by Lucy March
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.”
<
br /> 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 that that 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 follow
ed 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.
Chapter 2
Happy Larry’s definitely earned the title of Grungiest Dive Bar in Nodaway Falls, not that there seemed to be a lot of competition. It was windowless, airless, and underlit. What light fought the good fight to illuminate the place was dusty and yellowed, as if they deliberately bought lightbulbs on the brink of death for the purposes of atmosphere. It sported one aged pool table in a back corner, wood-paneled walls that displayed the scars of many a bar fight, and a big cranky dude with an unconscionable amount of facial hair behind the bar.
Totally Judd’s kind of place.
I sat on the worn leather-topped bar stool and slid Judd’s picture across the bar to the big guy.
