at regular intervals, and I’ll admit it; my breath caught in my throat a little bit.
“Look at that,” Judd said over my shoulder. “A claw-foot tub. Just like you always wanted. Do I know you or do I know you, huh?”
Seamus pushed himself past me into the bathroom, hitting the backs of my knees and making them buckle a bit. I checked the faucet and the handheld showerhead that was attached to the side of the tub; they were old, but they worked. It took the hot water a little while to come to the party, but hell, I was grateful there was hot water at all. There was no standing shower, but I liked baths well enough.
I could work with this.
I poked my head into the tiny back bedroom, which was empty except for the built-in bookshelves and the plain metal radiator under the window. I could paint the radiator white, and strip the faded pink floral wallpaper, and it would make a decent office. Emotion bloomed in my chest, so powerful and unfamiliar that I had to lean against the wall to hold myself up as it rippled through my being. I recognized the emotion, but just barely.
It was hope.
“See?” Judd said, grinning like a fool. “I knew you’d like it.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” I crossed the hallway, put my hand on the old metal doorknob that presumably led to what the paperwork had described as “the big bedroom,” and turned. The knob rolled loosely from side to side, but didn’t open.
Crap.
I jiggled it; I could hear the metal bits clinking around inside. I yanked at the doorknob, cursing and kicking at the door. No joy. Seamus sat a few feet back, watching me dispassionately. I leaned my forehead against the door and let out a breath, my entire body vibrating with nerves as the thought occurred to me.
The knob is made of metal.
A painful jolt of fear ran through me, and I stepped back from the door. My magic was gone. It was gone-gone, had been gone for sixteen years and it wasn’t coming back.
“Then what’s it gonna hurt to try?” Judd asked from over my shoulder.
I shot him a sideways glance. “You don’t know about the magic. I never told you. So shut up.”
He grinned at me, and my heart soared a bit, but I couldn’t tell whether the flutter was coming from the memory of Judd’s intoxicating smile or the momentary power fantasy of having my magic back and not having to dig through the truck to find my tools.
I shook out my hands, released a sharp breath, and closed my eyes. I could feel the workings inside the knob. I’d locked up my ability to manipulate metal, but I hadn’t lost my connection to the element. A piece had broken loose inside the mortise latch; I could turn that knob all day and it wouldn’t do a damn thing. It happened sometimes with old lock assemblies. Most likely, the cleaning people had shut the door too hard when they’d left, and the lock had finally broken down in protest. Or maybe the house had already made up its mind about me, and the verdict wasn’t good.
But either way, I was going to need my tools. I pushed up from my knees and headed out, Judd calling out after me, “What? You’re not even going to try?”
“Six years trying to get the truth out of you taught me not to attempt the impossible,” I shot over my shoulder at him.
I went out to the truck, got my beat-up old toolbox from behind the driver’s seat, and spent the next fifteen minutes dismantling the lock assembly while Seamus slobbered over my shoulder.
I got the door open, pushed through it, and my breath caught. The room had white beadboard wainscoting and yellow walls and gleaming wood floors and it was …
“Beautiful,” I breathed.
Right in the middle of the back wall was the refurbished white-painted cast-iron bed I’d had delivered from the local antiques shop. I’d been charmed by the picture on the website, by the shiny exposed metal springs, by the idea that I could love it even after everyone else had abandoned it. I’d spent way more money than I should have on an old-fashioned feather mattress to go with it, which had also been delivered and was leaned up against the wall, still in its plastic wrapping.
I walked over to it and ripped off the plastic in a frenzy, then hauled the mattress over and, with some effort, got it onto the bed.
“What do you think, Seamus?” I said, looking back at the dog who had finally found his way to the room. “It’s okay, right?”
Seamus walked over to the bed, sniffed the mattress, and curled up on the floor next to the bed.
“I don’t care what you say,” I said, “it’s gonna be—”
“Great, baby,” Judd said from behind me, hijacking the last of my sentence. “You and me, on an adventure, the way it was supposed to be.”
I turned and there he was, leaning against the doorjamb, looking sexy as hell, his black hair ruffled and his smile just as crooked and bent as his soul. And stupid me, I wanted him back. I wanted his arms around me and I wanted him in my bed and I wanted to believe in the beautiful lies he spun for me, my own corrupted Rumpelstiltskin spinning gold from bullshit. I missed him so much it hurt, and I hated him so much that I wished he could come back to life just so I could kill him myself.
“You’re not allowed in here,” I said, and shut the door in his face while his mouth was opening to form a reply. I kicked off my shoes, stepped over Seamus, and settled down onto my new old bed, groaning with exhausted delight before falling into a dead sleep.
* * *
The dream started out the way the dream always started out, just a simple reliving of the day that changed my life. I was in the basement of the First Presbyterian church in Lott’s Cove, Maine, with twenty-eight other people. My mother. My best friend, Del. Del’s parents. My math teacher from the seventh grade. We were packing up tool kits for the Habitat for Humanity volunteers who were taking the bus to Bangor later that day to help build houses over the summer. It was going to be the first time either Del or I had gone away from home for more than a night or two. We were going to be gone for one full week. We were insanely excited, just the way that day was in real life.
In the dream, though, instead of what really happened, the basement starts to fill with glowing gerbera daisies. It just fills, from bottom to top, and at first everyone thinks it’s cute, that the flowers are beautiful. They all play with them, and I try to tell them not to, but no one hears me. Eventually, the flowers cover our heads. It gets dark as they press in on us and people start to panic. That’s when it finally occurs to me to open the door and get everyone out, but I’m always too late. I reach for the doorknob, but just as I do, it turns into a daisy, and I touch it before I can stop myself. As soon as I do, electric-blue lightning sparks from my fingers, evaporating the flowers and hopping from person to person, killing them one by one. The door opens and there’s my father, smiling wide with his arms outstretched for me, as though he hadn’t just used me to kill them all.
Same dream. Every time.
“Babe.” I could feel the warmth of Judd’s breath on my ear. “Babe. People in the house.”
I jolted up in the bed, my heart racing, the instinct to rush to the door setting all my nerves on fire, but then I opened my eyes and slammed back into reality. I reached instinctively for Judd before realizing with a stab of sudden understanding that he wasn’t alive and warm in my bed.
He was dead.
I fell back on the pillows and breathed deep, slowly rising out of the dream and into my new reality.
Widowed, broke, and living in Nodaway Falls.
And there were voices coming from the front of the house.
I sat up, rubbing my eyes and trying to process what was happening. The voices belonged to women, and they sounded light and happy, not threatening. It was still light outside, so I hadn’t been asleep for that long, but I felt like I’d been out for years.
“Hey,” I said, and nudged Seamus gently with my foot. He raised his head and looked at me.
“You hear that? People are in the house.” I hurled myself out of bed and tried to smooth out my T-shirt and jeans, which also happened to be covered in dog hair, a thing I’d gotten rather used to over the last eight months. “You are the worst watchdog on the planet. Surely someone has told you this.”
Seamus did the dog equivalent of rolling his eyes and lumbered up off the floor to follow me into the living room, where I found an older woman with wild, flowing gray hair showing another woman—younger, blond, and massively pregnant under a red and white polka-dotted dress—where to put the covered glass platter that held a huge chocolate cake. The older woman was wearing a flowing yellow sundress and a big floppy hat with a sunflower on the side, and was so focused on her duties ordering Polka Dots around that she didn’t even notice me walking in. Polka Dots, however, saw me right away and instead of reddening with shame for breaking into my home, she grinned and waved. She was uncommonly beautiful, and I swiped at my own unkempt brown mop, hoping neither of the intruders were the judgy type.
“Hi!” she said, disappearing into the kitchen where she put the cake on the counter. “You must be Eliot!”
The woman with the gray hair turned to me, her face bright. “Eliot!” Her arms flew out and she ran to me, pulling me into a big hug.
“Oh, so … wow, you guys are huggers,” I said as she let me go.
“Such an unusual name for a woman, Eliot,” Polka Dots said. “I love it.”
“Thanks,” I said. “My mother was a George Eliot fan.”
She patted her belly. “We’re having a girl. Nick—that’s my husband, Nick Easter, I’m sure you’ll meet him soon—wants to name her Bunny.”
“Yeah, that’s a bad idea,” I said automatically.
Polka Dots made a face and laughed. “I know, right? So now I’m all obsessed with girl names. The little monkey was due three days ago, but she refuses to come out!” Polka Dots yelled playfully toward her stomach and laughed.
“Yeah. Good luck with that.” A weird silence followed, and I wished not for the first time that I had Judd’s gift for charming strangers with meaningless chitchat. “Um, not to be rude but … who are you people?”
Polka Dots slapped her hand to her forehead and laughed. “Oh! Wow! We totally forgot to introduce ourselves! You must be like, ‘Who are these crazy people in my house?’”
“A little,” I said. “Yeah.”
She smiled. “I’m Bernadette Easter, but you can call me Peach. Everyone does. And this is Addie Hooper-Higgins. She owns the antiques store. She sold you your bed.”
Addie Hooper-Higgins. The name did ring the vaguest of bells.
“Oh, right. Nice to meet you.” I held out my hand on instinct, but Addie just pulled me in for another hug. Over Addie’s shoulder, Peach smiled and winked at me, as if we were sharing a joke. That crazy Addie. Always hugs people twice.
“Um, yeah,” I said when Addie released me the second time. “I’m Eliot. Well, you know that. And this big guy is Seamus.”
“Oh!” Addie clapped her hands, delighted. “What a beautiful creature!”
“Don’t be offended if he’s a little standoffish. He’s not exactly friendly, but he doesn’t bite.” I hesitated, deliberating. “That I know of.”
The words were barely out of my mouth before Seamus was up on his hind legs, his massive paws on Addie’s shoulders as he attempted to lick her face right off her head. I stared in disbelief. The little bastard. For eight months, I’ve been feeding that dog—and not the cheap stuff, either, freaking Iams—and he had yet to lick my face or show any affection for me at all. On a good day, he tolerated my presence. On a bad one, he ate my lunch.
“What a little love!” Addie laughed and patted his shoulders lightly. “Down now, Seamus.”
Seamus immediately hopped down. He ambled over to Peach, sniffed her knee and licked her hand.
“Sweet dog!” Peach said, rubbing his head.
“Yeah.” I had a sudden hopeful thought. “You want him?”
They both looked at me as though I had just offered them my firstborn or something, and then Addie laughed.
“Oh, you,” she said. “You’re funny.”
I hadn’t been kidding but … whatever.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just got here this morning and I wasn’t expecting visitors, so I don’t have anything to offer you.”
“Oh, get the woman a soda, would you, Peach?” Addie said, and Peach went into the kitchen. I followed. Peach opened my fridge, and I was shocked to see that it was full. I could only catch a glimpse of the bounty in the few seconds while Peach grabbed three bottles of soda, but I saw a number of disposable Gladware containers and something that looked like lasagna before Peach closed the door.
“Wow, you filled the fridge. That’s … uh … neighborly.” My stomach was growling at the thought of that lasagna, and I hoped they couldn’t hear it.
Peach whipped the cap off one of the sodas and handed it to me.
“Thanks,” I said, and took a sip.
“I hope you don’t mind us just barging in like this,” Addie said, without the slightest hint of shame. “We knocked, but the door was unlocked, so we figured we’d drop all the stuff off and surprise you.” She shrugged.Just a little breaking and entering. No big deal. “Welcome to Nodaway Falls!”
I looked at Peach, who had the good grace to look at least a little abashed.
“It’s a thing we do here when someone new moves in,” she said. “Everyone contributes a dish, or knits homemade dishcloths…” She motioned to a paper grocery sack on the counter which I guessed held the nonperishable items. “You know, whatever we’re good at. Everyone throws in something.”
Addie beamed. “I made the pecan pie.”
I smiled back, and felt a bit of grudging happiness spark inside. These people and their good cheer were apparently contagious.
“Oh, I love pie,” I said. “It’s literally one of my favorite things.”
“Addie’s pecan pies are the stuff of legend.” Behind Addie’s back, Peach gave me a hand signal which I read to mean that I should absolutely under no circumstances eat the pecan pie.
“Okay. Thank you,” I said to both of them. There was another long silence and then I realized that, despite their intruder status, I should probably be doing something hostesslike. “I’m sorry. Do you guys want … to eat something you brought?” I tried to smile again, but felt like a stiff jack-o’-lantern this time. How did Judd do this so easily, just … like … talk to people? Of course, he wasn’t here at the moment to tell me what to do. He tended to only show up when I was alone. God forbid the guy should be actually useful, even in death.
“Oh, is your moving truck late?” Peach said, gracefully corralling the conversation. “When my parents moved to Florida, their moving truck went to Pensacola instead of Sarasota and it took them two weeks to get their stuff.”
“Yeah, that sucks,” I said. “But, uh, no. Everything I own is out in the truck.”
Addie and Peach exchanged a quick glance, and then Addie laughed and clapped her hands. “Starting over fresh! You know, that’s such a smart thing to do. Leave the past in the past, right?”
“So, where’s your husband?” Peach said, motioning toward my left hand. I glanced down at the wedding set that was still on my finger. It wasn’t worth much when Judd bought it new, so selling it wouldn’t have helped, and despite everything, I hadn’t been able to take it off quite yet.
“I’m widowed,” I said in a simple, matter-of-fact tone. “He took his mistress out for a night on the town—in my car, classy as always. He hit some black ice and drove off Route 44 and into the Taunton River, which wasn’t easy. Plowed right through the side rail and just … plooosh.” I made a sound of splashing water. “It was pretty cold. The cops said they both died quick, so … that’s a good thing, I guess.”
Silence. Wide eyes. Frozen postures. I had told the story so many times, I forgot how kind of horrifying it was. I swallowed and kept talking because neither of them seemed up to the task.
“Anyway, I had to sell the house and most of our stuff to pay off the debt he didn’t tell me about.”
More silence. I let it sit for a moment, but it got too uncomfortable, so I opened my mouth and made it worse.
“Yep. All I have left to my name is that crappy truck, this old house, and her dumb dog.”
“Wait,” Peach said, stepping forward. “You adopted your dead husband’s mistress’s dog?” Her eyes were wide with what I could only describe as wild admiration, and it made me hellishly uncomfortable.
“I don’t know about adopted,” I said, giving Seamus a dubious look. “Her family wouldn’t take him, so I was kinda stuck. I know that, roles reversed, she probably would have hit my dog in the head with a shovel and tossed it off an overpass, but I think I got a superiority buzz off of being a better person than she was, not thatthat was a high bar, but…”
You know those moments in the movies when it gets so silent you can hear the clock tick? Yeah. This was something like that. So I kept talking. “I have some of my things still. Clothes, underwear, stuff like that. I pretty much spent my last dime on that bed, so … gonna need a job soon.”
There was nothing left to report, so we stood there in a heavy, unbroken, tick-tock silence for a while. But somehow, I felt lighter just saying the words. In the kind of town where they brought the new neighbor homemade dinners and pecan pies and hand-knitted dishcloths, word would travel fast. Saying all of this once, to these two, meant I would never, ever have to tell that story again to anyone, and that was a comforting thought.
“Oh, honey,” Peach said, her eyes full of tears as she held her arms out and pulled me into yet another hug. Because of her baby-girth, I had to lean into the hug and reach my arms out awkwardly to pat her back as she sniffled on my shoulder. “I’m so sorry about your husband. That’s so sad.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “He was really kind of an asshole.”
“You poor, poor thing.” Peach sniffed as she finally released me, her eyes red. “You’ve been through so much.”
“Ah, you get used to it,” I said, shrugging uncomfortably. “What are you gonna do, right? Life hands you lemons, and all that.”
Peach put her hands on my shoulders. “You are so strong.”
“Bah,” I said awkwardly, making a dismissive gesture. “It’s not strength when you don’t have a choice. It’s just not falling down.”
“You know what?” Addie said, clapping me on the shoulder. “I like you.”
“Thanks.” I smiled, feeling an odd rush of warmth at the compliment. “I like me, too.”
She reached into her purse and pulled out two business cards, putting them one by one in my hands. One read GRACE AND ADDIE’S BED AND BREAKFAST, and the other read ADDIE AND GRACE’S ANTIQUES SHOPPE.
“Come by the antiques store tomorrow,” she said. “We open at ten. You can bring Seamus.”
I looked down at Seamus, then back at Addie. “You really want that big ox of a dog near your antiques?”
Addie waved a hand in the air. “It’ll be fine. I know everyone in this town, and if there’s a job for you, I’ll find it. What is it you do? Do you have any marketable skills?”
I hesitated. “I have a graduate degree in philosophy and spent six years working in a video rental store that finally went belly-up last fall. Unless there’s a market for someone who can discuss the themes of Randian objectivism in The Incredibles, then no. Not really.”
Addie looked at me for a moment, then patted me lightly on the cheek, the way I imagine a mother might. “That’s okay. I like a challenge.”
“Then you’ll like me,” I said, and moved toward the door. They both took the hint and followed me. Just as I put my hand on the knob, I said, “Oh, hey, I have a question. What’s the grungiest dive bar in town?”
The two of them answered in unison, without hesitation: “Happy Larry’s.”
“Why do you ask?” Peach said.
Because if Judd was in this town, he was in that bar. “No reason. Just curious. Thanks so much for coming by. I really appreciate all the stuff.”
I followed them out to the porch, surprised to find that next to Judd’s beaten-up blue pickup was an almost equally beaten-up green pickup with EASTER LANDSCAPING painted on the driver’s-side door. The similarity between the two pieces of crap gave me a brief feeling of belonging, which I appreciated. Peach hurled herself up into the driver’s seat and Addie climbed into the passenger side, and they both waved at me as they drove off. I waved until they were out of sight, then looked over to see Seamus lifting his leg to the back tire of Judd’s truck. I thought about stopping him, but there was something oddly gratifying about it, so I let it go.
I traipsed down the porch steps and untied the tarp covering the bed of Judd’s truck to uncover all of my worldly possessions, which amounted to some clothes, a few basic toiletries, and two boxes of kitchen stuff. Once back in the kitchen, I grabbed a fork from one of the boxes and, out of sheer curiosity, picked into the pecan pie and took a bite.
“Oh, gah, yugh,” I said, and spit it into the sink. I ran the tap and stuck my mouth under it, swishing the water around and spitting it out, then staring at the offensive pie. “What the hell is that? Flaxseed? Jesus.” Then I popped the lasagna into the oven to cook while I took a shower to clean up before my visit to Happy Larry’s.
Copyright © 2015 by Lani Diane Rich
