by Beth Byers
Song of Sorrow: A Prelude to Rapunzel
Snow White
Other Novels
These Lying Eyes
Sneak Peek of Spaghetti, Meatballs, & Murder
Chapter 1
It all started when we had a fire alarm and a plumbing issue the same week at work. Call center jobs are sedentary forms of a safari through hell. You’re miserable and your butt is getting ever wider. It doesn’t matter what company you work for—they’re all bad. First, the fire alarm went off. The doors closed to help control the fire. But then…management blocked every exit, preventing people from leaving, while they confirmed the fire. And as MAD as that made me, I stayed at my desk and answered calls with the alarm blaring so loudly I had customers offer to hang up, so I could get to safety. Sure, it was some idiot who’d combined popcorn and a microwave and done it poorly. But still…what if it hadn’t been?!
Then, two days later the sewage backed up. The toilets and water fountains weren’t safe. What did they do? They brought in portable potties and bottled water, but they didn’t get a handicapped potty, and my friend was in a wheelchair. And I just…couldn’t. It was so far beyond enough I found myself confused about why I was still there. So I got up, told the weirdo who sat across from me goodbye and did the long, slow, sweet walk of freedom.
There is something absolutely magical about dropping your bag over your shoulder and leaving a place you’d hated. I wouldn’t have done it…I was supposedly responsible…but I just…snapped. Maybe I wasn’t really responsible. Or only semi-responsible. I was responsible like people who get Bachelor’s degrees but in literature. Responsible like people who paid their bills but spent too much on makeup. Responsible like the only child of a middle-class mother. I had a savings account. I lived in a tiny, cheap, basement apartment. I’d be ok.
Perhaps it wasn’t the sewage or the fire alarm. Maybe it was the way the moon was full, the wind had been in my hair that morning, and it had smelled like rain. Maybe it was the way I felt like ants were crawling my skin every minute I spent chained to that desk. Maybe it was the way that I was far too close to 40 to be where I was and my life was entirely unsatisfactory.
Regardless, the moon was full, the wind had blown through my hair on the way to work, and it smelled like rain. The real prompter wasn’t, of course, the rain. I lived in the Pacific Northwest. It rained eight months straight every single year. If I had gotten a degree in Psychology instead of Lit, I would probably blame it on the death of my grandparents. I wanted their deaths to hit me harder than they had, but my mother had been estranged from them and I hadn’t known them well. I’d gone to their funeral and heard about their passions and their friendships. I learned about their work and spent the eulogy wondering how much of a disappointment I had been to them. That idea had bothered me even though I didn’t know them well. But then…then…I had written in my journal and realized that their disappointment wasn’t what bothered me.
Mine was. I was disappointed in myself and that feeling had swirled up with the wind in my hair and the full moon and the scent of rain and made a mess of the inside of me. All it had taken was the spark of backed up sewage and a handicapped friend who needed to pee and couldn’t.
And, I exploded.
* * * * *
“What’s your plan?” Mom asked without an expression, not even the flicker of a lash. Even though I’d abandoned my job. She’d actually laughed when I told her I walked out without a word. I was in this surreal land of madness where my incredibly responsible parent wasn’t concerned that I had become unemployed.
“I don’t have a plan,” I admitted with that need to be rational fighting with my desire to shout hurray that I’d escaped.
After I left my job, I let myself into the house to tell mom and gotten there before her. She probably had a meeting with a student or paused in the hallway outside her office to discuss Midsummer Night’s Dream with another professor. I’d shrugged off waiting with her luxurious cocoa and my journal. I snuggled into my favorite of her chairs, marveling at what I’d done. I’d realized as I flipped through my journal how each passing page elucidated the feelings of the last years. I’d been so unhappy, I’d forgotten what peaceful felt like. I’d been so used to the monotony, so used to the idea of responsibility, so focused on deliberately avoiding thinking too hard. Leaving was my journals fault, I realized. My journal and the magic of writing. My grandparent’s death. The full moon. The sound of the rain, but mostly the way writing had made me face my feelings.
My mom had come home as I started making pro and con lists for the future. The cons were far too heavy when I was facing what I wanted. But the singular pro was powerful: happiness.
“Graduate school?” Mom asked. Her voice was a cool neutral showing me how much she didn’t want to sway my decision even though it had been her dream for me.
I tapped my journal. It was just a spiral thing. I’d bought the one with a unicorn on it because it had made me smile. Mom didn’t know how in between writing about my misery, I’d been trying to discover what made me excited. And how it had been something utterly unexpected. A diner. Simple food. Recipes, feeding people, the smell of the ocean, a small town without corporations. I didn’t want to hear about shareholders ever again.
“I don’t want to go to graduate school,” I said, softly. “It’s why I haven’t gone.”
“What do you want?” Mom said it like it mattered, but we were adults. We both knew that what I actually wanted wasn’t something I could just switch on and off. We both knew that wanting something didn’t make it feasible.
I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to tell her what I wanted. I never had. Not once. I’d learned to make meals for my dream diner and never told her why. I’d perfected a chocolate layer cake without explaining how I wanted a glass counter with a string of beautiful, funky dome-covered cake plates to run along the top of it. I had learned to make pie and ice cream and cinnamon rolls and biscuits and gravy. I’d perfected chicken fried steak and hash browns and french fries and drawn pictures of booths with fun chandeliers and pretty wood floors and never…not once…told my mom what I’d wanted.
It wasn’t that we weren’t close. We were. It was just that she was a professor. I had assumed that she’d smile and then try to talk me into graduate school. Again. But, this time…I told her.
“You want a diner?”
I nodded, biting my lip. I didn’t want to see her disappointment.
“At the beach?”
It was painful to admit it. It was what I had been saving for, but it wasn’t going to happen. I didn’t have enough. I probably never would.
“It won’t happen,” I said, knowing it was true. “But that’s what I want. It’s hard to figure out something else when that was…it.”
“Really?”
My expression must have reflected what I thought of her continued surprise.
“It isn’t what I pictured,” she said. Her short hair fell into her face and something crossed her expression that I couldn’t quite read.
“It’s not going to happen,” I said defensively. “But, I’m tired of wanting it and not doing anything. I’m thinking…I’ll take my savings and try to find a little apartment and a job. Maybe in Astoria or Lincoln City. It’ll be better than misery in the call center.”
“Rosemary…”
“I don’t want to disappoint you,” I cut in, “but I can’t keep living like this. I’m sorry. Having a waitress daughter at the beach was never what you wanted.”
“Rosemary Desdemona Elizabeth Baldwin, you have never disappointed me,” Mom snapped. “I don’t understand why you never said anything. I am not a snob.”
“I know,” I said, wishing I’d been brave enough to tell her. Maybe brave enough to pursue what I want before.
“I teach at a community college not at Harvard. All I want is for you to be happy. It’s all I ever wanted.”
“I know…”
“Just because I love talking about Shakespea
re and Jane Austen doesn’t make me think that other things are stupid.”
“I know…” I sniffed and felt like I was 13 again and hated feeling like that.
“If making cinnamon rolls will make you happy, I think you should do it. Having your own place, I could see why that would be important to you.”
“I can’t,” I snapped. “I wish it were possible, but I don’t have enough saved.”
“Oh, Rose…” Mom bit her lip and examined my face for too long before she said, “I…you know I’ve been dealing with so much. I…”
“Your mom and dad died,” I said with a watery sniff. “This isn’t your fault. I snapped at work. And I am an adult.”
“We weren’t close. You know that. And I knew…”
“I’m sorry to bring this up again,” I said cutting in again. I took my mom’s hand. It was just so…unfair. I had such a great parent and she had something so…lesser. “I don’t want to make things harder for you. None of this is fair to you.”
“Rosemary, my love…” Mom shook her head and then reached out and smacked me lightly on the side of my head, “Let me finish. Because you darling fool, I got a call from my parent’s lawyer. I knew…”
I leaned back, trying to read her face. She was struggling to speak.
“I knew they had money. But I didn’t know what they’d do with it. Especially…given how things…were. But…well…goodness. They left everything to you and me. They split it equally and put it in trusts. They had…well…they had a lot. And there will be more from the life insurance.”
“What!”
“They were quite wealthy.”
I blinked.
“Now we’re quite wealthy.”
I had just taken a swallow of cocoa, and I froze, holding it in my mouth.
“You could have a diner or a hotel or a house or never work again. I mean…I knew they had money, but…not like this.”
Which is when what she was saying struck me and I choked on the feel of my heart in my throat and the cocoa in my mouth and coughed that luxurious cocoa all over my cream call center cardigan.
* * * * *
According to my mother, life on the Oregon Coast required a Subaru Forrester. I wasn’t sure I agreed, but when she insisted I get one, I let it happen more out of a desire to see if it would happen. I was testing this madness. Mom knew me well enough to know she was railroading me, and I was testing this surreal dream. When she was done, I had a shiny blue Forrester and a confirmation that money really had come out of nowhere.
While I sorted my apartment, my mom barged over, picked up my laptop, and found me a cottage on the Oregon Coast for the next four months.
“Mom, I can do that.”
“I’m excited,” she said, tucking her hair behind her ear. “This is your dream. I can’t wait to see it play out.”
Even after the Forrester, I didn’t believe it was real until Mom dragged me into the bank and had me sign more paperwork than I’d have thought necessary for anything but becoming the leader of the free world. When it ended, I had been left speechless at the balances of the accounts, the fact that people who had barely knew me had left it to me, and that I was leaving with one of those black credit cards.
Mom was the one who started loading my car. I helped, of course, but I got distracted by the scent of rain and the way the wind seemed to whisper happiness. Somehow finding my dream had become the most terrifying thing that had ever happened to me even as excitement bubbled in my stomach.
Mom turned from putting the last of my stuff into the Forrester and then squeezed me again. She looked at my face, cupped my cheeks and whispered, “Find a pet, a lover, your dream, and so much happiness. I’m not coming until you’re settled. I want to see it in its glory, so get it together.”
“You find a lover,” I said, pulling back with a laugh.
Her glance to the side paused me, and I examined her. There was a twitch at the corner of her mouth, and I gasped, “You have a lover.”
Mom’s wicked grin told me I was right. What an idea! I was going to let her happiness carry me into my second chance. My hands shook as I started the car and backed out of the driveway. It was all starting, and I was still waiting to wake up.
Chapter 2
It was a fierce need to use the restroom that had me stopping at the feed store outside of Silver Falls. I knew I wasn’t that far from the cottage, but I hadn’t been there before, and I didn’t want to have an episode that only toddlers would empathize with.
I ran into the store, interrupted the store clerk, and wove my way through the aisles. When I finished, I slowed up and decided to wander the store. What was it that made you feel guilty for using the restroom and not buying something? I had to at least pretend to look for something. As if I would fool anyone.
The first aisle was pig food. The next was nails and hammers and other implements I tried to avoid. The one after that took me to an outdoor area where they were selling chicks and other baby birds. I paused to coo at them and then wandered past a desk where I heard little growls and yelps.
“Oh, hello,” I said, squatting down and finding a pile of basset hound puppies in a cardboard box. There were, perhaps, a half dozen sets of floppy ears, wagging tails, and little black noses.
“They’re $50.00,” said a little boy with dark brown hair and bright blue eyes, “Mom said to get money for them, so they don’t get fed to snakes. They’re full breed. It’s a real, real good deal.”
I paused at that one. Too good of a deal, I thought. But one set of dark, soulful eyes caught mine and I knew I’d regret not at least petting the little soul. I lifted a puppy with each hand and felt two little noses brush against each of my cheeks, but the puppy in my right hand licked me frantically, and I couldn’t help but put down the second puppy to snuggle my little lover.
“They’re mutts.”
It was a man’s voice that cut-in to my puppy kisses. He was behind me, and his voice was deep and dark enough that I had to turn to see if his face matched his voice.
His voice did. It was as yummy as his face. He had to be at least six feet, four inches tall. I suppose I stared because I expected a gut and a crooked nose. Something that was the complete opposite of that voice. What I got was a healthy man with dark stubble on his face, kind dark brown eyes, and a strong jaw. He wasn’t stop you in your track handsome, but he was good looking. What really caught my attention was the way the boy’s eyes lit up with sheer, unadulterated joy.
The man continued speaking while I stared. “And JJ Masterson, your mom told you to make sure they found good homes and not to charge a single penny.”
The boy’s initial reaction was followed by a flush and then he moaned, “Fifty dollars is enough for the new lego X-Box game, and this lady would have paid it. Look at her, ‘tective. She’s a softy.”
The man grinned and his passable attractiveness morphed into a long tall drink of oh-my-goodness handsome.
“Hello,” I said grinning because I had no self-control, and he was just so pretty with that smile. “Thanks for saving me $50.00.”
“You gonna take that puppy? They look like basset hounds, but Kat Masterson’s female isn’t a full breed. She’d be furious with her son for saying the dog was pure.”
The puppy wriggled in my arms and kissed me again. As if it knew its future was on the line, the puppy squirmed, kissing my cheek and laying its chin on my shoulder.
“I do feel like I’ve been chosen. I’m not sure I can leave..umm…” I checked the sex and then said, “Her behind.”
The man grinned at me showcasing a handsome set of teeth and making my knees weaken a bit. I was easy. I had worked too long in a call center full of people warped by their work. “You from around here?”
I scrunched my nose, told myself to make friends and not freeze up just because he was handsome and talking to me, and said, “I hope to be, but I’m moving here from Gresham. Just staying in a little rental right now, and kind of…figuring things out.”<
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There was something warm in his eyes that I hadn’t seen for quite some time and I certainly hadn’t expected. I tucked my hair—my frizzy reddish hair—behind my ear and wondered how I looked after the drive. Given that I’d rolled the windows down and let the wind push me along, I suspected I looked a little bit homeless.
But, the flash of his grin said that he liked my answer, and I could feel my face heat in response to the way his eyes roved over me. Mostly my face, a level of tact I appreciated, since I was a bit thick from too much time literally tied to a phone and a chair.
“Well now, JJ,” he said, glancing at the boy. “Tell us about these pups.”
JJ told me that my puppy was the one who liked to snuggle and had been sleeping by his shoulder every single night. Her best friend was a little fellow with darker ears and freckles. The man the kid had called ‘tective held out his fingers to my little gal’s buddy. What could ‘tective mean? Was it some weird nickname? Like the things people called each other while they were playing video games? I wouldn’t be surprised to find out this man played video games with little boys just to make them happy.
My puppy’s little buddy waggled his tail and yipped at the man frantically. He circled the ‘tective’s boot like a kitty and then pawed at his calf.
“Uh-oh,” I said, wondering if he’d succumb. He put his hands on very lean hips and the puppy yipped at him again, touching him lightly with a paw—all the while, the puppy’s tail was waving so frantically it beat a tattoo against the ground.
The man looked over at me, grinned again—further weakening my knees—and scooped the pup up. Was it gratuitous for an attractive man to stand there smiling at me with a puppy in his arms? There was something almost—explicit—about a tall, handsome man holding a wriggling, yipping, puppy. Yes. Yes. It was definitely gratuitous to see something quite so knee-weakening.
“I’m Simon Banks,” he said, scratching the puppy’s belly.
Yes, I thought, yes. Regardless of who this fellow was—this moment of watching him semi-flirt over a puppy belly had made this day perfect.