by Meg Muldoon
I placed the phone back on the coffee table and instead of baring my feelings to his voicemail box, I took a big swig of whiskey.
My eyes drifted around the room, at the walls cluttered with photo frames. Inevitably, I found the one of Jacob and me, taken about five years earlier. The one of us laughing while sitting on a picnic table outside of a barbecue joint in Austin. My favorite one of us.
I felt a tug of pain at my heart, realizing I couldn’t remember the last time I saw him smile like that.
I couldn’t remember the last time I smiled like that either.
I forced my eyes away from the photo, studying all of the other ones on the wall. All the happy couples I’d helped bring together through my matchmaking visions. Reminders of the good that I was able to do in the world. Of the people I was able to help.
There were dozens of photos, dating back almost two decades. As far as I knew, each and every couple on that wall was still together.
Every couple but one.
What good was a matchmaker who couldn’t keep her true love?
I wondered.
I placed the whiskey glass down on the table and got up to go take the picture of Jacob and me down. The way I had tried to do at least a dozen times in the last three years.
But just like the other times, I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it. Taking it down would mean admitting defeat. It would mean admitting that it was over.
And that was something I just didn’t have the heart for tonight.
I sighed, glanced back at Hank, who was watching me with those big sad dog eyes.
Sometimes this cabin was just about all I could take.
I grabbed the old wool Pendleton blanket off the sofa, wrapped it tightly around my body, and went into my bedroom, grabbing the cheap paperback romance book from the edge of my nightstand.
I went outside onto the porch, Hank following close behind. I sat in the rocking chair, listening to the rain splatter against the porch railing. A train started rumbling in the distance, filling the night with its lonesome howls.
I sat, wondering how I ever got to this point in my life.
I didn’t have an answer.
I opened the romance novel and started where I had left off, reading about Lady Elizabeth Reynolds and her rogue southern suitor, Remy Martin.
I tried to laugh at the fumbling foreplay, written so cheesily, but I had trouble laughing tonight.
Reading it didn’t take away my sadness, the way it usually did.
I wasn’t but a few pages into the book when the headache started settling in at my temples.
And I knew a vision wouldn’t be far behind.
I held my head and groaned.
I wished that they would just stop.
Chapter 9
The stocky lawyer type with the frizzy black hair and the coke bottle glasses is tired.
Exhausted. A deep-rooted exhaustion that makes him feel nearly dead to the world.
It’d been a long day of running around town, having doors slammed in his face. Getting no answers.
Not a single friendly, familiar face in any of it.
What he could really use is a well-done steak, a heap of mashed potatoes and a nice domestic beer. But instead of going to the back of the store where they kept the meat, he heads for his old friend: the frozen food aisle.
He doesn’t have it in him to do much more than open and close a microwave tonight.
He thinks about Penny’s steaks. How she always made them rare. He’d always ask for well-done but she never listened to him, throwing the bloody steak down on the plate like she was doing him some sort of favor.
He closes his eyes for a second.
It’d been nearly five years, but he still spent much of his evenings thinking about her.
If he’d just paid a little more attention to her. If he hadn’t let the job swallow him the way it did. If he hadn’t forgotten their last anniversary.
Then maybe she’d still be with him instead of getting married to another man next month.
He shakes his head.
No. This isn’t how he wants the night to go. He’s too tired to start battling those old demons, the what-ifs and if-onlys.
Still, the thought crosses his mind. Uninvited, as always.
What I wouldn’t give for one of those rare steaks now, he thinks.
He sighs, opens the freezer door and reaches for the macaroni and cheese Stouffers box. In an instant, all the boxes behind it tumble out of the freezer and scatter themselves on the linoleum floor.
“Blasted!” he grunts.
He puts down his basket and starts collecting the TV dinners.
His hand brushes another as he reaches for one. He looks up.
Her dark red-stained lips curl up into a smile.
A familiar face.
“Seems like you’ve gotten yourself into a mess here,” she says, taking the box and putting it back in the freezer. “Not that you deserve my help, but here I am anyway.”
He struggles for her name. It’s on the tip of his tongue. Starts with an “B”. Belinda or Bethany, maybe.
“Beth Lynn,” she says, brushing past him. “And you’re welcome.”
She walks down the long aisle, and he has trouble pulling his eyes off of her.
When she turns the corner and disappears, he feels a strange sensation tugging at his chest.
He doesn’t usually go for those aging beauty queen types.
But there is something about her. Something he can’t quite get a hold on.
Something he hadn’t noticed before.
He puts the macaroni and cheese box in his basket and heads for the front of the store.
Chapter 10
I woke up on the sofa.
My hair was matted with sweat, and I was gasping for air, which might have had a little something to do with the fact that a 130-pound St. Bernard had draped himself over me like a blanket.
Suddenly, there was a rapping noise at the front door.
Hank shot up, stepping hard on my thigh to gain traction before jumping off the sofa. I groaned, and he bounded for the door like a juicy piece of longhorn steak was waiting for him behind it.
I sat up, my head throbbing from both inside and out, if that was even possible. Maybe it was the vision, or maybe it was the big glass of whiskey I had before bed, or maybe it was the massive welt that had taken over my eye, or a combo of all three. But any way you looked at it, I was hurting.
I stood up and went for the door. Whoever was out there, they were in for one scare all right when they saw me.
I peeked through the eye-hole, astonished at who was standing on my porch.
She looked like a dog with its tail between its legs.
“Well, isn’t this a surprise,” I mumbled, opening the door just a crack.
Beth Lynn Baker stood there on the other side, looking a little worse for wear herself. Dark bags clung underneath her eyes. The grey light of morning settled into her wrinkles, making her look at least ten years older than she was.
She was shivering beneath her garish faux fur coat.
“You’ve got some nerve coming here,” I said, the tone of my voice none-too-happy.
I noticed that the rain from the night before had turned into snow, leaving behind several inches of the dense, heavy white stuff everywhere.
Like I said. You just couldn’t predict the weather here this time of year.
Hank started barking at her, and with good reason. I held onto his collar, keeping him from jumping on her like that longhorn steak he’d been hoping for.
Not that she wouldn’t have deserved a pouncing by Hank after the way she acted the night before. The fact that I was having trouble seeing out my left eye this morning was, when you went to the root of the matter, this woman’s fault.
“Before you start in on me, Bitters, let me just say something,” she said, shifting her weight back and forth between her high heels.
“What is it?” I said.
&nb
sp; “I’m sorry about last night,” she said, looking down sheepishly. “I take full responsibility. I’m a fool thinkin’ that Kirby would ever change.”
“Well, you won’t get any argument from me there,” I said.
“I’m sorry you had to get in the middle of it,” she said. “How’re you feeling this morning?”
She peered at me. The horror in her eyes said it all about what I must have looked like.
“I’ve been better.”
She started rummaging through her purse.
“You know, I’ve got my makeup kit in here somewhere. I could fix that up so no one would know that—”
“I’m okay,” I said.
She stopped going through her bag and then nodded. She shivered again and then bobbled her head as she looked past me into the warm house.
I sighed, knowing that I was being rude letting my best friend freeze out here on my porch and not inviting her inside.
Though after last night, it seemed to me I might be in the market for a new best friend.
“Don’t you have to be at the insurance office soon?” I said, knowing by the light in the sky that it must be nearing 9 o’clock, if not already past it.
She shrugged.
“Being a few minutes late never hurt anyone.”
I may not have been the nicest person in the world. I may have been bitter and sometimes grumpy. But rude, I wasn’t.
“Fine,” I said, opening the door. “You want some coffee?”
“Do you have some of that hazelnut creamer I like?”
I kept from letting out another sigh.
You give them an inch, they take a mile.
That’s how Beth Lynn was.
“Yes, I’ve got that hazelnut creamer,” I said.
“Hallelujah.”
Hank growled unhappily, as if he knew somehow, on some psychic pooch level, that Beth Lynn had been the reason for me looking the way I did this morning.
Chapter 11
“I want to be up there on that wall with the rest of those happy people,” she said, taking a slurp from the steaming mug of coffee I’d set in front of her.
“You’ve never listened to me in the past,” I said. “What’s gonna change now? You’ll be off the boat the second another barely legal good-looking guy glances your way. Or for that matter, some greasy brute like Kirby Carruthers.”
I hadn’t told her about the second vision I’d had of her mystery man only a few hours earlier. Maybe I was hoping on some level that if I didn’t talk about them, then these visions would just go away.
But I knew it didn’t work like that. These visions had a way of harassing me until I did something about them.
I got up from the sofa and grabbed my make-up bag. I opened the compact mirror, tried not to drop my jaw in horror at the large rainbow-colored welt that was now the left side of my face, and started applying foundation feverishly.
“No, you see, that’s what I’m trying to change,” Beth Lynn said. “My therapist says that I’m keeping myself in a destructive pattern by the poor choices I make in men. She said I need to change the way I approach the subject. Not be so impulsive. Kind of like what you’ve been saying to me all along.”
“I’m no shrink,” I said. “I don’t know anything about patterns. But what I do know is that I told you three months ago what your soulmate looks like, and as far as I can see, you’ve been running as far in the opposite direction from him as you possibly can.”
She rested her head on the palm of her hand.
“I know,” she said. “But I just… it’s just hard for me to believe that he really looks like that. I mean, I know that I’ve seen better days myself, but I still have standards.”
“Beth Lynn,” I said, closing up the compact and placing it back in my bag. “Looks don’t mean a damn when you’ve found your soulmate. And until you’re willing to accept that, all you’re ever going to end up with are the Kirby Carruthers of the world.”
She bit her lip and pouted a little bit, staring at her cup of coffee glumly.
“That’s the long and short of it, Beth Lynn,” I said, glancing up at the photos on the wall. “You’re never going to be happy unless you open your mind a little bit.”
After another long pause, she took a deep breath.
“Okay,” she said, looking over at me. “Okay, I’m going to do my best. But, Bitters, you have to help me with this. You’re the only one who’s seen him. You can’t just abandon me now.”
I got up abruptly, placing the bag on the counter.
Shortly after I realized Beth Lynn wasn’t listening to me, I’d made kind of a pact with myself. I wasn’t going to interfere anymore. I’d done my part to help plenty of people find happiness, and what did I have to show for it? Not a damn thing.
I was finished with matchmaking. And if that meant ignoring the visions, well, then that’s what I was going to do.
“I’m done with all of that,” I said. “I’ve given you a description. You can find him yourself, Beth Lynn.”
The words sounded harsh, and I couldn’t tell if it was because I was still mad at her, or if I was mad at having this “gift” to begin with.
She looked over at me with big, lonesome eyes.
“How can you say that, Bitters? After all we’ve been through together? I know you’re mad, but you can’t just turn your back on me, just like you can’t turn your back on those visions you have. It’s just not…”
She glanced over at the photo in the center, the one of me and Jacob sitting on that picnic table.
I looked away.
“Have you heard anything from him lately?” she asked.
I didn’t answer. That in itself was an answer.
She sighed.
“All I want is to find the right one, Bitters,” she said. “I’m so tired of running into walls. All I want now is to find him before it’s too late.”
She was silent, and I felt the atmosphere of the room buckle under her sadness.
“Please, Bitters?” she said, tears brimming from those rodeo queen eyes.
I bit my lip.
She grabbed her purse and pulled out a Kleenex for added effect, knowing that was just would was needed to push me over the edge.
Dammit.
Here I was, getting suckered into something I shouldn’t have cared about for one measly second. Knowing that if I didn’t help her, my conscious would never let me hear the end of it.
I went over to the door, put my jacket on and started grabbing my purse.
“All right,” I said. “But if you show up later this week with another guy hanging off of your arm, then all bets are off. You got it?”
She stood up and smiled.
“You’ll do it?” she said.
I sighed.
“Doesn’t seem like I have much of a choice.”
Chapter 12
Broken Hearts Junction got its name over 150 years ago over a tragic incident that, for the most part, has been lost to time.
But it hasn’t been lost to me. Some days when I’m driving along the river, I can’t help think about her.
The Crooked River, a wide, slow-moving, deceptively tame-looking stretch of water meanders right through the middle of today’s Broken Hearts Junction. Back in the 1840s, the Oregon Trail took pioneers through this area, and crossing the Crooked River was a necessary evil. Countless pioneers died trying to cross the river, getting dragged down by the swirling currents that still push and pull today under those placid waters.
But the town didn’t get its name based on the many who lost their lives here.
Just one death gave the town its name.
Her name was Zerelda Richmond.
The story goes that Zerelda had come from a small farm in Pennsylvania with her husband, Joshua, the two of them making the journey with a wagon train. Their dreams were fixed on the Willamette Valley, just a couple hundred miles away from here.
They were so close to getting there. So close to their dream.
But halfway into crossing The Crooked River, all those dreams went to hell in a hand basket. Their wagon capsized in the currents, and Joshua was dragged under, drowned, and swept away downstream. Zerelda was saved by another in the wagon party, though accounts say she was screaming and kicking the whole while, not wanting to be separated from her beloved.
Rattled by the difficult crossing, the wagon party set up camp that night on the edge of the river, right where the small town of Broken Hearts Junction sits today.
But when the wagon leaders awoke the next morning, Zerelda was nowhere to be found.
One of the children later said they’d seen her standing down by the river early that morning, staring at those currents in the pale moonlight.
The story goes that all the wagon party found of Zerelda Richmond the next day was a half-empty bottle of whiskey on the river bank, and a calico dress laid out next to it.
Everyone knew that Zerelda waded in the river that night to join Joshua.
And ever since then, this spot of land has been known as Broken Hearts Junction.
Most people have forgotten the story. All that’s left to remind us is a rusted monument near the banks of the river.
But the story’s always struck a certain chord with me. I don’t know why, but sometimes I find myself thinking about Zerelda. The image of her wading into those dark waters, going after Joshua like that.
Sometimes that image would drift into my head when I drove alongside the river, like this morning.
Cold sunshine glistened off the rippling water, and it made it look almost cheerful. No traces of the tragedy that played out so very long ago.
I slowed down and made a right turn onto Brush Canyon Road, heading for Sunny Banks Nursing Home a few blocks away.
Thinking about Zerelda and Joshua.
Thinking about all those photos up on my wall, of all the happy couples I’d helped over the years.
Thinking about how it’d been so hard to take down that photo of Jacob and me the night before, even after three years had passed.
Thinking about his voice on his answering machine last night. How my heart still did somersaults when I heard that voice.
