by Cindy Myers
“I’m getting used to it.” The silence still bothered her, but it was getting better. “I’m making a curtain for the bedroom window so the light won’t wake me in the morning.”
“Yeah, Lucille mentioned she’d sold you the old theater curtains. Murph would have got a kick out of that.”
“He would? Why?”
“He used to say he didn’t need movies or television when he had the view out his windows. He would have thought theater curtains were appropriate.”
“You said the other night he wasn’t really your friend, but you seem to know him as well as anyone. So what was your relationship?”
His gaze shifted. “Do you really want to go into this?” he asked.
“Yes, I never met my father, so the only way I can learn what he was like is through other people’s impressions of him.”
“Fair enough. As long as you don’t expect to hear only the good things.”
“I don’t. Why should I?”
“All right, then. There were a lot of things I really liked about Murph. He had a good sense of humor. He was smart. He could be really generous when he wanted to be. But he had a selfish streak, too. I didn’t always like the way he treated people.” His eyes met hers, and she felt the heat of that gaze, the emotion behind it. As if he was saying he didn’t approve of the way her father had treated her.
But that was ridiculous. Jameso might have heard some things from Reggie, but he didn’t really know her. “But you kept coming around. Lucille told me you were the one who found him . . . when he died.”
“Yeah.” The creases around his eyes deepened. “I think he went quick. There weren’t any signs of a struggle. It looked like he was working and it hit him. The coroner said it was a massive heart attack. He probably died instantly.”
She sensed he was trying to comfort her, and the gesture touched her. “What happened to him?” she asked. “I mean, was there a funeral? Is he buried somewhere?” It embarrassed her that she didn’t know these things, that she hadn’t thought to ask them before.
“He wanted to be cremated. A bunch of us took his ashes up on top of the mountain here and scattered them. I guess we should have waited for you, but we didn’t know.”
“Of course you didn’t know. It’s all right, really.”
“There were a lot of things in his past Murph never talked about,” Jameso said. “I think he had a lot of regrets.”
“Don’t we all?” If she had a chance to live life over, would she have spent so many years devoted to making Carter’s life easy? She’d thought keeping him happy was the key to her happiness as well, as if shaping her desires to match his was the sign of an ideal marriage. For years she hadn’t even realized she had different opinions. She felt sick to her stomach remembering.
“Do you need help with those curtains?” Jameso asked, interrupting her self-flagellation.
“Help? Oh, no. I’m fine.”
“How are you going to hang them?” he asked. “All that velvet’s got to be heavy.”
“Lucille suggested I use pipe and plumbing fittings.”
“Good idea. You’ll need tools to hang them.”
“I’m sure my dad has some around here somewhere.” She had no idea what fittings to buy or how she’d mount them on the wall, but wasn’t part of being independent figuring that kind of stuff out?
“It would take me about half an hour to do the whole thing,” he said. “You should let me help.”
“Only if you let me pay you.” Hiring someone was different from accepting favors from a man she hardly knew.
“Fine. I’ll get the pipe and fittings and bring them back up here tomorrow.” He started toward the stairs. “I’ll go measure it now.”
“Don’t you have something else you need to do?” she asked, trailing after him. “A job?”
“The Jeep tours only run on weekends this time of year. Skiing season hasn’t started yet. I only tend bar in the evenings. I have time.”
Time and an interest in snooping as well? He stopped beside the bed and surveyed the empty metal box and the papers spread out around it. “Murph never did pay that traffic ticket,” he said, plucking the citation from the pile of documents. He glanced over his shoulder at her. “If he didn’t agree with a law or rule, he took the attitude that he didn’t have to obey it.”
“How did he stay out of jail?”
“I’m not sure he always did.”
Maggie watched, afraid of disturbing his stillness. He was such a hard man to read; she couldn’t tell if he was sad or angry.
He tossed the citation onto the bed. “I guess it doesn’t matter now.” He turned his attention to the window. “Where’s your tape measure?”
“I don’t have one,” she said. She handed him the ball of twine. “Use this. You can cut it to size and measure it when you get back to town.”
“Clever.” He handed her one end of the string. “Hold this against the window frame over there.”
He stretched the twine across the window and cut it, then began winding it into a ball. “I see you’re making yourself at home here. Does that mean you’re going to stay?”
“For a while. I don’t know how long.”
“When you make up your mind, let me know.”
She stared at him. “Why? What difference does it make to you?”
He pocketed the ball of twine. “There’s a pool in town on whether or not you’re going to stick around.”
“A pool?”
He shrugged. “It’s a small town. We take our entertainment where we can find it.” He started down the stairs.
“Wait,” she called after him. “How did you bet?”
“Oh, I’ll never tell.” With a wave, he headed out the door. She stared after him, not sure whether to curse or laugh.
Chapter 7
“Wake up, Cassie. I brought you something.”
Cassie started blinking, then hurriedly sat up. “I was reading,” she said, frowning at the young woman on the other side of the checkout counter. She might, in fact, have fallen asleep for a moment. It was to be expected, given her insomnia last night. “What do you want?”
“Janelle made Linzer torte this morning and I brought you a piece. I know how much you like it.” Danielle held out a square cardboard to-go container. The girl had a lush ripeness about her—all rosy cheeks and shining hair, perfect teeth, and impressive bosom. Cassie felt shriveled and aged in her presence.
“What do you want?” she asked again, standing and accepting the container.
At least Danielle didn’t try to pretend the torte wasn’t a bribe. “You have old issues of the Eureka Miner here, don’t you?”
“If that’s what you’re after, why don’t you go to the paper? I’m sure they keep back issues there.”
“Rick went to Montrose for the afternoon and the office is locked up tight.”
“What is in the paper that you couldn’t wait for him to return?” As she spoke, Cassie came out from behind the counter and led the way to the shelves at the back of the room where the newspapers were stored. Nowadays, most modern libraries scanned the issues onto computer disks, but Eureka still kept the old issues in oversized portfolios stacked on flat shelves.
“I need a picture of Murphy. The one taken after he won the Hard Rock competition for the third time, year before last. I thought I could copy it on your copier; then I can scan it into my computer at home and Photoshop it into something that looks like a real photograph.”
Jake again. The man had been dead a month and still he wouldn’t leave Cassie alone. “Why do you need a picture of Jake?” she asked.
“For the memorial.” At Cassie’s blank look, Danielle nudged her. “You know, the service we’re having for him at the Last Dollar. I know Lucille told you about it. It’s at seven tomorrow night. You’ll be there, won’t you?”
“Why would I want to be there?”
Danielle’s bright eyes clouded. “I thought Murphy was your friend. The two of you dated
for a while, didn’t you?”
“I don’t know where you heard that, but it’s a lie.” They had gone out exactly twice. Well, three times if you counted the night she’d had him to her house for dinner—a night she still blushed to think about. She pushed the awful memory away. “Jacob Murphy meant nothing to me,” she said.
“Okay. You can come to the memorial or not, makes no difference to me.” Danielle turned her attention to the papers. “That would have been August. If you show me which folder, I’ll look through them and you can go back to, um, reading.”
“They’re labeled.” Cassie indicated the writing on the spine of each folder. “When you find the picture, let me copy it. I don’t want you tearing the newsprint.” She retreated to her desk and opened the takeout container. A six-inch square of Linzer torte rested on a paper doily, the cherry filling oozing between squares of crisp pastry, sugar sparkling on the top. There was even a little plastic fork alongside.
Stifling a moan, Cassie dug into the torte. Janelle made the best pastry in the county, perhaps in the state. But the Linzer torte was Cassie’s favorite. It tasted just like the ones her grandmother had made when Cassie was a girl. She could remember sitting at the long, oilcloth-covered table in the kitchen of the Queen Anne house, eating slices of Linzer torte after school and listening to her grandmother complain about yet another business deal of her grandfather’s gone wrong.
The table had disappeared somewhere over the years, and Cassie had taken for granted that the Linzer tortes had died with her grandmother. And then Janelle and Danielle had opened the Last Dollar and the tortes had reappeared. Cassie would give a tooth to know how Janelle had gotten hold of her grandmother’s recipe.
“I found the picture.” Danielle’s voice rang out in the afternoon silence of the library.
Cassie pressed the back of the fork into the last crumbs of the torte and slid it into her mouth before she stood and made her way back to the paper. “It’s a great picture, isn’t it?” Danielle asked.
It was a great picture. Jake stood with the big sledgehammer over one shoulder, grinning at the camera. He looked strong and healthy and so handsome Cassie’s heart ached.
“It’s hard to believe he’s gone,” Danielle said softly. “I still expect him to walk into the café some morning and order breakfast.”
When Cassie first heard Jake had died, she hadn’t believed it. She’d invested so much in hating him, and in plotting revenge against him, that his death had left her feeling deflated. There was unfinished business between them, and now she could never know satisfaction.
“Why are you having a memorial service for him now?” she asked. “He’s been gone a month and his ashes are scattered.”
“We thought it would be nice for his daughter,” Danielle said. “Have you met her?”
Cassie shook her head and began twisting the brads to remove the paper from its folder.
“She came into the café this morning. She looks a lot like him, with his eyes and his hair. I meant to invite her to the service then, but I was so caught up staring at her, I forgot, so I had to send Jameso up to Murphy’s place to tell her. Reggie says she never even knew her father. Can you imagine?”
“Can I imagine Jake abandoning a wife and baby without another thought? Yes, I can.” The man she knew was just that coldhearted. Cassie carried the paper to the copy machine and positioned the picture facedown on its surface. “Do you want this original size or enlarged?”
“One of each, I think,” Danielle said. “It is awful that Murph left his family, but he obviously had regrets. He left her everything and he didn’t have to do that.”
Cassie made a scoffing noise. “He left her a worthless mine and an old shack. I doubt she thinks he did her any favors.”
“Murph had a beautiful place!” Danielle protested. “He could have pretended she didn’t exist and no one would have been the wiser. Besides, she doesn’t seem to harbor any hard feelings against him.”
“She might feel differently if she really knew him.” Cassie handed the copies to Danielle. “That will be fifty cents,” she said.
Danielle hesitated. Cassie waited for her to point out that the Linzer torte sold for four dollars in the café, but instead, she dug in the pocket of her too-tight jeans and pulled out two quarters. “Thanks for your help,” she said. “I hope you can make it to the memorial tomorrow.”
“Maybe I’ll be there.” She wanted to see what Jake’s daughter was like. And if the purpose of the service was to introduce the woman to her father, Cassie had a few stories she ought to hear.
Maggie spent the next morning in Eureka, washing clothes at the Laundromat and running errands. When she returned to the cabin shortly after noon, Winston was waiting on the front porch. She pushed past him and fetched the Lorna Doones. Her father must have bought the cookies by the case, but doling them out three and four a day, they wouldn’t last forever. She’d have to see if the grocery store kept them in stock.
Then again, she probably wouldn’t be here long enough to run out. After she was gone, Winston would have to go back to eating grass or brush or whatever it was bighorn sheep lived on.
Upstairs, the bedroom window was now framed by the red velvet drapes. Jameso had done a good job hanging them, even fastening a rod on each panel near the top to make it easier to pull the curtains open and closed. She’d thank him when she saw him tonight and make sure he sent her a bill for the supplies and labor.
She spent the rest of the day cleaning the cabin, scrubbing floors and dusting furniture and sorting through cabinets and closets. She boxed up most of her dad’s old clothes to take to Lucille, who probably knew some local charity that could use the old shirts, coats, and blue jeans. She kept the jean jacket to ward off the chill. When she was done, the cabin felt emptier. Lighter. Maybe she’d ask Barb to ship a few of her own belongings from storage, just to make things more comfortable while she was here.
At five o’clock, she dressed in the gabardine suit she’d worn on the plane and drove into Eureka. She was less nervous negotiating the steep curves of the road, less worried about slipping over the edge as the route became more and more familiar. Driving back up tonight in the dark might be a different story, but she’d avoid thinking about that for now.
There was already a crowd at the café by the time she arrived. She was surprised by how many people she recognized: Danielle and Janelle, of course, and Bob and Jameso. Maggie joined Reggie and his wife, Katya, and Lucille at a table on one side of the room.
But her attention was drawn to the front of the room, to a slightly grainy portrait of a man with silvered hair and a thick moustache and brows. He stood with a large sledgehammer balanced on one shoulder as if it weighed no more than a golf club, and he looked right into the camera with a wide smile that was so warm and genuine anyone looking at it would have to smile back. Maggie stared at it, almost overwhelmed with longing and regret. This was the face of her childhood fantasies, grown older with years, but in so many ways unchanged.
“Murph was a handsome man,” Lucille said.
“Did he have a girlfriend?” Maggie asked.
“No one serious,” Lucille said. “He dated a few women, but nothing ever long term. He was friendly, but he was never the type to let anyone get too close.”
“Yes, I guess not, living like he did, way up there alone.” She fell silent, wondering again what sadness drove her father to separate himself from others that way.
“I take it you’re not married,” Lucille said. “Not that it’s any of my business, but I noticed you don’t wear a ring.”
Maggie thought of the wedding band on the chain around her neck. “No, I’m divorced.”
“Me, too. Though mine was a long time ago.”
“Mine was just a few months ago.” She knew she wasn’t supposed to feel any shame for that. Divorce was as common as coffee shops these days, and this one hadn’t been her idea anyway. But it still rankled to admit her marriage had failed—that
she had failed.
“I didn’t mean to pry,” Lucille said.
“No, it’s all right.” The older woman inspired confession. “He left me for another woman.”
“Ah.” Lucille nodded. “Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. It does get better with time. The hurt, I mean. I moved to California after my husband left me. It helped, not living where I might run into him or his new wife in the grocery store or coffee shop.”
Maggie could be sure she wouldn’t run into Carter or Francine in Eureka, Colorado. The thought of either one of them cruising down the town’s dirt streets in Carter’s convertible BMW almost made her smile.
“Uh-oh.” Lucille frowned.
“What’s wrong?”
Lucille’s gaze shifted across the room, then back to Maggie. “Don’t look now, but here comes trouble,” she muttered.
Maggie turned to follow Lucille’s gaze and saw a small, thin woman with short, iron-gray hair coming toward her. The woman moved in a straight line, the crowd parting for her, and all Maggie could think of was a destroyer speeding toward a fight.
Cassie had fully intended to stay away from the memorial service. She had no desire to listen to people sing Jake Murphy’s praises. She went straight home from work and decided to spend the evening cleaning house, to wash Jake out of her mind.
Once she’d mopped the floors and polished the glass, she decided to dust the bookcases. That was her downfall. The shelves were filled with her collection of family albums and volumes related to the history of Eureka County. While she’d donated some duplicates and other books to the library, this private collection contained her most valuable volumes. These were the documents that testified to her family’s importance in the history of the area.
But looking at those books reminded her of the book Jake had stolen. It was one of the volumes she’d donated to the library, written by her great-uncle. Against library policy, she’d allowed him to take the rare book home with him, and she’d never seen it again. The theft of this part of her history hurt almost as much as his rejection of her as a woman.
