“Oh?”
“Yeah, he pops into my mind every time I have another big failure.”
“Stop that. You haven’t failed. Your store burned down. That’s not your fault.”
“My memories today were of the good times, years ago. They don’t jive with my later memories, before he died.”
“There were lots of good memories. Before.”
“What was wrong with him?”
“What do you mean?”
“He changed. A lot.”
The silence is charged. “Why do you ask now?”
“Because I’m a grown-up, and I wonder. Plus, I just spent time with a woman in Wyoming who has Alzheimer’s. She used to be sweet, but now she’s a pit viper. It reminded me of Dad.”
“Oh.”
Maggie takes a sip of Balcones, then blurts out her real question. “Mom, did Dad have Alzheimer’s?”
After long, silent seconds, Maggie hears soft crying on the other end of the line.
When Charlotte speaks, her voice quavers. “He, uh, he didn’t want anyone to know.”
The news should help, but it doesn’t. For so many years, Maggie had worried that the change in her dad was because he hated the person she was becoming. But that hadn’t been it at all. It wasn’t Maggie. It was a disease. Yet he would rather I think he hated me than admit to me he was sick? His feelings were more important to him than his only child’s. Maggie tries to contain the anger that rolls through her like thunder. Deep down, she knows that once he had Alzheimer’s, he was no longer rational. The decisions he made then weren’t the decisions he would have made as the dad she wants to remember. That dad would have put her first, not make her wait ten years to find out the truth. Easy to say, hard to accept. Maggie stashes acceptance away as a project for the future.
“I should have told you sooner.”
“I wish you had.”
“There’s more.”
“More what?”
“To his story. He got sick—real sick, real fast—but it’s not the Alzheimer’s that killed him. Not directly.”
Maggie steels herself. She’d always been told her dad died of a heart attack. Whatever’s coming can’t be good. “What was it?”
Charlotte takes a deep breath before she speaks. “He killed himself.”
The words are like a barrage of barbed arrows digging into Maggie’s flesh. Painful. Under her skin quickly, finding their way to the grudge she’s held against her father and working their way in. “How?”
“Hanging. In the barn. I—I found him. The church helped me keep it quiet.”
“Oh, Mom. I’m sorry. I had no idea.”
“No, I’m sorry.” Her mother sobs. “For him. Because of that, he can’t be with God.”
“Don’t say that.”
“The Bible is clear on it, Maggie.”
“You and I will have to disagree there.” She puts her drink down. “Thank you for telling me this. But let’s not talk about sad things anymore. How about we plan happy things instead. Can I take you and Edward to dinner tomorrow night?”
Charlotte sniffs, and Maggie can picture her dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. “That would be lovely.”
“Good. Let’s do it.”
“And when we’re together, I can show you that awful article online.”
“I’ve seen it.”
“There’s one that just came out tonight. Leslie. She’s my friend. But she said some pretty un-Christian things about you. If they’re not true, anyway.”
“Like what?”
“Like that you show up drunk all the time, all hours of the day, and that she’s scared of you and thinks you had something to do with the death of Gary and the person in your store.”
“Oh my God. Most definitely not true.”
“She didn’t feel safe there. I wouldn’t have either.”
“Then she should have left.”
“Not everyone has the means to just pick up and go, Maggie.”
“I can’t speak for her. All I know is she was supposed to be out this morning, and she’s refusing to leave.”
“Such a shame.”
“I agree. She shouldn’t blockade me from my home. You understand that, right?”
“What I know is that the Lord calls for us to help others in need. ‘For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in.’ Matthew 25:35.”
“She’s not in need. She’s stealing from me.”
“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
“This isn’t a forgiveness thing. I want my damn house back. The Bible calls for double restitution, though—thanks for reminding me to think biblically. Her price just went up.”
“We should all worry about our own sins first.”
“I’m flat out of unblemished rams covered in silver to sacrifice for mine.”
“Now you’re just being sacrilegious.”
“Mom, she lied to you. She lied to me. She lied to everyone. I didn’t illegally break her lease, show up drunk—” Maggie has to ponder that one for a moment, but she thinks she’s right. “—or kill anyone. You understand she’s slandering me, suggesting I killed people?”
“I’m sure that’s not what she intends.”
Maggie throws her hand in the air. It’s not like her mom can see her, but it makes her feel better. “Whose side are you on, anyway? A relative stranger, or your only daughter?”
“I can’t believe you’d even ask that.”
Maggie stares out the window. The waning light shortens her sightline, and she feels like Princess Leia with Han Solo and Luke Skywalker in the trash compactor room in Star Wars. Imprisoned, with everything shrinking in on her. She’s not going to win this argument. Her mom has an unearthly ability to see the good in everyone. It’s helped Maggie tremendously at times, so she can’t fault it when it’s working against her. Not completely, anyway.
She softens her voice. “I love you, Mom. I’ll call you tomorrow about dinner.”
“Love you, too, Maggie. Goodnight.”
Maggie lets her head thunk back against the wall. The conversation was exhausting. Relationships are exhausting. People. People are exhausting. And another damn online article? Why isn’t she getting a chance to comment before they’re being posted? It could be her changed phone number, although she just did that today. Or maybe it’s because her shop is closed and her house is under siege. She doesn’t want to give junk journalists too much credit, though. Or herself. Lord knows she usually hangs up or says, “No fucking comment” on the rare occasions that she gets the calls. Now the news cycle of her life has accelerated, like a hit and run over her back.
Outside her door, something emits an eerie howl. Maggie jumps up, ready to lock herself in the bathroom against an invasion of werewolves, until she realizes it’s just Louise. She opens the door a few inches.
“Hush your face, Louise.”
She hops back on the bed. She doesn’t want to, but she needs to read the latest tripe. She wakes up her laptop and types her name into the Google search bar. In the two seconds it takes for the results to appear, she bites her lip and tastes blood. She’d walked away from the pursuit of fame after rehab. In the past decade, she hasn’t read a single word about herself until the last week, other than the true crime novel Michele penned, and that was different. A favor to a friend. Maggie doesn’t lie about who she is, but she doesn’t offer it up. Her real self deserves protection.
Louise pokes her head in the door.
Maggie sucks the blood from her lip and reads.
“Superstar Gary Fuller and the Black Widow, Former Music Sensation Maggie Killian.” “How the Mighty Maggie Killian Has Fallen.” “Where Are They Now? Maggie Killian.” And many more of their ilk.
The dog hops up on the bed beside her. Maggie gives her a quick pat.
“Parasites will say anything to sell ad space.”
She scr
olls down further, finding the one she’s looking for but doesn’t want to see. “Does Black Widow Maggie Killian Have a Black Heart toward Her Renter?”
“Nice.”
Former recording artist Maggie Killian has been making news lately. It seems like every man close to her is getting murdered, and law enforcement in Wyoming and Texas have been looking hard at her for the deaths, reminding us of her old hit “I Hate Cowboys.” Maybe she truly does.
She’s still under investigation in Texas.
“She’s like a black widow,” an anonymous source says.
Maggie snorts. “Whatever.”
But that’s not all the mischief the washed-up alt-rocker has been up to lately.
Maggie clenches and unclenches her fists.
A renter of hers in Texas reports that a drunken and belligerent Ms. Killian has attempted to break her lease and even have her thrown out by the local sheriff.
“It’s scary enough living here, with all the people that conveniently die when Maggie Killian wants them out of her life, without her targeting me for removal, too,” the renter, a school teacher from Houston, says. “This isn’t new behavior for her. I heard she broke her contract with her old band and kicked them all out in the middle of a tour once. And she’s been doing stuff like that ever since, no matter whose career she destroys.”
Maggie’s split with her band isn’t new news, and we’ve written about it on this site before. You can read more about the fate of Davo, Brent, Celinda, and Chris here in “Breaking Up with the Band: Maggie Killian.”
We couldn’t reach Ms. Killian for comment. Maybe the woman once famous for singing about being a “Buckle Bunny” is back for a much-needed stint in rehab. Or otherwise indisposed by law enforcement.
“That bitch,” Maggie screams.
She clicks on the author’s name. A hoodied millennial stares at the camera ironically, holding up a Monster Energy drink as if mocking her.
“Cocksucker. Lazy journalist.”
Below the article is a picture of Maggie with her old touring band. She takes in the faces she tries not to remember. Yes, she feels guilty that she dumped them, but she didn’t cause their deaths or ruin any careers. Maggie’s gaze lingers on Celinda. She had felt sorry for her. Chris had used her and pushed her over for a real buckle bunny he picked up in Cheyenne.
“Not my fault, though. And she amounted to nothing because she had no talent.”
Enough of that. She texts Michele the article link. More fodder for the libel suit. Now Leslie DeWitt needs her unwavering attention.
But before she goes back to cyberstalking Leslie, she goes for a pit stop. On the way back to the bed, she trips and nearly falls on nothing but wood floor. Too much whiskey, not enough food. She opens the chips and salsa and digs in hungrily. Salsa dribbles down her chin. She scoops it back up and into her mouth with a chip, then offers one to Louise.
Louise crunches it like it’s a beef rib.
Maggie lays her phone on the bedside table. As she does, she notices a missed call banner. She leans closer to read who it was from, and she spits chips and salsa on the screen.
“Hank!”
Louise jumps up, wagging everything.
Hank called her. She looks at the number in her Recents. He’d called her that afternoon. She counts back hours. Probably when she was at Lumpy’s. Why had her phone betrayed her and withheld this information? No ring. No notification of any kind. Until now.
She doesn’t have an indicator for voicemail but she opens the screen anyway. Just in case.
But there’s none.
Sometimes when she’s out in the sticks her phone doesn’t tell her about voicemail for days. She calls in to listen for new messages.
Nothing.
She presses call back, smearing salsa on her phone screen. It rings once, twice, three, four times.
“Come on, come on.”
It rolls to voicemail.
“No.” She redials. “No.”
Hank’s voice prompts her to leave a message. Just the sound of it brings a tingling rush between her legs, to a place that misses him like a freeze misses the warm.
“You’ve got Hank Sibley of Double S Bucking Stock, and I’ve got your mother buckers. Leave me a message.”
She feels her cheeks smiling without her permission. “Hank, this is Maggie. I saw you called. If it was on purpose, call me back. If it was a butt dial, then listen to your butt. It’s telling you something.” She recites her new number, even though he already called it, and if he hadn’t, he’d have it from the record of this call anyway. Better safe than sorry.
She puts the phone down on the bedside table. Then she picks it up to check the ringer. It’s on. She sets it down again. But she hadn’t turned up the volume. So she picks it up again. Checks the volume. It’s on max. She lays the phone down. Pats it. Stares at it.
Louise walks to the edge of the bed to play the game, too.
“Watched pot. No boiling.”
The dog deposits herself on one of the pillows and wriggles to find a spot good enough for her sensitive hide. The princess and the pea, canine version.
A mental kick in the pants is in order. Maggie smacks her cheek—tap-tap-tap—with her fingers, then does the same thing to the other side. She slackens her lips and gives her head a shake. Lifts her arms and wriggles her fingers. The distraction of waiting for Hank to call back is so intense she can’t remember what it was she sat down to do.
Maybe the Balcones has something to do with it, too.
She scans the room. Pictures of Michele with her kids and her deceased husband, Adrian. A Hawaii Ironman triathlon poster. She’s at Michele’s because she can’t be at her own place, thanks to that horrible bitch Leslie. And that’s what she was doing. Researching the renter from hell. Something she should have done before handing over her keys in the first place. Giving her head one more shake, she repositions herself on the bed, knees bent, leaning against the pillows and wall.
“Ready or not, Leslie DeWitt, here I come.”
She types the woman’s name in a search box. She hits enter and starts reading down the results. Facebook. Facebook. Facebook. Instagram. Tsunami survivors. Google Plus. Twitter. Maggie bites the inside of her lip. Had she even spelled Leslie’s last name right? DeWitt. Is that one t or two? With an h or without? She double-checks an email from Leslie before wasting too much time. Growls. Two t’s. She’d typed it with one. She fixes it, and the search results explode. Now she has sexual abuse trial verdicts, obituaries, and more.
She wants to drink herself numb. She wants Hank to call. She wants to research Leslie DeWitt like she wants to sign up for a month of Sundays at church with her mother. But she’s out of other options. Nothing left to do but do it. She rolls her neck. It cracks, releasing stress, but not enough.
She browses, looking for clear profile pictures. There are nearly twenty Leslie DeWitts on Facebook alone, but none of the profiles pictures look like the right Leslie. She pulls up the profiles without pictures. There’s not enough information in any to rule them in or out.
She flips back to her Google results. Her Leslie isn’t the woman convicted of sexually abusing a kid she’d coached. That Leslie is in her early twenties and lives in Seattle. And she doesn’t know where her Leslie lives. Even if she did, that wouldn’t guarantee a match. Lots of people use their hometowns or fake information online. She decides to limit her search to records inside the United States, but she can’t narrow it any more than that.
But she thinks she saw Leslie’s home address somewhere in their contracting process. Scanning the emails between herself and Leslie, she doesn’t see an address, even in the message confirming the dates of her stay and working out the details of payment. PayPal. That will give her Leslie’s address. She pulls it back up. Houston. It jogs her memory. She flips back to the newest People.com article.
“A school teacher from Houston,” she reads aloud.
She adds the new information to her search. The res
ults are better—narrower, fewer hits—but not good enough yet.
Her Balcones is calling. She sips it, dredging up everything she knows about Leslie. Age? About forty. Accent? The voice she hears in her mind is atonal, without accent. She wouldn’t even call it Middle American. Which is weird, because it’s rare she can’t pinpoint a region.
She goes back to the twenty Facebook records, studies the pictures again. Looks can deceive. She eliminates the non–United States profiles and the women who are obviously too old or too young. She keeps five of them, even though they don’t look like the woman in her house. One of them seems somewhat familiar, but even if her Leslie had long gray hair, this wouldn’t be her. Too old. And the eyes are too dark.
Could it be Leslie was telling the truth, and that she isn’t really Leslie at all? If that’s the case, Maggie’s back to square one. She’s not ready to face that possibility, but she doesn’t have to yet. Not when there’s still more information to review. She sets the Facebook profiles aside for the moment and moves to other social media. Instagram and Twitter yield similar results. No matches to her Leslie. She doesn’t understand Google Plus, so she skips it, along with the social media Michele’s kids use. Snapback or Smackchat or something? Maggie isn’t part of that younger generation, and Leslie isn’t either.
Maggie racks her brain for more searches she can try. Why is this so hard? Her eyes are bleary from staring at the pictures. Maybe one of the women she’s seen is Leslie. Or maybe not. Maybe Leslie goes by initials or something. She saw a middle initial for her on PayPal. Leslie C. Thus, L.C. She’ll try that next. Or maybe Leslie isn’t even on social media and this is a big waste of time.
She takes a slug of Balcones. An idea forms. She runs a few Google searches using the email addresses she’d found in PayPal for Leslie. She finds an image for the first email. Her pulse quickens and she leans in. The woman in the picture has gray hair, long and wavy, pale skin, and dark eyes. Nothing like her Leslie and the tight, expressionless face caked in makeup to cover her scars, with blue eyes so light they’re like clouds.
Maggie Box Set Page 46
