“Do you like it?” I asked eagerly. “Isn’t Of Mice and Men amazing?”
“I read some and it’s ok, I guess. Sad, kind of.” She looked at the cover. “Yeah, I finished it last night. It’s really sad.”
I looked closely at her, at her eyes. She was about to cry.
Marley blinked hard and put down my phone on the learning center’s scarred table with a big thunk which most assuredly shook some more glass loose from the screen. “I’ll help you pick something to wear. You’re too clueless to do it on your own.”
“I’m not clueless! Well, ok, yes, about clothes I may be slightly clueless.”
“You totally are,” she said, looking disdainfully at my shirt. “I have all my stuff in garbage bags and I still look better than you.”
Garbage bags? I rubbed my hand over my lips to try to mask the expression of pity that would have made her get angry. “You do look a lot better. So, what should I wear?”
She stood up. “I can’t think in here.” No, of course she couldn’t think in the environment where she was supposed to be learning. “Let’s go,” she told me.
“Uh, I don’t think I’m supposed to…”
“You’re seriously looking around like someone overheard me?” Marley was already walking out of the door and I hurried after her, ignoring the curious gazes of the other tutors.
“Marley. Marley!” I whisper-hissed in the lobby, but she acted like she didn’t notice. By the time I made it into the parking lot, she was already at the door of my truck, and since something had happened to the lock so that it no longer exactly fastened, she was able to let herself in. “What are you doing?”
“I want to get out of here. I want to see your bookstore.”
I looked at her across the front seat, then looked back at the learning center. “Really? You do?”
“You yak about it all the time. Yeah, I want to see it,” she said, and settled into the seat.
I glanced one last time toward the corner of the building where Linda’s office faced out onto the parking lot. She wasn’t in there today, but I still felt like eyes were on me. “Ok, let’s go. Put on your seatbelt,” I told her. I tried to make myself small and invisible as I drove through the lot.
“You would be the worst criminal ever,” Marley pointed out. “I bet you’d turn yourself in.”
“I did once,” I agreed. “I took two dollars out of the cash register to buy a popsicle and I felt so bad I ratted myself out to my dad and gave it to him to eat.”
“Amateur.”
“I guess so.” I waited a beat. “So, have you forgiven me or something? I’m really glad you’re talking to me.”
She looked through the window. “It’s better not to be there. I mean it’s better not to be with my mom,” she finally answered. “I guess it wasn’t your fault.” Then she muttered something.
“What? I didn’t hear you.”
“I said it was hard to stay mad at you. You keep being nice to me.”
“Well, I like you a lot. You’re my friend and I don’t have a ton of friends,” I explained. “I always say stuff that makes people mad or I act all awkward. I’m glad we’re friends again.”
“Yeah,” she agreed. “We’re friends.” Then she muttered something else, but this time, I heard it: “I’m glad, too.”
“So this is the famous bookstore,” Marley announced when I let her in through the front door, so she could have the experience of a customer. She turned in a circle, looking around. “It’s kind of a shithole.”
“It is not! It needs some spit and polish, as my dad used to say, but it’s still warm and cozy.”
“Not warm.” She shivered.
“It will be, once the new furnace goes in! And it’s already cozy. Look.” I led her over to the counter. “See? My dad had a little step built behind the register, because my mom was petite. I could stand on it too, but I don’t need to because I’m much taller.”
Marley eyed me. “Sure, you’re a giant.”
“And see?” I showed her the door frame into the back rooms. “This is where my dad would mark my height. I am pretty tall,” I told her.
“No. Show me everything.”
I did, taking her on the grand tour, which didn’t last too long because the building wasn’t very big. I showed her all the improvements I had been nattering about at the learning center while she wasn’t speaking to me, but, as it turned out, she had been listening. And she kept listening as I pulled out volume after volume, making a towering pile of books that I was planning to give to her before I realized that they weren’t mine to give away anymore.
“You’re really into reading,” she said, looking doubtfully at the stack I’d created.
“I am.” I sighed happily. “Books are wonderful. Every emotion in the whole human experience is in these pages. Friends and boyfriends and new places and adventures and ideas, it’s all in there.”
Marley glanced around. “If you loved this place so much, why did you let it get so crappy?” she asked me.
“Things happen, over time.”
“But putting in that ugly fountain didn’t happen over time. You said it was really expensive and then it ruined the floors, right?” she prodded.
Did she miss nothing? “My dad made a mistake about that.”
“And he bought the coffee machine you have to had hauled away, and he didn’t fix the roof so you have to do plaster repairs,” she pointed out, and then went on with a list of deferred maintenance items that had caused damage and purchases my dad had made that hadn’t worked out. Luckily, I hadn’t mentioned to her the extra mortgage, the line of credit, the unpaid utilities, and the back taxes.
“My dad made some mistakes,” I said again. “He had big ideas, but he really wasn’t great about keeping up with things. He was really sad after my mom died, and he had trouble focusing.” As I said the words to excuse him, I also felt a rush of anger at him.
“Hm.”
“My grandpa was the one with the business sense,” I went on. “He died when I was sixteen and then my dad took charge.”
“And you.”
“I guess,” I conceded. “I had to try to be practical, because sometimes my dad wasn’t.” More anger, and I shook my head to push it away.
She picked up a copy of Little Bear from the revolving shelf of the children’s section. “Yeah, that’s what I had to be, too. Practical. Like, with my mom.”
“How so?”
“You know, food and stuff. I had to be practical about getting it and having meals, and, like, going to school. She wasn’t good about stuff like that, like your dad.”
But Marley didn’t sound angry about it; she just sounded sad. “Do you miss her? Do you miss living with her?”
She shrugged. “The place where I’m living now, they do it more regular. That’s probably better.”
Regular school. Regular meals.
“Are you going to cry?” she asked suspiciously.
“Totally not.” I sniffed. “It’s really dusty in here.”
“I said it was a shithole,” she agreed. “We should talk about your clothes now because you can’t go to dinner with your neighbor looking like you crawled out from under the reject pile of the Salvation Army donation bin.”
“I don’t look like that.” I glanced down at my coat and jeans, which seemed fine, but also at the shirt I had on. It was one of my old office blouses that might have seen better days. It had been a mistake to wear it while I worked to remove the burnt portions of my kitchen. “I’m planning to change out of this. Is there really a reject pile of donations at the Salvation Army?”
“Here.” She grabbed the ends of my shirt and tied it right under my breasts, then undid the top two buttons, also. “Much better.”
I squirmed nervously. “You don’t think it’s a little cold for this? Or that it’s too much?”
“You’re not showing as much as I am,” she pointed out. “Anyway, what are you afraid of? Slut shaming?”
&n
bsp; I winced. “Really, I’m afraid of anything with the word ‘slut’ attached to it.”
“If someone says something to you, tell them to go fu—screw themselves and put their eyes elsewhere,” she told me. “Because you look really good.”
“Do I?”
Marley nodded. “Awesome.” And then she let me hug her, too.
Chapter 12
“I like your outfit.”
I looked down at what I had come up with: not as much skin as Marley had recommended, but a least thirty percent more than I usually displayed, and I struggled not to tug on the fabric to cover myself more. “Thank you. I didn’t know if you’d notice.”
“I grew up with four sisters,” Gunnar pointed out. “I notice clothes, hair, makeup. They trained me well.”
I thought about what I had been wearing before tonight. “I guess I don’t notice too much, myself. I also guess that if I’m working in the front of the bookstore for you, I should put in more of an effort. I used to at work, I mean, where I used to work in Chicago.” I thought of my blazers, still lined up in my closet in the cottage, and remembered Gaby’s horror when she’d seen them. “Maybe those clothes wouldn’t look right, either.”
“Wear whatever you want. I always think you look fine, I was just saying that you look especially nice tonight.”
“Oh. Thank you.” I should have worn something with more coverage; I was so uncomfortable, I didn’t know how I’d get through the evening. But really, it wasn’t just the clothes. We were going over to Gunnar’s friend Jory’s house, the one he shared with his fiancée Meredith and some dogs, apparently. My stomach had twisted into a large knot when I thought about all the opportunities for me to disgrace myself: I could insult Jory, the fiancée, or both; I could fall and need to go to the hospital; I could start another fire. The possibilities were endless.
Jory and Meredith lived in an old, gracious farmhouse with green shutters, next to an ancient barn. “It’s beautiful,” I said, as we steered down their long driveway. “Wow.”
“I hope my house turns out like this,” Gunnar agreed and the car came to a halt.
“No, the Feeney place will be even better,” I said with certainty. “It’s going to be amazing.”
“Thanks, munch,” he said as he got out. Munch? Did that have something to do with how much I ate? I drew in my stomach just in case and opened the car door, hitting Gunnar with it. Hard.
“I was coming to open it for you,” he said, grimacing and rubbing his abs. “Four sisters, remember? They also drilled me in manners.”
“Sorry. Sorry, I—” But at that moment, the door to the farmhouse opened, and three enormous dogs came hurtling out, slavering and barking with their lips curled back, looking exactly like they were going for our throats. I screamed and held out my arms to fend off the attack.
“Surfrider! Venice! El Matador!” a woman called, running out after them. “Down. Down, right now! Jory!”
Jory, a man and not a fourth dog, jogged past her, his huge stride eating up the ground. He hauled the dogs off and their crazed licking finally stopped. They had been happy to see us, not angry. And I was covered in slobber and hair.
“They get excited,” Jory explained. “Sit!”
All three dogs immediately sat. When he said it like that, I almost did, too.
Gunnar was laughing. “Man, your dogs are wild. They remind me of you, before you met Meredith.” He smiled at me. “Thanks for protecting me,” he said.
“What?”
“You stepped in front and took the worst of the licking. You saved me from the hounds.”
“I’m so, so sorry,” the woman said. “I’m Meredith. You must be Hallie and I’m glad to meet you.” She surveyed me, the wet patches of spit, the fur, the dirt from their paws. “You may need to borrow something to wear,” she said. “Bad dogs!”
Their downcast looks fooled me none. They were demons.
After all my consternation about an outfit, I ended up in Meredith’s clothes, which ended up being nicer than what I had on previously. Sadly, yanking the new sweater over my ponytail electrified it, and it got even larger than normal.
“Is your hair curly?” Meredith asked me, eyes wide as she saw the back of my head. “Jory has really curly hair, too. When he lets it grow, it’s really…” She trailed off, searching for an appropriate word. “Voluminous,” she finished finally.
“I have to battle it straight to keep it tamed,” I admitted. “And I have it long, because I think the weight makes it lie flatter. Not so…voluminous.”
Meredith nodded like she understood my issue, which I was sure she didn’t, not with the soft, tamed waves and loose curls which grew out of her own head. But she was very nice, and she did her best to make me feel at home in her beautiful farmhouse. She had Jory had moved in together after only a little time of dating, it sounded like, which was a risky decision but seemed to have worked for them. At least, they were totally in love. He couldn’t take his eyes or his hands off her, and the PDA was thick.
It was also slightly embarrassing. I looked at the chandelier as Jory grabbed Meredith’s hand and kissed her palm before she went to get me another fork to replace the one I’d dropped, that one of their hell hounds had then run off with.
“They’re usually much better behaved,” she assured us.
“No, they’re not. We’re working on it,” Jory said. “In the off-season, I’m going to train them in the downtime around our own training.”
“The guys on offensive line have been staying in Michigan to work together, rather than taking off for somewhere else over the winter,” his fiancée explained to me as she handed me a new utensil. “Are you going to do that again, Gunnar?”
There was just a half-second of extra time before he answered her, and as he did, he looked down at the plate of delicious food that Meredith had cooked instead of meeting her eyes. “I’ll be here,” he said. He hadn’t lied; he just hadn’t told the whole truth about what he would be doing in the off-season.
At that moment, I happened to look at Jory’s face. He knows, I thought. He knows that Gunnar is retiring. Jory turned and looked back at me and nodded slightly, and I realized that he wasn’t going to say anything, either. Then Meredith tilted her head as she reached below the table to push at one of the mutts, and he swooped to kiss the exposed swath of skin on her neck, making her giggle. I looked up at the chandelier again, embarrassed, and Gunnar laughed.
Despite my ruined clothes, the unfortunate expansion of my hair, and my general nervousness around new people, I felt like the dinner went well. Meredith asked a lot about the bookstore, and said she would stop by as soon as it opened. “Gunnar said that you also work as a tutor,” she told me. “He said that you keep really busy.”
“I guess I do,” I said, glancing over at Gunnar, who smiled at me. “Yes, I’ve been tutoring a high school girl, Marley.”
“High school? She’s probably around my brother’s age,” Meredith said, sounding eager. “We could introduce—”
“No!” I interrupted. “No, I don’t think Marley would like him.”
“She means that Marley doesn’t like most people. Any people, besides Hallie,” Gunnar explained. “She’s going through a hard time. She just got placed in foster care, again.”
“Oh,” Meredith said, looking distressed. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I’m working on helping her more,” I said. “I’m applying to be a foster parent so that she can live with me.”
All three of them stared at me. “You are?” Gunnar asked.
I nodded. “Linda, my boss at the tutoring center, is helping me. She knows a lot about the system and she knows a lot of people too, so it may work out. I hope it will, because Marley really needs someone.”
“Taking care of a teenager is a huge responsibility,” Meredith said.
“She raised her brother, more or less,” Jory explained. “She knows what she’s talking about.”
“I don’t,” I admi
tted. “I really have no idea what I’m getting into, except that I know she needs someone permanent. Maybe it could be me.” I looked down at the table, embarrassed at the tears that had suddenly welled up in my eyes.
“I think that’s great,” Gunnar said. He reached and touched my hand, clenched on my lap. “I think that’s very impressive. I know you’d do a great job, too.”
“Really?” I thought of all the things that I’d done wrong lately, from losing the store, to not being able to secure a new job in my old field, to breaking my roof, to setting my kitchen on fire. The list was long. “Do you really think I could do it?”
“If anyone could, you could. You’re one of the most determined people I’ve ever met, and nothing gets you down for long. Most people would have freaked if their house almost burned down, but you rebounded right away, and you got most of the smell out, too.”
“What happened to your house?” Meredith asked, her eyes wide, and Gunnar gave her a brief explanation of my ancient appliances and the wiring that had been done by my grandpa’s friend Lew who was the postmaster and did only did electrical on the side. Maybe he should have hired someone with a license.
While Gunnar talked, I thought about Marley living with me in that cottage with the charred hole in the wall and the windows that whistled with wind. Of course, I hadn’t mentioned my plan to her yet, in case it didn’t happen, but I didn’t know how she’d react when I did tell her. I had some work to do with her and some work to do on my house. I looked over at Gunnar, and he smiled at me. But he thought I could do it. I bet I could, too.
We finally escaped from the dogs in the driveway as we said goodnight and got into Gunnar’s car. “Jory liked you,” Gunnar mentioned, and backed up carefully as his friend corralled his three beasts.
“How do you know?”
“You pretty much always know where you stand with him. He said, ‘I like her,’ so it was very clear.” He laughed. “Meredith wants to come over and take a tour of my house. She said she knows someone who could help get furniture and stuff, maybe even help push the construction along. Would you mind if that woman came and looked at your cottage first?”
The Last Whistle Page 20
