by Kay Bratt
Quinn thought of Woodrow then, and that made her remember that Maggie was also dealing with too much stress. Quinn felt a rush of guilt that she hadn’t been more help to her best friend and that she’d be even less so when she was gone.
Everything was falling apart.
She sighed loudly, then rose and followed Liam to the door of the shop.
He gave three successive knocks, a pause, then two more. With that, he opened the door and stood aside, letting Quinn cross the threshold first.
Chapter Fourteen
Maggie pulled up to the pump at the Ohana Fuels station and put down all the windows before shutting her car off. All morning as she’d gotten herself and Charlie ready, she’d felt jittery. Nervous. It was just her luck that a summer storm had hit on her way home last night, and though she knew she should stop, she’d skipped the gas station.
Now the tank was on empty without even enough gas to get Charlie to the inn, let alone get her back down Hana Highway to the clinic.
“Can we stop at Komoda Store for a doughnut on a stick?”
“No, Charlie, we can’t. That was in Makawao, and it’s a long way from here. Mommy’s in a hurry this morning. They probably already sold out anyway.”
Maggie could feel pools of sweat beginning to form in her shoes. To top it off, her eye began the nice little dance it did when the nervous tic came to play.
She turned to look at Charlie. “Sit tight while I get gas.”
He barely acknowledged her. He was concentrating on chewing the skin from the side of his thumb, a habit he must’ve inherited from his dad because Maggie had seen Colby doing it a million times.
“Charlie, stop that.”
He immediately stopped and looked at her with his most innocent grin, his green eyes big and round.
The doughnut Charlie was craving was one they’d picked up at a famous bakery when they’d gone to Makawao one evening. The family business was over a hundred years old and so popular that it was said they usually sold everything out by midmorning, then closed shop. It was good stuff but way too far out of their way.
But now she felt guilty.
Little heartbreaker. Damn, she loved her kid.
She climbed out and ran her debit card through the pump scanner. It beeped, and she picked up the pump, ready to use it. She peered at the screen, putting her hand up to shade it. The words were hard to make out through the bright rays of an extraordinarily warm Maui day.
PLEASE SEE CASHIER
Exasperated, she scanned the card again.
Same message.
The morning was not being kind to her. She had hoped to be able to talk to Quinn, and maybe David, before heading on to work. She needed every spare second she could get.
She went around and opened Charlie’s door. He was back to chewing his fingers. “Come on, bud. We need to go in the store.”
That got his attention. Usually the only time they went inside a gas station was for treats. He hopped out, Woodrow right behind him. Maggie was glad she’d had a strange feeling that morning and put on the dog’s official vest.
“Give me your hand,” she said a little too brusquely to Charlie.
He complied, and they hurried across the parking lot.
Inside, Maggie approached the counter, with Woodrow obediently at her side. A young man stood behind the counter.
“Mommy, can I have candy?” Charlie said, tugging on her pants.
“No,” Maggie said. “Hush while I get this straightened out.”
She turned her attention back to the cashier.
“Your card was declined. Can you try another? Or do you want to pay cash? Oh, and we don’t allow dogs in here.”
“He’s a service dog. And there must be something wrong with your system.” Maggie was beyond using her polite voice.
“Nope.”
That’s it? Just a nope?
Charlie tugged again, then gave another plea for sweets.
“Do you have another card?” the cashier asked. “Or cash?”
“Nope,” Maggie said, using the same deadpan voice as he did.
“There’s an ATM at the back.”
“Come on, Charlie.” She had just deposited a check from Colby the day before, and now she could kick herself for not getting some cash out of it. She tugged Charlie by the neck of his shirt, then grabbed his hand and headed for the back.
Before she could reach the machine, her phone rang.
It was a Hawaii area code. Was it one of the clinic numbers? She wasn’t late yet, was she? She continued the beeline to grab some cash and answered the phone midstride.
“Yes? I mean, hello?”
“This is the fraud department of Bank of Maui calling. Is this Margaret Ann Dalton?”
Maggie froze in place, right between the aisles of automobile oil and cheap souvenirs. Woodrow stopped, too, but she had to let go of Charlie so she wouldn’t lose a limb.
When he turned around, she waved him back.
“Yes, it is.” She looked down at the debit card in her hand.
“Please verify your phone number, Ms. Dalton,” the faceless female voice said.
“It’s the one you just called.” She rolled her eyes at the phone.
“Mommy, are you mad?” Charlie asked, tugging on her hand again.
Maggie put her finger to her lips and shushed him.
The woman wasn’t a bit ruffled with Maggie’s attitude. She asked again. “Please verify your phone number. It’s bank protocol, and we have an important message for you in regard to the safety of your account.”
Maggie gave in and rattled off her phone number, date of birth, and her mailing address. Last, they asked the name of her favorite dog.
“Toby.” Then she covered the phone and glanced down. Woodrow’s tail thumped the ceramic floor, and he looked up at her with sad eyes. “Sorry, it was my first dog,” she whispered to him.
She could hear the rep tapping on computer keys. “Have you recently changed your basic information such as your email address, password, and pin number?”
“No,” Maggie said. She felt her heart rate soar.
Woodrow nudged her leg and whined.
“Ms. Dalton, did you request a new account and debit card?”
“No, I sure didn’t.”
As she shuffled Woodrow and Charlie toward the sign that indicated the restroom, she listened to the rest of the call, which was nothing less than terrifying. The rep told her that someone had opened a new account in her name, using her address and social security number, then attempted to withdraw funds from her existing account. The bank fraud team caught it, but her account—and all access to her money—was frozen until the investigation could be completed.
She hung up the phone after being instructed to call back in a few days. The nausea took hold, and she felt the Pop-Tart she’d eaten for breakfast trying to rise up in her throat. It wasn’t as though she had a gold mine in her account, but what she did have, they needed to live on.
Goose bumps started to creep from her fingertips, up her wrists.
“Charlie,” she gasped.
Woodrow got more insistent, nudging her knees to try to make her sit.
“No, Woodrow!” She couldn’t sit down in the middle of the store.
“What’s wrong, Mommy?” Charlie said, his face scrunching up with worry.
Maggie began to see stars swirling in front of her eyes as she stood there. No money. No gas. No groceries for their empty pantry. No dog food for Woodrow. Payday two weeks away. The emailed photo that morning. Now this.
He’d found her.
No security.
No protection.
She felt like she couldn’t breathe.
And Charlie looked terrified.
“Bathroom,” she croaked out, letting go of his hand and pointing to where a restroom sign hung on the back wall.
Charlie headed there, and Maggie staggered behind him.
She could feel her chest tightening, and she was breathi
ng too hard. Woodrow nipped at her heels and gave a sharp bark. He knew it was coming, and she couldn’t stop it.
She had to get Charlie to safety.
“Ma’am?” the guy at the front counter called out. “Is everything okay back there? You’ve got to move your car if you don’t want gas. We’ve only got two pumps!”
“Get in the bathroom,” she said to Charlie as the tears began to stream down her face and she struggled for breath against the sudden intense chest pain.
They got there, and she pushed him in, then followed with Woodrow on her tail. Charlie immediately wrinkled his nose at the sour smell of the toilet and the dirty paper towels strewn everywhere. Under normal circumstances, Maggie wouldn’t let him into a bathroom in this condition, much less let him touch the sink like he’d immediately done.
Her head pounded, and her chills gave way to intense sweating.
She sank to the floor and pulled her knees to her face, then struggled against Woodrow as he tried to squeeze under her trembling arms and flatten her legs. He succeeded and laid his body across her knees, his training to keep her from hurting herself kicking in admirably.
“Stay right here,” she hissed between sobs, not even looking up until she heard Charlie moving. Before she could react, he’d grabbed her phone from her purse and slipped out.
She tried to push Woodrow off, but she was on the top level of an anxiety attack, and he wasn’t letting her go anywhere. Even through the trauma, Maggie could see he was trying to apply deep pressure to her torso to comfort her.
It wasn’t enough. Things were escalating.
Everything around her blurred and blended with the sound of an oncoming freight train in her ears. And then the world faded to black.
Chapter Fifteen
An hour later, Maggie sat on a stretcher outside the gas station, Woodrow at her side as a paramedic checked her blood pressure once again. She was horrified that leaning on the emergency van in front of her was Dr. Starr, aka Joe—aka her boss!
He was helping Charlie open his second bag of potato chips. They looked comfortable together, as though this wasn’t their first time meeting.
She saw Charlie fidget with a new shark tooth hanging around his neck, the leather of the necklace resting low on his tiny chest. She’d noticed Charlie glance at them on the souvenir aisle when they’d gone to the back of the store for the ATM.
Obviously Joe was doing whatever he could to make Charlie feel comfortable in the midst of what to him must’ve felt like the end of the world.
“Are you sure this is real?” Charlie asked, holding up the tooth for Joe to inspect.
Maggie recognized the hopeful expression that went with his question.
Joe nodded. “It sure is. Probably from a great white right off the waters of the North Shore.”
“Wow. Thank you,” Charlie murmured.
She was reminded of her current situation—no access to funds and a lunatic still tracking her—and she pushed the thoughts away, the fingers of her free hand running through Woodrow’s soft hair.
He looked up at her, worry still in his eyes.
“Good boy,” Maggie whispered. “Such a good boy.”
The machine made a racket as it filled up and then deflated. The paramedic quickly pulled the cuff from her arm, the rip of the Velcro like a gunshot in her ears.
“Can I please go?” Maggie pleaded with the man who hovered over her, whose thumb now pushed down on her wrist, taking her pulse. “I’m fine. This is embarrassing.”
Joe handed the bag of chips over to Charlie and looked up. “No, you can’t go until you are cleared.”
“The numbers are better but not stable yet. She needs to drink some juice,” the paramedic said, then headed to the van.
“Mommy, can I have a Coke?” Charlie asked innocently. He’d finally come down from his fear over her safety. Kind of quickly, too, considering how fast he’d accepted the invitation to climb into the fire truck and blow the horn.
He’d looked proud of himself as he’d climbed down wearing an oversize fireman hat, having earned a new nickname.
Little Makoa, they called him. Brave man. He’d saved his mother and had earned their respect. Something she could’ve done herself—with Woodrow’s help—if he’d just have waited a few more minutes before bursting out of the restroom with her phone. But she had to give it to him, for being so young, he’d also been responsible.
“No. You can have milk. I’m sure it goes great with all that salt you’re ingesting.” She gave Joe a look that was meant to chastise, but he only smiled.
“Aww, he’s a kid. A Coke once in a while won’t hurt him.”
“Tell that to your local dentist and see what his response is. Anyway, I really appreciate you coming, but don’t you need to head back to the clinic?” Maggie asked. “You had a full morning of appointments set up, I’m pretty sure.”
He shrugged. “They can wait. My employees and the animals under my care are my first priorities. Our current in-house patients are fine for the moment, and Mom rescheduled the morning appointments for later today. Everything is under control. Except you.”
“I’m under control.” She left off the key word now.
Maggie could just die. There was no doubt going to have to be some explaining later. He wasn’t just going to let someone who collapsed in a soggy mess in a public bathroom continue to be employed without knowing his clients were safe.
“We can talk about it later,” Joe said, nodding his head toward Charlie.
Was he reading her mind now? Maggie flushed.
It was just her luck that when Charlie had grabbed her phone and run out of the bathroom during her meltdown, the door had locked behind him. He’d charged the young man at the register, telling him to call his daddy as he pushed the phone up onto the counter.
First, the cashier tried to get into the bathroom as Maggie sobbed between heaves.
Since he could hear her through the door and knew she was conscious, the young man tried to reach a family member. He’d tried Colby’s number, as it was last on the call log, but he got his voice mail. Then he dialed the person called before that, which happened to be Joe from her accidental dial earlier that morning.
With Charlie at his side, the cashier had told Joe he wasn’t sure what to do, but a little boy named Charlie was freaking out because his mother was sick and locked behind the bathroom door in the gas station.
Joe had instructed him to call the paramedics, then jumped in his car and made the usual half-hour trip in record time. He was already there when the paramedics called the fire department to come break the door down.
Joe had spoken to her through the crack, his voice loud but soothing, just as he had used it during the surgery yesterday.
“Maggie, it’s Joe. Open this door so we can help you.”
Thankfully, though shocked to hear her own boss, Maggie was finally able to pull herself together enough for Woodrow to let her stand and unlock the door. Just in time, too, because two of Hana’s volunteer firemen were about to use a massive crowbar to break it off the hinges.
Most likely the cost for that repair would’ve landed on her plate. One more expense she couldn’t pay for. Because why? Her bank account was frozen.
Deep breaths.
Her phone rang just as the paramedic came back, slipped the cuff back on, and began pumping it full of air.
Maggie looked down and saw Colby’s face pop up.
She hit “Ignore.”
A text came through ten seconds later.
WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?? CALL ME!
A jolt of alarm went through her.
“Charlie?”
Her son looked up, his mouth full of potato chips.
“When you and the nice man from inside tried to call your dad, you didn’t leave a message, did you?”
Charlie shook his head.
Relief flooded through Maggie.
“The nice man did, though,” he said, crumbs shooting out of his mo
uth and onto the front of his shirt.
Maggie hung her head. She could only imagine what the store clerk had said on the message he’d left.
There’s a worried kid in front of me because his hysterical mother has locked herself in the bathroom and no one can get her out. Please help.
Colby would not be easy to settle down. Unfortunately he knew about her anxiety attacks. Before he’d agreed to let her move to Maui with Charlie, she had assured him repeatedly that they were now nearly nonexistent. That with Woodrow’s presence, she was cured.
She typed out a quick message and hit “Send.”
We are fine. A complete misunderstanding. Will call you later.
She prayed it would be enough. Having Colby breathing down her back was the last thing she needed when her life was already crumbling around her. Only one thing had changed. She would talk to Colby about everything that was going on. As Charlie’s father, he deserved that much. But first she needed to get it sorted out.
On her own.
Chapter Sixteen
The first thing that hit Quinn when she stepped into the shop was the intoxicating and bewitching scent of wood. Liam followed her, and the door shut behind them.
“Can’t Bodhi come in?” she asked, already missing the sweet boy.
“He’s on duty,” Liam said.
Quinn peered around. The building was immaculate, every inch swept clean and kept orderly, a collection of tools hung in precise rows on the wall nearest to her. Below them against the wall was a pristine line of carved wooden statues, similar to the one outside the gate.
It felt warm and inviting, though besides a few wooden stools, there was no place to sit. And it was quiet, other than a methodical swoosh that sounded every few seconds. Visually, there was a lot going on that made sense in a workshop, but after a quick scan, her eyes were drawn to a canoe mounted on the opposite wall. It was set tipping out to them, arranged like a trophy.
“That’s an outrigger canoe,” Liam said, following her gaze. “It’s my father’s pride and joy. Carved from a one-hundred-year-old koa tree, just like in the old days.”
The swooshing noise stopped, and Quinn followed Liam to the mounted canoe. It was definitely a masterpiece, and she felt honored that she would meet the master wood-carver who’d created it.
