by Madelyn Alt
Marcus cleared his throat, but it was the hesitation that made me pause. “I, uh . . . well, I meant to talk to you about that.” His gaze flashed in my direction and then back. “I, uh, think I’m going to have to postpone that. Just for a little while,” he said when Lou’s brows knitted together slightly. “I’ve waited this long. A little longer won’t hurt matters.”
“But you’ve already paid for your cl—”
“I’ve done a little checking. I can defer. Extenuating circumstances. It’s okay, Uncle Lou. It’s a few months, not forever.”
Wasn’t it the thought that counted?
“Okay. Well. You know what’s best, I guess.” A pause and then, “I just thought, with everything arranged and all, that—” He bit the words off suddenly. “Well, anyway. Will we see you two at Sunday lunch next weekend? Your Aunt Molly’s talking about doing it up right. And with your mom in Wisconsin for the last couple of months, she thought you might enjoy a little togetherness with the family.”
“Sure, sounds great.”
“Yeah? Maggie, you okay with that?”
“Great,” I echoed warmly, not about to let my questioning nature get in the way of a home-cooked meal surrounded by good people. Good people who didn’t put me on the hot seat with regards to my job, my finances, my relationships, my attitude, or my lack of interest in getting on with it and getting married and popping out grandchildren. Like my own family. Well, like my mother, to be more precise. “With any luck I’ll have this thing off me by then, and you can finally teach me how to do the limbo properly.”
Lou laughed. “I’ll look forward to it.”
He let us go then, with a wave and a blinding smile that stripped years from his face.
Marcus looked over at me when we were on our way. “Limbo, huh? I don’t think you’re going to be dancing anytime soon, sweetness. Not for a while anyway.”
We would see about that. I didn’t know when I’d hear the verdict from Dr. Dan on my healing progress, but I had high hopes for that very afternoon.
“So,” I began, gazing over at him curiously, “what was all that about?”
“All that?”
His attempt at nonchalance did not fool me. “Yes, all that. With Uncle Lou. About next week.”
“Oh. That.”
“What was next week?”
“Nothing for you to worry about, Maggie. Honestly. I’ve got it covered.”
Something wasn’t sitting right with me. He was keeping something from me for sure. But why? “Uncle Lou mentioned you having paid for something,” I persisted. “If you’ve already paid up for whatever it is, there’s no sense in putting it off. You should get what you paid for.”
If a man could squirm without actually, in fact, moving a muscle, Marcus would be doing just that at that very moment.
A sudden suspicion struck. “It was because of me, wasn’t it?”
He reached for his sunglasses from the visor clip and slipped them on. “What gives you that idea?”
It totally was. My heart sank. My stomach joined it.
He glanced over at me. “Oh, don’t look like that, Maggie. Look, it’s no big deal. I’ll start taking classes next semester. Like I said, I already looked into a deferral, and I think it’s the way to g—”
“Classes? Marcus, no! You can’t be thinking of putting that off. You’ve been planning this for months!” Marcus had been planning to return to college with an eye toward completing a teaching degree, an idea Lou had suggested originally but that Marcus had latched on to with an enthusiasm that made it seem especially meant to be. How on earth had I managed to forget about that? Why hadn’t it occurred to me to ask? Was I so wrapped up in my own egocentric world that I couldn’t see beyond my personal problems? Please tell me I hadn’t gotten that narcissistic.
“It’s no big deal—”
“No big deal? Of course it’s a big deal. It’s important to you.” I couldn’t be the reason he put off going back for his degree. I just couldn’t. Miserable, I wracked my brain. I had to think of a way to make him see reason. “You have to go. If you don’t, I won’t be able to live with myself.”
“Maggie—”
“I’m serious. Because what if something happens before the winter semester starts? Would you put it off then, too? People who put things off are just asking for something to happen, Marcus. And the universe is tricky that way. And if you didn’t go back, it would be all my fault.” I was on a roll. I barely noticed when he pulled the truck over to the curb and let it idle in neutral while he turned toward me.
“You’re being unreasonable.”
“No, I’m not. I’m telling you I don’t want that guilt to be on my head, hovering over me, waiting for something to go wrong.”
He sat there with his brows furrowed and a small, bemused smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “You’re kind of a glass-half-empty person, aren’t you. Always waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
I couldn’t exactly disagree with him, at least not about that, so I didn’t say anything.
“Well, you don’t have to be.” He reached out and tugged at my fingers. “Nothing is going to happen.” When I opened my mouth to disagree, he shook his head. “Nothing. Look, the world isn’t a perfect place. Things happen—”
Yeah. Life. And worse.
“—but I prefer to think of them as challenges, not road-blocks. Just things that need to be worked around. That’s what our Guides are for. Ask and you shall receive. There is a way. A solution will come. You just have to be patient, have faith. Trust your Guides.”
I would have said more, but something wasn’t letting me. It might have been the voice of Grandma C quavering in my ear in a surprisingly authoritative tone. Considering the fact that she is, you know, dead. Deceased. No longer of this earthly domain. Moved on to bigger and better time zones in the sky.
You gotta trust somebody sometime, Margaret Mary-Catherine O’Neill. And since you won’t put your trust in God or his host of saints and angels, you might as well put your trust in me. You know I would never steer you wrong.
In my ear. Damn and double damn. I wished the voice would go back to being thought based. Somehow when it was within my head, it was a whole lot easier to imagine that it was probably just the voice of my conscience manifesting with my grandmother’s voice. Now I wasn’t so sure it was just my imagination. But if not that, what was it?
“All right,” I relented, trying for a smile. “I’ll try.”
“That’s my girl.”
Trying. What exactly did that mean?
I pondered that for the rest of the morning and into the afternoon while I puttered and clunked about at Enchantments. For a chronic worrier-slash-thinker-slash-overanalyzer like me, trying is exactly what trying proved to be. How was I supposed to just let him put everything aside for me and not wonder on a daily basis whether or not he was wishing he had just gone ahead with his plans? What if something happened to prevent him from going back after the fall semester? What if something happened to prevent him from going back at all? Wouldn’t he always wonder if he should have?
Must. Stop. Thinking.
From a shelf just overhead, Minnie made her agreement known with a soft murmur of a meow. I reached up absentmindedly and scratched her behind the ears, knowing she was right.
Maybe I was overthinking it. All of it. Maybe all I needed to do was to just cross my fingers and hope for the best as far as healing my ankle was concerned. Because if it was all good with my ankle, that meant life as Marcus had previously known it could get back on track.
Liss sensed my preoccupation and left me alone for the most part. It was for the better. Not even the scents of spiced pear tea and caramel apple cinnamon buns could lure me out of my guilt-induced preoccupation. I clumped around gloomily here and there on my crutches, halfheartedly dabbing at imagined specks of dust with a microfiber cloth even though I had just done the same spot hours before. Liss just watched me from over her half-moon glasses, quiet symp
athy shining in her eyes, but like the wise woman she was, she kept her opinions to herself.
The shelves done, I moved on with a restless sigh to our sales counter and surrounding area. Not that it really needed it.
Respite came briefly when the phone rang just before one that afternoon. Liss had been walking past me with a pencil tucked behind her ear and a fresh cup of tea held aloft in one hand. She reached around behind me before I could even respond to the tweedling jangle of the phone.
“Enchantments Antiques and Fine Gifts, Felicity Dow speaking. How can I be of service?” It was her usual greeting, nothing out of the ordinary. I went back to flicking my cloth unenthusiastically at the cash register. “Oh, hello, Dr. Tucker. So good to hear from you, as always. And how is that lovely fiancée of yours? How wonderful for you both. And when will that be? So soon. Well, we’ll miss you, of course, but of course we wish only the best for you both. You will know the best path for you both. Precisely that. Oh, good heavens, listen to me. Yes, of course, she’s right here.” She listened another moment, then laughed. “Yes, as a matter of fact, she is behaving herself today. I know. Yes, it is rather a rare occurrence.” Ignoring my tongue poking out at her, she handed the phone over to me with a wink.
I cleared my throat officiously. “Dr. Dan.”
“Miss O’Neill,” he said with an equal amount of tongue-in-cheek formality.
My heart was beating an anticipatory tempo for the words I had been waiting for. Something along the lines of, Your bones look great. Fabulous! How do you do it?
“Sooo,” I said, “don’t keep me in suspense! How did the X-rays look?”
Chapter 2
There was a pause on the other end of the line. That should have been my first indication that what was coming would not be to my liking. “To be honest, Maggie”—and there it was, that was my second—“things aren’t quite where I would like to see them.”
Hm. Not quite the enthusiastic response I was looking for. “Oh?” My fingers tightened around the phone.
“No. Actually, I’m a little surprised. For a young woman of your age and health, by now I would expect to see the bony bridge of hard callus starting to form. We may want to consider leaving the cast on longer”—I groaned, so his voice grew louder to press the issue—“than previously anticipated. I know that’s not what you wanted to hear, but . . . honestly, it’s better to take your time with this, Maggie. Don’t rush things. Why don’t we give it another four weeks and then take some more pictures.”
“Four weeks! But—”
“The additional time is not out of the realm of normalcy for healing a broken bone. The time frame you were first given was a guideline more than a rule, so we’ll give it a few more weeks and then see where to go from there. You’re still taking the antibiotic?”
“Just finished up,” I said, trying not to sigh my disappointment too loudly.
“And the pain meds?”
“Don’t need ’em. I didn’t like how they made me feel, so after the first few days, I just stopped.” A pause, then quickly, “That’s okay, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yeah. More than okay. Most people take them to the end of the ’script without listening to the true needs of their bodies. All rightee, so, let’s go four weeks out, and then I’ll write up an order for another set of X-rays. Sound good?”
“When you say ‘Sound good?’ how literal do you want my response to be?”
I could almost see the smile on the other end. “Well, at least you haven’t lost your sense of humor.”
“Don’t be too sure about that,” I sniffed. “This is not the sound of a happy woman.”
“Better to heal in leisure now than repent in leisure later.”
“Now we’re mixing metaphors and proverbs?”
Dan laughed. “I’m a doctor, not a wordsmith. Four weeks, Maggie, then we’ll talk. Give that ankle as much rest as possible. Stay off of it, I mean it”—I blushed a little at that; good thing he couldn’t see me—“and call me if you have any problems. Otherwise, I’m sure I’ll see you around here and there with Steff.”
I set the cordless phone back on its charging base, unable to hide my disgust and dissent toward the prospect of another four weeks in the company of the incredibly weighty, incredibly yellow (what was I thinking?), incredibly glitter-fied, sparkle-fied, painfully ugh-ly Casted Wonder currently taking up real estate in the far southeasterly portions of my anatomy. I knew I should be more grateful to Dan for doing all of this gratis for me—and honestly I was, incredibly so—but disappointment was a sour medicine to swallow. So much for my hope that everything could magically be back to normal, thereby allowing Marcus to magically get on with his nonmagickal plans.
I couldn’t bear to tell Marcus yet. I knew what he’d say. That it was no big deal. That it was a good thing he was postponing going back to school. That it was the only logical decision.
“Bad news?”
I glanced up into Liss’s soft, empathetic gaze. “Very bad.”
She waited for me to go on. That was the best thing about being so close to Liss. She was the kind of friend who was always there for you, ready and waiting to lend a sympathetic ear, a font of both earthly and unearthly wisdom at her beck and call. While Steff was my go-to girl whenever I wanted to rant and rave and needed my best girlfriend to have my back and even to head up my posse if necessary, it was Liss I went to when I needed solace and solutions. With both of them in my corner, I couldn’t go wrong.
“My ankle’s not healing. At least,” I amended when I saw the concern leap to her eyes, “it’s not making improvements with the speed Dan might expect or hope to see. I have to wear the cast for four more weeks.”
Her posture relaxed by the end of my short explanation. “Well. That isn’t the best news, but not so terrible, in the long run. I shouldn’t worry about it if I were you, ducks.”
“But . . .” To my horror, I found myself unable to speak. My lip quivered. I bit it to nip that nonsense in the bud.
Liss took a seat at the counter. “There’s something more to this story, I take it?” she suggested quietly.
Still no voice. I nodded.
Liss waited, but when it became apparent that I wasn’t quite functional yet, she leaned forward and whispered, “You know, it is much easier if I don’t have to guess each and every admission along the way, darling. Is it to do with your ankle?”
I shook my head.
“Very well. Marcus?”
I hesitated.
“Aha. Marcus, it is. Well, then, out with it, love. You’ll feel better. Shall I make you a cup of tea?”
I shook my head.
Liss waited, watching me as she sipped from her own cup, the quintessential personification of patience.
I took a deep breath. All of a sudden I found my voice, and it all came flooding out in a torrent, all of my newfound fears that I was holding Marcus back, that he was putting off his life because of me. There I was, staying with him at his house, intruding on his solitude, eating his food, sleeping in his bed, and he hadn’t asked for a dime from me. He drove me everywhere I needed to go, without a single complaint, rearranging his own schedule in order to do it. And yes, he had canceled out on at least two band rehearsals that I knew of. “So now, not only do I feel like I am I mooching off of him and taking advantage of his kindness, but he is also being forced to make choices that go against everything he wants, and I just know he will resent me for this,” I vented. “And I can’t say that I blame him. I mean, the whole situation is all about me and nothing about him, and now—now!—he is putting off going back to school, too? When he’s been talking about going back and getting his degree for months? Please tell me you see why I have a problem with all this.”
Liss had listened to my emotional explosion without a word. Now she cut to the chase with the unerring precision of someone who has had much practice. “Maggie, has Marcus ever indicated to you that he doesn’t want to do all of these things for you?”
&nbs
p; I blinked as the interruption caught me off guard. “Well, no . . .”
“Then what makes you think that this isn’t exactly what he wants and intends to do?”
I shook my head, unable to conceive of that, as I went through the motions of making myself the cup of tea I had just told her I didn’t want. “He may want this right now . . . but what about later on? No, I have to come up with something to take the pressure off him. Something that will give him the freedom to keep moving along with his plans. Going back for his degree is so important. I don’t want to be the one to take that away.” A thought struck me just then about something she’d said to Danny before handing the receiver over to me, and I paused in midstream as I poured the hot water over the loose leaves in the tea strainer. “What was Danny telling you?”
“I’m sorry, dear, what was that?”
“When you said ‘We’ll miss you,’”I reminded her. “Why will we miss him, where is he going?”
“Oh, didn’t Dr. Tucker tell you? Evidently, once the dear doctor’s residency is completed, he anticipates having to move to another city in order to start his practice. I imagine that’s fairly standard for young doctors and their families these days. Perhaps he’ll head toward New England. I understand his people are there . . .”
In my mind, I’d been expecting news of a trip. A business conference, maybe, or even a spicy, sexy vacay to Aruba. I had not been expecting that. “Move? To another city?” My face fell. Oh, but that would mean . . . “That can’t be right. Steff would have told me.” Wouldn’t she? Maybe she did. I started to rack my brain for any hints, anything that might have been said that I hadn’t picked up on, but I was at a loss.
“Oh dear. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything. I just assumed . . .”
At her crestfallen look, I rushed to reassure her. “No, it’s okay. Really.”
“No, I shouldn’t have said anything.”
I shrugged, miserable. “You couldn’t have known that I didn’t know. It only made sense.” Because Steff was my best friend. Why wouldn’t she have told me that she was going to be leaving me behind? Panic started to set in as I tried to remember when, specifically, Danny’s residency was officially over. Was it November? December? That was right around the corner. The first sunny days of September were already upon us. The next couple of months were bound to be a whirlwind for Steff, preparations for leaving, tying up loose ends.
