by Cindy Myers
“No, I don’t think so. I’ll look around on my own.”
“You should stay here with your mom.”
“She won’t care if I go look around,” he said. “She doesn’t worry about me.”
Lucille couldn’t believe that. Every mother worried about her children, even long after they were grown and gone. “All right. Stop by my shop at lunch time and we’ll get something to eat.”
“How will I know which store is yours?”
“The name of the place is Lacy’s. It’s on Pickax Street.”
“That’s a funny name for a street.”
“A lot of places around here have names related to mines and mining. The people who first came here—well, the first white men—were all miners.
“Were there Native Americans here before that?”
Not “Indians” but “Native Americans.” So politically correct and strangely adult sounding. “The Uncompahgre lived in the area before it was settled.”
He nodded again, focused on the cereal.
“Are you sure you’ll be all right by yourself?” she asked.
He nodded. “I’m used to finding my way around in new places. And Mom says Eureka is pretty small, right?”
“Yes, it’s pretty small.”
“Then I shouldn’t have any problems.”
Where did he get that outsized sense of self-assurance? Not from her. Not from his mother either. Olivia had been shy to the point of being tongue-tied until eighth grade. Even then, she’d never been a social butterfly. Left to her own devices for a day, she’d have retreated to her room to read science fiction, write in her journal, and listen to dark, incomprehensible music.
“There’s a bicycle in the shed out back if you want to use it,” Lucille said.
“Okay.”
They were definitely going to have to work on his manners. “When someone offers you the use of something they own, you should say thank you,” she said.
“Okay.” Pause. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” What the hell had she gotten herself into? “I’d better go now. See you at lunch.” She left him at the table and went to get her purse and her keys. She took one last peek at him before she went out the door. He’d gotten up and was pouring a second bowl of cereal. As if waking up in a house with a grandmother who was a virtual stranger, in a town on the edge of nowhere, was really no big deal at all.
Maggie found the bank and withdrew some cash from the ATM. She didn’t have a lot of money, but it ought to be enough to see her through a few more weeks. Of course, there was always the Steuben, which was insured for $20,000, but it wasn’t exactly a liquid asset. And it was the one good thing she’d taken from her marriage.
Eureka Grocery was a surprisingly well-stocked market with a deli in the back and three check stands by the door. She filled a basket with frozen dinners, canned soup, bread, cereal, and skim milk—the single woman’s shopping list. Add a few tins of cat food and she’d be a full-fledged stereotype.
When she was married, she’d prided herself on her cooking skills; she’d made her own soups and bread, even homemade pasta. Such effort seemed pointless when you had to eat the results alone.
Next door to the market sat a long, low building. Bright red letters in the front window identified it as Lacy’s. A stout blonde in a long, red flowered skirt and black ballet slippers was sweeping the front porch when Maggie approached. “Good morning,” the woman said cheerfully, not pausing in her work but turning to sweep her way toward Maggie. “Come on in and look around. I’ve got a little bit of everything.”
This was no understatement. From her spot just outside the open doorway, Maggie spied a circa 1950s sofa and chair, a gilded mirror, a box of canning jars, three teddy bears, and a mounted elk with only one eye. “I’m looking for some curtains,” she said. “Something to cover a big window.”
The woman—Lacy?—leaned her broom against the porch railing. “I don’t know,” she said. “But let’s go see.”
She led the way into the shop, down narrow aisles lined with everything from old Barbie dolls to sets of Haviland china. Garage sale castoffs sat side by side with what Maggie suspected were valuable antiques.
But she didn’t see so much as an old tablecloth or faded bedspread, much less a set of drapes large enough to cover a wall-wide window.
They reached the back of the shop and a row of six dusty, wine-colored velvet theater seats. Beside them sat an old-fashioned movie projector. “How big a window are you looking to cover?” the woman asked.
“A big one.”
“Then I may have just the thing.” She reached behind the row of seats and dragged out a large cardboard box—the kind that might have once held a washing machine. She opened the top and began pulling out yards and yards of wine-colored velvet. “Theater curtains from the old Ironton Theater,” she said. “Do you think they’d work?”
Maggie grabbed two fistfuls of the velvet and stretched it out before her. It was dusty and a little faded, but still sturdy. And there was certainly plenty of it. “How much?” she asked.
The woman eyed Maggie, then the box of velvet. “Thirty-five dollars.”
“I’ll take it.”
Together, they stuffed the fabric back in the box. “I’m Lucille Theriot, by the way,” the woman said. “I own this place.”
“Maggie Stevens.” Maggie took the offered hand. “Who’s Lacy?”
Lucille laughed. “I have no idea. It was supposed to be Lucy’s, but the sign painter goofed. Come on. Let’s drag this up front.”
All that velvet proved heavier than Maggie had anticipated. By the time they reached the front of the store, both women were red-faced and out of breath. “What . . . brings you . . . to Eureka?” Lucille asked.
Maggie waited a few seconds more before she answered. “My father was Jacob Murphy,” she said. “He left me his place, and I came up from Houston to settle his affairs.”
“Ah. I heard you were coming to visit. Welcome to town.”
“Thank you.”
“Are you trying to cover those windows in his cabin?”
“Just the ones in the bedroom. You’ve seen them?”
“Not exactly. And certainly not the ones in his bedroom.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean . . .”
Lucille laughed. “I’m not saying I wouldn’t have taken him up on the offer if he’d asked. Murph was a good-looking man, and he was only about eight years older than me, but we were just friends. I’m the one who sold him the windows.”
“You did?” Maggie glanced around her, wondering if there was a hardware department she’d missed.
“I bought out an estate over near Rico and the guy was a glazier who had all these odd sizes of windows someone had ordered for a custom home and never built. Murph had mentioned he wanted some new windows for his place, so I hooked him up. Murph always said he owed me for those windows. It was our running joke that someday I’d collect.” Her expression sobered. “It was a big shock when he died. He seemed like the kind who’d go on forever.”
“How did he die? No one told me.” She’d been so consumed with mapping out the details of her father’s life that she hadn’t thought to ask about his death.
“I heard it was a heart attack,” Lucille said. “He was working up at his place, stacking rocks or something, and just keeled over. You could ask Jameso. He’s the one who found him.”
Jameso again. Did the guy make a habit of lurking around the cabin? Why? She fought annoyance—at Jameso, and at her father, for dying before she had a chance to get to know him, and for not letting her be a part of his life while he was alive. After all these years, that rejection still hurt.
True to her claim of having “a little bit of everything,” Lucille unearthed a packet of needles and three spools of black thread to go with the theater curtains. Maggie added a pair of scissors and surveyed the pile. “What the heck am I going to hang these with?” she asked.
“Hardware store up the s
treet sells steel pipe and plumbing fittings,” Lucille said. “That’s the only thing sturdy enough to support these heavy things, plus they’ll cut them to size for you.”
Maggie nodded. After she measured the windows, she’d make another trip. She paid for the purchases with her credit card; then the two women wrestled the box out to the Jeep and Maggie headed back up toward Garnet Mountain, determined to spend the rest of the day looking for the French Mistress Mine and studying whatever papers her father had left behind.
She’d just passed the hot springs when her cell phone erupted with the opening notes of Vivaldi’s “Spring.” Barb. She knew before she glanced at the phone, and guilt washed over her that she hadn’t yet called her best friend. She pulled over onto the side of the road and answered the phone.
“You had better have been held hostage by Yetis or be in bed with some gorgeous, rich stud.”
Barb’s husky drawl filled Maggie with an unexpected wave of homesickness. “I’m sorry I haven’t called,” she said.
“So, no Yetis? And no stud? I’m disappointed in you, woman.”
“Give me a chance. I’ve only been here one day.”
“You must have been busy doing something, if you couldn’t even be bothered to call me.”
“There’s no cell service at my dad’s place. And no landline.” No electricity or cable or Internet . . . Barb would be calling for men in white coats to take Maggie away when Maggie told her she planned to stay.
“Back up. You’re staying at your dad’s place?”
“Yes, it’s a cabin on a remote mountain—a real cabin, not some real-estate developer’s idea of a weekend getaway for the Ralph Lauren set. This is an old mining shack my dad remodeled.”
“Uh-huh. And what about the gold mine? And the two vehicles?”
“There’s no gold in the mine.” Bob had been very definite about that. “And the vehicles are an old Jeep and a snowmobile.”
“A snowmobile!” Barb’s laughter rang loud in Maggie’s ear. “Oh, darling, it sounds like you are having a real adventure. What’s the town like—Eureka or whatever the name is?”
“Eureka is beautiful. Not very big, but what’s here is lovely. Gorgeous scenery. Very different from Houston. Very . . . rugged.” The mountains, but the people, too, had an informality and individuality she hadn’t encountered before. As if living isolated from crowds and city conventions had allowed each person to assert whatever aspects of her personality she wanted, whether as a motorcycle-riding lawyer or as chicken-raising lesbian café owners. She smiled at the thought.
“You sound as if you like it.” Barb sounded amused.
“I don’t know what I think, really. It’s all so different.”
“Maybe different is what you need.”
“Or maybe if I stay here I’ll end up as crazy as my father was.”
“Was he crazy?”
“I don’t know,” Maggie admitted. “I’ve been here less than twenty-four hours and I’ve learned he may have had a drinking problem. He probably never remarried after he and my mom split, and he apparently never had any other children. He was eccentric enough to live up on a mountain all by himself, yet he seems to have had plenty of friends. I met a man who said Murph almost killed him, then a few weeks later saved his life, and the librarian apparently doesn’t like him because he kept a library book out for five years just to annoy her.”
“He sounds like a really interesting guy,” Barb said. “And I must say, you’ve learned a lot in one day.”
“Everything I learn only leads to more questions. The only person he seems to have told about me is his lawyer. He went to all the trouble to leave me everything he owned, but why?”
“It’s sort of traditional for people to leave their belongings to their only living relative. You qualify.”
“Nothing else about my father or the way he lived was traditional.”
“Maybe he felt guilty about abandoning you and your mother, and this is an attempt to make up for it. Guilt can be a powerful motivator, you know.”
Such as her own guilt that she hadn’t done more to try to make contact with her father after she was grown. She’d vowed plenty of times to look for him but had never done so. “The more I find out, the worse I feel,” she said.
“So keep looking until you know everything,” Barb said.
“I think it’s probably impossible at this point to know everything, since my dad isn’t here to tell me.”
“Then keep searching until you find enough to make you feel better. Him leaving you and your mom was a shitty thing to do, but from what little you’ve told me so far, it doesn’t sound like he was a complete asshole. That has to be worth something.”
“I guess you’re right. I’m going to stay here a little while longer anyway.”
“Let me know if you need me to send you anything from Houston,” Barb said. “Better yet, let me know when I can come visit.”
“Give me another week or so to get settled; then I’d love to see you.” The thought of having Barb here to bolster her spirits—and maybe her nerve, if need be—cheered her.
“Is there anything interesting to do in Eureka, Colorado?” Barb asked. “Besides look at the gorgeous scenery?”
“There’s a hot springs. Clothing optional.”
“Ooh, now that does sound interesting. We must try it out when I visit. Any good-looking men?”
Maggie thought of Jameso. “I’ve been too busy to look for men,” she said. “Why would I want one, anyway? The only ones I’ve known have been more trouble than they’re worth.”
“True. But they have their uses.”
“I don’t have any use for one right now.”
“Have fun solving the mystery of your father,” Barb said. “It will be good for you to be on your own in a new place—one without so many unfortunate memories.”
What about the good memories she had of Houston—and even of her marriage? There had been some, B.F.D.—before Francine Dupree. But maybe Barb was right. After her divorce she’d wanted to travel to exotic places in order to gain a new perspective on and new ideas for her life. Eureka wasn’t Tuscany or Nepal, but it felt worlds away from Houston and her problems there.
Cassie had not slept well, and this translated into a fouler than usual mood that made most patrons avoid speaking to her. They approached the counter warily and handed over their library cards and books to be checked out or turned in without comment. Word spread through book readers that Cassie was “having one of her days,” and those who could, decided to wait until another time to visit the library.
A city council member had dared to complain once about Cassie’s surly attitude toward the patrons and taxpayers who were, after all, paying her salary, and had felt the full brunt of the Wynock wrath. He had endured a stern lecture on the role of the Wynocks in the community, the fact that the land upon which the library sat had once been Wynock land, and the sacrifices Cassie herself had made to make the library the thriving community resource it was today. If patrons wanted the equivalent of a cocktail hostess behind the desk, they could certainly have one, but she believed they were better off with a woman who knew the collections like the back of her hand and the history of the county better than anyone else. This library was more than the building and the books within its walls. This library was Cassie Wynock’s life, and he would do well not to forget it.
The man had left, cowed and quiet, and the townspeople had accepted Cassie and her moods as much a part of the library as the uncomfortable chairs at the computer stations and the dusty collection of birds’ and hornets’ nest in the front display case. Cassie enjoyed the respect she felt was her due and things ran smoothly.
So she wasn’t pleased when, shortly after lunch a skinny boy with a head as round as a light bulb and wire-framed glasses sliding down the end of his nose ambled up to the counter and stood there, staring at her. Cassie ignored him, and he shifted from one foot to the other, watery blue gaze fixed on her. He cleared h
is throat. Cassie continued to stare fixedly at her computer screen, though she was so distracted by the boy’s strange presence she couldn’t focus on the words printed there.
“Ma’am, could you help me?” he asked.
With her most forbidding scowl fixed in place, Cassie turned to look at him. She definitely didn’t recognize him. His was such a striking collection of physical attributes, she couldn’t have forgotten him. “Yes?” she asked frostily.
“Do you have any books on the Native Americans who lived in this area?”
She’d expected some inquiry about video games or graphic novels or use of the computers—the usual interests of boys his age. “Shouldn’t you be in school?” she asked.
“No. Do you have any books on Native Americans?”
“To which Native Americans are you referring?” she asked.
“All of them that used to live here,” he said. He seemed completely uncowed by her forbidding tone and manner, a novelty in itself.
She stood. “You may find some books in the Juvenile Nonfiction area.”
“I don’t want kids’ books,” he said. “I want real books. History books.” He glanced around him. “Do you have a local history section?”
Intrigued, Cassie led him to the history collection and the half-dozen books about the Uncompahgre tribe and their impact on the area. “These books may interest you, but you’ll need a library card to check them out,” she said.
He pulled a biography of Chief Ouray off the shelf and opened it, holding it close to his face. “You can give me one,” he said. “I’m going to be living here now.”
She tried to hide her surprise. She’d assumed he was a visitor, perhaps from one of the families who spent the summers in one of the guest cabins along the river. “Where will you be living?”
“With my mother and grandmother—Olivia and Lucille Theriot.”
