by Zoe Chant
As if the name had summoned her, loud footsteps pounded down the back stairs. "Bye, Aunt Ver!" Bailey called through the half-open back door. "Hi, Mr. Maddox! Bye, Mr. Maddox! See you after school!"
"Keep a good lookout on your way there, and come straight home after!" Verity called to the retreating clatter on the back walk.
"She gonna be okay?" Maddox asked through a mouthful of toast.
"She'll be fine. I don't expect they'll try anything in broad daylight, with a lot of other people around. And she usually walks to school with her friends." But Verity was gazing in the general direction of the back door, frowning, eyes fixed on nothing. "I didn't mean to put my niece in danger with my own stubbornness. Maybe I should leave. Take her somewhere safe."
"You could do that," Maddox agreed. "But you'll always feel like you're running. That's no life for a kid either, having to look over her shoulder all the time."
"You sound like you know what you're talking about," Verity said quietly.
"Let's just say I've had some experience with moving around." He stuffed a piece of bacon in his mouth to stop himself from saying any more, but ended up saying around it, "You want some of this?"
"I've already eaten, but thank you." With that, Verity began moving around the shop, straightening things, putting the couch back to rights and folding the blankets.
"I can help with that—" Maddox began.
"No, you sit there and eat." She looked over her shoulder at him. He still kept forgetting she couldn't see; it really seemed like she was looking at him most of the time. "Did you sleep well?"
"Slept great. Thanks, ma'a—uh, Miss Verity."
Verity smiled patiently and gathered up the blankets. "When you're finished eating, can you take these upstairs for me? You're also welcome to use the bathroom up there and freshen up."
He stuffed the last piece of toast into his mouth and said around it, "I'm done." Except for the cup of what had turned out to be not coffee but tea. He wasn't going to be rude and ask if she had anything stronger, but he wasn't sure if he'd ever develop a taste for the stuff.
"You must have been hungry," Verity said. She sounded impressed. "Take the tray with you too, then, and if you could, I'd really appreciate it if you'd do the dishes while you're upstairs. You can just leave them in the sink. I'll put them away."
She held out the blankets and Maddox took them, struggling not to give in to temptation to let his fingers brush across her small, strong hands. "You don't mind me being up there alone?" he couldn't help asking.
"If I didn't trust you, I wouldn't have let you sleep in the shop last night. I'm a good judge of character, and I think you're a good man."
If she only knew what he really was. Maddox forced a smile, then realized she couldn't see it anyway. "Yes, ma'am," he managed to say, and balanced the tray on top of the blanket stack in one arm before picking up his cane and all but fleeing the shop.
The morning was already warm, the sky cloudless except for a few wispy trails of white near the horizon. Maddox climbed the back stairs slowly and carefully, with the cane tucked under his arm and his hand on the railing—noticing as he did so how the paint on the top slat was rough and peeling, and some of the rails were starting to loosen, nails jacking themselves out of the desert-dried wood. Maybe he could do a little work around the place while he was here, fix up a few things.
And take care of her corrupt-sheriff problem. If he could only figure out how to do that.
There was a small wooden balcony at the top of the stairs with a row of plants on the railing and a plastic deck chair. He freed a hand from the bundle in his arms to open the door. It led into a small but tidy kitchen, with a window over the sink looking down on the walkway wrapping around the side of the house, and the fence between Verity's shop and the house next door.
Maddox wasn't sure what to do with the blankets, so he left them in a neat pile on a kitchen chair. There were two of everything in the kitchen: two chairs, two cups and two spoons in the sink, two hooks by the door with a light wool coat hanging from one and a girl's jacket with sparkly rhinestones on the back hanging from the other.
Just Verity and her niece up here. He felt like an intruder already.
But he washed the dishes neatly and left them in the sink as she'd told him, leaving the tray on the counter since he wasn't sure where else to put it. He stuck his head down the short hallway off the kitchen. Two closed doors were probably the bedrooms, and the one open door led to the bathroom. Here again, there were two toothbrush cups (labeled with the raised lettering of a labelmaker: VERITY and BAILEY), and a small clutter of female things around the sink, hair brushes and a hair dryer and spray bottles and various electrical things with plugs that he knew had something to do with female hair but not exactly what.
She'd implied that he could use the shower, but he felt very weird doing that, so instead he used a washcloth to wash off the worst of the dust and leftover dried blood and iodine from last night. All the toiletries around the sink made him wish he had a toothbrush and deodorant. And that reminded him of his pack, still laying in the ditch if the sheriff hadn't done anything with it. Need to go back and get that, he thought.
Before leaving the bathroom, he examined himself in the mirror to see if he looked too disreputable. The scrapes and bruises were healing, and when he peeled off the bandages and tape from Verity's doctoring efforts last night, he looked passable—well, except for the tats, but there wasn't much he could do about those. He stood out in small towns wherever he went. He was used to it.
He didn't like the idea of Verity thinking he looked dangerous—but no, he reminded himself for the dozenth time, Verity couldn't see him. She only knew whatever his voice told her about him.
And anyway, he didn't think Verity seemed like a judgmental person. She was just ... nice.
Nice to others. Nice to be around. Nice-smelling—
Okay. Let's not go there.
He reminded himself he'd be leaving soon. He couldn't let himself get drawn too deeply into the lives of Verity and her family.
No matter how much he wanted to.
But at least he could leave their town a better place than he'd found it. That'd be a nice change from what he used to do for a living.
He splashed some water on his face, dried it on a clean towel, and dropped both towel and washcloth into the laundry hamper behind the door. On the way out, he noticed a few more things that needed fixing. The door stuck at the jamb, and the faucet dripped. Also, the gutter was sagging.
Good reason to stick around for a little longer, if Verity needed some things done around the place.
He made his way back down the stairs, moving a little less stiffly now that he was starting to stretch out. On the back patio, he paused to look out over Verity's garden. He wasn't someone who cared about gardens much, but he was used to the tidy order of the gardens at his former employer Darius's mansion, with each bush neatly trimmed and all the flowers in matching colors.
This garden was very different. At first glance it looked like the backyard was simply overgrown, a wild riot of foliage and flowers with no particular pattern to it. Some parts of the garden were full of flowers, blazing in dozens of colors and spilling over the stakes and string tying them up; others were nothing but messes of leaves.
But then he thought, Verity doesn't care what it looks like. This must be where she grew the herbs to make her teas out of. And that made the garden suddenly look very different to him, not an unkempt mess but a garden full of useful plants, where every square foot was used for growing something. There were even plants in tin cans, cut-down milk jugs, and other sorts of containers sitting along the edge of the patio. Maddox leaned down and pinched one of the leaves, picking a plant at random since he didn't know what any of them were. It released a sharp, lemony smell that lingered pleasantly on his fingertips. Feeling slightly guilty, he nipped off the damaged leaf with his fingertips and dropped it on the nearby compost pile.
Verity w
ouldn't want to waste useful leaves by trimming her plants into ornamental shapes, the way Darius's gardener used to. This was a practical garden, not a garden for looks.
He really liked it here.
"Maddox?" Verity said, leaning out the backdoor.
"Here."
"Ah, I thought I heard you come down the stairs." She came out onto the patio, and he admired again how easily and gracefully she moved, neatly avoiding all the containers lined up along the patio's edge. "What are your plans for today? Did you have any?"
"I guess I was gonna go out and look for my stuff," he said. "I had a backpack. I lost it when the sheriff hit me with his car."
"That utter jackass," Verity muttered darkly. "Yes, of course you should do that. And if you're going out, would you mind doing some errands for me while you're at it?"
And so, somehow, without being sure how it had happened, he ended up leaving by the back gate with Verity's shopping list and a wadded-up reusable canvas grocery bag under his arm. He also had a tourist ball cap that she'd given him pulled down over his eyes. Maddox doubted it would help a whole lot—he was pretty recognizable—but it might at least help with the problem of having the sheriff's goons find him while he was out walking around.
Not that he wanted to hide. But he also recognized that he wasn't likely to win a fight in his present condition. Back when he was younger, he used to get into a brawl with every punk who picked a fight with him. But over the years he'd learned to fight smarter, to fight like a pro.
You didn't go into fights you couldn't win. You set it up to tilt things in your favor.
And I'm gonna win this fight. They're gonna pay for picking on these people.
He just hadn't figured out how yet.
***
It took him awhile to find what he was pretty sure was the right stretch of road outside town, where the sheriff had run him down. He spent the walk looking around nervously for signs of sheriff's deputies or other possible trouble, but saw nothing.
And here I thought being a law-abiding citizen meant I was done having to look over my shoulders for the fuzz ...
Yeah, this was the right stretch of ditch; there were some brown blood stains on the rocks, and scuffed-up dirt and broken bushes where he'd crashed into the brush. Of his backpack, though, the only trace he found was his dented metal camp cup where it had rolled behind a rock. He'd carried it tied onto a strap on the outside of the pack; it must have fallen off.
Now where would they have taken it ...
C'mon, Maddox, that's not a hard question to answer. You gotta think like the goon you used to be. If he had been doing a job for one of his old employers, he would have made sure to clean up the area. Any personal objects left behind would be thrown away or burned.
Careless, he thought, looking at the blood on the rocks and the dented cup in his hand. Sloppy. The sheriff and this Ducker guy didn't have high standards. But then, he knew that already; they'd let him and the kids get away.
But then, they didn't have to be good at it. They were used to running a town where everyone was so intimidated that all they had to do was yell "Jump!" and the townspeople would ask "How high?"
Except for Verity and her family.
And there must be more people in town like them. They couldn't all have given in to this Ducker jerk's strong-arm tactics. One person alone couldn't win against people like that, but a bunch of them together ...
He slapped the tin cup into the callused palm of his other hand, then shook his head and put it in the canvas bag Verity had given him, and started walking toward town. He wasn't the kind of person people listened to, especially in a little town where he was a stranger and an outsider.
Verity might be able to. But he didn't know if he wanted to try to talk her into it. Standing up to Ducker would be dangerous; that was the problem. That was why people didn't. There must be a lot of people here—most of them, in fact—who hated what Ducker and the sheriff had done to their town. But the nail that sticks up gets pounded down. As long as they kept their heads down and didn't get on Ducker's bad side, they could go on living their lives and raising their families in safety. Who, other than a couple of reckless kids, was going to risk their lives just to tell someone like Ducker "no"?
And who was he to tell them they ought to? He was a drifter with no family and no friends, a loner who'd probably be run out of town on a rail if his past came to light. He had no right to go around telling other people how to live their lives when he'd wrecked his own so thoroughly.
Still, he had to grin when he walked past a billboard for the sheriff with a couple of men in overalls industriously scrubbing the graffiti off the bottom edge. The sheriff's face grinned from the left-hand side of the billboard, bigger than life and twice as ugly. RE-ELECT SHERIFF HAWKINS ... EXPERIENCE COUNTS! read the enormous letters next to his face.
Maddox just wanted to plant his fist in that grinning mug.
And then, as he stood there looking at the billboard, an idea came to him.
Fight smart.
There was more than one way to defeat someone.
It wouldn't work, he thought. It was stupid to even think about it. All he'd do was paint a giant target on his back.
But ... if Ducker and Sheriff Hawkins were aiming at him, they wouldn't be harassing people like Verity. And maybe ... just maybe ... there was more than one way to get people to pull together in a crisis.
***
Despite the lateness of the season, it was punishingly hot by the time he got back to the tea shop, lugging a bag of groceries and leaning heavily on his cane. Neither his hip nor his recently injured ankle had appreciated all the walking. Neither did his ribs.
He went in the front so Verity would hear the tinkling of the bell. There were no customers in the shop, and Verity was at the counter with clean white paper spread in front of her and numerous little piles of crushed tea leaves.
"Hi," he said. "I got your stuff."
"Thank you so much. I'll take it upstairs as soon as I finish getting these sachets put together." She leaned under the counter and came up with a water bottle, frosted with condensation. "Thirsty?"
Now that she mentioned it, his tongue felt like it was stuck to the roof of his mouth. "Yeah. Thanks." He managed not to snatch it out of her hands, but instead took it politely and guzzled half of it in one go before going over and sinking onto the couch.
"It's incredibly dry here, and it can get to you fast. Not just the heat—it's getting cooler, now that we're getting on into fall—but the humidity and altitude as well. I forgot to warn you before you left, but I suggest carrying a bottle of water with you whenever you plan to be gone for awhile."
If this was what she considered cool, he'd hate to find out what "hot" was like. "I'll do that. Appreciate it."
Verity smiled as she sorted the tea. "Did you find your things?"
"Gone." He tried not to let it sting. It was just stuff. "Guess they wouldn't leave it laying there."
"Maybe someone else found it and picked it up. You might talk to the local newspaper office and see if anyone put an ad in. Or check the notice board at the Whistlestop. Everyone posts things there."
"No point," Maddox said. He rolled the empty water bottle between his palms. "Miss Verity—"
"Please call me Verity." She smiled again, mostly to herself, he thought. "I think after I've had my hands all over you, we can be on a casual first-name basis."
The memory of her sure, smooth fingers tingled through him. He had to adjust his position and get himself under control, forcing his mind back on track to continue. "Verity ... how would a person go about running for sheriff?"
Verity didn't look up—there was no reason for her to—but her head tilted in his direction to indicate her interest as she continued deftly sorting tea leaves. "Well ... I'm not sure. I guess you'd register with the county, probably at the courthouse, if the deadline's not already past. Why?"
"Well, I was thinking I'd sign up."
Verity's fast-moving fingers stopped. For a minute she just stayed like that, frozen in place. Then she said carefully, "You want to run for sheriff against Hawkins?"
"Yes, ma'am, I do."
"Maddox, I don't think you understand how dangerous Sheriff Hawkins is."
Maddox couldn't help snorting a short laugh. "He tried to run me over with his car. I know he's dangerous."
"He's run unopposed in the last three elections. If anyone makes the mistake of registering early on, they soon learn the error of their ways and drop out."
"I'm pretty hard to intimidate."
"If he can't scare you off, Maddox, he will try to kill you!"
"He already tried once," Maddox said. "Didn't take."
Verity hesitated. Then she got up from the counter. Brushing her fingertips across the counter's edge to orient herself, she came around the end and went over to him.
"Maddox." She touched the edge of the couch and sat down beside him. She smelled like the herbs she'd been sorting, fresh and green and a little spicy. "What you want to do for us ... I appreciate it. But I don't want to see you hurt or killed trying to do it. You're welcome to stay with as long as you need to, until you're feeling better and can move on. But you don't need to die for us."
"I'm not planning on it."
"Maddox—"
"Verity, listen." He took her hands in his, and the warmth of her skin was intoxicating, especially when she gripped his hands back. "I've known people like this Hawkins guy. Ducker too. You think they're gonna stop when they get what they want? People like that, they just keep wanting more and more. The only way you can get out from under 'em is to do like you said, sell your place and move away."
"Maybe I should." She let it out on a sigh. "I fight and fight, but I never seem to get anywhere."
"That's 'cause you've been fighting alone. Verity ..." He pulled her hands closer to him. "You're not alone anymore."
For a long moment she was still, her hands unmoving in his. Then without warning she leaned forward, lips parting.
Maddox met her halfway.
