Much Ado About Muffin

by Victoria Hamilton

  “Me, too! I would have loved to play one of the parts. My mom was ready to sew me the most gorgeous kimono.”

  “You could have played Lady Thiang,” I said. “She’s the chief wife of the king. So have you met Roma Toscano?”

  Isadore snorted, like a dragon in her lair. Hannah giggled, her slim hand, tiny rings on her bony fingers, over her mouth.

  “Isadore doesn’t like her much, but I think she’s interesting!” Hannah said. “I’ve never met anyone like her.”

  “Probably not.” I, on the other hand, had met many divas in the modeling world, and they generally had two things in common: absolute self-absorption coupled with crippling insecurity. I suspected Roma was the same. I stared at Hannah, her big gray eyes luminous in the dim and dusty library, her tiny body adorned with a long dress that covered her withered legs. “I’ve missed you so much,” I said, and teared up. How could I have stayed away so long? These people, this place, grounded me.

  “We all missed you,” Hannah said, placing her hand on my arm, her cool, light touch like a fairy breath. “You know, you only miss people if you love them.”

  Isadore looked up from her book, stopping midmunch, and nodded, her odd green eyes aglow. “Missed you, too,” she whispered.

  Chapter Four

  Before I left town I girded my loins and entered the post office, one of the buildings squashed together across Abenaki from Binny’s Bakery. There was an alleyway to the left of it, and a vacant storefront on the right. It all looked ready to tumble down around Minnie’s ears. I entered, the buzzer sounding. Minnie was on the phone, whispering and looking flustered, her puffy cheeks ruddy. She muttered something hastily, and hung up.

  The post office was long and narrow, with a wall of post office boxes on the right ranging from small at the top to larger ones along the bottom. Along the left wall were supplies to purchase: envelopes, brown paper for wrapping, bubble wrap, and tape. About halfway down was Minnie’s counter, and behind her a door to what I assumed was a mail-sorting room.

  Minnie stared at me. She’s a woman in her sixties, broad-beamed and not tall, with messy gray curls. She wore a postal uniform, a pale blue golf shirt and navy pants, stretched across her heavy form. First I collected my mail from our post office box, and then I approached the counter.

  As far as I knew no one actually liked Minnie. We all put up with her because what else could we do? I had long ago switched everything I could to email and paid most bills online. But . . . there are some things you can’t avoid using the post office for.

  “How are you today, Minnie?”

  She nodded, picking moodily at an old scab on her hand. “Heard you were back.”

  “I am. And some of my luggage is being sent back to me by post. It should come soon, within the next few days, I hope: a suitcase and a box.”

  “Okay. Fancy schmancy, from Italy?”

  “Actually, I was in Spain,” I said.

  “Same difference.”

  I gritted my teeth. “Minnie, I heard you had a run-in with Crystal Rouse. What’s the deal with her?” I was anxious to know what was going on, since Emerald, and therefore Lizzie, were involved. Lizzie and Em had lived with me for a while, and I had become attached.

  “That witch had better watch out. She’s got my Brianna reeled in and full of some crap about wishing for something and getting it. What a load!”

  For once we kind of agreed on something, though I wouldn’t put it so baldly. “I’m going to look into it. I feel responsible for Lizzie, since she and her mother lived at the castle for a while.”

  “The castle,” Minnie said darkly. “You open up your place to all kinds of weirdos, don’t you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing,” she said as the phone rang. “Just . . . nothing. I gotta take this.”

  I left mystified and concerned.

  * * *

  Over the next couple of days I slowly got back in the swing of things, even though Roma Toscano, who seemed to take up every waking minute of Pish’s time, filled my castle with chaos. I’m not sure how that was possible, but her stuff was everywhere, and she was everywhere, every time I turned around. Plucking at my sleeve, asking questions to which I had no answers, asking me where Pish was, what there was to eat, if I had any wine left, and where, by the way, the key to the wine cellar was. I kept that hidden because the woman could drink us all under the table, and did, the second evening I was home, when I saw Pish sloshed for the first time in years.

  The only safe spot was my own bedroom, the beautiful turret room I had taken back after our spring visitors left. Even with Roma ensconced, it was good to be home. I slept in late the first couple of days, spoke to my estate lawyer, Andrew Silvio, on the phone—we were close to tying up the inheritance, finally—and got reorganized. My schedule got back to normal, somewhat, though I felt like something was missing.

  For one thing, Becket had not come back, and I was worried. Also, Virgil was being evasive. His schedule seemed to be completely full, and Gogi told me, when I called her, that he had taken on numerous volunteer coaching jobs after I left. She implied it was to fill his time so he wouldn’t feel lonely, but I thought maybe he was avoiding me.

  And for another, though I had seen almost everyone, I had not connected with my best and oldest friend. I had stopped by Jack and Shilo’s home on my way out of town, the day I started my apology tour, but no one was there. The place looked abandoned, the grass unkempt and the flowers wilted.

  I called and called but got no answer. Not to be defeated, three days after getting home I finally tracked down Jack and found out that he and Shilo had recently bought another house in an older section of town. Pish had been so taken up with Roma that I guess he didn’t know, and no one else had told me. They probably thought given how close I was to Shilo, I’d already know.

  The midcentury ranch he owned when they wed wasn’t her, Jack explained. Shilo is fey and creative, wildly imaginative and special in so many ways; a tract home was too staid. Sniffing an opportunity, he had put in an offer on an empty home in the old section of town and bought it at a ridiculously low price. They had partially moved in so they could renovate while living in it, with the revitalized Turner Construction doing some of the heavy work. The ranch home had been rented out to tenants who hadn’t moved to town yet.

  He gave me the new address. Unwilling to beat around the bush with something so important to me, I asked him, was Shilo angry at me, as others were, for staying away so long and being so distant?

  He was silent for a few moments. “I don’t think so.” He sighed heavily. “Something is bugging her, but she won’t tell me what. I’m out of town today, but she’s at the new house. Go see her, Merry. You’re her oldest friend. Help me figure it out.”

  I hung up, feeling a cold chill race through me. When I first met Shilo she was a skinny, scared teenaged model living in a modeling agency apartment with several other skinny, scared teenage models. She didn’t talk much about her family, and I didn’t push her, because I observed that when you pushed Shilo about her past, she pulled away or cut you off. Over the years we had become best friends, but I still didn’t know much about her past except that she was estranged from her family. I thought she came from the South; her accent had been fairly strong when I met her, though she eventually lost it.

  Sometimes I wondered if I should have tried harder once we got close, but she was as fragile as a dandelion; one puff and she’d shatter, I always worried. Fragile, and yet so incredibly strong in other ways. She must be strong, I often thought, because there was clearly something in her life that had wounded her, and yet she kept going. If Jack thought something was wrong, maybe now was the time for me to push. I remembered what Doc had told me, that he saw her talking to a strange man, but she hurried away when she saw Doc walking toward her. It made me uneasy.

  Minutes after hangin
g up, I was in the big Caddy, heading to the address Jack gave me. I drove into Autumn Vale, wound through the streets, and turned down the avenue that had a little parkette on the corner. I had discovered the tiny pocket park the previous fall; it was entered through a wrought iron gate over which the words Come and Partake of Nature were written in iron scrollwork. This was most definitely an old section of town. There was an elaborate Italianate house, a Colonial, and then there was the house Jack had described, with a Turner Construction truck parked outside.

  I pulled up to the curb. When I got out I noticed two men were using a jack to support the roof of the rickety veranda of the Queen Anne–style mansion; the men must be Rusty Turner’s new hires, I supposed. One was a stocky, balding African-American man whose fringe of hair had some gray in it, and the other was a biker-looking fellow probably in his late forties, with gray threaded through his long ponytail.

  The black guy had noticed me as I got out of the car, and smiled as he cranked the jack and locked it into place. “Nice-lookin’ old Caddy you got there,” he called out.

  “It is a sweet ride,” I replied.

  The other guy turned, eyed me with indifference, and returned to his job, checking to be sure the hydraulic jack was firmly in place. Around the side of the house parked on a weedy, cracked paved drive I spied Jezebel, Shilo’s rickety old car, so I hoped I’d caught her at home.

  I ambled toward the house. It was a fixer-upper, that was for sure. If Jack hadn’t told me that the foundation was in perfect shape, I’d worry that it would tumble down around their ears. The house was a big clapboard Queen Anne, with a wraparound porch that extended on one corner to a round jutting section. The porch was in rough shape, with rotting boards and spindles, the railing split and falling off. But as I examined the home overall, I could see that the clapboard siding seemed in good repair, though it needed a paint job, and the windows were newer, double-hung, and installed sometime in the last twenty years or so.

  I strolled through the old wrought iron gate and toward the house. “My name is Merry Wynter,” I said. “You two must be Rusty Turner’s new guys. Are you new in town?”

  “I am,” the balding guy said. “Dewayne Lester at your service. Just got to town two weeks ago. I’d shake your hand, but I’m kinda busy.” He lifted a four-by-four into place on a second jack, under the beam, his maroon T-shirt stained with a V of sweat down the front and back, as his workmate silently pushed the jack into place and cranked.

  The other guy didn’t say a word.

  Dewayne eyed him with an expression of distaste. “This here is Pete, and he’s all business, no time to be polite.”

  “Rusty don’t pay us to talk,” Pete grunted, working the jack until it pushed the four-by-four right up against the veranda roof beam. He was stringy, ropy muscles winding around sinewy arms, exposed by a plain white tank top shoved into tight paint-stained jeans, while Dewayne was stocky, with the build of a prizefighter gone soft, broad of shoulder, though he had a potbelly hanging over the waist of his string-tied sweatpants.

  “Rusty is a friend of mine,” I said. “I’m sure he’s lucky to have you both, and I’m glad his business is starting up again. Is Shilo home? I see her car.”

  “Yup, she’s there,” Dewayne said, straightening from his work and pulling a cloth out of his pocket. He wiped beads of sweat off his forehead. “She’s stripping wallpaper today.”

  I laughed. “I know something about that.”

  “Merry Wynter. I’ve heard your name around town. You’re the lady who inherited the castle!” Dewayne said, jabbing the cloth in my direction.

  “I am.”

  “Shilo talks about you sometimes.”

  “I’ve been away for a couple of months.” I climbed the steps and peered anxiously up at the roof. “Is it safe to come through the front?”

  “Sure is,” Dewayne said. He hopped over and opened the door with a toothy grin.

  I slipped through, then turned and thanked him. He seemed like a nice guy. I then stepped into the foyer. As my vision adjusted to the gloom, I saw what had attracted Shilo. The foyer was bright, though dusty, and the floors were all hardwood. The moldings and baseboards were original wood, too, and the staircase that climbed in stages from the foyer to a landing, 180-degree turn, then the rest of the way up, was all the same gorgeous dark-stained wood. A beautiful pendant light hung in the middle of the big, open space.

  A movement startled me, but it was just Magic. “How are you, sweetie?” I cried, picking up Shilo’s bunny and cuddling him against me. “Shilo!” I called out as I began to explore.

  “Hello?” came back a ghostly echoing call.

  I followed the sound, walking through a parlor to a dining room, and found Shilo, dressed in overalls and a tie-dye T-shirt, her long dark hair in braids. She was up on a tall ladder stripping hideous stained wallpaper. She turned and saw me, and a welcoming smile broadened, then faltered.

  “Merry!” she gasped, and unsteadily climbed down the ladder, spray bottle and putty knife in her hands. She dropped them and crossed the floor, gently took Magic out my hand, set him aside, then hugged me hard. “I’ve missed you so much,” she said, her voice muffled against my shoulder.

  I held her for a minute, rocking back and forth. Shilo and Pish were the friends who were there for me when Miguel was killed in a horrible accident on the highway to Vermont. They were there through his funeral, when his mother berated me, telling me it was all my fault that her son wanted to stay in New York, and so ended up dead on an American highway. And they were there when Maria demanded I give back his name; I was to no longer call myself Mrs. Paradiso.

  And they were both there through my long years of mourning, the only two people who never told me to get a grip and get over it. Sure, I was there for them, too, through trauma and trial, but I think I leaned on them a lot more than they leaned on me. Whatever was wrong in Shilo’s life, I needed to figure it out and help her.

  She led me around the place with excitement, and I was so happy for what seemed to be a new phase of her life. Where once she had been a vagabond, a self-described gypsy girl, she was settled, with a wonderful husband—Jack McGill had fallen completely in love with Shilo almost immediately, and they had married within months of meeting each other—and now had a project to work on. So far I hadn’t noticed the sadness people reported.

  We finished in the kitchen, which was basically gutted. Shilo had a table and chairs set up, and a long, scarred table that held a microwave, coffeemaker, and hot plate. She made a pot of herbal tea and sat cross-legged on the fifties dinette chair, while Magic snuffled around the room, hopping from place to place, leaving dark pellets behind. I reminded myself to never walk barefoot in her home.

  I apologized for having been gone so long and seeming so distant on the phone. “Shilo, you deserved better. You all deserved better. I was selfish, caught up in my own needs; I’m so sorry.”

  She hugged me again and patted my shoulder, her eyes shining with tears. “I know, Merry, I know. We—Pish and I—did understand, but it hurt.”

  “Am I forgiven?”

  She nodded. Shilo and Pish both knew my past, and understood that when I left to go to Maria’s deathbed, I hadn’t much hope of a true reconciliation. “But Maria had changed a lot over the years,” I said. “She regretted how she had ostracized me. I now get that part of that was Miguel’s responsibility. He should have been willing to stand up to his mother for my sake; it would have made a difference. I felt guilty about feeling that way, but it was a legitimate response that I had been too afraid of losing Miguel to express.”

  “So what about Virgil?” she asked.

  I sighed. “I need to apologize properly to him, and then I think we have some talking to do.” I left it at that. “How about you and Jack? You doing okay?” I was looking for a way to open up a conversation about the people who were worried about her.
So far she had been nothing but cheerful, but it did feel like there was something just under the surface.

  And there it was: something was wrong. She didn’t meet my eyes, as she tried to smile. Examining her face even as she looked away, I noticed that she was pale and seemed even thinner than usual. “Are you okay, Shilo? Is anything wrong?”

  She shook her head. “No way. Jack adores me, Magic is alive, and I’m fine! What could be wrong?”

  Despite her jaunty attitude, my bull-crap alarm was going off. She was agitated, though, and I didn’t want to make our first get-together in months into an uncomfortable inquisition. I let it go for the moment. “So Rusty has his business going again! I’m so happy. And you and Jack hired them to do some of the work?”

  “We’ve only been in here for a couple of weeks, and Rusty’s guys only started working yesterday.” She jumped up to move Magic away from an extension cord, then unplugged it and wound it up. “They’re going to have the veranda restructured by next week, then they’re going to paint the whole house for us. I can do a lot of the interior stuff, and Jack is handy, but there’s so much to do we need help.”

  “The one guy, Dewayne, seems like a nice dude.”

  Her eyes sparkled, and she plunked down in the chair across from me. “You’ll never guess who he is.”

  “Tell me!”

  “He’s Minnie Urquhart’s new boyfriend! They met on a dating website, and he moved here to be closer to her!”

  “Holy crap, really?”

  “Jack and I came out to the castle to talk to Pish, but he wasn’t there. When we told Roma about Dewayne and Pete helping us on the house, she said she’d seen Dewayne around. I guess he was at the post office talking to Minnie, and she figured out their relationship. As normal as he looked, Roma said, there must be something seriously wrong with him to go out with Minnie.” Her smile faltered. “And then she said some rude things about Minnie’s size and her name and her age. It was kind of awful.”