by Nella Tyler
The service finally came to an end more than an hour later. I was groggy and ready for a nap at that point, but perked up in a hurry, jumping to my feet. I wanted to see if I could get a chance to speak to Maggie before she left with her mom. But I didn’t get much further than standing up before Mom took me firmly by the elbow.
“I volunteered to serve coffee downstairs, dear. Come join me while your father warms up the car.” She didn’t wait for me to answer, just started dragging me in the direction of the basement steps. I went with her, knowing it was futile to fight her when she’d set her mind on something. I wasn’t sure why Dad was getting out of this, but he often used the excuse of starting the car in icy weather and warming it up because he knew how much Mom hated sitting in a freezing cold vehicle. It was a pretty good racket and one that only worked for a single person.
We got in line with several other women, setting up plates of cookies and small pastries and getting the coffee and tea ready for the parishioners, who were just now coming down the stairs. I’d served quite a few people—many of them remarking on how long it had been since they’d last seen me at a service—when I caught sight of Maggie and her mother coming down the stairs. I quickly fixed a mug of hot tea the way she liked it—scalding hot, milky, and no sugar.
Our eyes met as she approached and I smiled as I held out the tea.
She took it, smiling too, though more guardedly. “Thank you.” She looked over at her mother, who said good morning to me and then walked further down the line to get a mug of coffee and some pastries. She turned back to me and said in a quieter voice, “Can I speak to you after you’re done serving?”
“Of course,” I said. There were dozens of people left to serve, but it shouldn’t take more than 30 minutes or so.
“Go,” Mom said. I looked over at her to find her grinning up at me knowingly, her light eyes flashing in the poor fluorescent lighting of the basement. “The hard part was getting the refreshments set up. As long as you come back to help clean, I can handle your serving duties.”
I smiled at her and went around the table to follow Maggie to a lone bench in the corner of the long, rectangular room. People tended to clump in the center of the room, staying close to the refreshment table for the additional platters of sweets that would be brought out later as the first wave disappeared. Maggie and I sat down side by side. She had that sweet vanilla smell coming off of her skin, the one I liked so much.
She looked at me for a long moment with her wide, incredibly green eyes before she finally began to speak. I didn’t break the silence between us or look away at the sound of someone loudly laughing at another parishioner’s comment. As soon as she began to talk, the rest of the noise in the room just fell away.
“I’m sorry about how I acted on the phone before you left for Italy,” she said, speaking in a low voice that stayed safely between us. “I shouldn’t have taken all of that out on you. I still had some things I needed to deal with, obviously.”
I shook my head as I took her hand. She stiffened, and I could tell by the look on her face that she didn’t want to have to explain to her church family that we were together—if we were even still together, that was. I had to imagine the apology was a good sign, though I considered it wholly unnecessary. I let go of her hand and she relaxed again, her rigidly set shoulders loosening.
“You have nothing to apologize for,” I said. “I understand why you were upset.”
“I was angrier at BJ than I was at you.” She shook her head, her cheeks reddening. “And being angry at him just made me even angrier at myself. How could I be mad at the man I loved more than anything? A man who has been dead for over a year? I felt shitty. And I took that feeling out on you. Not that I wasn’t mad at you, too.”
I didn’t respond to that. She had points she wanted to make and I planned to sit here and let her make them.
“It’s not that you’re a rich man, although that is certainly its own issue, but it’s that I don’t want anyone condescending to me or treating me like I’m some helpless little woman who can’t handle things on her own. I realize that now that BJ is gone. My mother is a very independent woman and apparently so am I. BJ understood that, but still he went behind my back about the account.” I opened my mouth to speak and she shook her head. “I know he thought he was protecting me, but that’s not how it feels to me. From where I’m standing, it feels like he didn’t trust me enough to be truthful with me or, worse, he didn’t respect me, even though I know he did. Do you understand that?”
I nodded because I really did. “I do get that, but you have to understand the kind of man I am, too. I care about you and want to take care of you. Not because I don’t think you can do it yourself, but because I was raised to care for the people you love, man or woman. I can’t help that about myself, but I can rein it in when it comes to doing things that directly affect your life. I won’t sneak money into your accounts or make any decisions without consulting you first. I don’t want you to think that I don’t value your intelligence and independence. Those are both a huge part of the reason I want to be with you. I love how strong and self-sufficient you are.”
She still seemed troubled, her eyes dark with emotion, but then she smiled. “Okay, I think I can live with that. Let’s just agree to treat each other as equals. No going behind each other’s backs. Ever.”
“Agreed,” I said, and her smile deepened.
“Maybe I can make up for the missed trip to Italy with a date this week?” she asked, reaching to take my hand. I lifted an eyebrow, intrigued by the obvious sign of affection. Maybe she didn’t care what her fellow churchgoers thought about our new romance after all. Or maybe she’d been hesitant to show affection before she knew how our talk was going to go.
“I’d love to take you out every night of the week,” I said.
She laughed at that and leaned to kiss me on the cheek. “Mom’s ready to go. I’ll call you later.” She left me on the bench as she crossed the crowded room to where her mother was waiting by the stairs, a small grin on her attractive face. I could see in her eyes that she was pleased to see Maggie and me together. I nodded my head to her and she swallowed back her smile, her light eyes dancing before she linked arms with Maggie and they turned to climb the stairs.
Maggie
Tuesday
I was nervous but ready to take this next serious step in getting on with my life. I looked over at Brian Sr., who was grinning at me, his dark eyes shining in that way that always reminded me of BJ. Sometimes they looked so alike it stabbed me in the heart. I would never understand why BJ had to die so young. He should have lived for decades, growing to look like the man standing next to me now. He took me by the hand and squeezed. I hadn’t realized I was trembling until he did that. But it wasn’t from fear—at least not all the way. I was excited, too. This was it.
Jackson was on the other side of me, dressed in a nice shirt and jeans instead of his normal blue coveralls that were stained with grease. He looked nervous too, which made it easier for me to calm down.
“Are you ready for this?” I asked him.
He nodded, not looking ready at all. “I think so. What about you?”
I shrugged, trying and failing to make the gesture seem casual. “About as ready as I’m going to be. I tend to second, third, and fourth guess things.”
Jackson laughed at that, his posture loosening a little, though not all the way.
“I’m proud of you, Maggie,” Brian Sr. said. “You’re moving forward instead of clinging to things in the past. No matter where life takes you, I’ll always consider you my daughter-in-law.”
I blinked up at him in the cool air, the start of tears stinging my eyes. I lifted onto my tiptoes to give him a hug. “Thank you for everything,” I whispered into his ear. “I couldn’t have gotten through the last year without you.”
“I feel the same way about you,” he murmured, and despite the chill in the air, a tingling warmth moved through me. We pulled out of the
embrace and turned to face the attorney’s office again.
“Let’s do this,” I said. The three of us went inside together. I’d looked over the contract for the sale of the business and spoken to Mike—the attorney who’d drawn it up—about some tweaks I wanted. The most important terms were already there—I’d been adamant about having Jackson as a majority partner in the business. It just made the most sense to me, even though Jackson did seem nervous about it at first. I’d gone back and forth on what I wanted to do with the other 45 percent, but finally decided that I would retain it for myself instead of offering it to Brian Sr. I’d even briefly considered selling Jackson 100 percent, but I decided that I wanted to keep some part of BJ alive, at least for now. Who knew how I would feel about the shop in a year or two. For now, it was enough that Jackson could handle all of the day to day operations without needing to check in with me all the time. We could schedule quarterly meetings if he wanted, but I trusted him to run things correctly. He’d essentially been doing that since BJ died. Today was only about making that official.
We went inside the office, met with Mike in his large conference room, and signed all the necessary papers. It didn’t take longer than 10 minutes if you didn’t count the greetings and banter with Mike before we started the actual signing and initialing of the document. Jackson had given me a check that morning to buy me out of 55 percent of the business my late husband had started when he was 20 years old. It was a large number, way more than I needed to live on while I waited to land a teaching job. I’d brought one of the fine bottles of champagne I bought earlier, along with a few plastic flutes. We popped the cork and toasted the future of the shop, which I knew would continue to flourish with Jackson at the helm. Split four ways, we finished the bottle easily and left without feeling the least bit tipsy.
“We should celebrate,” Brian Sr. said as we stepped outside into the freezing weather. The temperatures had plunged even more now that we were firmly into the middle of December. I normally didn’t mind the cold, but I just didn’t have the patience for it this year. I couldn’t wait for spring to arrive, but it would be months before that happened. We had to slog through the brutally cold months of January and February to get there.
“I should probably get back to the shop,” Jackson said, but I wasn’t hearing it. He’d worked 10 to 15-hour days six days a week for the last year. He deserved a break, even if it was just an afternoon.
“Brian’s right. Let’s go out to lunch. My treat.”
“The hell it will be,” Brian countered. “I’m going to treat everyone this time.”
Jackson didn’t get a chance to argue as Brian and I went back and forth about where we wanted to eat. We finally decided on the diner near the shop where Eliza and I had eaten since we were in high school. I didn’t go there often—usually, not without Eliza—but it was good to know a place so well that you could have your order ready before you even got there. My mouth was watering at the thought of a burger, an order of greasy onion rings dipped in lots of ketchup, and that dreamy strawberry shake.
We piled into Brian Sr.’s big car and drove over to the restaurant, the three of us chattering the entire way, all the nerves from earlier long gone now that the deed was done. I felt as light as air, which just confirmed that I’d done the right thing.
It was just after lunch rush, so the restaurant was empty. We crowded into a booth, Jackson on one side and Brian Sr. and I on the other. This place was a long-running staple of Danbury. Everyone who lived in town had eaten here more than a few times. We all had our favorites—the menu hadn’t changed in decades—and never needed to look at a menu.
After the waitress came over to take our drink orders—all three of us asking for glasses of water to go with our milkshakes—Jackson grinned across the table at us.
“I can’t believe my first project as an owner is going to be that Alfa Romeo Banks is bringing back from Italy,” he said.
Brian Sr. perked up at that. “He emailed me some pictures of that car along with all the specs. It’s going to be a beauty once you two get through with it. BJ always wanted to work on an old Alfa.”
Mentions of BJ were having the opposite effect on me these days. Instead of plunging me into painful introspection, I felt even lighter, my insides filling with happiness. I could think about him now without worrying about feeling wounded. It was like a huge part of my past that had been well out of my reach for 13 months had finally unlocked again, welcoming me inside of it to look around and enjoy the places I’d been and the man I’d once planned to share my life with. It was a wonderful development, and it told me that I was doing exactly what I needed to be doing—taking hold of my own life and forging a path that didn’t involve the plans BJ and I had made together when he was alive. It wasn’t a betrayal. It was me living my life, which I had every right to do.
“I can’t wait to see it,” I said. Banks had emailed me pictures of the car as well and it looked terrible, but he was so excited about it that I was sure he and Jackson would be able to make it shine. The Cadillac had looked even worse when the boys brought it home, and look how that had turned out. “And it’s the perfect first project for you to take on as a new owner of the shop, Jackson.”
He gave me a grateful smile as the waitress set our milkshakes down. As soon as she moved her hands, we each descended on the frosty treats like we were starving to death, the sounds of slurping taking the place of words for at least a full minute.
“I’ll do my best to be up to the task,” Jackson said in between sips of his mint chocolate shake. In Danbury, you could tell quite a bit about a person by what flavor shake they ordered here.
“The good news is, since you’ve been a staple of the shop from the beginning, all our clients know you and will stay.” I had to laugh when I thought about what I’d just said and how ridiculous it was. “To be honest, they’re probably only still with us because of you. I sure as hell didn’t know a damned thing about running a garage.”
“You learned quick, though,” Jackson said, and I smiled. That was high praise coming from him, even if he was being generous.
“I’m grateful to both of you,” Brian Sr. said, looking first at Jackson and then at me. “BJ’s dream is still alive because of how hard you’ve worked, and it’s going to stay alive for years to come.”
Jackson lifted his untouched water glass. “To BJ.”
Brian and I lifted our glasses, too. “To BJ,” we said in unison.
Before we clinked glasses, I added, “And to us. Because we’ve done a damned good job getting by over the last year.”
Brian smiled as he and Jackson repeated the first part of my toast. We clinked glasses and went back to devouring our milkshakes.
By the time we finished eating, it was late afternoon. Jackson went back to the shop, but Brian Sr. and I just went home. The place was slightly in disarray, with boxes everywhere and things pulled out of shelves and off the walls. I got some music playing and got started packing again. Mom and I had talked at length about my plan for the future, and I thought it best for both of us that I move in with her. My share in the garage was much smaller now, which meant I’d be taking less of the profit as a salary. I’d also eventually be making a teacher’s salary and wanted to stay in the habit of saving as much money as I could. This house was paid off, but it wasn’t mine, not really. It belonged to Brian Sr., who told me I could stay in it for the rest of my life if I wanted, but I knew he could use the extra income that renting it out would bring. And Mom was all alone in her place. It wasn’t quite as massive as the Wheaton mansion, but it was much too big for a single woman.
I was actually looking forward to leaving this house. There were many great memories here that I would miss, but the last year had been terrible. Packing away BJ’s stuff had helped, but I still didn’t feel comfortable here anymore. I needed to leave.
I closed up a box and taped it shut, then moved it over to a stack of other packed boxes. The more I did, the more accomplis
hed I felt. I was truly taking the steps to move on with my life after so much stagnation. I knew I’d accomplished a lot over the last year, but only in the last few weeks did it feel like I was actually moving into the future. It still felt like BJ was with me, but not as much as before. It saddened me, but it gave me hope, too. I could be happy again, really happy. Maybe with Banks, maybe just by myself. Either way, I’d take it over crying rivers of tears and feeling completely hopeless.
I packed 10 more boxes before I decided to quit for the night. I was exhausted from getting up early and then the busy day that followed. Over the last two weeks, I’d begun to sleep through the night again, going six hours at a time last night. I woke feeling like I’d actually rested instead of just tossed and turned.
I wasn’t hungry after such a huge, grease-soaked lunch, so I made myself a cup of herbal tea and drank it in front of the cold fireplace. I looked up at the mantelpiece, where I’d returned my wedding photo to its original place of honor, just for the time being.