Wavering Convictions

by Erin Dutton

  “Take as much as you need. I’m rarely back here, anyway, except to mow. I spend most of my free time in the garage.”

  “Okay. If this were my yard, I would probably build raised beds over there.” She pointed to the spot she’d scoped out. “That area seems to get plenty of sun, but it’s close enough to run the hose for water.”

  “Go for it.”

  Getting permission energized her creativity. They wandered closer to the area, and Maggie could already envision two rectangular beds. She described them to Ally, pacing off the dimensions of the space.

  “Do you know what you want to grow?”

  She wanted something easy to care for. She wasn’t sure how often she would be here, and she didn’t want to impose on Ally to care for her hobby. “What do you think about tomatoes, cucumbers, and carrots?”

  “Whatever you want. And feel free to come by as often as you need to. But if you’ll show me how much to water and when, I can take care of that when you aren’t able to get by.”

  “Are you sure this isn’t too much of an imposition?” She offered them both one more out. Ally had made a generous offer, but maybe she hadn’t been smart to accept.

  “Stop asking. I wouldn’t have offered otherwise. And I still had time to make an excuse when you texted yesterday.”

  “Okay. If anything changes—”

  “I’ll let you know.” Ally’s expression softened, and she touched Maggie’s arm. “And you’ll tell me if things get weird for you, too?”

  “Deal.” She stuck her hand out, but what started as an exaggerated handshake just turned into them holding hands again. And she didn’t want it to end. Leaving her hand in Ally’s warm, firm grasp, she turned to study the yard again.

  “When do you want to start?”

  She squeezed Ally’s hand. “Would it be too enthusiastic of me to say today? I could grab some supplies and still have most of the afternoon to work.”

  Ally smiled. “Sounds like a plan.” Ally released her hand slowly, and Maggie imagined that she did so reluctantly.

  When they circled the garage, Ally eyed Maggie’s Prius. “How many trips do you think you’ll have to make in your tiny car?”

  “Hey. My little car has some space when I lay down the seats.”

  “Do you want a ride?” Ally nodded toward her SUV, which was larger than the Prius.

  “I don’t want to take you away from your work.”

  Ally shrugged. “I can spare some time to run to the garden center with you.”

  “As long as you don’t mind. I’m thinking Lowe’s. I can get lumber to build the beds and some basic planting stuff all in one place.”

  “I’ll grab my keys.”

  Ten minutes later, Maggie wished she’d insisted on driving. Ally tapped her fingers against the steering wheel and tightened her jaw.

  The driver of the blue car in front of them left two car lengths between her and the pickup truck in front of him. The traffic in the left lane passed them, and several cars slipped into the space in front of the blue car. Ally huffed.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  The driver of the blue car slowed down so much Maggie thought she might be looking for a street to turn on. Two more cars merged in front of her.

  “What is this lady doing?” Ally waved her hand at the windshield. “What the hell are you doing?” She leaned forward and spoke more sternly, directly to the driver, though she couldn’t hear her.

  “We’re all going the same place. And no one is getting there very quickly.” She suspected there might be a wreck somewhere up ahead, given the unusually heavy traffic.

  “Everyone that this idiot is letting in front of her is getting there faster than us. Why can’t she just close that space?” As traffic slowed again, Ally rolled up closer to the woman’s bumper than Maggie was comfortable with.

  “You can’t push her into it.”

  Ally squeezed her hands around the wheel, then sighed and forcibly relaxed them. The line of cars crawled forward, and when they got close enough to the Lowe’s parking-lot entrance, Ally swerved around the blue car’s bumper.

  “Impressive.” Maggie hadn’t thought Ally’s car would fit through the space without curbing a tire.

  “Sorry. I get impatient when I drive.” Ally swung her SUV into a spot close to the front of the store.

  “No kidding.”

  “It’s something I need to work on.”

  “It’s good to know you have faults.”

  “I have tons. Hey, I’m going to grab some sandpaper while I’m here. I’ll meet you over by the lumber.”

  Maggie found the rack of pressure-treated lumber. She consulted her phone, where she’d made notes on the dimensions she wanted for the beds, and tried to calculate in her head how much wood she’d need. She didn’t want to make another trip back for more, but she had no place to put the extra if she over-bought.

  “Do you want some help with that?” Ally asked.

  Maggie hesitated.

  “Construction is kind of what I do, you know. This will probably go more smoothly if you let me give you a hand.”

  “Okay.”

  Ally nodded and pulled a small notebook and pencil out of the pocket of her light jacket. Within seconds she had a rough sketch of the beds Maggie had described to her earlier. “Is this what you want to do?”

  Maggie glanced at the drawing and nodded, and Ally grabbed a large rolling cart from farther down the aisle and transferred lumber from the display rack onto it. Maggie helped stack the boards. She followed Ally down another aisle, where she added a box of nails.

  “When we get back to my place, I can cut the boards to size for you.”

  “I don’t want to inconvenience you.”

  “Honestly, Maggie, this whole thing will take me less than an hour to build. How long do you think you’d have to spend on it?”

  “Do you mean how many days?”

  “Then it’s settled. Let’s go get the rest of the stuff. Then we can hit the Starbucks drive-through on our way home.”

  Chapter Nine

  Ally had been right. The work went a lot more quickly with her help. Within an hour of arriving back at Ally’s house, they had built the frame on the first bed. And it was nicer than what Maggie’s rudimentary carpentry skills would have managed. The box was perfectly square, and when Maggie thought they were finished, Ally described her idea to secure another board to the top in order to provide a ledge for Maggie to lean on while working in the soil.

  Maggie had never been the manual-labor type. She wasn’t opposed to a little work, but, living in an apartment now, she didn’t have the space or the need for big projects. Her ex would hire someone to do work around their house rather than get her hands dirty.

  “Isn’t it funny how you can spend years with someone, yet when it’s over, they cease having a name. They just become ‘the ex’ in your mind.”

  Ally paused in the middle of measuring one side of the garden bed and gave her a curious look. “Where did that come from?”

  “I was thinking about house projects and—never mind. My thoughts are usually a long and winding road.”

  “That end with you randomly speaking them aloud?” Ally’s grin softened any judgment Maggie might have inferred from her words.

  “Maybe.”

  “I like that.”

  “Even if you don’t know how I got there.”

  “Especially then.”

  Ally’s ringing phone interrupted a nice moment of eye contact between them. When Ally pulled it from her pocket to check the screen, Maggie wished she’d been able to resist in favor of whatever was happening between them just then.

  “I’m sorry. I have to take this.” Ally stepped away as she answered her phone. She went to the other side of the yard.

  Maggie debated trying to cut the next board by herself. Ally had run an extension cord for the saw to their corner of the yard. Even though Ally had moved far enough away that M
aggie couldn’t hear her conversation, the saw might still be too loud. Instead, she measured out the area for the second bed. Then she grabbed the hand tiller Ally had found in the garage, apparently courtesy of the previous owner, and loosened the soil. Ally paced while she spoke, pausing every so often to pinch the bridge of her nose or rub a hand down her face. She was as animated on the phone as she’d been in traffic. After Ally scowled at her phone, touched the screen, and shoved it back into her pocket, Maggie spun around to avoid being caught watching her.

  Ally strode back across the lawn, picked up the next board, and marked the spot for her cut. Her expression didn’t invite conversation, so Maggie didn’t pry. They finished the first bed in a mildly uncomfortable silence.

  The second frame got done even more quickly, whether due to their experience building the first or the lack of distracting conversation. Ally spoke only to convey a measurement or an instruction about their work. Maggie started to inquire about her mood several times—in her head. But the words never materialized.

  By the time they’d finished, she was eager to escape the awkwardness. She gathered up the wood scraps and placed them in the bin Ally indicated, while Ally packed up and stowed her tools. She returned from her last trip to the garage with scraps and found Ally sitting at a table and chairs on the patio at the back of the house.

  “Thank you for your help.” Maggie glanced over at the finished beds, still empty of plants.

  Why had she accepted Ally’s offer? She’d wanted a distraction from the limbo created by months of waiting for the trial to start, and work wasn’t doing it. Exercise had proved to be good stress relief in the past, but she’d canceled her gym membership last year in favor of the walking trails around her apartment complex. Now, just the thought of traveling those paths alone could send her into a full-blown panic attack.

  So she’d convinced herself Ally’s idea of gardening was just what she needed. She’d sent the text accepting Ally’s offer with that thought in her head, completely ignoring the voice that said she really wanted to see Ally again. But even that hadn’t gone the way she’d planned. After the tense silence following Ally’s phone call, Maggie couldn’t leave fast enough from the disappointment drowning her.

  “Would you like a drink? I have hard cider, or I can open a bottle of wine?” Ally’s offer seemed to be sincere rather than just polite, so Maggie replied honestly as well.

  “That depends. Are we going to talk or sit and drink in silence?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Maggie stepped from the grass to the concrete patio but didn’t take the opposite chair just yet. “We don’t know each other that well. But I can tell you have something on your mind.”

  “It’s nothing.” Ally’s brush-off of the subject lacked any trace of conviction. She sighed and rolled her eyes. “Carey’s getting sprung from rehab tomorrow. Ma wants me to take her to pick him up.”

  “Oh. Maybe I will have a cider.”

  Ally leapt up and went inside. She returned with two bottles, their caps already popped, and handed one over. “I’m sorry. You don’t want to talk about him.”

  “I don’t.”

  Ally nodded and looked away, her expression a mix of hurt and understanding. They were becoming friends, weren’t they? And friends shared family stuff. But surely she had other people she could discuss this with. Maggie had dragged it out of her. Was it fair to turn her back now?

  “Listen, I can’t summon up any sympathy for him or his situation. But maybe we could discuss this in terms of how it’s affecting you. You don’t want to go with her?”

  Ally sat back down, gesturing for Maggie to take the other chair. “Not really. He’s been sober for just over sixty days. I know that’s an accomplishment, given his history. But she’s going to fawn over him like he’s graduating from college instead of from a mandated stay at a halfway house.”

  “Youngest child?”

  “Typical, right?” Ally took a sip of her drink. “But it’s not just that. He’s more like her than I am, so she relates to him better.”

  “Are you like your father?” Maggie remembered a snippet of conversation in the courthouse café. “I’m sorry, but you said he wasn’t around now.”

  “Yeah. I don’t really know. I was four when he left. But Ma says I’m like him, only more reliable. Yet she only says that because I run her errands and stuff. As soon as she doesn’t think I’m pulling my weight, that’s when I’m just like him.”

  “Did you agree to go?”

  Ally nodded reluctantly. “It feels selfish to say, but a part of me has been relieved that he’s been away. I hate how what he’s done—his choices—always bleed into my life.”

  “How do you mean?”

  Ally set her bottle on the small patio table beside her. She scooted to the edge of her seat, and their knees nearly touched. Her hands twitched as if she wanted to cover Maggie’s. Maggie shifted her hands from her lap to her sides, uncomfortable with how much she wanted that contact.

  “For starters, you. If I hadn’t been at the courthouse, I wouldn’t have met you. And I like you, Maggie. I like talking to you and spending time with you. But what hope do I have—I mean, I’ve never felt so ripped in two directions in my life.” Ally made a sound of disgusted frustration. “I’m sorry for dumping this on you.”

  Maggie could see Ally shutting down. She’d folded her arms over her chest and angled away from Maggie, as if protecting herself from Maggie’s reaction to what they talked about.

  She should walk away—they should both walk away from this whole situation. Even if she could get around the perceived conflict of interest involved, how could they ever have a meaningful friendship when there was a whole part of Ally’s life Maggie couldn’t care about? Truthfully, her feelings about Carey were stronger than just apathy. But Ally had just spent her afternoon helping Maggie build garden beds. She’d done that—not to get something back from Maggie, but because Maggie had talked about needing to find a positive outlet in her life.

  Since she couldn’t address what was really between them at that moment, she offered the only thing she knew for sure—she wasn’t ready to disappear from Ally’s life. “Do you mind if I come back Monday to start planting?”

  Ally’s soft smile touched Maggie’s heart. “I’ll be here.”

  “It’ll be after work.”

  “No problem. I’ll spend the day planning and starting a new project.”

  “What’s next?”

  “I don’t have another commission yet. So, I’m debating a dining-room buffet piece.”

  “If you aren’t crafting something specific for someone, do you sell your stuff online?”

  “Mostly. This summer, I’m going to try taking some pieces to one of the larger flea markets to see if they sell there.”

  “That’s a good idea. So Monday’s all work, then?”

  Ally nodded.

  “Do you think you’ll be ready for a break when I get here? I could bring some Chinese food for dinner.”

  “I have a better idea. Why don’t you come straight here and get started on your planting, and I’ll take my break and go pick us up some dinner? That way when you’re finished, we can eat together.”

  * * *

  Ally pulled into an empty parking spot at the far end of Shirley’s apartment building. She pushed the button on the dash that opened the rear hatch, leaving Carey to grab his bag. As she circled the back of her vehicle, he tapped a hand against the open hatch as he walked away, leaving it up.

  “Door, Al.” He’d done stuff like that since they were kids—ever since his growth spurt left him taller than her.

  She smirked at him and hit the button on the remote to close the door, depriving him of the satisfaction of seeing her reach up and pull it shut. “Watch your head.”

  She cut him off and strode up the sidewalk toward Shirley’s place. On the way to the recovery house, Shirley had insisted she come inside when they got back for lunch. She’d made Ca
rey’s favorite—chicken and dumplings.

  Ally hadn’t spoken to Carey since he got in the car, except to coldly return his greeting. He’d apparently decided to act as if she hadn’t walked out on him last time they spoke. Once more, he expected to ignore the conflict, and she was supposed to let it go.

  As Ally stepped inside, Shirley lifted the lid on the crockpot. The aroma of savory chicken filled the apartment, a welcome change from the usual stale cigarette odor.

  “Biscuits done?”

  “Dumplings. Not biscuits,” Carey said as he shoved her farther inside so he could close the door. “Guest room ready, Ma?”

  “I put fresh sheets on the bed for you this morning.”

  “Thanks. This is just until I get on my feet and put this court business behind me.”

  “Stay as long as you want to, honey.”

  Carey disappeared down the hall, and Ally forcibly unclenched her jaw. She didn’t want to start an argument about how he foolishly believed this situation would end with his freedom.

  “You need to be nicer to him. He’s going through a tough time right now.” Shirley had told her repeatedly that she shouldn’t cling to her anger. She’d even said she didn’t get why Ally would be upset over some rusty old gun.

  “A tough time? That’s what you call this?”

  “You never have enough compassion for him. He doesn’t have things as easy as you do.”

  Ally turned her back to help contain an uncensored reply and pretended to be busy pulling a pitcher of iced tea from the fridge. She’d worked one job or another since the day she turned fourteen, beginning with babysitting for the single mother in the apartment next door.

  She understood that Carey’s addiction wasn’t all his own making. His doctor had prescribed strong painkillers when he hurt his back, and he’d never successfully gotten off them. But she couldn’t give him a pass on robbery because of addiction. He’d coldly told her that he saw her father’s gun as a means to make more money. She hadn’t raised him to be so uncaring about another human being. And that’s what it came down to. She felt as responsible for the person he was now as Shirley, if not more so. She’d failed as much as their mother had.