Windfall

by Tempe O'Kun

  “That doesn’t necessarily—”

  “Besides, I’ve seen his porn collection.” At Shane’s look, she got defensive. “What? If he didn’t want me to see it he shouldn’t have left his laptop open.”

  “Uh huh.” The cat drawled with divided attention, still paging through the old magazine. “Well, did the porn have otters in it? That would be a good sign.”

  “No. Three gigabytes and not a single otter. He was probably scared my mom or I would see it and get the wrong idea.” She slumped. Finding otter porn on his computer would have been a perfect pretense for confronting the big husky. Okay, maybe not; this wasn’t TV. But at least it would’ve given her some confidence. “So anyway, that’s what I’m up against. If I’m too subtle, he won’t notice. If I’m too forward, he’ll get so embarrassed he’ll totally shut down and I’ll feel horrible.”

  “Well, if I see any skywriting that says ‘dear Max, we should bang,’ I’ll know you’ve run out of ideas.”

  The lutrine grumbled, glaring out the window.

  Silence sank over the room.

  A smirk grew across the cat’s face. “You know, you could start by reading him the fanfics where you two—”

  “Hey!” Kylie abandoned the tea cozies and hopped onto a stool at the counter, tail swinging. “I didn’t ask for your advice.”

  “They have to exist.” His slitted gold eyes flicked up at her, over a faint smile. “I mean, come on: it’s the Internet.”

  From outside, a cloying voice arose: “Oooh, you’re new. I woulda remembered. Nothing’s ever new here.”

  Kylie’s small ears perked up, then drooped. “Ugh, sounds like Cindy’s trying to attract some fresh prey to her venus fly trap.”

  “That’s terrible.” The cat snickered, half looking up. “It’s probably some poor tourist who doesn’t know any better.”

  Cindy yipped a flirty laugh. “You got plans tonight, big guy?”

  The otter tilted her head in thought. “Yeah, most tourists wouldn’t be Cindy’s type. She likes big brawny canines like—”

  A deep canine tenor: “Actually, I’m just here to—”

  Horror dawned across Kylie’s face. “Oh carp.” She leaned back on the stool to spy out the window.

  Max stood on the sidewalk, finger pointed with the polite desire to leave.

  Clad in a string bikini, the spaniel tossed her hair in just the right way to make it flash golden in the summer sun. “Did you just move here? I love getting to know new people.”

  Kylie flailed off the stool, knocking it over. One foot stuck in the dowels, she dragged it across the store with frantic hops. With an incredible clamor, she managed to scramble out the open doorway.

  Cindy stood with her back to the otter’s shop, trapping the giant husky on the sidewalk.

  Max’s eyes met Kylie’s and telegraphed his need to be rescued from this very forward new person.

  The otter smiled, brushing a lock of hair from her eyes, shook the stool from her foot, and shrugged.

  The cocker spaniel donned a sneer. “Oh look, everyone’s favorite celebrity has-been.”

  Excusing himself with a shrug, he skirted the cocker spaniel’s lawn chair. He wagged to her side and smiled down at her.

  The lutrine’s grip closed on his elbow. “Hey Maxie.”

  The other dog peered over the lenses of her expensive sunglasses. “Oh.” Her gaze swept over the two of them, then blasted a quick glare where Kylie held Max’s arm. “You two know each other?”

  “Cindy, Max is my co-star from Strangeville.” Kylie pulled him a little closer. “He’s big and charming and not interested in you.”

  “Whatever, tuna-breath. He knows he’s interested in this.” The sunbathing spaniel crossed her arms and leaned back, spreading her legs a little. “Especially compared to you.” Looking at Max, she flicked a dismissive tilt of her head at Kylie. “And considering your family’s…tendencies.”

  Kylie stiffened.

  Max bounced a confused look between them.

  Cindy’s eyes lit up, pouncing on a weakness. She turned to Max, her voice a purr of innocent curiosity. “Did no one tell you? She and her family are this stupid town’s favorite boogeymen.”

  The otter stood horrified and silent, desperate for a means of shutting the bitch up without proving how crazy she was.

  The cocker spaniel sneered, first at Kylie then at the town in general. “All the old farts go on and on about the whackjob otters up in their mansion. Then like, twenty years ago one of them goes extra batshit, burns down someone’s house and takes off into the woods. They say on a full moon you can still hear him rambling about the monsters in his head.” She ended on an ominous note, waggling her fingers, expression mocking.

  “You—” The lutrine sputtered with fury. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  “Oh have you not told him?” The spaniel lay back on her sun chair. “I suppose, if I came from a family of lunatics and arsonists, I wouldn’t want to tell people either.”

  Max lifted his eyebrows at her. A quick glance with Kylie, then he waved. “Nice meeting you.”

  “See you later, stud!” Cindy waved, sliding her shades up. “Look me up if you don’t wanna get stabbed in your sleep.”

  Kylie dragged him inside, shutting the door. A deep grumble rose from the pit of her stomach. Max wasn’t supposed to find out like this. Now he’d think she was a time-bomb of mental illness, which she might possibly be, but Cindy dumping all the crazy on him all at once certainly didn’t help her sanity.

  The dog raised his ears at her, eyes kind. His heavy paw rested on her shoulder, light with concern.

  She patted it. “Shane, I think I’m gonna take off.”

  Feet propped on a table as he flipped through an old Platinum Retriever comic book, the cat shrugged. “Sure. You might wanna leave through the other door.”

  The otter padded off to the back room to grab her bag. Standing at the other side of the doorway, she took a few deep breaths. Here she was, letting that petty little jerk get to her, while Max acted like an adult. He always seemed to be in such control of his emotions. Not for the first time, she wished she found it so easy. If nothing else, it wouldn’t give Cindy such ready ammunition.

  In the other room, she could hear the dog and cat chatting. She peered from around the corner, past rows of shelves, where she just happened to be able to hear them.

  Tilting his muzzle back out to the street, Max lifted an ear. “What’s her deal?”

  Shane sighed. “She was really popular in high school. Got halfway through a semester or two into college, decided it was too hard, then came running back to a social structure that didn’t exist anymore. Then Kylie showed up and people liked how she treated them like they existed even when they weren’t within earshot.”

  The husky’s brow furrowed. “And now they’re, what? Deadly rivals? She’s gotta be a year or two younger than Kylie.”

  The cat waggled his paw around in ambivalence. “Cindy’s been pacing around town since September, trying to wrap her head around the fact that no one cares she was prom queen anymore. Then she takes one look at —What’d you call her? Rudderbutt?— and decides this is a good chance to prove she’s still top dog. I guess it’s some kind of canine thing?”

  Max only shrugged.

  The cat continued: “Anyway, Kylie tries to ignore her, but that spaniel’s got a way with biting comments. I guess she can’t help getting mad.”

  Conversation lulling, the two had just enough time to blink at each other before the stockroom door squeaked fully open.

  The otter emerged and dragged her best friend and the remains of her best-laid plans to the back door, grumbling: “Stupid lousy Cindy Madison with her big mouth and her flowing locks and her mind-control bikini…”

  They took the long way around the block to Laura’s hatchback, well out of cocker spaniel range. The silence on the drive home got louder and louder. Anger burned a blush on her cheeks. She knew sh
e shouldn’t get this upset, but she really wanted to reconnect with Max and blurting out that the town thought her family was crazy wasn’t a great start. Moisture started welling up in her eyes, blurring her view of the road ahead. She bit her lip.

  “So that’s Cindy. Wish she’d introduced herself first.” Max reached one hand from the steering wheel and put it back on her shoulder. “She seems…intense.”

  Kylie looked his way, brushing the hair from her teary eyes.

  He patted her shoulder. “That’s Montanan for asshole.”

  The lutrine couldn’t help but laugh; a curt, sputtering laugh that did nothing to unwind the tightness in her chest. “Ugh! Max, she drives me crazy. She even thinks I’m lying about being older than her.”

  Ears cocked, he looked away. “Well, she does have a few inches on you, in several directions.”

  She punched him in one massive shoulder. “Shut up, Maxie.”

  Still driving, the husky didn’t react except to smile a little. But, before long, he looked thoughtful again, still watching the road. “So…arsonists?”

  The otter deflated a little. “I’ll explain when we get to the house, Maxie. I promise.” She wrung the edge of her vest. “I just… I was waiting for the right time to tell you, okay?” She ducked her head so she couldn’t see his expression.

  Minutes later, they pulled up to the house and parked. With a heavy sigh to break the silence, she led him inside, then upstairs, then into her room and shut the door. The big dog followed close behind her, hovering, worried. She paused at a folio tacked to her wall. “Alright, before I show you this: context.”

  Max sat on her waterbed, patient tail curled around him as the surface sloshed.

  “O-okay.” A chill gripped her hands and feet, distress squeezing her heart. She took a deep breath to fight the stammers. Best to give him all the info before he could jump to conclusions. “Mom thought it might be nice if I had some kind of connection to the new house, since I’d never lived here, so she gave me the old family journals that inspired Strangeville. Turns out…”

  She trailed off, one final hesitation. It was too late, though. Max would never let it go now that he was worried about her. She bit the bullet: “It turns out my family has a history of going nuts…for the past few hundred years. And they keep journals recording just how crazy they get.” She opened the folio, unfolding it further and further, taking care not to knock anything loose. As she went, she affixed the paper with tacks into the plaster. By the time she’d finished, it extended around the corner and halfway to the window.

  The wall stood plastered with notes, old photos, and string.

  His gaze skimmed the connections, taking it all in. “And this is…”

  She sighed, hugging herself. “That’s the Crazy Wall.”

  Those ocean-blue eyes swept back to her. “And this is tracking…?”

  “Everything. Anything. I don’t even know yet. Ugh!” She gave him a weary smirk. “Does not wanting to talk about the Crazy Wall make me crazy?”

  He patted the bed next to him. “I don’t think talking would be a bad idea.”

  “I’ve been trying to trace some family history.” She sat. “This is a timeline of the Bevys here in Windfall, color coded. Red is ‘local eccentric’ crazy. Blue is institutionalized crazy. Yellow is missing, presumed crazy.”

  His muzzle dipped in a slow nod. “I’m sensing a pattern.”

  Still in shock, her breath came out a quiet sigh. “They all start with ‘I’ve found these journals—going to read them for a lark’ and end with ‘the Universe is out to get me—run for your life.’ That’s why the house’s been empty this long. Crazy has a way of making people want to leave.” Tears welled up in her eyes, keeping her from looking at him.

  If she’d been looking at him, she might’ve seen him coming. Instead, two strong arms wrapped around her and crushed her against that massive chest in a powerhouse hug.

  “Aw c’mon, Maxie.” She pawed at his chest, the last of her self-control slipping. “I-I’m okay.”

  He didn’t budge, which was wonderful and terrible. In fact, he squeezed her tighter. He rumbled in her ear, a sound of wordless love and support, and the dam broke. She didn’t cry, exactly, but a few tears snuck out as she breathed long, ragged breaths against his shirt. Her chest heaved as they stood there in her room, letting months of slowly-building dread out in one long go. He hadn’t run, the hug said. He wasn’t going to run.

  He loosened the hug just enough to rest his chin on top of her head. “You’re kind of an idiot, you know that? Why didn’t you just tell me something was bugging you this badly?”

  “Because it’s weird, Maxie! I mean, whatever’s going on’s obviously genetic and that means it might get me too and then I’ll go nuts and you’d never want to—” She was cut off by a renewed hug, and he held it until she’d calmed enough to put her thoughts into better order. “I was so happy to be seeing you again, Maxie. I didn’t want to ruin it with the news I was probably gonna go insane at some point.”

  “Your mom’s not insane, at least by the standards of television producers.” Satisfied, he let up on the hug, but stayed close. “I think you’re jumping to conclusions.”

  “It’s all in the journals. Maybe you should read them.” With a sniffle, she ran webbed fingers through tousled hair. “You don’t have the crazy gene.”

  His wide paw rested on her shoulder.

  She touched it and smiled. “Mom always said I came from a family of eccentrics. Understatement of the century.”

  “And last century.” His blue eyes felt serious and kind on her, before they shifted back to the timeline on the wall. “How far back does this go?”

  “Seven or eight generations of Bevys lived here. In our excavations of the house so far, I’ve found four generations of journals, including the guy who built the house and my great uncle.” She drew a box of mismatched diaries from under the bed. “Same song, stuck on repeat.”

  He inclined his head back downstairs. “Have you talked to your mom about this?”

  “Oh, she knows about it. Using the journals to make a TV show was Mom’s way of coping with a messed up family history.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “For one, I try not to make her dwell on it. For another, pretty sure she thinks taking the old journals at face value is the first step down a road that ends in a padded cell. When she saw how into them I was getting, I had to convince her I was only looking for a genetic or environmental cause for frequent punching of the crazy card.”

  He took the top journal from the box, then sat down on the bed and opened it with care. He flipped through the hardcover, three-quarters blank and one-quarter gibberish. “Are they all in code?”

  Kylie shook her head. “Just Leister’s. Mom kept it thinking she’d crack it one day, but never had the time.” She tapped a paw pad on a name on the inside cover. “Leister Bevy was my great uncle. Notice anything weird about that page?”

  “Yeah, it says ‘my favorite book.’” Ears up, the husky tilted his head at the book. “Why bother to write that?”

  “Exactly. So I started thinking about it this winter: if I were encoding a journal for my descendants, I’d leave them the key.”

  A moment passed in silence. The dog studied her, looking through her into her ancestors. Then his eyes refocused. “This isn’t his favorite book.”

  “Exactly!” She brightened as the two old friends shared a look of mutual intrigue.

  He thumbed through another book and watched it descend into scrawls and gibberish. “So what is?”

  “Some morbid philosophy text called Notes on Life and Death. I found it on his nightstand.” She pointed down the hall. “Turns out that was the cipher—he used the first instance of each letter as a letter of the alphabet. The rest was just scanning the journal into the computer, retyping it letter for letter, and using the make-your-own-code feature on the Kibble Puffs website.”

  Max chuckled, breaking the tension at last. “Breakfast
cereal saves the day. Good thing he didn’t use cursive.”

  “I showed Mom, but she just said ‘oh cool, I’ll remember that for a spy thriller.’” Kylie pulled a stack of printer paper from the box and set it before him, dejected. “Doesn’t make much more sense than the rest of them.”

  “Hm.” He drew another journal from the stack and flipped through a few pages, then found a charcoal drawing of the house and drive, reading the text beside it. “What’s a holt?”

  “Otter term.” Kylie tossed a weary gesture to the property. “This house, the hill, the woods: it’s all the Bourn holt.”

  Those deep blue eyes scanned the inside cover page. “Wait.” A thick paw pad tapped the yellowed paper. “This one’s maiden name wasn’t Bevy or Bourn. She married into the family.”

  “And promptly went crazy.” She slumped, elbows on her knees, head down, hands on the back of her neck. “So someone else with the crazy gene married into my family.”

  Max touched her knee, waited for her to look up, then shook his head. “Genes aren’t the whole story here. If you really believed that, you would have just gotten a blood test instead of going to all this trouble.” He swept a finger at the Crazy Wall.

  “I’m looking for a reason to hope that I won’t go crazy.” A frustrated groan clawed up her throat. “Or at least to find out what kind of crazy I’m prone to.”

  His heavy paw patted her thigh. “Pretty sure we’ll find that first one, rudderbutt.”

  She brightened at the ‘we’ in that sentence. “Sorry, Maxie. I was trying to find a way to tell you without freaking you out.”

  “Is this why you’ve been acting like you’ve got storm clouds tailing you?” He lowered the jumble of paper, eyes full of concern. “This must have been bugging you for months. Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “Because—” She gestured uselessly at the Crazy Wall, at the months of worry and uncertainty it represented. “Because it’s weird! I’m weird! The whole reason we even met is because my mother turned a history of mental illness into a TV show!” This wasn’t the reaction he was supposed to have. In all her anxious predictions, this conversation had ended with him buying an emergency train ticket back to Montana. One way. She picked at the edge of her bedspread and focused on her toes as they kneaded in the carpet. “You liked the show a lot when you thought it wasn’t real, but I thought I’d better work up to it being based on the true story of my crazy ancestors.”