‘I want her so badly,’ he thought. ‘But if I go about it the wrong way I will never forgive myself.’
He knew he had to give her the letter. Once she read it, she could decide for herself if what he did was wrong or not. It had been seven years, but it might as well have been yesterday as far as Maggie was concerned. She may be willing to hold Scott in her arms, but he wasn’t convinced he occupied the first place position in her heart.
Chapter Ten – Wednesday
Maggie hadn’t been to Fleurmania in several years. The little town was tucked away in the foothills of Pine Mountain, just like Rose Hill, but on the other side of Bear Lake. It was half the size of Rose Hill, and was well off the beaten track as far as tourists were concerned. There was a large Mennonite Church there, but no folksy tourist attractions. As a consequence, the town was peaceful, but poor.
At Pine Crest Manor, Maggie found the administrator was a Mrs. Kathleen Dougan, someone who went to school with her father and mother.
“Your dad was the handsomest boy you ever did see,” she said. “He had that black curly hair and bright blue eyes. We all had mad crushes on him, but he only had eyes for your mother.”
Maggie knew that wasn’t entirely true, according to her mother, but she let this nice lady have that fantasy. She played ‘remember when’ and ‘do you know’ with her for a little while, and then got to the reason for her visit.
“You remember my Aunt Delia?” Maggie asked her.
“Of course I do, how is she?”
“She’s doing well. Ian’s retired now but they still have the bar, the Rose and Thorn.”
“It was such a shame about their little boy. He was the sweetest thing.”
“Yes, he was. Did Connie Fenton work here at the same time Delia did?”
Mrs. Dougan’s demeanor immediately changed.
“Unfortunately, yes,” she said.
“Why, what happened?” Maggie asked.
“Nothing I’m allowed to talk about,” she said, “if I want to keep my job.”
“I certainly don’t want to jeopardize your job,” Maggie said, clearly wishing she could.
She could tell Mrs. Dougan was dying to say just what she thought of Connie Fenton, so Maggie told her about the president of Eldridge College dying in the Eldridge Inn, where Connie was in charge, and Mrs. Dougan’s eyes got bigger as she listened. After Maggie finished telling her all she knew, the administrator got up and left the room for a minute, before coming back with a thick file.
“I have to run out to my car and look for my cell phone,” she told Maggie in a loud voice, as she thumped the file down right in front of her on the desk. “It might take me awhile. You help yourself to anything you need while I’m gone. I’ll lock the door so no one disturbs you.”
With that final remark she left the office, and Maggie wasted no time in opening the file to read through the contents. By the time Mrs. Dougan came back twenty minutes later, Maggie had learned all she needed to know. She thanked the woman profusely.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you what you needed to know,” Mrs. Dougan said loudly, as they walked through her secretary’s office.
“That’s okay,” Maggie said. “I understand.”
Maggie walked out of Pine Crest Manor and down the steep stairs set into the hillside to where she left her car on Main Street. There weren’t many businesses open in Fleurmania, just a gas station and a general store. Maggie went into the latter to see if they had any root beers.
Morris Hatcher came out as she walked in.
“Hatch!” she said just as he said, “Maggie!”
“What in the devil’s name are you doing in this godforsaken town?” he asked her.
“I came to see someone at Pine Crest,” she said.
“You haven’t changed a bit,” he said. “How’s your family?”
“They’re all just fine,” she lied. “How about your bunch?”
“It would take me all morning to get you caught up, and I have to get back to work.”
He pointed to the gas station down the block.
“Is Marvin Bledsoe still running that place?” Maggie asked.
“He is, and about to drive me crazy. He hasn’t changed much either; he’s just fatter and meaner.”
“How about if you put the VW up on the rack and talk to me while you change the oil? He can’t fuss about that.”
“Sure, bring that old buggy on down here. I’d like to see what kind of rubber bands and paper clips you got holding her together these days.”
“I’m going to buy myself a root beer and I’ll be right down.”
Morris Hatcher had been Hannah’s boyfriend in high school. Then his good-for-nothing father drank himself to death, and his mother died of cancer, leaving Hatch at age sixteen with four younger siblings to look after. He dropped out of school, went to work for Marvin as a car mechanic, and broke up with Hannah, who was devastated.
Maggie bought her soda and then drove her vintage VW Beetle down to Marvin’s gas station. Marvin Bledsoe was a gigantic man who’d already had one leg amputated because of diabetes, but still he sat in the gas station all day long drinking whiskey in RC Cola and accepting money for gas and car repairs. He started out nice in the morning, but by afternoon he was a different person altogether.
It was still early, and Marvin was in good form. He was sitting behind the counter in his wheelchair, chewing the fat with a couple old coots.
“Hey Red,” he said when Maggie walked in. “How’s that ole man a yers?”
“Fitz is fine,” Maggie said. “How are you doing, Marvin?”
“Oh, I can’t complain,” he said with a wheezy laugh. “Nobody’d listen even if I did.”
“I’d like Hatch to take a look at my VW, if that’s alright with you. My oil light just came on and I’m afraid to drive it all the way back to Rose Hill.”
“Sure, sure,” he said. “Go on in.”
Maggie walked through the connecting door to the service area, which seemed very familiar to her, having an uncle with a service station very much like it in Rose Hill. She threw Hatch the keys and he brought the VW in and raised it up. He found Maggie a milk crate to sit on and placed it near the gas stove. He draped a newspaper over it.
“That should keep your britches clean,” he said, and she thanked him.
Hatch’s hands were stained black from his work. He wore a pair of faded blue coveralls with the name “Dwayne” embroidered on the chest; they were several sizes too big and hung on his thin frame. Hatch had never been what you would call a handsome man, with a lanky, bony frame, a long neck with a pronounced Adam’s apple, and a big hooked nose. He had large dark eyes and a friendly smile, though. His features were further improved by the black goatee he wore to cover up his receding chin. In high school he’d had long silky straight black hair, which many a girl envied, but now he wore it nearly shaved. When he smiled, a chipped front tooth was still apparent. He always looked tired as a teenager, with dark circles under his eyes. They were still there.
“How’s Patty?” Maggie asked first.
Patty had been in Maggie’s class, a very shy girl who quit school the year after Hatch did to help look after the younger kids.
“Well, that’s a kind of sad story right there,” he said, as he drained the old oil out of the pan. “She took up with a fella from over to Familysburg, and he got her hooked on that meth. I don’t know if she’s alive or dead, to tell you the truth. I haven’t heard from her in over a year. I got her child living with me, though. He’s about seven, and he’s a good ‘un. Smart, you wouldn’t believe how smart that boy is. Gets all A’s on his report card. Better’n I ever did, that’s for sure.”
“I’m sorry to hear that about Patty,” Maggie said, thinking Hatch would never be free from raising someone else’s kids.
“She may kick it yet. I guess there’s some that do.”
“What about Boyd?”
“He’s done good. He went in the army, got
himself a promotion this past year. He’s running the procurement department down at a base in Texas. He doesn’t come home much, got a family of his own now, two little girls and a real nice wife.”
“And Lessie?”
“She went to beauty school and works at a place in Morgantown. She’s married to a steady, nice guy who’s a meter reader for the gas company. They don’t have any kids yet. Her job keeps her busy, so she doesn’t get home much either.”
“And Trudy?”
“Trudy graduated from high school ‘bout five years ago, and she’s working at the Megamart in Friendsville, sharing a place with another girl she works with. She’s got her a real nice Christian boyfriend, and I expect she’ll marry him and have a bunch of little Sunday-schoolers before long.”
“So it’s just you and Patty’s boy?”
“Joshua. Yep, it’s just me and Joshie now. I never did get married; I just didn’t have room for anybody else, ya know what I mean?”
Maggie thought of how Hannah had suffered when he broke her heart in high school. Hannah, who didn’t seem to be able to have kids of her own; she would have married him in a heartbeat, and been a good mother to all those kids. Things might have turned out differently for everyone if she had.
“How’s our Hannah?” Hatch asked her, as if reading her mind. “You two still joined at the hip?”
“Pretty much,” Maggie said. “If I don’t see her every day I talk to her four or five times.”
“How’s she getting along?”
“She’s good,” Maggie said.
“I heard she married Sam Campbell. She happy?”
“She’s doing fine,” Maggie said. “She’s still the animal control officer for the county; she and Sam took over the family farm. She keeps pretty busy.”
“She got any kids?”
“No, not yet.”
“I see her dad every once in awhile when he tows somebody through here. You tell her I said hi.”
Hatch and Maggie played the “remember when” and “do you ever see” game until the oil change was done, and then Maggie paid Marvin while Hatch backed her car out of the service bay.
“You tell your Uncle Curtis I want to sell him this place,” Marvin said to Maggie.
“Why would you want to do that, Marvin?”
“I’m gettin’ old, girl, and I want to move to Florida.”
“It’s way too hot in Florida,” Maggie told him. “You’ve got that mountain blood in your veins, and it’s too thick for the beach.”
“You tell him I’ll make him a good deal,” Marvin ordered, in between sips of RC and the whisky Maggie could smell from where she stood. “I mean it.”
Maggie waved to him as she went out, and took her keys from Hatch.
“Your buggy’s in good shape for a senior citizen,” he said. “I adjusted the timing belt and cleaned your spark plugs while I was in there, but Marvin don’t have to know ‘bout that.”
“I really appreciate it,” Maggie said. “It was good to see you again.”
“You ever hear from Gabe?” he asked her.
Maggie still felt a sharp pain in her heart at the mention of his name.
“No,” she said. “I don’t know where he went or what he’s doing.”
“Well, I don’t want to spread gossip, but I heard he was in prison down in Florida.”
Maggie’s heart thumped hard in her chest and the pain increased.
“That’s not true,” she said. “He couldn’t be. For what?”
“Possession with intent to sell,” he said. “A huge shipment of drugs is what I heard.”
“That can’t be true,” Maggie said. “Gabe didn’t do drugs, let alone sell them.”
“I’m just tellin’ ya what I heard. He and Patty’s man had the same supplier.”
“That’s just vicious gossip,” Maggie said. “I don’t believe a word of it.”
“I won’t argue with ya, woman,” Hatch said. “I know ya too well, and I’d never win.”
Maggie just kept shaking her head.
“Patty’s man is thinking of someone else.”
“Alright,” Hatch said. “Sorry I said anything. You mad?”
“No, I’m not mad.”
Hatch looked at her with those big soulful dark eyes, reflecting a life of sorrow and hard work.
“You take care,” he said to her. “I’d give ya a hug, but I’m too dirty.”
“That’s alright,” she said. “Hug received, just the same.”
Maggie cried a little on the way back to Rose Hill; for Hatch and his orphans, for Hannah and her troubled husband, and in a burst of self-pity, for herself and Gabe.
Several people nodded to Scott as he entered the Rose and Thorn, and one or two people took the opportunity to leave, but he was used to that. Patrick was serving drinks, and his Uncle Ian was holding down one end of the bar, entertaining the tourists. On top of the other end of the bar, oddly enough, what looked remarkably like a small beagle was sprawled out asleep, its head resting on a folded bar towel.
Patrick lowered the volume on the Alison Krauss CD he was playing, and said, as Scott sat down at the bar, “Sorry about giving you so much grief about clearing out the bar the other night. I know you were just doing your job, and we did have way too many people in here.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Scott replied and nodded at the dog. “Who’s your friend?”
“That’s Banjo,” Patrick said, as he resumed polishing glasses. “I’m dog sitting him for Hannah. Caroline asked her to find homes for all Theo’s dogs and Hannah’s kennel is full up. She found a home for his brother, but this one is still available.”
“Just dog sitting, huh?” Scott said with a smirk.
“It’s just for a few days, until she gets something else sorted out,” Patrick insisted, but Scott knew better. “Lazy Ass Laddie doesn’t like him, so my mother had him tied up behind the bakery, bossing him around something awful. I brought him down here so he could relax where it’s warm.”
“Aren’t you worried about the health department?” Scott asked.
“You mean Floyd?” Patrick said, and gestured with his head toward a booth along the side, where county health inspector Floyd Ransbottom raised a frosty mug to them at the mention of his name. “Banjo here’s been buying him beers since we opened, and I gotta tell ya, Floyd doesn’t seem too concerned.”
Scott shook his head and went down to the end of the bar to see if he could buy Ian a beer, but Ian waved him off.
“I can’t drink ‘til after dinner. I’m driving the bus mornings and afternoons again,” he said.
“That’s a long drive now,” Scott said, “and to a big school.”
“Have you seen that consolidated school?” Ian asked him. “It’s a massive thing. I don’t know how the kiddies find their way around it without a map. Full of computers and you can’t imagine what all. It’s all technology these days. Everyone’s on the wild world enter web.”
“Do you use the e-mail, Ian?” Scott asked him, knowing his former mentor hated not only computers, but any machine he couldn’t take apart and repair himself.
“No, son, let me tell you what I like to do. When I have a message for a fella, I like to use this thing I got called a telephone. It has a cord attached to the wall what connects it to every other house in the nation. Or I haul my fat arse over to where the person I want to communicate with hangs his hat, and give him my message personally. All these spoiled brats with their texturing and wee boxes and what have you, they may be richer than we were, but they are a damn site poorer in some ways, I can tell you; they’re not a smidgin’ brighter either, and that’s the shame of it.”
“No discipline problems on your bus, I imagine,” Scott said, knowing full well he was only winding the older man up.
“You got that right,” Ian said. “Every semester during the first week of school I put one of ‘em off the bus on the side of the highway and leave ‘em there. It makes an impression they don’t soon
forget.”
“You don’t really,” Scott said, a little concerned.
“No, I do, I really do,” Ian insisted. “I tell Delia the day I’m doing it, and she follows along behind and picks the child up. No harm, no foul. But it makes my point.”
Everyone in the bar laughed except Scott, who closed his eyes and wished he hadn’t asked.
Gwyneth arrived at the lodge and was horrified to find Caroline hanging dripping wet sheets on a clothesline draped across the great room.
“What are you doing?” she gasped, watching the water drip on the expensive oriental rugs and hardwood floors.
Caroline looked at her sister in exasperation as she climbed down the ladder she was using.
“I’m conserving electricity by not using the dryer,” she said.
“You have all those monks out here, why don’t they do some of the work?”
“It’s a long story,” Caroline said, wiping her brow, “and I know you wouldn’t understand, so I’m not going to try to explain it to you.”
“Oh, are they the beekeeping kind? I really hope they’re not the dog training ones; we just got rid of all those horrid beasts.”
“No, they are not beekeepers, or dog trainers, they are meditators, and I don’t have any help,” Caroline said. “I’m doing this all by myself.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“I hardly think of you when manual labor is involved.”
Gwyneth smiled at her sister and took out her cell phone.
“I thought you said your cell phone didn’t work in Rose Hill,” Caroline said.
“I switched to the local provider. Turns out I now own the land on which their tower sits. My service, and service for all my staff, is now free and unlimited. They’d like to put up another tower between here and the ski resort, darling, and I told them I’d talk to you about it.”
“You never cease to amaze me.”
Morning Glory Circle Page 27
