by Tamara Leigh
Gary clears his throat. “So, what are you doing in Charlotte?”
Haunting you—Stop it! Be. Skippy. Checking my facial muscles, I meet his gaze. “Taking care of a little business. I head back to Pickwick tomorrow.” If I get what I came for.
He gives a slow nod, and though I know it’s wrong to savor his discomfort, the taste is pleasant. Sorry, Lord, it’s too hard to be Skippy. I really want this all to be over, but not at the expense of this man being Devyn’s father. However, if he is, it would sure help if his lack of conscience were a result of the hits he took to the head while playing football. Yes, that would explain it. Some.
My mouth aches with the width of my smile. “What about you, Gary? Do you live in the area?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“Oh, wait!” I peer past him to the banner that proclaims the proud sponsor of The Marriage of Figaro. “I’ll bet you work for the bank sponsoring this event.”
“He does.” Sirena presses nearer his side. “My Gary is a banker. Upper-level management. And he’s in line for a big promotion.”
I open my eyes wide. “Congratulations—and on the raise you’re bound to get.”
His Adam’s apple ratchets up, and he looks quickly away like a dog well aware of its place in the pack. I’m guessing his reaction has a lot to do with that raise—fear his date’s boasting could result in child support for a daughter he has never acknowledged.
He shakes back his cuff. “Look at the time. We should take our seats.”
I check my own watch, ending on a tug and release that results in another satisfying ouch! “It was nice seeing you again, Gary, and meeting you, Sirena.”
They murmur like words and turn away.
I give them a lead, then follow, the better to see where they’re sitting. At the theater doors, the press of people forces me closer to them, and that’s when I hear Sirena’s reproving voice. “…find you talking to one of your old girlfriends—”
I am not old. Just older.
“—and right after I had a run-in with your ex in the ladies’ room.”
He’s divorced? Of course he is, and had I dug deeper, I probably could have unearthed what surely accounts for the demise of pale and pudgy—his return to “bachelor mode.”
“Did you know your ex is sitting right behind us? Not a good start to my evening, Gary.” She sniffs, and I feel sorry for whatever hope she’s harboring for their relationship, especially after how he looked at me.
Though those behind me won’t like it, I slow to put more distance between the unhappy couple and myself. So Gary is single. Not that it makes a difference. Devyn will still have to reset any near-future quest that includes this man who forgot her existence.
I snap the springy watchband again, but no ouch! Pushed along by the tide of people, I lift my hand. Whew. It’s not the watchband; my wrist is almost bare of the fine hairs that once covered it.
A few minutes later, I suffer a setback when Gary’s tickets see him and his date ushered to grand-tier-level seating. I half expected this because of the bank’s sponsorship but hoped he would have orchestra-level seating as it was the best I could secure on short notice. So he’ll be overlooking my seat, and somehow I have to find a way to get up there.
As I settle into my seat on the aisle, I look up and over my shoulder. Gary is sitting on the right-hand side of the front row, leaning away from Sirena to converse with a man beside him. I look to the row behind him. That’s where I need to get. And I will, even if I have to trod his ex’s feet.
Hmm. My bet is that the ex-Mrs. Winsome is the sharp-faced blonde staring narrow eyed and thin lipped at the back of Sirena’s head.
I open my playbill to the page that outlines the evening. I’ll make my move during one of the intermissions, but since the first opportunity is an hour out, it looks as if I’m going to discover what The Marriage of Figaro is about.
Or not. Opera is not better in person, though it appears I’m the only one with that opinion. Those around me are captivated by the comedy of errors that has me constantly referring to the playbill to make sense of all the characters and their bellowing in an unknown language. It makes me feel uneducated, especially when the young woman beside me starts mouthing the foreign words and sweeping a hand in time with a song sung by the character of…Susanna?
Humph! My neighbor may know her opera, but I’ll bet she doesn’t know the word legerdemain. Whereas, I…well, I will find a way to work it into my day.
Noticing I’m watching her, the young woman leans near, causing me to revise my opinion of her age. She can’t be much older than Devyn. “Sorry,” she tinkles, “I can’t help myself. I just love this opera. Don’t you?”
“Mozart did a great job of…setting the play to music.” Thank goodness for the playbill.
“Oh yes!” Then she’s back to mouthing and sweeping.
Intermission can’t come soon enough. Fortunately, when I “accidentally” go the wrong way in returning to my seat, Gary and Sirena are resettling in theirs. Even better, the ex-Mrs. Winsome and those who sat on either side of her are absent, giving me more room to maneuver.
Pausing against the wall of the grand-tier level, I scope out the usher who is helping an elderly man find his seat, then another who is turned sideways and talking into a headset.
I check the shawl I elegantly draped over my red hair (he may not see me coming, but he could see me going), run through my excuse should anyone ask what I’m doing on this level (“Goodness, I shouldn’t have had that extra glass of wine”), give the watchband a hairless snap, and enter the second row from the left side. With a “sorry” here and an “excuse me” there, I sidestep those who have resumed their seats. Doubtless, some will start to wonder why I didn’t enter on the right side, but that’s where Gary is, and only four seats past him is the aisle, and beyond that, the exit.
As I approach my destination, my heart thumps, and I feel my pores open up with the promise of moisture. Calm down. This isn’t Reece. It’s Gary, the guy without a conscience. Get what you need and don’t look back.
Got it. But I also have the ex-Mrs. Winsome in my sights, moving briskly toward her row. I pick up the pace, dodging feet and knees. Thus, no sooner does she enter the row than I’m upon Gary.
As I pass behind him, I get full extension on the watchband, brush it through the hair at the back of his head, and…snap!
“Ow!” His head jerks around, fortunately, in the opposite direction I’m heading. “Did you do that?”
“What?” Sirena squeaks.
I keep going, certain he’ll look behind and relieved my hair pinching can’t be blamed on his ex. But to be sure…
“Excuse me,” I say when we meet. “I need to get to the ladies’ room.” I lean near her frowning face and lower my voice. “Bad.” That last has “female problem” spoken all over it.
She smiles apologetically, as if my “female problem” is her fault. “Certainly.” She backs out.
“Thank you.” A few moments later, I’m out the exit. A minute after that, I’m in the ladies’ room. “Just one root,” I beg as I pull the stall door closed behind me.
I lift my wrist toward the overhead light. And smile. There are at least a dozen hairs caught in the links of my watchband. No wonder Gary was so perturbed. That had to have hurt. “But do we have a root?” I pull my reading glasses from my evening bag and shove them on. “We have rootssss.” And that was a real work of legerdemain.
Shortly, I hail a cab, visions of a good night’s sleep dancing in my head. No more operatic yodeling, no more Gary, and no more empty baggie. Closure at last. Maybe.
That’s one daily word I won’t have trouble affixing to my day, starting with reflection on last night’s watchband coup that resulted in the drop at the post office (the DNA is in the mail) on my way out of Charlotte this morning, and now this.
My clandestine mother glances around the empty theater, then shifts to the edge of her seat, leans close, and taps the spreadsheet
. “I told you it was serious.”
She did, though she refused to go into it over the phone, and that’s why I am the not-so-proud owner of a speeding ticket issued halfway between Charlotte and Pickwick.
I sigh. “I know all about this, Mom.” Well, not all, since the last time I peeked at the chart tacked to the back of Devyn’s closet, Reece Thorpe was not listed as a potential father. He is now Candidate Number Eight (as opposed to Candidate Number One on my list of potential fathers). And he’s chalked up quite a few plus marks in the attributes columns: Kind, Approachable, Likes Kids, Sense of Humor, Employed, Christian. He suffers only one negative mark—Pickwick Resident—unlike Seth, who refuses to give up on me. In Seth’s Comments section, Devyn wrote in small letters: needy, interacts with me only to look good in front of Mom, too concerned with his looks, dumped Piper in high school.
“So, what are you going to do about it, Magdalene?”
I sink back in my seat. “Get married.”
She doesn’t startle; she convulses, which is comical considering the elegance she exudes from her coiffed hair to her perfectly polished nails to her scuffless shoes. “Married?” The hope in her voice vies with disbelief.
“If I find the right man—for both of us.”
Her nostrils flare. “Of course.”
But if she had her way, I would have married Seth years ago and be living comfortably enough to join her for weekly outings to the hairdresser, lunch, and shopping. If not him, then Rob Bowie, whose wealth, according to Mom, forgives him for a multitude of sins, starting with the mullet-cut hair worn since grade school and ending with the rumor that his last wife left him when she caught him wearing her pantyhose.
“Maggie.” My mother’s gaze slides away from mine. “Devyn’s daddy…Is it Reece Thorpe?”
Her question shoves a cork in my throat. She has never ventured into the mystery of who fathered my daughter. All that mattered was that I get rid of it. That I not mess up my life by bringing it into the world. And once I did bring it into the world, that I give it up for adoption. That last option might have worked if not that it was, in fact, a baby girl. My baby girl.
“Is it Reece?”
The old anger that wants to know what gives her the right to ask is back.
She averts her eyes again, and I know what is reflected in mine isn’t pretty. I hear her swallow, a thick, moist sound that ought to prepare me for when she looks up. I’m jolted by the emotion on her face, magnified by tears that appear to be generated by the heart rather than the head.
“I know I don’t have the right to ask, and I’m…” She raises her hands as if in surrender. “Well, I’m sorry.”
Sorry? Did she really say that?
“Sorry for not giving you”—her mouth and chin pinch—“what that Skippy woman gave you.”
Her disdain makes my back stiffen, as if to support the wall between us that developed hairline cracks at “sorry.”
She leans closer. “Though I didn’t want you to throw away your life on raising a child on your own, I do love my granddaughter.”
Another crack.
“You know that, don’t you?”
“I know, Mom.”
Relief eases her shoulders only slightly, but I suspect it’s due to her love of thick shoulder pads despite the likelihood they may never come back in style. “And I’m proud of how well you’ve done for yourself, Maggie. Even though…” She looks around the old theater. “This is hardly what I envisioned for you. But it pays the bills, I suppose.”
There goes my back again, holding up the wall. And here comes my mouth—
No! Don’t say it. This is progress. She loves you and Devyn, even if it’s hard for her to show it. I close my mouth and then my eyes. Lord, it’s me. I know I haven’t been the best at listening lately, but I could use some help with my choice of words and patience.
“I’m sorry,” my mother says again.
I flip open my eyes to find her face wrinkled with concern, an emotion she usually avoids for fear of permanent lines.
“I shouldn’t have said that. I mean…” She looks at the stage. “I hear you’re good at what you do.”
“Hear,” because she has never attended my auctions. I relax my back muscles as I consider her profile and the years etched alongside sorrow. The life my daddy led her through and left her to hasn’t been easy, try as she does to keep up appearances. While I have questioned her love for Luc and me, I’ve never doubted she loved her husband. He may monetarily support her long-distance, but he isn’t here for her. Wasn’t here to aid in her plans for their children to return the Pickwick name to its former glory, starting with my brother, whose charm and powers of persuasion were to have transported him into the ranks of topnotch lawyers. He sells used cars. With my beauty pageant–refined looks, carriage, and flair for drama, I was to have been a world-famous model-turned-Oscar-worthy actress. I sell people’s castoffs.
I lay a hand over my mother’s. “One day I hope you’ll feel comfortable enough to drop by and see me in action. ’Cause I am pretty good at my job.”
She nods, then does something I don’t recall her ever doing—drags her teeth across her bottom lip, removing a layer of lipstick. “I would like to come see you sometime.”
“I’d like that too.”
“Now about Reece Thorpe.” She momentarily closes her eyes, as if to block the thought that after all the training to turn her daughter into a lady, I was far from one when out from under my mama’s watchful eye. “Is he my granddaughter’s daddy?”
I hope what I’m about to say won’t make her react in such a way that we both reinforce the weakening wall. “I don’t think so.”
She pulls her hand from beneath mine. “What do you mean?”
“I’m sure you remember those rumors about me in high school, the ones you were certain were put out by jealous girls. They weren’t all rumors, Mom. My pregnancy was not the result of the first and only time I—”
“All right.” She holds up a hand before a suddenly flushed face. “So there was another boy who could have fathered Devyn.”
I hate this, and it takes everything I have not to look away. “There are three who could be her father.”
Her eyes widen and roll up.
I grip her shoulder. “Mom!”
She slaps her hands to her knees. “I’m just a bit dizzy. It’ll pass.”
I slide my hand to her back and massage the knots there. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to know, but—”
“Does that Skippy woman know?”
“Yes.”
A sharp breath vibrates through her back. “Of course she does.”
“Mom, it’s because of her that we have Devyn. You don’t have to like Skippy, but I need you to understand what she means to me. She’s a good person and—”
“Yes. She was there for you when I wasn’t.” She stands and hooks her purse over her arm. “Believe me, I understand.”
I jump up. “Mom—”
“I have to go.” She steps into the aisle but snaps back around. “Does Reece Thorpe know Devyn might be his?”
I shake my head. “His family moved before anyone knew I was pregnant, and he thinks she’s ten or eleven. I haven’t corrected him.”
“Then perhaps he can be forgiven, in time. And the other two?”
I long to look elsewhere. “They knew, Mom, and they walked away.”
Her eyes darken, and like a judge who has taken all she’s going to take, she pronounces, “Not forgiven.”
Not surprised. And not going to mention my DNA quest.
She presses her shoulders back. “I picked up a few groceries for you, there’s hot chicken salad in the Crock-Pot for dinner, I folded and put away the laundry—that’s how I found Devyn’s list—and the dishwasher needs to be emptied.”
“Thank you, and thank you for staying with Devyn.”
She nods and bustles up the aisle and through the lobby doors.
I stare at the empty doorway
until the spreadsheet crinkles in my hand, then collapse into my seat. I should use the two hours until I pick up Devyn from school to prepare for Saturday’s auction, but I give in to a baser need—to simply breathe. However, my thoughts are busy little creatures, replaying Reece’s kiss, Gary’s kiss-off, my mother’s hurt and anger, and the list. Oh, the list…
I bend forward, put my head in my hands, and draw comfort from the hair that curtains me, encloses me, conceals me.
“Maggie?”
Why won’t he go away? Take his kiss and disappear? I need to breathe.
“Are you all right?”
Whoa! Did a memory just touch my arm? I drop my hands and look around. Reece is down beside my seat, a toothpick in one corner of his mouth.
“Oh!” Like Jack let out of its box, I pop up and back against the seat. “What are you—I didn’t see—” Did he overhear the conversation with my mother? I search his face. No, he wouldn’t look at me with such concern if he had overheard.
He settles his forearms on his thighs. “I called to you, but you didn’t seem to hear.”
“Uh…” I push a hand through my hair. “Just tired.”
“Back from Charlotte, right?”
How did he know where I was?
He shifts the toothpick to the other side of his mouth and smiles. “Your daughter told me.”
He was with Devyn? When? Where?
“I ran into her and your mother at the grocery store yesterday.”
I wish Mom had mentioned that, and that my face wasn’t so vocal. “I got in a little while ago—probably should have gone straight home and taken a nap.”
“Did the trip pan out for you?”
In more ways than one, though he has to be referring to the antique pocket watches that were my excuse for going to Charlotte. Happily, the collection was better than pictured and described on Craigslist. I urged the executor of the estate to allow me to sell the watches on consignment, certain that even with my cut, he would get more than what he was asking, but he said the heirs wanted the estate settled yesterday.
