St. Francis Society for Wayward Pets

by Annie England Noblin

  “Aren’t you two clever?” my father replied.

  “As a matter of fact, we are,” I said. I scrunched up my face and crossed my eyes in an effort to make Theo laugh. Instead, his brow furrowed, and he began to cry.

  “Why do you always do that?” Eli asked, taking Theo back from me. “He cries every single time.”

  “He got his sense of humor from his mother,” I muttered.

  Ignoring my comment, Eli said, “So you’re off to Timber Creek?”

  I nodded. “I guess so.”

  “Are you nervous?”

  “Not nervous,” I said. “More . . . apprehensive. I don’t know what to expect.”

  “I get that,” Eli replied. “I’m sorry you never got the chance to meet her.”

  “I guess it’s probably better this way,” I said. I crossed my arms over my chest and shrugged in an effort to appear nonchalant. But Eli knew me better than anyone else on earth, and I knew he wasn’t buying it.

  “Going will be good for you,” he said. “It will give you some closure.”

  “I wasn’t aware I needed closure,” I replied.

  “Trust me,” Eli said. “You’re going to want it.”

  I didn’t argue with him. Instead, I looked down at Rowan, who was pulling on the hem of my shirt. “Where are you going, Aunt Mae?” she asked.

  “I’m going out of town for a few days,” I said, offering her my brightest smile. “I won’t be gone for too long, I promise.”

  “Will you be back for my birthday?”

  I laughed. “Of course. Your birthday isn’t until June third.”

  “Daddy says you lost your job,” Rowan continued. “I told him you could come and live with us. You can sleep in my room!”

  I shot a look at my brother, who responded by giving me a sheepish smile. “Well, that’s very sweet of you, Ro,” I said. “But I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”

  Rowan nodded solemnly. “That’s what Mommy said,” she replied. “She said you should find a real job first.”

  “Rowan!” Eli exclaimed, his face turning roughly the shade of a boiled lobster. “What have Mommy and I told you about repeating our conversations?”

  Rowan shrugged and skipped off to find my mother. I leveled another look at Eli and said, “Please tell Kate not to worry.” I made a fist and wiggled my thumb at him from in between my fingers. “If unemployment doesn’t work out for me, I can always become a magician. You can hire me for Rowan’s next birthday.”

  * * *

  I drove to Holly’s house and sent her a text to let her know I was out front. It was nearly eleven a.m., but she’d warned me that the twins were in the midst of a sleep regression cycle, whatever that meant, and that sometimes they didn’t even go to bed until four o’clock in the morning. This meant that both the twins and Holly’s wife might still be asleep when we left for Timber Creek and that if we woke them up, I might not even live to regret it.

  Holly opened the front door a few minutes later and an ocean of screaming and crying spilled out with her. She heaved a great sigh of relief when she slid into the passenger’s seat, and I handed her a cup of coffee.

  “Oh, thank baby Jesus,” she said, breathing in the scent of the coffee through the plastic lid.

  “What’s going on in there?” I asked.

  “You don’t even want to know,” Holly replied. “Drive fast before Christine changes her mind about letting me go.”

  “Your kids ought to be on a birth control commercial or something,” I said. “I’m pretty sure their high-pitched shrieks would be enough for anybody to beg for the pill.”

  “I wish I had the energy to defend them,” Holly said, closing her eyes. “Does it make me a bad person if I’d rather go to a funeral than be at home with two sleep-deprived toddlers?”

  “After what I just heard, I think I’d almost rather be the one in the casket,” I replied. “But seriously, thanks for coming with me. I really appreciate it.”

  “Well, I couldn’t let you go alone . . . or with your parents.”

  “And I appreciate that.”

  Holly smiled over at me. “So, how big is this town . . . what’s it called? Timber Falls?”

  “No,” I said with a laugh. “Timber Creek. My birth mother was born and raised there, I guess.”

  “And she never left?”

  I shrugged and turned onto the interstate, yielding to a huge semitrailer with a “Honk If You Love Jesus” bumper sticker on the back. “I guess not.”

  “That’s sad,” Holly replied.

  “You’ve never left Seattle,” I reminded her. “I guess neither of us has, not to live anywhere else.”

  “I spent the summer in Boston after college,” Holly replied thoughtfully. “That’s where I met Christine.”

  “That was for an internship,” I said. “And you came back.”

  “I guess you’re right,” Holly replied. “I guess it just seems worse when you never leave a small town as compared to a big city.”

  “Seems kind of judgmental to me,” I teased.

  “You haven’t even begun to see judgmental,” Holly replied. “Did you tell Alice or whatever her name is that you’re coming to the funeral?”

  I shook my head. “No,” I said. “I found the funeral information online.”

  “Don’t you think she’ll want to know you’re coming?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I just . . . I wish I didn’t have to do this.”

  “I know,” Holly said. She reached out and patted my arm. “I wish you didn’t have to do it either.”

  “It’s the right thing to do, though, right?” I asked, hopeful she’d tell me I didn’t have to go to this funeral and that I could turn my car around and drive right back home.

  Instead, Holly nodded her head. “It’s the right thing to do.”

  We drove the rest of the way in relative silence, listening to music and stopping once to grab snacks from a roadside convenience store. Holly looked around with some interest as we exited off the interstate and into the little town of Timber Creek.

  “This isn’t as bad as I thought it would be,” she said as we drove down a shop-lined street. “It’s kind of cute.”

  “What did you expect?” I asked. “Barefoot hillbillies?”

  “Maybe a little,” Holly replied, sounding slightly disappointed.

  I rolled my eyes. “I don’t know how Christine puts up with you all day.”

  I pulled into the parking lot of the hotel where we’d rented a room for the night. It was on the east side of town, farther out than I would have liked and sitting among what appeared to be a giant pasture of cows.

  “Maybe we spoke too soon,” Holly whispered.

  “Be quiet.”

  Together we lugged in our suitcases, and I presented my ID and credit card to the bored-looking clerk. He rammed the card into the chip reader and then turned his watery eyes on me.

  “Ma’am, this card doesn’t appear to be working. Do you have another one you’d like me to try?”

  “Uhhhh . . .” I said, trailing off in the hopes that he’d just forget about payment and let us stay in the room for free. When he did not, I continued, “Let me check.”

  I made a big production of rummaging around in my purse before Holly sighed and handed over her platinum Visa card. “Here,” she said to him. “Just run mine.”

  “Thank you,” I said under my breath.

  “Well, it wasn’t like that dude was going to accept the hairy Tic Tacs in the bottom of that gross purse of yours,” Holly replied once we’d boarded the elevator. “So I figured it was pay up or sleep in the car.”

  I looked at her sheepishly. “I’m just flat broke right now, you know?”

  “I do know,” Holly said. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I’ll pay you back.”

  “No, you won’t.”

  “I’ll buy you dinner, then,” I said. “I at least have enough for that.”

  Holly’s face
brightened. “Oh, let’s go find something quaint and local.”

  “You sound like such a hipster right now,” I said, rolling my eyes.

  We got into the room and flung ourselves down on one of the beds in an exhausted heap. I don’t think either of us could remember the last time we did so much driving, and neither one of us was particularly good at it.

  Holly scrolled listlessly through her phone. “There doesn’t seem to be anything that great that I can find,” she said. “Maybe we should just get back in the car and drive around until we find someplace that looks good.”

  “That’s fine,” I replied, rolling myself off the bed.

  “I’m going to shower,” Holly said. She looked me up and down and made a face that told me under no circumstances was I dressed appropriately.

  “What?”

  “You might want to consider changing,” she replied. “And brushing your hair too.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “You can borrow my flat iron. It’s in my bag,” she called over her shoulder as she disappeared into the bathroom.

  I sighed and sat back down on the bed. I had two missed calls from my father, so I called him back. He answered on the first ring.

  “Maeve! Are you safe in Timber Creek?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I replied. “I sent Mom a text. I guess she forgot to tell you.”

  “Sounds about right,” he replied. “She’s at her bridge club meeting anyway.”

  “I’m sure she can’t wait to tell everyone about her near-death experience with the pork chops,” I said dryly.

  My father ignored this and replied, “How was the drive? Is the hotel nice?”

  “It was fine, and the hotel is fine,” I said.

  “You sound tired.”

  “I am,” I admitted.

  “And maybe a little nervous about the funeral tomorrow?” he asked.

  I nodded into the phone, even though my father couldn’t see me, feeling as though I might start to cry. I felt homesick. This was ridiculous. I wasn’t a kid at sleepaway camp for the first time. I’d been in Timber Creek all of an hour, and I was a thirty-six-year-old adult, for Christ’s sake.

  “Mae?”

  “Hmm? Oh, I’m fine. Yeah, nervous. I feel weird about this whole thing. I didn’t even know her, Dad, and she made it pretty clear she had no interest in knowing me.”

  “Don’t say that, kiddo,” he replied.

  I smiled just a little then, because I loved it when my father called me kiddo. “You know just as well as I do,” I began, “that she made it clear. You don’t have to pretend she didn’t.”

  “There is nothing easy about this situation,” my father replied. “I wish I could make it go away for you, but I can’t.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “I think you’re doing a good thing,” he continued. “Try to relax tonight with Holly, and then we’ll see you tomorrow evening.”

  “Relax with Holly?” I asked. “Are we even talking about the same person?”

  “I did say ‘try,’” my father replied. “Call me tomorrow?”

  “I will,” I said. “Love you, Dad.”

  “Love you too, kiddo.”

  I put the phone on the nightstand between the two queen-sized beds and plugged my charger into the lamp. I’d always wondered why regular lamps didn’t come with a plug-in—it seemed like there would be a market for that in homes and not just hotel rooms. I hit my head nearly every morning bending over to unplug my charger from the wall. Then again, maybe everyone else wasn’t as clumsy as I was, and there was probably some sort of hotel catalog that only hotel owners were allowed to get and buy from . . .

  “What are you doing?”

  I looked up to see Holly standing in the doorway of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, staring at me.

  “Oh,” I said, looking back down at the lamp. “Just charging my phone.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “You haven’t even plugged it in.”

  I fumbled with my phone, and Holly came to sit down next to me. Her wet hair dripped down onto my jeans, and I playfully pushed her away from me. “You’re dripping on me,” I said.

  “Oh, sorry.” She scooted away. “Listen, you know, I didn’t mean what I said before. You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. We can check out of the hotel room right now, drive back to Seattle, and nobody will know any better.”

  I shook my head. “No, you were right. I do need to do this. I’m sorry for being such a downer. Let’s get dressed and go find a place to eat.”

  After a quick chat with the desk clerk and Holly’s very firm insistence that she needed a beer, the clerk suggested we head downtown to a bar called Three Sheets. We giggled for a minute over the name and then checked our makeup in the mirror before going inside.

  The bar was jam-packed, but we managed to squeeze ourselves onto two rickety and suspiciously damp bar stools.

  “It’s like 1980 came in here to die,” Holly whispered to me, and then, because I couldn’t hear her, yelled, “IT’S LIKE 1980 CAME IN HERE TO DIE.”

  She was right. From my perch at the bar, I surveyed the room. The decor was quaint, if not a little dated. All the tables boasted plaid tablecloths. The walls were wood paneled and there was at least one elk or deer head on each of them. There were pool tables in the back, and somewhere there was a jukebox playing Bruce Springsteen’s greatest hits.

  An overworked barmaid appeared behind the bar and handed us laminated menus without looking at us and said, “What can I get ya to drink?”

  “What do you have on tap?” I asked.

  The barmaid rolled her eyes to the back of her head and said, “Uh, ya know, the usual stuff.”

  “Like?”

  When she rolled her eyes again, I said hastily, “Just give me whatever light beer you have on tap.”

  “Great,” she replied. “And for your friend?”

  Holly leveled her with a stare she usually reserved for her twins. “What do you have on tap?”

  The barmaid heaved a sigh and began to recite the list, including some local microbrews. Holly gave her choice, and after I’d changed my order to match hers, we gave her our food order. She rolled her eyes once again when Holly requested her bun be gluten free.

  “We don’t have that shit here,” she said. “I can give ya a hamburger patty with no bun or you can take the gluten.”

  I was surprised when she didn’t finish that sentence with and shove it up your ass.

  “Fine,” Holly said. “I’ll just take the burger on the regular bun.”

  All around us, people were laughing and drinking and eating. Waitresses came out with plates of food, and nothing on any of them looked short of amazing. Most of the people there were in groups of at least four, with a few couples taking up some of the smaller tables in the middle of the room. In the corner at the back of the bar was a man sitting alone. He had shaggy dark hair and a beard. His eyes were every bit as dark as his hair. Tattoos spilled out down one arm past the sleeve of his red flannel shirt. But what stood out the most was the man’s sheer size. He looked like some kind of lost lumberjack.

  He poured himself a glass of beer from the nearly empty pitcher sitting on the table. He was getting plenty of attention from more than one waitress, and I could understand why. He stood out not only because of his size but because he was devastatingly beautiful. There were plenty of good-looking men in Seattle. Every bar was full of eligible men doing their best to impress a potential mate, but for the life of me, I couldn’t think of a single one I’d ever seen that compared to him. I couldn’t tear my eyes away.

  Every once in a while, he’d look up from his beer and scan the room. The third time he looked up, he caught me staring at him. He held my gaze for a few seconds before I thought to be embarrassed and focused my attention elsewhere.

  “Who is that?” Holly asked, taking a drink of her beer that had been put in front of her and cutting her eyes toward the man at the back of the room. “He looks famil
iar.”

  “He does?” I asked. “Not to me.”

  “Are you sure?” Holly squinted her eyes and peered at him, her thick eyelashes nearly touching from top to bottom. “Oh my God,” she said, burying her head in her shoulder. “He caught me staring.”

  “He caught me too,” I admitted. “He doesn’t look very friendly. Let’s try not to make an enemy on the very first night.”

  “I’m going to go to the bathroom,” Holly said, jumping up from the stool. “Hopefully I won’t get herpes from the toilet seat.”

  “You don’t get herpes from a toilet seat,” I said to her. “You’re a scientist. You know that.”

  “I know that this place looks like the bathroom is probably disgusting,” Holly muttered. “But I drank that beer too fast, and now I have to pee.”

  “Don’t hover!” I yelled after her, and a couple of people stared at me with odd expressions on their faces before turning back to their conversations.

  The door at the front of the bar swung open, letting in a rush of cold evening air, and in marched a woman in a tube top and what could only be described as pants designed to look like each of the woman’s long, thin legs were snakes shedding their skin.

  She stopped as the door closed, crossing her arms over her chest and glancing around the room. After a few moments, her eyes settled on someone behind me. She brushed past me, focused intently on the table right smack-dab in the middle of the room, where a man was leaning into a dark-haired woman wearing giant hoop earrings. Without either the man or the other woman noticing, the woman in the tube top grabbed a full pitcher of beer from the table next to them and proceeded to pour it over the head of the woman wearing hoop earrings.

  Hoop Earrings stood up, gasping and sputtering. For a few tense seconds as the women faced each other, I thought I was going to witness a fistfight. Instead, Hoop Earrings let out a shriek and stormed off, prompting Tube Top to call after her, “I told you to back off, Leeann!”

  “You bitch!” the man at the table hissed, standing up. “You fucking bitch!”

  Tube Top turned to match his glare and said, “You better go pay your tab, Ronnie. Before Leeann’s hair freezes outside and it starts to break off in little clumps.”