by Jess Lourey
When the flames burned themselves out, I turned to my pillaged, heartbroken, betrayed garden, my head thick and raw. I picked what whole vegetables I could find and gathered enough to fill two bags. I made a pile of the plants I had killed and burned them also. When it was all said and done, I was left with two live tomato plants, the carrots and potatoes, and one helluva hard watermelon.
A clean start. That’s all I wanted. A clean start.
Mrs. Berns and Sarah Ruth sensed my strange, impenetrable mood and left me alone for the morning shift. I worked robotically and grieved what I had done. What could I ever do to make up for getting trashed and destroying my garden? Hurting the earth was the worst thing I could do, because there was no one to forgive me.
“You should go get some lunch.”
“I’m not hungry, Mrs. Berns.”
“I am. Will you please get me a bagel?”
“You hate bagels.”
“Not as much as I hate mopey, pain-in-the-ass, black-mood girls. I don’t know what put you in this funk, but Sarah Ruth and I need a break from it. Take a walk.”
“Fine.” The coffee shop was as good a place as any to hate myself. I grabbed the grocery bag of peppers, onions, and tomatoes and shuffled over to the Fortune Café. My plan was to share my abused vegetables with Sid and Nancy, the owners of the Café. They had been in business together in Battle Lake for five years, but they’d been a couple at least two decades. The Café’s front room was a coffee shop and their back room was a combination library-computer room-visiting space. I had played many a Scrabble game with Sid in the back, her vocabulary a fair match for mine. The three of us were solid friends, though I was closer to Sid than to Nancy, and I felt my shame sink even deeper as I walked into their store, the inviting smell of cinnamon and coffee washing over me.
“Hey Mira!” Sid smiled from behind the counter she was washing as I entered. The lunch rush had already come and gone, and except for a three-seat table of tourists near the front, the place was empty. I normally felt comforted by the surroundings—forest-green-and-white-tiled floor, blonde wood tables, and white walls hung with watercolors of flowers and country schoolhouses. Now, the familiarity somehow increased my guilt.
“Hi.”
“Jeez, you look rough. Catch a summer cold?”
“Maybe.”
She stopped washing the counter and crossed her arms in front of her. “Maybe? There something you want to talk about?”
I couldn’t meet her eyes. “You ever do something so bad that you could never fix it?”
Sid studied all the vegetables I had placed in front of her, then looked at me with a glimmer of understanding under her graying eyebrows. “This is an awful lot of vegetables all at once, some of them not ripe. You get a storm out there?”
“Of sorts.”
Sid sighed. “No, I never did anything so bad I couldn’t fix it, and if you’re still alive, neither have you.”
I snuffled. “What if it was really bad?”
“Like attacking your own garden?”
“Yeah.”
“Then you apologize to your garden, you replant what you can, and you figure out what made you so crazy.”
“I already know.”
“I figured you did. Anything you can do something about?”
I thought about my dad, my mom, the dead cheerleader, Johnny with his sweet blue eyes and strong hands. “Maybe.”
“Then I suggest you stop feeling sorry for yourself and start doing.” She wiped her hands on her apron decisively and grabbed my hand. “Come here. I have something to show you. Nance, can you watch the front? I’ll be right back.”
She led me upstairs, to her and Nancy’s living quarters. I had spent plenty of time with her in the lower half of the building but had never been to the second level. This section of the house was as neat as the downstairs, with a separate kitchen, bathroom, living room, and bedroom. The country-fancy look of the Café was not duplicated on this level. Everything up here was clean lines, hardwood floors, and pale denim-colored walls. The smell of baking bread wafted up through the cracks, but it wasn’t as strong, and there was a clean soap scent up here that cut through it.
Sid led me into the bedroom and opened the dark oak chest at the foot of her bed. She rifled through the deep container, smiling fondly as she brought up a box of pictures.
“Have a seat,” she said, indicating the white, yellow, and blue patchwork quilt on the bed. “I’m going to show you something that I’ve never shown anyone but Nancy.”
“Your senior photo?”
“Worse.” She handed over a Polaroid of a charred building, its supporting beams sticking up like blackened bones. I held it close, sniffing for charcoal.
“What is it?”
“My parents’ garage.”
“Oh my god! Was anyone hurt?”
“No. My mom and dad were on vacation, and that’s why I burned it down that day.”
“You burned down your parents’ garage?”
“To the ground. I destroyed their minivan, all the pictures they had in storage in the garage attic, all their gardening tools. Burnt it all to the ground.”
“Why?”
She sat heavily on the floor with a mix of sadness and humor in her eyes. “I was pissed off. I was a teenager, and I had been trying to come out to them for years. They wouldn’t hear me, and so I thought I would do something they couldn’t ignore. Pretty stupid, huh?”
“Did they listen to you?”
“No. And they still haven’t. They prefer to think of me and Nancy as ‘roommates.’ They also didn’t press charges against me for torching the garage, they didn’t claim any insurance, and they paid the fire station’s bills. We all just acted like nothing happened. They probably thought they were doing me a favor, but it was the shittiest thing they could have done.”
“Did you tell them you were sorry?”
“Eventually, after many, many years of feeling horrible for burning their memories. It was after I figured out I didn’t need their approval that I could finally apologize and mean it. Even better, I forgave them. And I saved a picture so I’d never forget where I’d been and how far I’ve come, and so I never go back. We make mistakes, Mira. We learn, we change what we can, and we forgive ourselves, as hard as it is. That’s life.”
I felt an interior weight shift. It didn’t go away, but it didn’t feel so heavy anymore. “You’re a wise woman.”
“You’re not so bad yourself.” She treated me to a smile like balm and packed up the picture. On the way back downstairs, she also offered some juicy gossip. “By the way, you know the new family at New Millennium Bible? The Holier Thanthous?”
“The Meales?”
“That’s them. You’ll never guess what happened this morning. Their daughter, Alicia, the one who looks like a young Lynda Carter?”
“I wouldn’t go that far, but yeah.”
“She was in this morning. Nancy caught her stealing a bag of biscotti. Can you believe that!”
Nancy met us at the bottom of the stairs at the mention of her name, wiping her hands on her apron. “Yah, caught her red handed. And do you know what she said to me? She said she was just putting it into her purse so it’d be easier to carry to the counter.”
“You didn’t believe her?”
“That’s like the lion telling the antelope it’s just going to clean its hind end. I told her I was going to call the police, and she threatened me with the Liberty Law School. Said it was started by Jerry Falwell and was turning out lawyers only too happy to deal with people like me.”
I smiled for the first time that day. “Coffee shop owners?”
“I guess. That one is wicked.”
That about summed it up, as far as I could tell. “So what’d you do?”
“Let her go. We don’t need the trouble.” Nancy straightened her apron, squeezed Sid’s hand, and headed back to the front counter. On her way, she hollered over her shoulder at Sid. “Did you ask her yet?�
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I looked from Nancy to Sid. “Ask me what?”
“A favor. I know you’re busy with two jobs, but we’re hoping you can open up the Café tomorrow. Nancy’s sister is having surgery in Fargo later today, and we want to stay overnight so she isn’t alone.”
“Anything serious?”
“Not too bad. Just gallstones. She doesn’t have any other family close by, though, so we want to be there.”
My dearth of family felt sharp for a moment, but the pang was replaced by my bounty of friends. “Of course I’ll open up. I can’t promise to do any baking, though.”
“We’ll have it all stocked up for you, and a sign saying that the fancy coffees will need to wait. We’re planning on being back by 10:00, so you’ll be able to skedaddle to the library before Mrs. Berns turns it into a house of ill repute.”
“Perfect.” As I collected keys and opening instructions, I warmed inside. Action felt good, as did helping my friends. Sid was right. I needed to fix what I could, starting with finding that dirt on the Meales I had yet to uncover. It was bad enough they were messing with the library—I wasn’t going to let Alicia mess with my friends, too. I had promised Ron I would head out to New Millennium Bible Camp this afternoon to check out the Creation Science Camp, and my very innocent reporting for the Battle Lake Recall would be a perfect cover for some earnest snooping. Once I tipped that playing field, I could work on repairing my garden.
Sid gave me an overview of the till before sending me on my way with a free, sun-dried tomato and Greek olive cream cheese bagel and some parting words.
“Hey, you know why Lutherans hate premarital sex?”
“Why?”
“They’re afraid it’ll lead to dancing.”
I left ten pounds lighter and decided to take advantage of my lunch hour to visit 4Ts and place another check in my “good deeds” column. I worked on the chewy bagel as I trudged through the kiln-like air, sweat beads gathering at my hairline and separating to race down my neck. I pulled my V-necked T-shirt from my chest and peered down at the rivulet forming between my A-cups.
“I wouldn’t hold my breath, darlin’. If they haven’t grown yet, it doesn’t do any good to water ’em.”
“Hi, Kennie.”
“And didn’t I tell you to stop by my house? I have a business deal that I know you’re going to want to get in on.”
I thought back to our conversation in the library and realized she had in fact invited me to her house, but I had been too distracted by the petition to react properly. Visions of topless octogenarians, pre-assembled penis enlargement devices, and a walkie-talkie-sex service scuttled through my brain, and all the apprehension I should have felt the first time she mentioned a “business deal” came at me like a swarm of mosquitoes. “Why don’t you just tell me what it is right now? I’ve got a minute.”
“Nope. You’ve gotta see the demo model at my house.”
Jesus. It was the penis enlargement device. I was sure of it. “I’m not much of an entrepreneur.”
“I just want to know if I can display one in the library. Once you see it, you’ll want one for yourself, and who knows? You might decide to invest. I tell you, it’s gonna be big.”
What a great motto, I thought to myself. And if I could blow off Kennie just a couple more times, I’d be able to make it out of Battle Lake without ever seeing her latest “business proposition.” “I’ll come over tomorrow morning, ’kay? I have to open up the Fortune for Sid and Nancy, and then I’ll stop by before I open the library.” There wouldn’t be time, but she didn’t need to know that.
“You won’t be sorry, darlin’!” She wiggled her fingers at me and marched off in the other direction, the spangles on her sequined tank top catching the sun and turning her into a strolling disco ball. The brightness was probably for the best, as her blinding shirt made it nearly impossible to see her Daisy Dukes, or, on Kennie, ill-fitting denim underwear. I could fool myself that it was a trick of the glare on my eyes and not the outline of a terrifically deep butt crack showcased in distressed, acid-washed denim that I saw as she disappeared around the corner by the bank.
I entered the cool interior of 4Ts and made my way around the milling shoppers. I recognized Kaitlyn near the front window, the well-proportioned blonde teenager from my first visit. The short, bubble-nosed brunette behind the counter must be Lydia. I made my way over to her and prepared to tell a little white lie.
“Hi, are you Lydia?”
She smiled at me. Her eyeteeth were unusually skinny, giving her mouth a quirky, friendly appearance despite the haunted look in her eyes. “Yup. Can I help you?”
“I’m Mira James. Lucy worked for me at the library. I wanted to say I was sorry about her death. I heard you two were good friends.”
Her upper lip quivered. “Yeah.”
“Did she make it to cheerleading practice the day before, um, before she was found?”
“Yeah. She was there. Like I told the police, it was like any other practice.”
“Did she seem in a strange mood, or leave with anyone you hadn’t seen before?”
“She was happy Lucy, just like usual. And she left alone. Everyone else there was part of the squad. People used to come watch us practice, until the coach made them stop.” Big warm tears were collecting at the corner of her eyes. “Do you think they’ll find out who killed her?”
“I hope so.” I thought of the terror Lucy must have been in before she was shot. Who took her? Why? I changed the subject before I started to cry myself. “I’m looking for Annika. Is she here?” I knew she wouldn’t be, but it seemed the most natural way to bring her into the conversation.
“No, it’s her day off. She should be here tomorrow, though.”
“Does she ever come in on her day off?”
Lydia nodded. “Totally! She’s the best. Sometimes, when I’m the only one on, she’ll watch the store for me so I can go and grab lunch or run some errands. On her day off! Can you believe it?”
I could. And that would explain why the money missing from the till wasn’t shift-specific. “She’s a real pal.”
“Absolutely. Do you want me to give her a message for you?”
I smiled at her. Her sweetness was infectious, even if it was soaked in her sadness. “No thanks. I’ll just stop back.”
“Okay. Let me know if you need anything else.” She smiled softly and moved off to help a customer in the front of the store, and I filed this situation away as “mystery solved.” Annika was dripping with expensive jewelry she couldn’t possibly afford on this job, and she routinely volunteered to watch the till for her coworkers, the same till that was regularly short on cash. The problem was, I only had assumptions, and like I had told Tina, that wasn’t enough. I decided to suggest to Tina that she be clearer about the rules to her employees—only one clerk using the till per shift—and install a camera in the front of the store. I was sure that would put an end to the stealing without getting anyone in trouble, which had been her goal from the start.
I stepped out of the store and walked back to the library, feeling good about helping Tina. I’d finish a few hours of paperwork, then ask Mrs. Berns and Sarah Ruth to close so I could return to the Bible Camp.
“I’m back!”
Mrs. Berns peered up at me as I sashayed into the library. She was on all fours, looking under the table on which the banned book display rested. “I thought you were just going for a bagel. Did you get laid between here and there? Or maybe a lobotomy?”
“Hunh?”
Mrs. Berns grunted. “I sent you away because you were Crabby Cathy and now you come back Suzy Sunshine. What happened?”
“I ran into some good advice. What are you doing on the floor?”
“Dropped a pencil under here.”
“Let me help you.” I crouched next to Mrs. Berns and reached my hand underneath the table. I came up with two pencils, a magazine insert, and Nut Goodie, the ferret. “What’s he doing down here?” I asked, dragging out
the mangy creature.
“Gives me the creeps. It’s a long, dead rat. I tried sticking it in the trash but it kept reappearing behind the counter, so I gave it a time out down here. Probably that angelic Sarah Ruth is the one that kept digging it out.”
“What’s that crack mean?”
“Just that she can never do anything wrong.”
I looked at Mrs. Berns, who was still sporting her six shooters strapped to her waist. She had also rounded up a pair of Fleet Farm cowboy boots and was wearing a snap-front Western shirt undone to halfway down her droopy chest. This was a woman who could do a lot wrong, and I loved her for it. “Sarah Ruth’s just being on her best behavior because she’s new. She’ll mess up soon enough, I’m sure. Where is she, anyhow?”
Mrs. Berns gestured over her shoulder as she pushed herself off the ground. “In the back room. She rushed there when you left for lunch, and I haven’t seen her since.”
“Thanks.” I strolled into the storage room. We had boxes of books accumulated back here, as well as holiday decorations, stuffed animals we rotated through the kids’ section, a bathroom, and next to it, a tiny office whose door was currently shut. The office had room enough for a desk, two file cabinets, and not much else. It was not unusual for Sarah Ruth to be in there getting a handle on the paperwork, but it was unusual for her to do it with the door closed. The library rule was to keep the door open in case you were needed on the floor.
I grabbed the cool doorknob in my hands and twisted, half expecting to see the office empty. Instead, I found Sarah Ruth on the old, black, circle-dial phone, which she shoved down guiltily when I peeped my head in.
“Sorry! Did I interrupt a conversation?”
Sarah Ruth patted her limp brown hair nervously and shook her head. “Wrong number.”
I smiled. “But I didn’t hear the phone ring.”
“Oh, I mean I dialed the wrong number. I was trying to call the Recall office, but I got someone’s home number. I know it’s so rude to hang up, but I get too embarrassed to stay on the line once I realize the number is wrong.”
