by Jae Dawson
But no Frances relic compared to the clay mug currently on my nightstand. No, that one was all Gran. She had crafted and painted the mug to look like the top portion of a pair of jeans, grooved pockets and all.
I turned it slightly on the desk, a smile on my face. Devon and I called it the Ass Cup. This legendary mug had become a rite of passage in our circle. If someone wanted to hang with us, they needed to kiss my ass first—aka, pucker up to the cup. Hell, we’d even forced Andy and Bale to drink spiked cherry juice from the mug eight years ago as a band brotherhood blood oath. I thought many times of taking this mug on tour with me. But if anything happened to it . . .
Nightshade, Gran’s black and tan Yorkshire terrier, barked from the living room, pulling me from my thoughts. I wandered into the hallway. In the living room, Gramps sat in an old recliner and stared blankly at the front door, Nightshade curled on his lap. “Get that, Cade?”
Opening doors always sent a flight of crows through my system. Would the door open to a glassy-eyed zombie fan, desperate to devour all things Cade Owens and Burning Umbrage? Or might it be another over-Botoxed Hollywood type paid to cater to the band’s needs—blinking dollar signs behind their eyes? And then there was the other fear—a police officer. Anxiety crowed its ominous warnings as I reached for the knob, and a memory captured me. The memory.
* * *
A man in uniform hesitantly met my eyes. “Cade Owens?”
“Look,” I said, trying not to stutter. “I’ll re-paint over Mr. Richards’s fence. It was just a joke.”
“No, son.” The officer frowned and appeared to struggle for a moment. “There’s been an accident.”
“Hey, Cade!” Devon called out from the other room. “The Creepers are—oh shit!”
Hot tears pricked my eyes and the world quieted until there was only the pulse thundering in my ears. I couldn’t meet the man’s eyes.
“I’m here to escort you to the hospital.”
* * *
“Are you Frances’s grandson?”
I snapped out of my haunted mind and plastered on a smile for the elderly woman at the doorstep. She was dressed in a bright orange t-shirt and yoga pants with a pink bandanna tied through her short, curly gray hair. Small wrinkled hands with fire-engine red fingernails cradled a casserole dish as if it were a baby.
“Cade, right? I’ve heard so much about you.”
“Yeah. Here, let me take that.” I gently transferred the foil-topped dish into my hands and then opened the door wider for her to enter. “Hey Gramps, you have a visitor . . .” I lifted my eyebrows her way.
“Deloris,” she said sweetly.
“Deloris,” I repeated more loudly. I had recently discovered how Gramps communicated better when visitors were announced first. Most of the people who had visited this week I already knew. A few were new faces to me, though—like her.
“So, how do you know Gran?” I shut the door after she shuffled inside.
“Your fan club.”
“My . . . what?”
She smiled—almost mischievously—and, for a moment, I saw a glimpse of the young woman still inside her.
“You listen to Burning Umbrage?”
“Your Gran introduced us ladies at church to your band.”
Now I laughed, hard. The image of little old church ladies listening to my music was too rich. But that was Gran, always stirring the pot for shits and giggles. Even at church.
Deloris’s eyes twinkled when she caught that I understood how she teased. I could see why Gran liked her.
Had liked her.
The vice squeezed around my ribs again.
“I’ll dish up a plate for Gramps.” I nodded toward the living room. “He’s in there.”
Deloris padded into the other room and greeted Gramps warmly.
When out of sight, I peeked into the dish and nearly groaned. “Damn, Deloris.”
I might propose to her. Holy shit. The dish held freshly grilled steaks drizzled in what looked like goat cheese and balsamic, with oven roasted potatoes, cheesy garlic bread, and freshly baked snickerdoodle cookies, safely partitioned from the other food with tin foil. No weird-ass casseroles for us tonight. A few dishes this week had been in the running for food crimes against humanity. I had more than enough money to hire a chef for Gramps, but I knew these drop-ins from his community would mean more. Did mean more. Plus, it was the Hartwood Falls way of things. Big city draws with small town values, that was Hartwood Falls. Or so everyone loved to say.
I quickly put a plate together for Gramps, stealing a few bites for myself. Gramps and Deloris were smiling while looking through a photo album when I entered. Nightshade leaped off Gramps’s lap and jumped between my feet, dancing in an eager circle.
I chuckled. “You’re my stomach’s interpretive dance right now, Shade.”
“I raised four boys.” Deloris winked.
“You single?” I winked in return and was rewarded by a genuine blush. Flirting with gray-haired women never got old. Before she could reply, I knelt before Gramps and handed him the prepared plate. “Eating like a king tonight.”
His eyes widened as he looked over the food. But my eyes focused on the tremors in his hand as he took the plate. He required assistance with some meals, and I worried he’d need to eat soft food soon as well. Since his stroke last year, he struggled with mobility. Sometimes cognitive abilities too. Gran had become his full-time caretaker, refusing any outside help. Even mine. There was no way she was going to let anyone else care for her husband. She had the biggest heart of anyone I knew.
It shouldn’t have failed. It shouldn’t have stopped.
I took a knife and fork and cut off a few pieces of steak to hide my building grief. “Try this. Deloris made it.” I offered up the morsel without meeting his eyes.
Gramps took the fork from my fingers and focused on the spunky woman instead of his shaking hand. “Frances would probably ask for your recipe about now.”
“Would you like me to add it to her recipe box?” She asked with a kind smile.
“Sure thing. I believe she keeps blank cards in the back. Maybe I can convince Frances to make your famous snickerdoodles for the church picnic this year.”
Deloris and I both froze; our eyes locked.
This was the fourth time today Gramps had referred to Gran in the present tense.
“Gramps—” I began softly.
Gramps lowered his fork and held up a shaky hand. “Sorry . . . my mind slips away and I forget.”
Deloris slid him a sad smile. “I did too after my Jimmy passed away.”
I swiped furiously at a tear. I needed air. Gramps, Gran, and me . . . we had been each other’s only family. And now Gramps wasn’t doing well. Losing Gran would only make his condition worse. How long did he have? And without me here in town, what would he have to hold him to this place?
I couldn’t even think about that.
Deloris watched me from the corner of her eye. It was too much. By myself it was hard enough. But with witnesses? Unbearable. The desire for a drink hit me full force, like a slap to the face. It was always in me, that yearning undercurrent. But right now, it felt undeniable. To distract myself, I lifted the knife to cut another bite of steak for the older man when Nightshade romped over toward the door and barked. My body nearly deflated in relief.
“I’ll, uh, take Nightshade for a walk.”
I didn’t wait for an answer. Nightshade barked at the door in anticipation. I threw on a jacket, ball cap, and tucked sunglasses into the neck of my shirt. Leash in hand, I jogged out of the house and into the dusking night. Emotions boiled beneath my skin—anger, sorrow, fear. How the hell could I record an album right now? Followed by a world-wide tour? Every thought of leaving twisted a dagger inside my heart.
I couldn’t abandon Gramps.
Wouldn’t.
Chapter Three
Bella
A knock on my front door roused me from my couch-bound stupor. After workdays like toda
y, it was all I could do to get into my yoga pants and melt into a puddle on the sofa. “Just a minute,” I half-heartedly shouted, sliding my cold toes into my sheepskin slippers. It was only early September, but Hartwood Falls already had a chill in the air.
My door opened to someone I had not been expecting. “Mamma? Did we have plans I forgot about?” I wracked my brain. I didn’t think so. I was pretty good about getting things onto my calendar.
Mamma breezed past me into my apartment, her embroidered kaftan trailing the scents of patchouli and sage behind her. Her long black hair cascaded to her waist, and she wore enough jewelry and crystals for three people. Her olive skin was flawless, her firm chin and high cheekbones barely betraying a hint of her fifty-five years.
“Belladonna Maria LaSorena Pagano.” She rounded on me. “For shame. I knew you’d just be sitting here in those—” She pointed at my clothing, her nose wrinkled “—sweatpants.”
“They’re yoga pants,” I corrected. Totally different. Much cuter. Much less pathetic. I closed the door behind her.
She waved her hand dismissively. “You need to change. I’m breaking you out.” She headed down the hallway into my bedroom, leaving me behind. My mother was a force of nature. Undeniable and enigmatic. And inconvenient as hell.
I reluctantly trudged after her into the bedroom. Crossing my arms before my chest, I leaned against the door jamb, as if accepting my slow-motion descent into hell. “Mamma, I've had a long day. Work was rough. I just want to stay in toni—what are you doing?”
Mamma rifled through my closet, pulling out checkered blouses and 1940s- and 50s-tailored dresses. As a teenager, I had rebelled against Mamma’s hippie chic attire, somehow finding my way to bright red lipstick and a Rockabilly style, which mostly stuck.
“You work too hard. Find a job you love and you'll never work a day in your life.” Apparently, she could lecture and meddle at the same time. A Mamma Pagano specialty.
I let out an exasperated sigh. I did love my job. It just also happened to be exhausting. “We can’t all do what you do. I don't think Hartwood Falls has room for two stores like yours.”
My mother’s Italian Stregheria folk magic bookstore Charmed, was tucked on Main Street between the bakery and the post office. It was a mystery to me how a little metaphysical store—filled with tarot cards, incense, herbs, and out-of-print astrology books, mixed with Catholic sundries like rosaries and saint candles—paid for that prime slice of real estate. But it had been a solid fixture ever since Mamma followed me to town three years ago.
“I'm not saying you have to open a store,” she continued. “Just think about yourself for a change, cara mia.”
“I am thinking about myself, and what myself wants is to sit on that couch, finish my bottle of rosé, and not think for the next twelve hours.”
Mamma emerged from the closet holding a black dress with a swooping neckline and little embroidered cherries along the hem. “Put this on.” She tossed it to me.
I let it fall to the floor. “It’s Tuesday, for God’s sake.”
She buried her head back in my closet.
“Where are we even going? Not that I’m agreeing to go anywhere,” I amended.
“Tonight is a new moon.” Her voice was muffled by the clothes hanging about her. “We’re going to do an incantesimi d'amore ritual.”
“I don't need your help managing my love life. I'm doing fine.”
“Are you?” She turned and leveled her gaze at me with such intensity that I almost took a step back. Mamma had an energy . . . an alive-ness that I found myself envying at times. I didn't know how many cups of coffee it would take for me to be that energetic. These days, it felt like work was the energy vampire that left me drained and dead inside. Okay, maybe nothing so theatrical.
“All you do is work and worry about those children.”
I hated it when she was right. Whenever I asked how she could read me so easily, her response was always enigmatic—a mamma knows.
Her eyes met mine over her shoulder. “It's admirable. But what about yourself, Belly?” she asked, emphasizing her most horrendous nickname for me. “You're still young. Beautiful. You should be spending your Tuesday night having a torrid love affair with a man who worships you like the goddess you are!”
I dropped my face into my hands. “Not going to discuss sex with you.” Particularly how little I’d been having as of late. Well, ever since Jason and I broke up three miserable years ago.
Three. Years.
Maybe she had a point.
“I don’t know where you got this squeamishness from. Not me. It must have been your papá.” It was a favorite pastime of hers—blaming my long-absent father for any inconvenient traits.
“Can we stay on topic, please? You still haven’t told me where you’re trying to drag me.”
“I’m taking you to your favorite spot, and we’re going to do a ritual to call in your true amore.”
“The Falls?” I sighed. “It’s September. You know, cold, plus it’s going to be dark soon—”
“If you do this with me, I’ll do all the publicity for your musical.”
I opened and closed my mouth. “What?”
“All of it.” She waved her hand in the air in a way only an Italian mother does—sweeping, dramatic, full of a mother’s martyrdom for her children. “I’ll design the flyer, the program, get it printed, distributed, hang them all over town. Flirt with all my customers until they agree to go.”
I bit my lip. My mother did have an amazing eye for visual arts. And she could get anyone to do anything . . . as she was demonstrating right now.
“Fine!” I threw up my hands in an equally as dramatic flourish—the frustration of an Italian American daughter who knows better than to fight with her mamma.
With a triumphant smile, she tossed me a purple cardigan and a pair of dark-wash jeans.
I collapsed face first into the bed.
My mother always got what she wanted. I pondered this innate natural law from the passenger side of her little black Fiat. How did she do that?
As much as I brushed off her magic and rituals as superstitious nonsense . . . I couldn’t dispute the results.
Besides, if I wanted to return to my yoga pants and rosé, it was best to humor her.
Scrambled bits of music drifted from the radio while Mamma fiddled with the buttons. Then a song filtered through that I recognized. Tom drums boomed an ancient-sounding rhythm. Fingerpicked notes from an acoustic guitar melodically danced around the building thunder of the drumbeats. But it was the vocals that stilled my heart. Smoky, hypnotic, the kind of sensual notes that always arrested my pulse.
Mamma continued past it.
“Hey, go back. I like that song.” It was Wilted by Burning Umbrage. That band was just about Hartwood Falls’s only claim to fame.
Mamma raised a pencil-thin black brow at me. “You know the lead singer is from Hartwood Falls?”
“Are you serious?” I said with mock surprise. Then I scoffed. “It’s a miracle there isn’t a statue dedicated to him in the town square.” Although even I had to admit, that would be a hot-ass statue. The lead singer, Cade Owens, was unfairly good looking. Like God had taken the amount of sexiness normally allotted to three regular people and just shoved it all into one man for the hell of it.
“Did you know he’s in town?”
“What?” I examined her, my bullshit meter not quite functioning properly. “No, he’s not. His Instagram didn’t show him traveling anywhere.” I winced as soon as I said it. Following Cade Owens’s account was supposed to be my secret guilty pleasure.
“His grandmother Frances Owens passed away,” Mamma said. “He’s here for the funeral. I’m not surprised he didn’t announce it.”
“Oh.” My curiosity dimmed. “That’s sad.”
“I thought about going to the funeral,” Mamma said.
“Did you know her?”
“No, but it would have been a perfect opportunity to get
a look at that man in person.” She kissed her fingers in a salute and murmured, “Delizioso.”
“Mamma!” I smacked her on the shoulder. “You can’t go to a funeral to ogle a rock star thirty years your junior.”
She stuck her tongue out at me. “Stop worrying about what everyone else thinks, Belly. Life's too short for that shit.”
“It’s not ‘worrying what everyone thinks,’ it’s ‘not being a terrible human being.’”
Mamma whipped into a parking spot at the base of Hartwood Falls State Park. “Tom-ay-to, to-mah-to,” she said as she put the car in park and got out.
I shook my head and followed. I had to remember why I was doing this. All publicity materials for Little Shop of Horrors, our fall musical. Worth it. So worth it.
I pulled my purple peacoat around me, taking a deep breath of fresh fall air. Mamma was right that this was one of my favorite places. And though the night was cool, a walk would be nice.
“Nature always knows,” Mamma said as she retrieved an embroidered bag from the back of the car. “And tonight, nature knows that it’s time for you to make a change.”
“You know that just calling yourself ‘nature’ doesn’t make you any more authoritative.”
She ignored me. “I have a feeling.”
I groaned but threaded my arm into hers.
As we walked up toward the trailhead, a smile pulled on the corners of my previously downturned mouth. Mamma was crazy, but she was my crazy. And I was her rock, keeping her grounded. It had always been that way.
