by Jan O'Hara
“Listen, Angelina,” she said after reading the clerk’s name tag, “I’m looking for three men.”
“Mr. Pike, Mr. Lee, and the blond gentleman, right? Gill let me know,” the clerk said, correctly interpreting Page’s surprise. “We were looking for Mr. Cuthbert earlier. When he arrived, he left his vehicle blocking emergency access.” She nodded to the door. “Not that he’ll be able to move it tonight.”
Outside, a hip-high snowdrift had amassed at the front end of a black Escalade, and was creeping over the windshield. “Amazing, right?”
Amazing and frightening, especially if Oliver was anywhere outside.
“So…my missing three?” Page said.
“Right. You’re Ms. Maddux, correct? I was about to come find you. Mr. Pike called a minute ago. He said to tell you they were all together.”
Page swallowed and tried not to sound needy. “He didn’t want to speak with me?”
“We didn’t get that far,” Angelina said. “We were having communication problems.”
“Did he tell you where he was calling from?”
“The phone cut out before he could say. But he sounded fine,” Angelina said brightly. “Healthy and sound.”
“Super. Thanks,” Page said, as she turned away. She was relieved. And grateful. She just wished Oliver would have given a clue as to what he was thinking. Was he going to forgive her?
His choice, she reminded herself, his timing. But at what point did his decisions eliminate hers?
Chapter 26
“Imagine the prairie farmers in the old days,” said Mr. Lee. “Not a hundred miles from here they lived in sod huts with oilcloth windows, fighting to survive the winter without modern fabrics or technology. They had to check on their livestock during storms like this one. To keep from getting lost, they would use clotheslines to tie themselves to their homes.”
Bart pulled a long face and leaned in close to Oliver. “Does he go on like this all the time?” he said in an undertone. “I’m beginnin’ to feel guilty for eating his rice balls.”
Search me, Oliver wanted to say in solidarity, and, Kill me now. But Oliver was trying to heed his lawyer’s advice, and since Bart hadn’t seen fit to apologize, Oliver wasn’t going to speak to Bart unless absolutely necessary.
It would help if he could move more than two feet away from the guy.
Rather than heat the entirety of the gazebo, Mr. Lee, who hadn’t yet offered them the use of his first name, had directed them to rearrange the benches. While Mr. Lee started a fire in the grate, Bart and Oliver had dragged and pushed the benches together. In effect, they had created a small, raised enclosure directly in front of the hearth. Then Mr. Lee hauled out a space blanket, which he draped over the top of the structure, fastening it in place with ribbons of duct tape.
While Oliver wasn’t exactly roasting, the shelter and proximity helped trap and hold their own body heat, plus that of the fire. He was no longer worried about losing his favorite body part.
Since they had all missed dinner, Mr. Lee shared a portion of his food and water, including a container of rice balls rolled in black sesame seeds.
Mr. Lee had tidied their space. Now, having grown weary of the need to impress them with their coddled state, Mr. Lee set his watch alarm. “You’re both on fire duty. I’ll be up at two and it better still be burning.” He pulled his hood over his head, rolled over to face the bench back, and within seconds, was sawing logs.
“Why do we both gotta stay awake?” Bart said.
“Because he doesn’t trust us on our own,” Oliver said. “We aren’t worthy.”
Bart shrugged. “Guess I see his point.”
For a long time they lay there, listening to the roar of the wind, watching the fire dance and flicker in the grate.
“What’s your woman’s name?” Bart asked. “The one with the blue highlights,” Bart clarified after a time, as if Oliver’s decision to remain silent had been about girlfriend-confusion rather than naked hostility.
Oliver said nothing.
“Ah, the silent treatment. That’s her favorite trick, too, which is good—makes you compatible. She’s buttoned up tighter than a whale in a bustier. The couple that zips the lip together, lips the z—”
“Can it, will you?” Oliver burst out. He glanced over at Mr. Lee, who hadn’t so much as stirred. “She must have talked enough. You found me, didn’t you?”
Bart sat up abruptly, dislodging one edge of the space blanket in the process. He shot a nervous glance in Mr. Lee’s direction and set about reattaching it. “Let me get this straight. You charged out of there, madder than a deb in cowstink, ’cause you thought she led me up here?”
“I know she did,” Oliver said.
Bart laughed and resettled on his back, lacing his hands over his chest. “Okay. Guess that’s fair. She did give me the hotel number, which I used to harness the power of the internet. Course, if she hadn’t squealed, I woulda found you through social media a whole twelve hours later. He made air quotes and used his falsetto again. “Oh em gee. Guess who just shot a selfie next to the world’s handsomest baseball player.”
The girls at Teague’s store. Oliver groaned and washed a hand over his face. He’d forgotten about them, not that it mattered. The issue was about loyalty and trust. Page had knowingly talked to Bart, against Oliver’s wishes. She had knowingly withheld that information. Then she had compounded those breaches of faith by using a bogus story to justify her actions.
But your phone isn’t exactly behaving, a little voice said. That’s strange and consistent with her tale.
And what if she tires of your pig-headedness and runs? Sure, Avis told her not to, but Avis told you to ditch your glasses, and look how you responded.
Oliver put out his hand. “Give me your phone,” he said to Bart.
Bart held it aloft, and out of reach. He cocked an eyebrow. “Will you forgive me if I do?”
Oliver gave him a look.
“A’ight. Never mind,” Bart said as he handed it over.
At least he didn’t nag Oliver to preserve the battery for future emergencies, as Mr. Lee would have done.
Oliver pressed a few buttons and thrust it back in disgust. “Unlock it, dummy.”
Bart began tapping. “Well, I’ll be… It won’t take my PIN.” More button pressing. “Dang. First time I’ve ever been locked out. Well, don’t go losin’ your hair shirt,” he said when Oliver forcefully exhaled. “I can try again in five minutes.”
Oliver was getting a bad feeling, and it wasn’t a case of creeping frostbite. Bart might be many things, but he wasn’t incompetent about tech stuff.
Oliver sat up and faced Bart, so he could get a clear bead on the other man’s expression. “When you talked with Page, what exactly did she tell you? I want word-for-word accuracy.”
There was a long silence while Bart put on his intense thinking face.
“It’s a simple question with a simple answer,” Oliver said. “For honest people.”
Bart glared at Oliver. “I’m tryin’ to remember, if that’s all right with you. I was so busy bustin’ my hump to get here, I put it clear out of my mind.” Bart’s face cleared. “Something ’bout sending help immediately to Mrs. H’s room.”
“A,” Oliver said automatically. “It’s the first letter of the alphabet. How hard is that to remember?”
“Well, excuse me.” Though the fire was plenty high, Bart wiggled out of the shelter and tossed another log onto it, sending a shower of sparks up the chimney. He stomped back and reclaimed his spot. “Man, maybe I don’t want you for a best friend no more. You’re a right pain in the behind.”
Oliver massaged his left temple against the headache that was coming on. Unless Bart and Page had coordinated their excuses, their stories were too consistent to be a lie. So Page had possibly told the truth about how little she shared with Bart. She had possibly told the truth about the weird communication glitches.
If so, the only thing Oliver could fault h
er for was how long she’d delayed her confession. Given Avis’s illness, and how Oliver had overreacted in the thrift store—and maybe, possibly, somewhat overreacted with Bart—was her reluctance unearned?
Bart swiveled his head to examine the space behind him, then looked back at Oliver. “What? You’re lookin’ at me real strange.”
“When you were at the Thurston,” Oliver said slowly, “did you see an old guy with a fringe of hair around a bald spot? Wears a blue sports coat? Supposedly has kind eyes?”
“Nope. Why?”
“Try your phone again,” Oliver said. “And go slow. Make sure you do it right.”
This time, no matter what Bart did, his phone displayed a winky-face emoticon and nothing more. “Guess that’s borked,” Bart said cheerfully, and shoved his phone into his pocket while Oliver dropped his head into his hands. “So it’s Page, huh?” Bart said. “I like it. Simple. Direct.” Bart elbowed Oliver. “Implies the need for an ink application.”
“Shut up, Bart,” Oliver said absently. “Now you’re just trolling.”
“It’s what I do, O-man. It is what I do.”
Oliver lifted his head. “I think I might have made a big mistake.”
Bart thumped him on the back. “Won’t be the first time.”
Oliver shook his head, shook it some more.
“You went and fell in love with her, didn’t you?” Bart asked.
“Yeah,” Oliver said on a sigh. “Yeah, I did.”
“And you went and freaked out and pushed her away.”
“Yeah, I did. And it’s driving me crazy that I can’t speak to her and fix it right n—”
From Bart’s inside pocket, making them both jump and Mr. Lee stir, came the sound of a ringing phone. Bart’s eyes were huge as he fished the phone out and thrust it at Oliver.
“Thurston Hotel,” said a chipper voice over the speaker. “Angelina speaking. May I help you?”
“Did you dial the hotel?” Oliver whispered to Bart.
Bart shook his head. “Cross my heart.”
“Hello? May I help you?” came through the speaker.
More than anything, Oliver wanted to move to a private location, to take the call off-speaker, to have a moment to compose his thoughts. But he didn’t dare risk the connection in any way.
“Um… Angelina, hi,” he said. “This is Oliver Pike again. I need to speak to Page Maddux, but in case we get disconnected, can you take a message? It’s important she gets this as soon as possible?”
“I can do that for you, Mr. Pike,” she said. “What did you want to say?”
How did you apologize via third party, when you had an Asian Clint Eastwood and an ex-friend for Siamese twins?
Doing the only thing he could, Oliver took a deep breath and began.
Chapter 27
Because she had nothing to do other than worry, when Mrs. Horton headed for bed, Page decided to turn in, too. There had been no further communication from Oliver and she was tired of haranguing the staff for updates, tired of completing travel preparations for a departure that wasn’t going to happen, tired of staring out at the whirling snow.
She was especially exhausted from speculating about when Oliver would make a reappearance, and what that would mean for her.
The room was tidy, Mrs. Horton’s suitcase packed for the morning, and Mrs. Horton herself was in the bathroom when the room phone rang. Page flew to it, feeling a further loss of hope when it was Angelina from the front desk.
“Ms. Maddux? I apologize for disturbing you this late.”
“It’s not a problem,” Page said. Something about the woman’s tone invited caution. Abruptly, she felt breathless. Her heart started to beat faster with all the possibilities springing to mind. Was another oldster sick or hurt? Had Oliver and Bart pounded each other to a pulp?
“Mr. Pike called a few minutes ago,” the clerk said. “He was hoping to speak to you, but we were cut off before I could transfer him.”
“Okay…” Page said.
“Before that happened, he dictated a message. He was very insistent you read it tonight. I didn’t want it to go astray, so I’m having Gill bring it to your room.”
“That must be him,” Page said, hearing a knock. She hung up and, in her haste to reach the door, bowled into Mrs. Horton, who was emerging from the bathroom in her nightgown. There were a few tense seconds as Page worked to avert disaster, but eventually she disentangled their limbs and righted them both.
“Watch where you’re going, gal.” Mrs. Horton was ashen and panting. The hand she put to her chest trembled.
“I’m so sorry.” Page gave her a quick hug and a smack on the cheek before opening the door with considerably more restraint than she would have otherwise.
The Gill she faced was a very different Gill from the one who had conspired with Oliver to tease her in the elevator. He wordlessly handed her an envelope. Her name was written on the front in neat block letters.
“Why do I have the feeling I won’t like this message?” Page asked.
“I can’t say,” Gill said. “I didn’t read it, ma’am.”
The note was sealed, but that wouldn’t preclude the staff from gossiping, or conveying with a simple glance that its receiver would be made unhappy by the contents.
“I can see that,” Page said. “Thank you.” She would have closed the door, then, wanting to do nothing more than rip into the envelope.
But Gill bent down and reached into the space to the right of the door. “Is this yours, Ms. Maddux?”
Page gaped. After a pause, she recovered enough to take the object dangling from his hand. “There can’t be many blue paisley backpacks in Harmony, but let me check.” She slid to her knees and fumbled with the zipper.
Yes, there was her wallet, complete with cash and ID. There was her clothing. And deep at the bottom of the backpack, the two small vials of ashes. She had her mom and Nan back with her again.
“I guess that’s a yes,” Gill said, smiling down on her as she clutched the vials to her chest and fought back tears.
“I’ve been looking for this for a week,” Page said. “Where did you find it?”
“It was already there when I got off the elevator,” Gill said.
Page climbed to her feet. So that was it, then. Whoever, or whatever had absconded with her backpack, effectively tying her to Oliver and the oldsters for a week, they had chosen tonight to give it back. With it, they had provided both the means and implicit permission for Page to leave.
Page was sensing a theme. Did she really need to read Oliver’s note to know they were walking papers?
Feeling dazed, she said goodnight to Gill and closed the door. She moved to the small table in the corner of the suite and sat heavily in one of the adjacent chairs.
The table held a basket of coffee creamers and sugars, and often served as a repository for their hotel keycards or loose toiletry items. It was also where Page dispensed Mrs. Horton’s nightly medicinal.
Mrs. Horton approached and hovered, a bottle of dandelion wine in her hand. Behind her glasses, her eyes were unusually solicitous. Evidently, she had decided to reverse their roles tonight.
“Need something to warm your blood, gal?”
Page sighed. “Why not?” She pushed a glass tumbler forward. “Hit me with a double, Mrs. Horton.”
Then she reached for a stir stick and slit the envelope open.
* * *
✽
She held herself together until Mrs. Horton was asleep, and then she padded to the bathroom. On the pretext of taking a shower, she sat on the bathmat on the tiled floor and, with the sound of running water to drown out the noise of her weeping, gave in to a good, five-minute cry.
Then a little self-preserving orneriness intruded. She had probably cried longer over Oliver than he’d spent composing her kiss-off.
She pulled the note he’d dictated out from under one of Mrs. Horton’s medicine organizers, where she’d hidden it earlier.
I
’m sorry, Page. I can’t keep doing this. Please forgive me. Think it’s best if we part. ~ Oliver
It wasn’t much when she’d given him her heart. Then again, you didn’t give your heart in a quid pro quo move.
After she twisted the note up and tossed it in the waste basket, she returned to her bed. She lay awake, listening to the wind batter the hotel as her thoughts drifted back over the week.
She thought of Avis and Mavis—especially Mavis at the end, when she’d stood silhouetted in the hospital doorway, a solitary figure, knocked back but not down.
Page wanted to be like that.
She could be like that.
Because the thing was, despite the maudlin ending to an improbable love story, beginning with being half-frozen, she couldn’t actually find it in herself to be sorry. For the first time since she’d lost her mom and Nan and Leo, she felt like she was ready to figure out her life. She didn’t know exactly what it would look like, and she had hoped—fervently hoped—it could be with Oliver, but the future was there, hidden behind a shining mist, just out of sight. She could feel it.
Because of this week, this wacky experiment with the oldsters, with Oliver, she knew things about herself she wouldn’t have otherwise.
Like… She wanted to put down roots. To have a place she could call home. To have a cat again—one that would laze on the carpet in a spot of sunshine, washing itself, and leave hair all over her black wool pants.
She wanted a job where she might need those black pants to be part of a black suit. Where she could do more than scratch the surface of things before she had to move on. She wanted to see the fruits of her labor, to have to fight through the growing pains. She was ready to test herself and know the limits of her strength and grit.
She looked over at the softly snoring Mrs. Horton—Agatha—who made a still, small, dear, cantankerous figure under her sheets.
And she wanted a community to do her fighting in, and for.
