Warm Nights in Magnolia Bay

by Babette de Jongh

  “I don’t care what you call it; it looks like a challenge to me.”

  Abby had to admit that the dog was sending mixed signals. “Wolf,” she called, making kissing noises. “Come here, puppy.”

  “Wolf!” Quinn commanded, striding forward and clapping his hands. “Move, dog!”

  Wolf didn’t move.

  Georgia ran up to Sean and jumped at his legs. He picked her up, and she licked his face. Under the spell of Georgia’s calming presence, Wolf’s body language changed from playful yet intimidating to a calmer vibe. His plume of a tail swayed side to side, and he walked up to Sean and sat in front of him. Tongue hanging out in a doggy smile, he waited for Sean to bend down and pet him.

  “Sean, no.” Quinn’s long strides had brought him nearly even with Sean, but too late to keep the boy from kneeling and putting his hand on Wolf’s neck. Georgia hopped out of his arms, circling the boy and the bigger dog with excitement.

  “Quinn, it’s fine,” Abby called out. The last thing Wolf needed was for Quinn to scare him away at this critical moment when he willingly solicited human touch. She pushed the scooter over the gravel, but the uneven surface was more uncooperative than it had ever been. “Let them be.”

  Quinn glanced at Abby and stopped moving. It was clear that he was ready to spring forward if need be, but at least he was giving her opinion the benefit of the doubt—kind of a big deal considering the situation. Wolf’s plumy tail swayed back and forth as Sean stroked his fur. Then the big dog gave Sean’s face a big, wet swipe of his long tongue. Sean fell back onto his butt, laughing. “Quit it!”

  Wolf didn’t quit; he walked right over the boy’s prone form and licked him even more, with Georgia joining in. Sean wrapped his arms around Wolf’s neck and rolled. Then both dogs and Sean were wrestling on the dusty gravel driveway, with Sean giggling like a girl and both dogs’ tails wagging with glee.

  Quinn stood over them, hands on hips. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  Abby caught up with the crowd and linked arms with Quinn. “After all the hours I’ve spent courting that elusive dog, he does this.” Her feelings were a little hurt, but at the same time, a warmed-honey flood of gratitude and happiness overflowed her heart and flooded her entire body.

  Quinn shrugged. “I guess he likes kids best.”

  A cloud of dust rose up from the driveway where the happy trio played together. Sean’s dark hair was turning gray from the dust, and so were his jeans. “I’ll have to wash his clothes while we’re eating dinner. I don’t want his mother to get mad at us for ruining his clothes. Do you have something he can change into?”

  Quinn snaked an arm around her waist. “Yeah, I’ll find something.”

  Sean sat up and hugged Wolf, who laid his chin on Sean’s shoulder and looked for all the world as if he was hugging back. Satisfied with her good work of successfully introducing Sean and Wolf, Georgia came back to Abby and hopped onto the scooter’s seat. Abby moved her knee to the very edge of the seat to make room and fondled Georgia’s ears. “You always know just what to do, don’t you, girl?”

  Georgia looked up and grinned. Abby heard in her mind, clear as a bell, Yes, I do.

  * * *

  After Sean left that evening in the small, loud car without a top, Wolf lazed in the dappled sunlight that filtered through the cat’s-claw vines. He sighed with repletion, not from a full belly, but from a full heart. He had missed playing with his kids, even more than he’d realized until he had the chance to do it again with the little Quinn whose name he later learned was Sean.

  When he saw the boy get out of the car, he had slunk behind him at first, but then Sean noticed him and clapped a hand on his thigh to call Wolf to him. Not trusting, Wolf hadn’t come at first. But when the boy started to walk on, Wolf found that he couldn’t let him go. He realized in that moment that he needed to play. He needed to connect with a human who was still young enough to play, but more important, someone who wouldn’t try to trap him. He didn’t know how he knew that about Sean, but he did. The boy’s energy wasn’t as tight or controlling as either Quinn’s or Abby’s.

  So instead of letting the boy walk away, Wolf had run around in front of him and done a play bow to show what he wanted. And he did want to play! But then when the boy came closer, Wolf got scared and backed off. They did that dance for a while, the dance of coming close and then backing away, until Georgia came outside and helped everyone to relax—even Quinn and Abby, who had rushed outside, too, determined to interfere. But Georgia hadn’t let them. She had, as usual, taken charge of the situation. She had given Wolf a great gift, one of many.

  Then the grown-ups got tired of watching Sean play with Wolf and Georgia, and they both said some words that made Sean stand up and follow them inside. The boy invited Wolf to come, too, and Georgia hopped around with excitement, licking Wolf’s lips and wagging her tail to encourage him.

  But he couldn’t accept that kind of closeness with humans. Not yet.

  Maybe not ever.

  * * *

  Early that Friday morning, Abby turned the faucet, but nothing happened. She set her toothbrush on the edge of the sink and turned the faucet again—off, then on, then off. Nothing.

  Quinn’s reminder to check the mail rang in her ears, along with Reva’s reminder of the water company’s tendency to cut the water off first and ask questions later. “Shit.”

  Knowing already that she’d done this to herself, she maneuvered the scooter into the living room toward the alcove that had once been a closet but now served as Reva’s office space. Abby had been avoiding the accumulated stack of mail on the rolltop desk. Ever since her life with Blair had gone to hell, opening the mail made Abby nervous, as if each envelope might contain bad news or a bill she couldn’t pay.

  At the beginning of their live-in relationship, she had thought it sweet that he paid all the bills so she could concentrate on taking care of him and Emily. But over time, his insistence on handling anything involving money evolved into hypervigilance over every penny Abby spent, then every minute she spent away from home. As her autonomy seeped away, her relationship with Emily grew even more precious, and for a very long time, she told herself that the good times outweighed the bad. But all his subtle reminders that she wouldn’t be able to survive financially without him had deep tentacles that hadn’t yet released her.

  Life just didn’t seem safe anymore.

  “Look at this,” she muttered to herself. Her hands were shaking as she leafed through the stack of envelopes. “Stupid.” She tossed bulk-mail advertisements into the recycle bin and set anything official-looking aside. Water bill; a bright-pink slip shining through the cellophane window. “Shit.”

  She ripped the envelope open. Cutoff date…she glanced at the calendar that hung above the desk…today.

  Quinn came in from the patio, scratching his head. “Abby? The water in the barn isn’t—”

  “Yes.” She flapped a hand at him. “I know. I forgot to pay the water bill.”

  He smirked. “I seem to remember telling you to check that stack of mail several days ago.” Standing there with his dirt-smeared hands on his hips, he shouldn’t have been smirking, but he did have a point. “How long since you’ve paid the water bill?”

  She huffed at him and flapped a hand again. She wasn’t about to tell him that the answer to that question was never. “We can use the water at your place until I get this sorted out.”

  “That’s fine for the animals, but I can’t see you loving a hose bath any better than Georgia does.”

  She scowled at him.

  “Come on,” he coaxed with a grin. “That was supposed to be funny. This isn’t the end of the world.”

  She ignored him. “They won’t let you pay online.”

  “And they don’t take credit cards, either,” he added, “because I tried to set up auto-pay from my credit card account, a
nd they don’t do that.” His grubby fingers took the bill from her, and he looked it over, reading the fine print. “We’ll have to drive into town. You have to pay in person before they’ll turn it back on. It doesn’t say whether they’ll take a check or cash. But knowing them, it’ll only be one, not the other.”

  “Well, hell.” Abby needed to get over her idiotic avoidance of going through mail. It would’ve been so much easier to pay the bill before it came due. It wasn’t like she didn’t have access to Aunt Reva’s account, which could easily afford the water bill, a mere $32.98. Reva had taken Abby to the bank and given her signatory privileges so she could write any checks she needed to. She even knew the PIN of the account, for which Reva had given her a debit card. “Let’s just go now and get it done. I’ll take a shower and brush my teeth later, when they’ve turned the water back on.”

  Quinn set the bill aside. “I’m not done with the morning chores yet. I’ve at least got to feed all the animals their breakfast, and I can run a hose through the fence from my place to yours to give everyone fresh water. Meanwhile, please go through the rest of this stack and see if anything else needs to be dealt with sooner rather than later.”

  Abby felt like a chided child, and she knew she deserved it. She moved the desk chair out of the way and sat on the scooter instead. “Okay.”

  While Quinn finished the chores, she turned the stack of mail upside down and worked from oldest to newest. She wrote out checks to all the utility departments—the electric bill was overdue, too, and would also have to be paid in person—and opened an official-looking envelope from the city courthouse.

  Cordial invitation to present your case at a town hall meeting…

  “Present your case?” Abby scanned through a bunch of legalese and blah, blah, blah.

  …to determine whether it is in the best interest of the city of Magnolia Bay to extend your establishment’s permission to keep farm animals within the city limits.

  Abby’s mouth went dry, and her heart tried to explode out of her chest. “What?” She scanned the letter again. Her fingers were really shaking now. This was bad.

  Quinn came inside. “What?”

  “I don’t know.” Abby held out the letter and shook it at him. “I don’t know what’s going on. This seems serious.” He took the letter, and she wrung her hands while he read through it. His face flushed a dull red, and his hand started to shake, too. Shit. Shit. She should have gone through the mail every single day, instead of leaving it all till now. “I’ve fucked up, haven’t I?”

  Adrenaline prickled her skin and stung her sinuses. She wanted to cry, to sob, to scream. God, she’d fucked up everything so badly, the way she always did. Sticking her head in the sand, leaving everything until past the last minute, so afraid of making a mistake that she failed to do anything at all. “I should have told Reva about this. I should have read it a long time ago. When does it say…?”

  He continued to scan the letter. His face was flushed, his jaw clenched, his hands gripping the pages as if their contents affected him, too.

  “I’m so glad you’re here. I’d be freaking out even more if I’d been here all by myself right now.” Knowing that she wasn’t in this alone gave her strength and courage. She clutched his arm. “When is it? What time?”

  He shook out the front page and put it behind the others. “It’s today. This afternoon at the Magnolia Bay Municipal Courthouse. It’s a town hall meeting about whether Bayside Barn should be able to keep farm animals in the city limits.”

  She’d already read that part—twice—but when she heard Quinn say it out loud, another shock of fear coursed through her. “Bayside Barn won’t be able to exist without the animals. This place is all about the animals, about teaching people how important they are to us.” She looked up at him, begging for reassurance she knew he couldn’t give. “Why would they do this? Was it something I did? Something I did wrong?”

  “I doubt it.” His reply sounded offhand and meaningless; he couldn’t know any more than she did until he finished reading the letter.

  She tried to be quiet and let him absorb the message, but couldn’t stop herself from wailing, “Why is this happening?”

  “It looks like there’s been a petition going around, and a bunch of people have signed it.”

  Abby’s skin crawled. Mildred had said something about those people coming to their door and being turned away.

  “Our neighbor on the other side called to complain about our cat.” And shit, Abby had forgotten to ask Quinn to go over there with a live trap. “But she ended up being really nice once I explained that it wasn’t Reva’s cat that was bothering her.” Abby felt as if she were drowning, going under in a tidal wave of trouble over which she had no control. “I just don’t know who would’ve done this.”

  Her whole body felt ice-cold, encased in a fear so dense and impenetrable that it stopped her breath. He took her in his arms, making her feel so safe and protected. “Shhh,” he said, his voice a soft shushing sound, a lullaby of comfort. “Shhh. Don’t worry. Whatever it is, we’ll take care of it.”

  “How?” she wailed. “Do you think I should call Reva?”

  “I don’t think there’s anything she can do right now. But maybe you should call some of the volunteers that help out on field trips. See if any of them can meet us at the town hall. It’ll look better if we have a crowd on our side.”

  “We could have had a crowd if I’d opened the mail sooner.”

  His arms tightened around her. “Let’s not worry about what’s over and done with. Let’s think about what to do now.”

  She nodded. “I’ll call Edna.” Just the thought of having the kind woman’s stalwart support calmed Abby, though she still felt like a panicked swimmer whose chin kept dipping below the waterline. “Just hold me first.”

  He rocked her in his arms, and though her leg fell asleep from its position on the scooter, and a pins-and-needles feeling from lack of circulation coursed from her toes to her hips, she clung to his steady strength and let him hold her until she could breathe again.

  Chapter 19

  While Abby showered at Quinn’s place with her cast wrapped in a plastic trash bag, he tried for the umpteenth time to call Delia and find out what the hell was going on. But of course, true to form, she wasn’t answering. Not his phone calls, and not his texts.

  Maybe this whole thing wasn’t his fault. When Delia had failed to respond to his messages, he told himself that she hadn’t done what he asked and was therefore ignoring him.

  Part of him hoped that the neighbors on the other side of Bayside Barn had complained and started the petition, but another part knew better. Unless they had complained to the city long before they complained to Abby—which didn’t make sense—there wouldn’t have been enough time for them to circulate a petition and set up a town hall.

  “Quinn?” Abby called out from the bathroom. “Help.”

  “Coming.” He nudged the door open and went inside, where Abby fought with the scooter’s handlebars, which were jackknifed between the wall and the bathroom cabinet.

  “Everything’s all cattywampus.” She hopped backward and held on to the towel bar, giving him better access to the scooter.

  “Wow, you’re really stuck.” He wrestled the scooter into a forward-facing position, all the while ignoring the fact that only two tiny scraps of thin, see-through fabric hid her most interesting parts from view. And those two scraps—thong panties and a barely there bra—were more of a distraction than an actual cover-up. “Okay. Here you go.”

  Instead of climbing onto the scooter, Abby wrapped her arms around his neck. She leaned against him, all warm and willing and smelling of soap and shampoo and mint toothpaste. “I don’t know what I’d do without you right now. I’m so lucky that you moved next door to my aunt when you did.”

  She kissed him, roaming her hands up and down his back i
n a way that made him wish they had more than a half hour to get out of this house and on the way to the courthouse. Her fingers tunneled through his hair, and she grabbed hold, tilting his head for a deeper kiss.

  He obliged by kissing her as deeply as she was kissing him, but at the same time, he felt his face fire up with shame and embarrassment. He might not be the cause of this problem they were about to face, but then again, he might. Would the answer be revealed at the town hall meeting?

  Whether or not it was, and whether or not he was actually to blame, he knew that he didn’t deserve Abby’s gratitude or approval. He cupped her face in his hands and studied the beautiful colors in her eyes. “We’ve got to go.”

  She blushed and looked down at the tile floor. “You’re right. I’m procrastinating.”

  He moved aside and let her pass. “The rest of your stuff is in my bedroom. I’m gonna take a shower while you get dressed.”

  “Okay, thanks.” She touched his arm. “You have no idea how much this means to me—all your help, everything you’re doing.”

  “It’s nothing.” Less than nothing if she ever found out that he might have been responsible for this mess. He changed the subject to get some sense of control over the situation. “We’ve got to leave here in half an hour, at the latest, so we can pay the bills and get to the courthouse on time. Make sure you’re ready.”

  She leaned forward and kissed him gently, caressing his cheek as she turned away. “I’ll be ready. And I know you don’t like to be thanked, but I want you to know that I won’t forget this. I owe you one.”

  He returned her kiss, hoping this wasn’t the last time she’d let him touch her. Whether this situation was his fault or not, he knew he had to make it right. Reva might benefit from having to move if the price was right, but if it happened against her will because of him, this budding relationship with Abby would wither and die. And he realized—not too late, he hoped—that his relationship with Abby meant more to him than he could’ve ever dreamed.