The Real Thing

by Lizzie Shane

  Maggie scrambled to her feet, sliding her feet into a handy pair of clogs and grabbing a hoodie, not caring if any of it matched as she clutched the envelope in her hand and rushed toward the back door. “You stay here, baby,” she said when Cecil lifted his head.

  It was dark along the path between the two houses, clouds hiding the stars and no moon in sight. She stumbled blindly, her eyes slow to adjust after she’d lit every lamp in Lolly’s place. A stray branch slapped her shins and she hissed softly as she tripped over it before finding her feet again, starting to wonder if this was an idiotic idea.

  She’d completely lost track of time in the closet and had no idea how late it was. Every light in the Summer house was not lit in welcome, but there were a couple of lights on, so maybe it wasn’t too late to knock on Ian’s door. The house had been built on top of the garage, the living areas and bedrooms elevated to get the best views of the ocean over the dunes, and Maggie climbed the steps to the front door, the envelope clutched in her hand.

  She knocked gently, in case it was late enough that Sadie was asleep, and a dog barked inside the house. The big, deep bark reminded her that Sadie had said her grandmother and her dog came out on the weekends—a fraction of a second before Allison Summer flung open the door.

  “Lori!” she exclaimed, her round face lighting, before she checked herself with a broad smile. “Or rather, Maggie. Sorry. Old habits. Dolores always called you that.”

  “Of course,” Maggie murmured, the letter suddenly heavy in her hand. She hadn’t heard Aunt Lolly called Dolores in…well, ever.

  A gangly reddish brown mutt with droopy jowls tried to shove around Mrs. Summer for a sniff and she grabbed onto his collar, straining to hold him back. “Edgar, quit. Anyway I’ll try to remember. Maggie.”

  “You can call me Lori, Mrs. Summer. It’s okay.”

  “And you can call me Allison. You’re all grown up now.” The dog gave another lurch forward and made a hacking noise as he choked himself on the collar Mrs. Summer was holding. “Unlike this idiot. He still thinks he’s a puppy.”

  “He’s sweet.” Maggie reached out her free hand to the dog, who went into extreme panic mode in his eagerness to snuffle her fingers.

  “He’s a dolt, but we love him. Come on in. Ian’s out and Sadie’s asleep, but you’re always welcome.”

  “Oh. Right…” Maggie hesitated halfway across the threshold, suddenly feeling awkward. Sadie said her grandma came over so Ian could go out, but she hadn’t put the pieces together. Hadn’t even really thought about the fact that it was Friday night and Mrs. Summer would be here until the woman herself opened the door.

  “It must be so hard, being alone in that house,” Mrs. Summer went on, her attention half on the dog she was shoving away from the door. “Dolores used to come by so often it was like she lived here.”

  “I, uh, I can’t stay,” Maggie stammered, suddenly uncomfortable standing in Ian’s entryway when he wasn’t here. “I was just wondering if anyone had ever called Aunt Lolly anything else. Besides Lolly and Dolores, I mean. I thought you or Ian might know.” She slid the folded letter into the pocket of the hoodie, something holding her back from simply handing it over and asking if Mrs. Summer knew anything about it.

  “Not that I know of, but Ian might know of some other name. Why?”

  “No reason,” she lied without even knowing why. “I was just wondering if anyone ever called her Lori.”

  “Dolores? I don’t think so. But you never know. She had quite a past.”

  “I’m starting to realize that,” Maggie murmured under her breath.

  “What was that?” Mrs. Summer looked up from her wrangling of the dog and Maggie shook her head.

  “It’s nothing. I’ve just been going through her things and she has some pretty eclectic stuff. I wanted to, um, find out if you or any of Lolly’s friends wanted some of it. I didn’t want to send things to Goodwill that should be going to other people. People who knew her.” Since Maggie was feeling more and more like she never had.

  “Oh, how sweet,” Mrs. Summer’s smile was fondly maternal, making Maggie feel like she was eight years old again. “Dolores already took care of giving folks things with sentimental value when she was in hospice, but I can ask around. See if there’s anything else you might want to set aside.”

  “Thank you. That’d be great.” Maggie sidled toward the door and Mrs. Summer seemed to take the hint that she was leaving, smiling gently.

  “Any time dear. And I do mean that. You come by any time. Don’t let Ian scare you off. He’s never here on Fridays anyway.”

  Maggie nodded, awkward even in the face of Mrs. Summer’s kindness. She’d always envied Ian his family. His prim, every-hair-in-place mother. His larger-than-life, always laughing father. They were the freaking Cleavers to her. “I was sorry to hear about Mr. Summer,” she murmured as she hovered in the doorway. “He was such a great man.”

  Sadness shifted beneath the surface of Mrs. Summer’s cheer, her smile softening with the ache of grief. “Yes, he was. Thank you, dear. He always liked you. We both did.”

  Maggie had a hard time believing that. During those teenage years she’d always been pretty sure they thought she was a bad influence on their upwardly-mobile son, encouraging him to chase his dream of being a rock star rather than following the college path laid out for him.

  Did Ian still play the guitar? He’d once been just as passionate about being a musician as she’d been about being an actress. On rainy days the summer she turned sixteen, they’d listen to music for hours on end while he fingered the chords on the neck of his guitar, always practicing—and there had been a lot of rainy days that summer. It seemed like the sun had barely ever come out—and she’d loved every second of it.

  “G’night, Mrs. Summer,” she murmured.

  “Allison,” Mrs. Summer reminded her. “Good night, dear.”

  Maggie walked back toward Lolly’s house, through a darkness that didn’t seem quite so dark this time, or maybe she was just moving more slowly, giving her eyes more time to adjust to the lack of light. She emerged from the trees at the edge of the fire pit and sank down on one of the Adirondack chairs. Another night rose up in her memory from decades ago, when she’d come out of the trees hours after the curfew Lolly had set for her, and found Lolly waiting, a fire crackling in the fire pit, casting light and shadows on her aunt’s face.

  “I’m sorry,” she’d mumbled, not actually sorry for a second. “Ian and I were hanging out and I fell asleep.” Which had been one hundred percent true, but she’d fallen asleep after her curfew had already passed.

  “S’more?” Lolly had offered, holding up the marshmallow Maggie hadn’t even noticed on the skewer. She’d taken the treat, suspicious of the offering. “I wasn’t mad,” Lolly had gone on when Maggie sank down onto the empty chair beside her. “I was worried. I worry about you, Maggie May.” The nickname had just taken hold that summer, teasing and light, and in that moment it seemed to say Lolly hadn’t completely washed her hands of her yet. “I know you’re having a hard time with things back home, but I’m here for you. I will always be here for you. I will love you and worry about you until the day I die. So try not to give an old woman high blood pressure wondering where you are at night, all right?”

  Maggie had apologized again, more sincerely this time, and Lolly had given her another s’more.

  As she stared at the fire pit now, those words seemed to echo.

  I will always be here for you.

  Except she hadn’t, had she?

  Maggie pulled out the envelope, running it through her hands. Lori. To Lolly? To her? Lolly wasn’t here anymore and she’d left everything in the house to Maggie. She must have known that eventually she would find the envelope. She had to have meant for Maggie to see whatever was inside, right?

  She tucked a finger beneath the flap. The glue was old and the envelope came open without a single tear. She gently tugged lose
the paper inside, a few sheets of stationary, folded and faded. It was too dark to make out the words and she could easily have gone inside where the lights in the house were still blazing, but instead she tucked the sheets back into the envelope, the envelope back into her pocket, and set about building a fire in the fire pit.

  There was something so perfect about the idea of reading Lolly’s letter from the grave at the fire pit. Cinematic, almost. If this were a movie, the letter would be powerful and significant and she would read it by firelight, tears glistening in her eyes.

  She hadn’t built a fire in years, had never had much practice at it, if she was honest, but she remembered the basics. Kindling, logs in a teepee. There was a bottle of lighter fluid leaning against the log-pile and Maggie grabbed it. Had that always been Lolly’s secret for how she could build a fire so fast? She popped the top and squeezed the bottle, surprised when a much longer jet of liquid shot out than she’d been anticipating, coating the top logs.

  Maggie had a fire pit at her house in Hidden Valley, but it was gas. Push a button, instant fire. That was more her speed, but she found a book of matches that looked older than she was and peeled one off.

  She struck the first match—and it died in a tiny puff of breeze she barely felt. She flicked the dead match on top of the fire and tried again. And again.

  By the time she figured out how to shelter the match from even the slightest whisper of a breeze with her body, she’d gone through half a dozen of the little buggers. Lucky number seven sparked to life and Maggie held her breath, slowly lowering it toward the logs—having learned that if she simply tossed it down the dang thing would go out on the way. She silently cheered on the tiny match flame as it grew closer and closer to the waiting logs—

  Until it caught with a whoosh and a flare of heat.

  Flames roared upward and Maggie yelped, leaping backward, her feet tangling in the borrowed clogs. She landed on her side, one hand bracing her fall, as the flames shot toward the sky. It had to be an optical illusion because she was lying on the ground. The column of flames couldn’t actually be as tall as the house.

  Then she noticed the sparks dancing on the breeze. Swirling in the air. Little motes of fire.

  Heading straight toward the tree line.

  “Oh shit.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Ian couldn’t see Lolly’s back yard from the driveway, the house shielded it from view, but a suspicious orange glow made him slow the truck for a closer look—and swear under his breath, throwing the truck into park and leaping out. Those were flames. Above the house.

  He sprinted around the house, the scent of smoke hitting him like a wall as he took in the scene. It had clearly started in the fire pit, but the fire was too big for the small, circular pit. It roared unnaturally tall, the flames wending and dancing in the air, the breeze bending them toward the nearby trees. The trees which were the reason the fire pit was so small and never held big fires.

  A figure burst out of the house, sprinting at full speed and carrying what looked like a duvet.

  “Maggie!” Ian shouted, intercepting her before she could fling herself and the entirely too flammable down onto the fire in an attempt to smother it. He caught her around the waist, lifting her off her feet to stop her in her tracks and spinning to set her down farther away from the flames.

  “The trees!” she yelled, pointing as if he hadn’t noticed the wildfire danger. It hadn’t been a particularly dry spring, but it hadn’t rained as much as usual and it had been dry for the last couple days. The fire danger level wasn’t as high as it might be, but it wasn’t as low as he’d like either.

  “Sand!” he bellowed back, pointing to the bucket Lolly kept next to the log pile. “Get another bucket. Or a pot. Whatever you can find.”

  He released her, hoping she would follow his directions since he didn’t have time to worry about Maggie going rogue, and ran the few steps to the log pile. The metal bucket was heavy, the sand inside still damp from the last rain shower even though it had been days ago. He hefted it, the worn wooden grip on the handle digging into his fingers, and wrapped his other arm around the base of the bucket. Getting as close to the fire as he could without singeing off his eyebrows, Ian flung the heavy, damp sand directly onto the logs.

  The effect was immediate. The flames lowered, the fire dimmed—and the Jenga tower of logs collapsed, sending two burning logs rolling out of the fire pit and toward the tree line. Ian cursed under his breath as Maggie raced out of the house again, this time with a pot in her hands. “Get more sand!” he shouted at her, kicking the burning logs away from the trees like a high stakes game of soccer.

  The fire in the fire pit was rallying after its sand bath and Ian used the edge of the bucket to scoop up more sandy soil and fling it onto the fire. Inside the house, Maggie’s little dog could be heard yelping out a series of shrill, high pitched barks—and Ian was grateful he wasn’t underfoot causing even more trouble.

  The garden hose was stretched out across the grass as if Maggie had gone for it first, but it was too short to reach. How many times had he told Lolly she needed a longer hose and she’d laughed and told him she never had big fires anyway?

  He snatched up the duvet where Maggie had dropped it and ran to the end of the hose, dousing the fabric until it was wet and heavy.

  Maggie came racing back then from the beach trail, the pot of sand held against her chest. She dumped it onto the two loose logs burning closest to the trees, smothering them enough that he could kick the whole mess back toward the fire pit and blanket them in the soaked duvet. “One more should do it,” he called, calmer now, though his throat was scratchy and raw.

  Maggie’s incredible eyes looked black in the low light. She nodded and ran back toward the path to the dunes where the soil turned to sand without another word.

  Surprisingly good in a crisis, that Maggie Tate. Not something he would have predicted.

  With the fire more contained, he jogged over to the house and filled the bucket from the spigot, arriving back at the fire at the same time as Maggie returned with the full pot of sand. He took it from her arms with a quick thanks, distributing the sand over the last of the flames and then dousing them with the water from the bucket until all that was left of the bonfire was steam and a smoke-charred duvet.

  With the fire reduced to a smoldering heap, they stood looking down at it, both of them breathing hard.

  “Playing with matches?” he asked, his voice light, never looking up from the fire as if it might leap to life again the second he took his eyes off it.

  Maggie huffed a soft laugh in response, sinking down onto one of the Adirondack chairs that were miraculously unburned. “I guess I should have paid more attention in Girl Scouts.”

  “You were never a Girl Scout,” he said, the words automatic, based on a time when he’d known everything about her.

  At her silence, he looked over to find her watching him, her face inscrutable in the darkness. “True. Though I played a camp counselor in my first movie. If I were more method I would know all about wilderness stuff.”

  He snorted, sinking down onto the other chair. “Somehow I can’t quite picture you in the wilderness.”

  “Thank you,” she said dryly. Then she met his eyes and repeated the words, more softly, the joking tone gone, letting him know she wasn’t talking about his inability to picture her as a wilderness guide anymore, “Thank you.”

  “I saw the flames as I drove up. What happened?”

  “Too much lighter fluid. Not enough skill,” she quipped at her own expense. “The realtor said the house was a tear down, but I don’t think she meant for me to burn it down and take the entire neighborhood with it.”

  He went still, something inside him clenching. “A tear down?” Was she going to knock down Lolly’s house?

  “I know.” Maggie coughed, the sound rough from the smoke. “It sounds horrible, doesn’t it? Like I’m taking the one thing Lolly
left me and destroying it. Like I’m ripping up her memory.” She shook her head. “Even if it isn’t worth anything, it feels wrong.”

  He studied her face, trying to read her expression in the low light. She kept surprising him.

  Her hair had fallen down as they’d rushed to put out the fire and now hung loose, blonde curls cascading over her shoulders. He knew every line of her face, even in the low light. There was a streak of soot on her cheek and he reached out to rub it off.

  Maggie stared at him, as if confused to have someone touch her so gently and something seemed to stretch between them, some memory of a hundred other times they’d touched, back when they’d both been different people. “You okay?” he murmured, unsure what he was asking.

  “I’m good.” Maggie coughed again and rose to her feet, breaking the moment. “You want some water? To offset the smoke inhalation?”

  “I’m good.” He stood as well. “I should go.”

  “Right.” She cleared her throat. “Thanks for the rescue.”

  They walked together toward the back of the house, where Maggie’s dog could still be heard barking shrilly inside. As they grew closer to the light spilling out of the windows, he realized she was wearing what looked like a costume from one of her movies underneath a loose grey hoodie.

  “What are you wearing?” he blurted without thinking.

  The dress was a hot pink and orange paisley that ended at the top of her thighs. The wide, white collar gave it a definite vintage look, though he couldn’t have identified whether it was sixties or seventies. If not for the grey hoodie she would have looked like an escapee from an Austin Powers movie.

  Maggie blushed, ducking her head, and hesitated beneath the floodlight that illuminated the driveway where he’d left his truck idling. “I decided to start going through Lolly’s stuff. Turns out she was secretly hoarding sixties fashions. Among other things.”

  The last three words were muttered under her breath and Ian’s eyebrows popped up. “Other things?”

  She looked up at him, the light from the floodlight bringing out the gold in her hair. “I found a letter,” she admitted. She fished something out of her pocket and showed him the folded envelope, unfolding it so he could read the name written on the front. “Did you know Lolly had written me a letter? Or was it even for me? I mean, it could have been any Lori. Or for all I know she might have gone by Lori when she was younger. This could be some crazy love letter from a guy she was dating when she wore dresses like this one.”