by Cindy Myers
With difficulty, she reached back and slid down the zipper on the dress and picked up the next candidate. This one was pink—a color Barb had declared would emphasize Maggie’s “glow” and featured ruffles around the neck “to draw attention to your face.” Unfortunately, that face was forty years old and beginning to sag, not the dewy twenty-something the maternity designers had probably had in mind. Maggie shook her head and began to wrestle her way out of reject number two.
Maybe she’d get married in maternity jeans and the extra-large “Eureka! Colorado’s Great Discovery” T-shirt she’d won at the Chamber of Commerce mixer last month. Jameso could wear his Dirty Sally T-shirt, and all the guests could sport the slogan or logo of their choice. No fuss, and they’d all be so busy reading each other’s chests they wouldn’t notice the pregnant woman at the front of the room.
She studied the next candidate—a cream colored summer-weight wool suit that probably cost a month’s salary. The color made her think of vanilla ice cream, which set her mouth to watering. Did they have any Blue Bell left in the freezer?
A timid tapping on the front door made her jump. She reached for her robe, and waited for the sound to repeat itself. Was that someone knocking or just a flicker attacking a knothole in the cabin’s siding?
The knock came again—definitely the door. With a sigh, she sashed the robe over her belly and waddled into the front room.
“Oh, hello, Maggie.” Sharon looked like a startled rabbit—all big dark eyes and twitching nose. “I’m looking for Jameso.”
“He’s at work. But come on in.” She held the door open wider.
Sharon squeezed between Maggie and a stack of half-packed boxes. A backpack and camping equipment fought for space with a half-assembled baby bed and a lamp with its shade knocked askew. “Excuse the mess,” Maggie said. “Things have been sort of crazy around here.”
“No thanks to me, I’m sure. I feel terrible, intruding on you this way.” Sharon shoved her hands in her pockets and looked everywhere but at Maggie.
“You’re not intruding. I’ve been meaning to get by to see you. How are you doing?”
“Okay.”
“How’s the job?”
“Good.”
“That’s good.” She waited, but Sharon didn’t elaborate. This wasn’t exactly the heart-to-heart between soon-to-be sisters-in-law that Maggie had hoped for.
“So, Jameso’s at the Dirty Sally?” Sharon asked.
“No, he’s at his other job, with Mountain View Tours?” At Sharon’s blank look, she added, “He’s a driver and guide for a Jeep tour company in the summer. It’s too early for tourists yet, but they had some kind of meeting. Is there something I can help you with?”
Sharon chewed her lower lip. “You’re going to think I’m really stupid,” she said after a long silence.
Nervous, standoffish, maybe shy. But not stupid. “I won’t, I promise.”
“I need to find a place to live. A house or apartment to rent, I mean. I feel terrible, kicking Jameso out of his house. Now that I have a job, I can afford a place of my own.”
“As long as you’re not looking for anything very big—pickings are a little slim right now. Jameso and I have been looking for a place to move into together for months now.”
“Two bedrooms would be nice, but it doesn’t have to be big or fancy. And I don’t have to be right in town. Alina and I are used to living out in the country.”
“I can introduce you to my real-estate agent,” Maggie said. “I’m sure she’d be happy to help. And there’s nothing stupid about wanting your own place.”
“It’s not that, it’s just—” Her voice faded.
“Just what?”
“I’ve never rented my own place before.” Her face reddened. “I don’t know what I need to do, what I should watch out for. I don’t even know how to get the electricity turned on or the phone connected.” She gave a shaky laugh. “I’m thirty-one years old and I’ve never even had my own checking account. Isn’t that pathetic?”
“Maybe a little unusual, but you can learn about those things. Why don’t we sit down?” She moved a pile of magazines from one end of the sofa and Jameso’s shirt from the other, and motioned for Sharon to join her. “Jameso said you married young. I take it your husband took care of the money.”
“Yes.” She perched on the edge of the sofa, as if prepared to spring up again at the slightest alarm. “What did Jameso tell you about Joe?”
“He said he didn’t know him well.”
“He didn’t like him. It’s all right. None of the family did. I think that’s why I liked him, at first. My father hated him, but Joe was bigger and tougher than my dad. He was the first man I’d met who would actually stand up to our father, and that impressed me.”
“And he promised to take care of you,” Maggie said.
“Yes!” Sharon’s eyes widened. “How did you know?”
Maggie shrugged. “It makes sense—if you were afraid of your father and someone promised to protect you, of course you’d want to be with him.”
“Joe did protect me. And I didn’t mind that he took care of all the money and business stuff. I wasn’t interested in all that.” She waved her hand, as if brushing aside a pesky fly. “And I don’t want you to think I’m useless; I can do a lot of things. I can shoot a gun as well as any man, dress a deer, make bread and candles, and tell poisonous mushrooms from ones that are good to eat.”
“There are plenty of people around here who would be impressed with those accomplishments,” Maggie said. “I can’t do any of those things. When I first came to Eureka, I had to learn how to build a fire in a wood stove, how to start a snowmobile, how to walk in snowshoes, and a lot of other things.”
Sharon wrinkled her nose. “All the things I can do are fine if you want to pretend you’re still living in the nineteenth century, but they’re not much use in the twenty-first.”
“You know how to use a computer.” It had been one of the requirements for the library job, apparently.
“Oh, yes. Even living off the grid, we had Internet. That was the one modern invention Joe approved of. Well, that and automatic weapons.”
Maggie must have looked as confused as she felt. “I guess you’d call Joe a survivalist,” Sharon said. “A prepper. He and his friends thought civilization as we know it was going to end any day now—and good riddance to it. They were going to hole up in their compound and start over with their own rules.”
Maggie had heard of these survivalist groups—some were even rumored to live in the mountains around Eureka. But she’d always pictured them as single men. Never women and children—families.
“Is that why you left?” she asked. “Because you didn’t want to live that way?”
“I didn’t mind at first. I like living in the country and I enjoy doing things for myself, like baking bread. The last few years I homeschooled the children and I enjoyed that, too, spending so much time with them. For a long time the prepper thing was just something Joe did on weekends. We still lived close to town and he worked in a factory that made skis. The kids belonged to 4-H and went to the local school. I volunteered at the local library. We were a pretty average family.”
“And that changed?” Maggie asked.
She nodded. “About five years ago, Joe started hanging out with a different group—more hard-core and radical. He quit his job and we moved farther out. The kids couldn’t go to school anymore. We were supposed to be completely self-sufficient. I didn’t like it and we argued more.” She pressed her lips together.
“That would be hard,” Maggie said.
“Yes, too hard.” She sighed. “One day I took Alina and went to a hotel in a nearby town. I tried to convince my son, Adan, to come with me, but he refused. I was afraid to wait any longer, so Alina and I left. I had some money I had saved and I paid a lawyer to file for divorce.”
“Where did you get the money?” Maggie asked. “I mean, if you didn’t work outside the home and you
r husband controlled the finances?”
She smiled. “I made money writing for different Web sites on the Internet. I put everything I made into an online savings account Joe didn’t know about. That’s how I found the lawyer, too—online. She was very good. She threatened to report Joe to the police—he had some illegal weapons and hunted without a license. He didn’t believe in paying taxes or having a driver’s license or anything like that. If she’d pressed charges, she could have sent him to jail for a long time. Instead, she persuaded him to agree to a divorce.”
Her face clouded. “But I couldn’t force him to give up Adan, not unless Adan wanted to come with me. He didn’t.”
“That must have been heartbreaking for you.” Maggie’s own heart hurt, thinking of this mother having to give up her child.
Sharon nodded.
“You don’t sound stupid to me at all,” Maggie said. “You sound like a very smart, resourceful woman.”
“Thank you. I am, I guess—but it’s hard. Doing everything by myself.” She shrugged. “I guess I thought by coming here I’d have Jameso to help me. I can see now that wasn’t very realistic. He has you and the baby to think about.” She stood. “And I’ve taken enough of your time. I’d better go.”
“No, stay.” She didn’t want them to part on this sad note. “As long as you’re here, I could use your opinion.”
“What do you need my opinion about?” Sharon looked wary.
“I’m trying to choose a wedding dress. Come look.”
Maggie led the way into the bedroom, where several dresses were strewn across the bed. “They’re from my friend Barb—you met her the first day you were in town—she owns the new bed-and-breakfast that’s due to open this summer?”
“I remember Barb.”
Maggie laughed. “Barb’s a hard woman to forget. She and I have known each other for twenty years, at least. She’s married to an oil executive in Houston and wastes more money than I’ve ever made, so when she said she wanted to buy my wedding dress, I agreed.”
Sharon reached out and touched the soft, cool fabric of a pink dress, the color of apple blossoms. “They’re all beautiful,” she said.
“I’m at the point where I think I look awful in everything,” Maggie said. “So I could really use an honest opinion.”
“I remember that feeling.” Sharon transferred her attention from the dresses to Maggie. “You look really great. Not all bloated and blotchy like I was.”
“I feel bloated and blotchy.” Maggie sat on the end of the bed. “I was nineteen when I married my first husband. I wore a white lace dress from the wedding department at J. C. Penney and a veil I’d made out of tulle, white satin roses, a hair band, and hot glue. I weighed one hundred and eight pounds soaking wet.”
“I didn’t realize you were married before. Do you have any children?”
“No, my ex didn’t want any and I let him convince me that that’s what I wanted, too.” She rubbed her hand back and forth over her swollen belly. “When I found out I was pregnant, I couldn’t believe it.”
“How did Jameso take the news?”
“He fainted.”
Sharon couldn’t keep back the laughter. “He fainted?”
Maggie laughed, too. “He swears hearing about the baby had nothing to do with it, but of course it did. He was living the ideal life: single, working just enough to pay for beer and gas for his motorcycle—no ties, no commitments.”
Sharon sobered. “But he’s sticking by you and the baby.”
“Oh, he loves me,” Maggie said. “I’m sure of that. And this is probably what he needed to settle down. But we didn’t exactly plan anything. I never thought I’d be forty and pregnant and planning a wedding.”
Sharon did the math in her head—Maggie was eight years older than Jameso. She was watching Sharon, waiting for a reaction to this revelation. “Joe was twelve years older than me,” Sharon said. “I was barely fifteen when we got married.” A lifetime ago.
Maggie’s eyes widened. “You were a baby!”
“I was. And the thought of Alina marrying at that age makes me break out in hives.” She sat on the bed next to Maggie, careful not to crush the dresses. “I was so desperate to change my life. Even without planning, you and Jameso are in much better shape than I was.”
“Jameso doesn’t like to talk about the past, but he did say the two of you had it hard growing up.” Maggie’s voice was soft and she spoke slowly, as if searching for the right words. “You did what you had to do, and you turned out all right.”
Sharon nodded. “I guess so.” She turned and studied the dresses. “Which one of these do you like the best?” She didn’t want to talk about Joe anymore. The subject made her so tired.
“I can’t decide,” Maggie said. “What do you think? I can try them on, if you like.”
Sharon considered the options and tried to picture them on Maggie’s small frame. “What time of day is the wedding?” she asked.
“Morning. With brunch afterward. I know that’s unusual, but I know I’ll be too nervous to wait all day, and there’s less chance of rain in the mountains in the morning.”
“A morning wedding will be nice. I think the suit, then.” She smoothed a hand down the cream-colored wool. “The others are too frilly and girlish. Not that you wouldn’t look pretty in them, but you seem classier. The suit will look dressy and beautiful.”
“You’re right.” Maggie let out a long sigh. “I thought that one looked the best of the three, but I wasn’t sure. Thank you. You’ve been a big help. I’ll tell Barb to send the other two back.”
“What is Jameso going to wear?” Sharon asked.
“I’m hoping I can persuade him to put aside his motorcycle jacket and T-shirts, and wear a suit for the ceremony. I might need your help with that, too.”
Sharon doubted she had any influence over her brother; he hadn’t looked all that thrilled to see her, and he hadn’t gone out of his way to get together with her now that she was here. She’d told herself he was very busy, with work and the upcoming wedding and baby. But in the tender places she kept locked away inside, his rejection hurt. She’d spent all morning gathering the courage to confront him. But maybe it was better that she’d found Maggie home alone. Maybe the way to reach her brother was through the woman he loved. “I have a feeling he’d do anything for you,” she said. “How did the two of you meet?”
“He was my father’s best friend. After my father, Jake, died, he left me everything he had, including his property here in Eureka.” She looked around the cabin’s cramped bedroom. “Not this place—a cabin in the mountains and an old gold mine. I’d just gotten divorced and was unemployed, so I decided to come up here and check it out. The first night I spent at my dad’s cabin, Jameso came by to check on the place. He thought I was a squatter or something and I thought he was a serial killer, come to prey on a woman alone.”
“So you really did try to hit him with a stick of firewood?” Sharon asked, remembering Barb’s pronouncement.
“I just waved it around a little. He had the grace not to laugh in my face.”
Sharon smiled, picturing the scene. Jameso had probably looked pretty scary, but Maggie hadn’t backed down. “And you fell in love.”
“Not right away.” Maggie shook her head. “I really didn’t want anything to do with him, but he was persistent.”
Yes, that sounded like Jay. “He was always stubborn, even as a little kid,” she said. “It’s one reason he had such a hard time with my father—he would never back down, even when it cost him.”
Maggie’s face clouded. “He told me his father was abusive. He was afraid he’d be that way with our baby—that it was something he could inherit. I told him he was crazy, that I knew he’d never hurt me.”
“I don’t think he would either. He hated our father—that alone would make him work hard not to be like him.”
And here they were again, back to depressing subjects she didn’t want to talk about. Maggie must
have felt it, too. “It’s almost lunchtime,” she said. “Are you hungry?”
Not really. She hadn’t had much of an appetite for months, but she went through the motions. “I could eat.”
“Then come to lunch with me.” Maggie shoved to her feet. “I’m eating everything in sight these days and it looks better if someone else is sitting at the table when Janelle and Danielle bring out all that food.”
The Last Dollar was busier than it had been Sharon’s first day in town. Almost every table and booth was filled, and people waved and greeted Maggie by name as the two women passed. “You must know everyone in town,” Sharon said when they were seated in a booth near the back.
“You will soon, too,” Maggie said. “At least all the ones who frequent the library.”
“I guess so.” She spread her napkin in her lap. It would be nice to have friends. The only other woman in the camp with Joe and Wilson—a Russian emigrant named Oksana who was married to a man named Earl—didn’t speak much English and in any case hadn’t been friendly to Sharon. She seemed to have developed the idea that Sharon was after Earl—as if the paunchy old man who was missing half his teeth was such a great catch.
“Hello, Maggie, Sharon.” Danielle glided up to the table, order pad in hand. “What can I get you two and the baby today?”
“I’ll have the cheeseburger, no onions, curly fries, and a glass of milk,” Maggie said.
Sharon studied the chalkboard menu. “The vegetable soup sounds good. And a small spinach salad.”
“Coming right up.”
“Their soup is wonderful,” Maggie said. “But then, everything here is.”
“Alina fell in love with the place as soon as she saw they had veggie burgers.” Sharon smiled her thanks as Janelle set two glasses of water in front of them. “She decided to become a vegetarian last year and you’d have thought she’d declared she was a communist the way Joe reacted, or overreacted.”
“I don’t think it’s that unusual for young teenagers to do things like that,” Maggie said.
“Joe was big on living off the land—killing our own food and stuff. But he took it too far with the kids. When Alina was twelve, he made her go out in the woods by herself and kill and butcher a deer. The poor girl was traumatized. She swore she’d never eat anything with a face again.” She rotated the water glass, watching the beads of condensation form on the sides. “I think I knew then that I’d have to get her away from there sooner or later.”
