The Corner of Forever and Always

by Lia Riley

  “Was that the whole story?”

  “Of course not. She skipped out the part where he’d told me he was divorced. Why are you even asking?”

  “Because I know you. And I know you’d never do something like that. And after you left, I looked up the article she’d posted on the Back Fence and found the jerk’s name. And so I looked that up, and there was an entire section of Auditions.com devoted to what a skeezeball he was.”

  “You really are a super sleuth.”

  “I know my sister. And to know you is to love you. But if you’re going to live here, I want you to be happy. Beau’s a good guy and he’s offering a path.”

  “I was too scared to see it.”

  “You want him.” Not a question.

  “More than anything.”

  “So why are you still here talking to me? Go get him.”

  A motorcycle roared up the street, the engine cutting off in front of her house.

  Pepper crawled from the blanket fort to the window and peered through a gap in the curtains. “Looks like he beat you to the punch.”

  Tuesday gripped the closest quilt. “What am I going to do?”

  “Be honest. The real question is what am I going to do? I don’t want to stick around here for any makeup sex.”

  “You really think we’ll make up?”

  “Yes, and now I have to go hop the fence. I’m sneaking out the back door and climbing up on your garbage can. If you hear something, it’s not a raccoon on steroids.”

  “Wait…”

  The doorbell rang.

  “Bye.” Pepper was gone in a blink.

  Tuesday crawled out, took a deep breath, and opened the door.

  “I have to tell you something,” Beau said abruptly. His chest rose and fell in an erratic tempo, his eyes wild.

  “I wasn’t sure you were ever going to speak to me again. I can go first if you like. I wanted to say that—”

  He raised a hand, silencing her. “Flick is missing.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  “What do you mean missing?” Tuesday’s brown eyes were wide with shock.

  “She hasn’t been seen since the Harvest Festival, and according to police, she left a letter saying she was leaving for good.” He’d been en route here when he was flagged down by a deputy. “A search party is being assembled. She was last seen getting sick near the Kissing Bridge.”

  “She ate the poisoned pie, too!”

  Beau’s chest tightened as Tuesday filled him in on the pie theory. It was outlandish, devious, and contemptible. That was Hogg Jaw, all right. “You’ve been spending more and more time together lately. Can you think of anywhere she might be?”

  “She loves the library.”

  “They’ve checked there.”

  “The bus stop?”

  “There too.” Thunder rumbled in the distance. “It’s supposed to storm tonight.”

  “This is all my fault.” Tuesday swayed. “If anything happens to her, I’m never going to forgive myself. Wait!” She gripped the door frame. “If she was last seen by the bridge, she might have gone up the river.”

  He nodded slowly. “Lots of nooks and crannies to hide.”

  “Or get trapped.” She ripped a hair elastic off her wrist and gathered her long hair into a bun. “I don’t know how, but I know that is where she is. Will you take me?”

  He took her hand. “I won’t stop until she is safe.”

  It didn’t take long to get on Beau’s bike and head to the river. They parked at a lookout near the state park, upstream from the bridge. The clouds were getting darker and darker. Fogged rolled in.

  Tuesday leaped from the seat and tore to the ravine’s edge, cupping her hands to her mouth. “Flick! Flick!”

  Beau hunted the underbrush until he found what he was looking for, an old, almost overgrown fishermen footpath that led to the water’s edge. “This way. This is how I used to go as a boy.”

  They hiked up the river as the rain increased, the ground growing steadily more muddy and slippery underfoot.

  “What time is it?” Tuesday gave the gloomy sky a dubious look.

  “We have another hour until total darkness.”

  She brushed a branch from her face. “Will we find her?” Dead leaves crowned Tuesday’s hair, and she had dirt on her forehead.

  “Yes.” He cast a glance at the deep water with a silent prayer that when they did find her, she’d be okay.

  They walked in silence for a few minutes.

  “Listen, there’s something I have to tell you. From earlier. I had sex with a married man.”

  He forced himself to hold his gaze. This was what he wanted after all. Clear the air. No more secrets. Hear the truth from her, raw and unfiltered.

  “I didn’t know. Isn’t that stupid? I didn’t know he was married. I knew he had been, of course. But I had thought the divorce was finalized, except it wasn’t. It wasn’t even in process. I was this…pawn.” She spat the word. “The two of them had a messed-up relationship, and somehow I became the frosting in their twisted Oreo. I ended things as soon as I found out, but he was cruel. He liked…hurting me. That’s when I heard that he told everyone I’d seduced him. That I’d hounded him relentlessly. Called him after auditions. Showed up at restaurants. As if I even had the money to be hanging out in the kind of places he frequented.”

  Her words came quicker, as if once unleashed they were unable to be contained.

  “At first he invited me to his brownstone. Said he wanted to talk about a part. I was too flattered at the attention to think anything of it. I was so sure that this was my chance. That I’d worked hard. Paid enough dues. At last I’d made it.” Her laugh sounded like something wounded. “All he wanted was to use me.”

  Beau’s jaw clenched. “He forced you.”

  “No. I made it easy. I didn’t realize what had happened at first. He was so romantic and charming. Then he started with the insults. Not many, just chosen with exquisite care. He made me feel unlovable. And yet he loved me. And I got so messed up in the head that I believed him. The spell didn’t break until one afternoon when we were, you know, and I looked up and his wife was there, in the living room, watching us, holding a suitcase, home from a work trip.”

  “That’s…”

  “Terrible. Idiotic. Disgusting. Trust me. There’s isn’t a word you can say that I haven’t used.”

  “Repulsive.”

  “Well, okay, there you go. I’ll add it to my list.”

  “I meant him.”

  Her mouth opened and closed. Her shoulders slumped a fraction. “I guess I thought he was right, that I was unlovable. My mom, she left us. I can remember the day she packed her bags. Pepper cleaned the kitchen…refused to say a word. My father went hunting. I was the one who went upstairs, into her room, and begged. I got down on my knees, and she stepped around me on her way out the door.

  “Later, after she moved to New Hampshire and remarried, she tried to apologize about it once. But it’s a hard thing to get over, your own mom walking past you and choosing another life. Maybe that’s why I chose so many bad men. They just kept feeding my internal script, the one that told me that no matter what I did or promised, I wasn’t worth it. That it was all I deserved.”

  He hooked a hand around the back of his neck. “And I thought that a relationship was supposed to be easy if it was real. But it’s work, even with the right person.”

  “The best kind of work?”

  “Yeah, the best.”

  He froze, pointing down at the trail. “See that?” Small footsteps were embedded in the mud surrounding a large puddle.

  “Flick!” Tuesday called, and he joined in.

  The only answer was the pitter-patter of rain.

  “Flick!” Her voice cracked. “Flick, can you hear us? Come on, honey.”

  “Wait.” Beau grabbed her arm. “Do you hear that? There it is again.” A muffled shriek, as if came from beneath the ground.

  “Where?” Tuesday swiv
eled her head, staring around at the fallen boulders. “How do we figure out how she got under us?”

  “By working together.” Beau cupped his hands to his mouth. “Flick, if you can hear my voice, keep yelling.” He and Tuesday followed the answering cries, playing a game of hot and cold, until they found a spot where the gully opened into a small marsh, a cove surrounded by sandstone on three sides.

  “Help! Help!” The girl’s voice grew louder, increasing in clarity.

  “This way.” Beau scrambled over loose rocks into a small cove set back from the main river, Tuesday at his heels.

  “Help! I can’t get out. I’m stuck down here.”

  Beau maneuvered between two boulders, bent, and peered into a small opening, fishing out the small flashlight stuck on his key chain.

  Flick’s tear-stained face peered up from the shadows.

  He helped Tuesday ease down the four-foot drop and followed her. The sobbing girl had tried to take shelter from the storm and had slid in, twisting her ankle. He shone the light around to check out the structural integrity of the cave, and the light hit a flash. Then another. And another. He gave a slow shake of his head, a smile spreading over his face. “I can’t believe it.” Gold. Piles of it. Every direction.

  “You did it.” Tuesday hugged the sniffling girl. “You found it, the lost treasure.”

  “I was dizzy and wanted to lie down out of the storm,” Flick explained through hiccups. “I thought I could crouch under an overhang, when I saw the hole.” She rubbed her eyes and buried her face in Tuesday’s shoulder. “Last night Mrs. Boyle was on the phone talking to a friend, and she said that she was so tired. That fostering was more work than she expected and she wasn’t as young as she used to be. All I could think was what would happen if she didn’t want me? Would I go to a group home? Never have a family? So I wondered if I was really good and tried hard, what if I could live with you instead? But you didn’t want me. No one wants me.”

  “Hush, darling. That’s not true.” Tuesday was patting her head, pushing the hair from the girl’s tear-streaked face. “You are so wanted. You are so special.”

  Beau kept the beam from Flick’s eyes but noticed her lips looked dry. “You’ve been sick, haven’t you?”

  “A few times.” She nodded. “I’m thirsty.”

  Beau set the light between his teeth and ripped off his jacket. “It’s a cool evening, and soon it will be a cold night. We’re going to get you warm.”

  Tuesday pulled out her phone. “I don’t have any reception in here. I’m going to call in search and rescue. It’s better they come to us, and help keep her dry.”

  “I can walk,” Flick protested weakly. “I don’t need a fuss.”

  “I’ll go out and get a signal,” Beau said. “You hold her.”

  Tuesday nodded. “It’s all going to be okay. Just put your head right here in my lap and take a snooze.” She sank next to a chest, and coins crunched underfoot. She drew Flick onto her lap, holding her as if she were a much younger girl.

  Beau hauled himself halfway up the gully before he got a bar. He called 911 and described their location. When he got back to the cave, Flick was dozing, arms clinging to Tuesday’s neck.

  Beau crouched and stroked her hair. “You know, we did make a good team.”

  “We did. Thank God we found her.” She glanced around at the bounty. “And all this. I can hardly believe it’s real, can you? Imagine, all this time Redbeard’s treasure really existed, right below Everland.”

  He ran the flashlight beam over the rocky wall. There were chests overflowing with goblets, necklaces, diadems, and coins. “When I was a kid, I used to believe that there was something more than just waking up each morning and going to work or school.”

  Tuesday nodded slowly. “I can remember how I cried and cried on my eleventh birthday when I didn’t get a letter from Hogwarts.”

  He looked at her intently. “What if magic exists, but it’s not the version from the storybooks? What if it’s baking a cake in the middle of the night?”

  Her smile was soft. “Or hearing a song lyric you’ve listened to a thousand times and finally understanding what it’s really trying to tell you.”

  “Or kissing on a boat.”

  “The corner of Forever and Always.”

  “A cave filled with treasure.”

  “Maybe magic is all around us all the time if we’re brave enough to look.”

  He crawled behind her and held her against him. She was being strong for Flick, and someone needed to be there for her.

  She kissed the girl’s head and tucked his jacket closer around her shoulders. “It’s these moments that hold the true magic in life—the moments when you’re inexplicably happy. We so often overlook them, take them for granted, that we fail to see them for what they really are. This is our real magic, and I’d take it over Hogwarts any day.”

  “I love you, Tuesday.” There. He said it, the words that had been dancing on his tongue for too long, waiting for him to get the balls.

  “I love you, too.” She leaned back into him, and he felt her body melt into his, as if all the tension released in a long exhale.

  What had he been so afraid of? Loving Tuesday was like breathing, a vital function, part of his physical makeup and necessary to his survival.

  “And it’s Grace,” she added with a cringe. “Grace is my real name.”

  “Grace?” He tried it out. “It’s pretty, but not you. How did you get to Tuesday?” He wanted to know, plus talking seemed to calm her down.

  “In my bedroom back in Moose Bottom there was a needlepoint that said ‘Tuesday’s child is full of grace.’ I think it had been my grandmother’s. One day I woke up and decided that I liked Tuesday for a name better. I was five and my parents were good sports. They went along with it and it stuck, even though I was really born on a Friday.”

  “A Tuesday born on a Friday.” He chuckled, shaking his head. “Got to say, it suits you.”

  Shouts filtered through the cave opening. Followed by dogs barking.

  He picked up a coin and held it in front of them. “I wonder what will happen to the treasure.”

  “You know what? I have an idea.” She adjusted Flick in her arms. “Two, actually. Do you trust me?”

  He kissed her head, breathed in her sweet scent. “Always.”

  And the magical thing was that he meant it.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  It didn’t take long for word to spread about Flick’s rescue and her inadvertent discovery of Redbeard’s lost treasure. By the next morning the entire town was abuzz with the news.

  “I say, but there’s a right-sized crowd gathering outside. National news trucks, the whole bit. You’re a hero.” Cedric Swift ruffled Flick’s head. “The magnitude of the treasure exceeds my wildest dreams. It’s going to take months to catalog the findings.”

  Tuesday’s throat caught as the girl beamed. She placed Beau’s phone on the hospital counter. The Back Fence had posted a full retraction to their character-assassination story. The biddies went so far as to offer a genuine apology and an invitation to join the Everland Ladies Quilt Guild.

  “Knock, knock. Hope I’m not disturbing.” Donna Summer poked her head through the hospital door.

  “Not at all. Please come in.” Tuesday jumped out of her seat and motioned to the empty space. “I know the last twenty-four hours have been…strange…to say the least. But before you give Hogg Jaw the Coastal Jewels designation, please, please hear me out.”

  “No! First hear us out!” Pepper burst into the room, followed by Toots, Mean Gene, Lettie Sue, Gil, Robbie, Caroline, and Madam Magna.

  “We have fire codes here.” A frowning nurse bustled in. “Out, out! All of you, out! My word, this is like trying to herd cats.”

  “Shove a sock in it, Irene.” Toots planted her feet. “We’ll be out of your hair in two shakes, but first Madam Magna has something to say.”

  The old woman shuffled forward. Today’s turban wa
s dandelion yellow and garnished with a diamond made up of tiny silver sequins. “The apples were poisoned by an old witch.”

  A hush fell over the room.

  “Well, technically that’s an exaggeration.” Pepper jumped in with her no-nonsense tone. “But nevertheless, the apples for the pie Tuesday baked were knowingly tampered with—”

  Beau wrapped his arm around Tuesday’s waist, pulling her in close. She leaned into his quiet strength, relishing the sound of his protective rumble. “Who’d do such a thing?” He sounded ready to crack a can of whoop ass.

  “My stepsister.” Madam Magna spat the word like a foul taste. “Betty Ann Hogg.”

  “The church organist?” Beau asked, his brow wrinkling. “Judge Hogg’s mother? That doesn’t make sense. She’s too sick to hurt a fly.”

  “That’s what she wants you to believe.” There was no longer any trace of a mysterious Eastern European accent in Magna’s down-home twang. “While she’s acted frailer than a wilting flower for years, she’s gone ahead and laid the foundation for a financial empire stretching across the county. The greatest crime boss in the Low Country.”

  “That is true. All of it.” Pepper nodded slowly. “This situation smelled like a setup job. And who would have the motivation to try to get the judges to turn their backs on Everland? In my observation, the simplest answer is often the right one. In this case all arrows pointed straight to Hogg Jaw. So Rhett and I took ourselves on a reconnaissance drive yesterday. Only one place in that town had an apple tree, Ma Hogg’s farm. You could see it from the road—if I stood on Rhett’s shoulders and used binoculars. And while we were taking pictures, who do you think came driving up?”

  “Me.” Madam Magna shuffled forward. “As soon as I caught wind of the Harvest Festival disaster, I suspected Betty Ann’s involvement. She’s been gunning for Happily Ever After Land for years.”

  “Why?” Beau frowned. “It’s an amusement park. What did it ever do to her?”

  “Brought me joy.” Madam Magna got a faraway look in her eye. “She wanted payback. See, she’s convinced that I stole her suitor when we were girls, and carried that grudge, even though the man went on to marry someone else.”