“A note?”
“I left a note on top of the signs. The first time I took them down.”
“You talking about that piece of cardboard? That sat outside for a week in the rain? If there was a note on that, it was long gone by the time I saw it, lady.”
Lady. “Bet it was easier to read than your handwriting,” Libby muttered.
He didn’t answer. An impasse. She shivered. The drizzle had switched to light rain and if she’d missed her gloves and her hat before, she missed them ten times more now. Still. They’d gotten this far, and Libby wasn’t about to let her new life there get off to a wrong start. “Look.” She made firm eye contact again. “You are in the wrong here. You’re posting ‘no trespassing’ signs, but the only one trespassing is you.”
His face was unreadable. Obviously a man who didn’t like people very much.
“All you had to do was stop by and ask me to move them. That’s what neighbors do.”
Libby had no answer to that one. Well. She had an answer. But it would have meant admitting something she wasn’t going to admit. Not out loud. That, being familiar with the fate of Little Red Riding Hood, she wasn’t too keen on venturing into the dark, dark forest on her own. Even if this wolf was, most likely, just a garden variety misanthrope woodchuck. Living in a shack with his collection of torn tee shirts and piles of Genny empties and baby pot plants growing in drywall buckets. Harmless enough if you overlook his vast assortment of firearms. Yeah. Libby knew the type.
She turned toward her house. “Look. I’m cold. Please just move the signs onto your property. If you really think you need them.”
Enough of this.
But then Bo’s muzzle touched her hand again, and suddenly she felt the man’s Carhartt drop over her shoulders.
“Hey. I didn’t—”
“Your lips are blue.”
“I don’t—”
“I’ll pick it up in fifteen minutes.”
He snapped his fingers for Bo.
She decided not to argue. It seemed wisest to just accept the coat. She really wanted this encounter to be over, and besides, the warmth had already gentled her shivering.
On the other hand, speaking of misanthropes, she didn’t really want to have to talk to the guy again, either. So, on the spot, she decided it would be inconvenient for her to be home in fifteen minutes for coat pick-up time. “Fine. But I have to be somewhere in . . . a little while. I’ll leave the coat on my doorknob.”
The man nodded, pulled a screwdriver from his pocket, and waved it at her to make sure she saw it. Then he turned to the sign on the pine tree.
So he’d conceded defeat on the sign argument. He was going to take them down. Or move them anyway.
When Libby got far enough away that he wouldn’t see, she thrust her arms through the jacket’s sleeves so she could get her stiffened hands into its pockets.
♦ ♦ ♦
Libby’s side door was locked and she hadn’t brought a key with her, so she circled round to go in the front.
There was a battered old Ford Escort parked in her driveway.
Libby didn’t own a battered old Ford Escort. She drove a not-so-battered old Toyota Corolla.
The front door on the driver’s side of the Escort flew open, and a jeans-and-tee shirt-clad woman skipped up toward her. “Auntie Em! Auntie Em! I’m home, Auntie Em!”
“Maisey?”
The teenager grabbed Libby in a hug. “Wow, I bummed when I knocked and you weren’t home! I fit all my stuff in my car, do you believe it? Did you get my message? Did you talk to Mom? What’s with that jacket? What happened to your hair?”
“What? What message?”
“Don’t you answer your cell phone?”
Uh oh. Truth was, Libby had been leaving her cell phone turned off. On purpose. She had no land line phone right now, being between houses. And it had been nice, skulking along beneath the radar.
Only now she was getting the sinking feeling that her skulking had backfired.
“How does Paul reach you, if he can’t get you on your cell?” Maisey hadn’t let up her string of questions.
“I call him.” No business of hers that sometimes Libby took little breaks from Paul. “What are you doing here?”
“You’ve got room, right?” Her eyes were on the house, now, sizing it up. Farmhouse, circa 1870, obviously at least three or four bedrooms.
“Oh no. Nobody said anything to me about you moving in.”
“I gotta. Mom’s gone to Hawaii. And we did tell you, only you weren’t picking up.”
Libby groaned. “Hawaii?”
“Uh huh. With her new boy toy.”
Libby groaned again.
“Lemme get my stuff,” Maisey was calling over her shoulder.
Libby looked up at her new house. It was shrinking. Right there before her eyes.
♦ ♦ ♦
Libby didn’t know what her niece was doing but it sounded like she was throwing sneakers onto her bedroom floor from somewhere up high. Top of a ladder, maybe.
Moving in.
Libby looked up at the ceiling toward the noise, then turned her attention back to her cell phone, punching in the code that would let her retrieve her messages.
Eight of them.
Five from her sister. They all pretty much repeated themselves, so she stopped listening to them all the way through after #2. Works of art, really. Breathtaking blend of wheedling, carelessness, and whining, with an occasional shot of blatantly insincere concern for Libby’s state of mind thrown in. It was Libby, after all, who had found herself suddenly divorced, out of a job, and about-to-be homeless. But her sister had always been indifferent about Libby’s marriage. Maybe she assumed Libby could take anything. Which would be partly Libby’s fault. For cultivating an image of firm stability. But does that absolve the rest of her family from indulging in a bit of empathy from time to time?
Hardly.
Extracting actual information from the messages, on the other hand, wasn’t so easy. Maisey had related pretty much everything that the messages did. Gina was moving to Hawaii. Was already there, by now. She had a new boyfriend who was planning some sort of business venture. A bit about how sexy the new boyfriend was, something about him being a Tantric sex coach. File that under “too much information.” And then, of course, the admonition that Libby babysit Maisey.
She didn’t call it babysitting, of course. Maisey was nineteen.
One last message from Maisey, who prattled on every bit as goofily as her mother, letting Libby know she was going to be here yesterday. Well, Maise, you hit your target within 24 hours, not bad.
Message #3 was from Paul, left last Thursday. His voice was a rock of calm in the swirling chaos of her sister’s nutsiness. “Hey, babe. Guess you have your phone off. I’ll stop by the house at 5:45.”
He meant the house in Pittsford. While Libby was still sleeping there, he’d always come by at 5:45, hitting that target within five minutes plus or minus, depending on traffic. And then he’d take Libby out to eat, him driving, either to a restaurant or his place. They never ate at the Pittsford house. Paul was like that, about the Pittsford house. “Wallace’s territory,” he said. And so it was, even though Wallace had long since moved out.
Libby walked upstairs. And found Maisey in the wrong room—the one Libby was planning to turn into her office.
She braced herself against the door frame and took a deep breath. “Maisey, you’re in the wrong room. I said the bedroom on the left.”
“But . . . I like this room. And it was empty.”
“Please, Maisey? I was planning to put my office in this one.”
“Can’t you put it there?” Maisey pointed past Libby to the room across the hall.
“Please? This one’s a bit bigger . . . I need room for my desk and file cabinets and stuff.”
Maisey scowled and re-zipped her duffel bag.
Libby watched her hoist it back up over her shoulder and stood aside to let her pass
. Then she thought of something else.
“One other thing, please, Maisey—no drugs.”
Maise wasn’t a bad kid, mind you. But Libby was no dummy, either
Maisey jutted out her chin. “I don’t do drugs, Aunt Libby. I haven’t in ages.”
“Good for you. Good for you, Maise. Thank you. I’m glad to hear it.”
Maisey crossed the hall and dropped her duffel bag into the smaller bedroom.
Libby leaned against the doorframe and rubbed her forehead. A small victory. But a victory nonetheless. And who knows, maybe she wouldn’t be there long. Maybe she’d decide to enroll in college or something.
Suddenly a pounding on the door thudded through the house. A loud pounding.
“Who’s that?” Maisey had re-entered the room to collect one of her boxes. “Sounds like someone’s plenty pissed at you!”
The jacket.
Libby had forgotten to take it off. Forgotten the whole plan to leave it on the doorknob, to avoid having to stand face-to-face with that man again.
She jumped toward the stairs, too freaked out to answer Maisey. The pounding had sounded pretty loud. Can you tell if someone’s pissed at you by how they knock on the door? Of course not. And it could be enthusiastic pounding . . . except that Libby’s doorbell was broken. Which meant the guy had been out there, standing in the drizzle, pressing the button for goodness knows how long.
Who wouldn’t be tempted to pound pretty hard after standing in the drizzle pressing a broken doorbell for awhile?
Libby yanked the door open.
“Haven’t left yet, I see.”
She pulled the jacket off and held it out to him. He took it, but slowly. He was looking over her shoulder.
Libby turned and there was Maisey, big grin on her face.
“So it’s your jacket,” she said and then squealed and practically knocked Libby over as she pushed past through the door and out onto the stoop, where she knelt and threw her arms around Bo’s neck.
“Maisey! Hadn’t you better ask first?”
Maisey appeared not to hear. She stroked Bo’s head, crooning ecstatically, while the man looked down at her, apparently amused. Maybe because of her piercings. And the tattoo—a dandelion head with a few seeds blowing away—visible on the back of her neck. Not that people who live in the country don’t know about the whole piercing and tattooing thing.
Libby pushed open the storm door again. “Maisey, the man wants to leave now.”
“What’s his name?” Maisey meant the dog. And was asking the neighbor, not Libby. Maisey instinctively goes for the person most likely to indulge her.
“The dog’s name is Bo,” Libby said. “Now please finish moving your stuff into your room, Maise.”
The teen stood up, rolling her eyes for the benefit of her audience and saying, “Bye, Bo,” in a dramatically regret-filled voice.
Libby thought about asking the man whether he moved all the signs—like telling Maisey which room was hers, it would have helped to re-establish where everyone stood. But her manners won out. Of course they were all moved. No point in suggesting he wasn’t acting, now, in good faith. Plus, she could always check them, later.
“Thanks for lending me the coat.”
“Your doorbell’s broken.”
“I know.”
“And there’s something in your hair.”
She reached up and as she did remembered. The pine pitch. Great. So she looked like a freak. Just great.
She watched him walk down the drive.
“So who is he?” Maisey said. “He is gorgeous. And so’s the dog.” She giggled.
“Shush!” Libby closed the door. “He’s within earshot still, you ninny.”
“So? What do you care?”
Libby scowled. “Maisey. Please no bedding my neighbors.”
“Yeah right, like I’d sleep with a senior citizen.”
Ouch. Why did Libby get the feeling that wasn’t directed solely at her neighbor? Especially considering that he was probably younger than her . . . by a good five years, she bet. “Knock it off, Maisey. You’ll find out for yourself how young you still are—when you’re his age. And it will come before you know it, too.”
“Yeah, sure. And anyway, I have a boyfriend.”
That little disclosure should have set off a whole slew of warning bells, of course, but Libby was mentally exhausted by then, and its significance didn’t register properly. So all she said was, “Do me a favor, Maisey, and please finish getting your stuff out of my office. The movers are coming tomorrow and my desk has to fit.”
Then she went and put on a kettle for tea. And some mayonnaise. She’d read, somewhere, that mayonnaise would get pine pitch out of hair. Better to smell like a sandwich than pine pitch.
Gorgeous. Yeah, well, maybe. Tall enough, anyway.
She’d left her cell on an overturned box in the living room. Now she retrieved it and dialed Paul at work.
4
He didn’t pick up until the fourth ring. That was kind of odd—he’d moved to a real office, so unless he was in a meeting, he was generally at his desk. And when Paul was at his desk, he was a first ring kind of guy.
Yeah. A real office. Actual walls. Not a cubical. When Libby was working there, he’d had neither. He was in the lab. “There” being Cal4 Laboratories. That’s where Libby and Paul had met, in the research department, two biologists, part of Cal4’s crack “benign skin conditions” research team. Or as they called it, Psori-Ops. Short for Psoriasis Operations. Ha ha ha, guess you had to be there. Anyway, in the lab, the phone is almost always out of arm’s reach, and even if the researchers happened to be near it when it rang, they resented being interrupted. They had more important things to do. They almost always let incoming calls go to voicemail.
Paul’s phone habits changed when he made the jump from research to product management a year ago. Libby was laid off two weeks later. It wasn’t a huge surprise, getting laid off—she was a senior biologist, high-salaried, and the company had been bumping along through a pretty rocky spot for nearly two years. Plus—well, she didn’t have any proof of this, but it’s not that hard to figure out—after she and Wallace split, people began whispering that she and Paul were an item. Which happened to be true. It wasn’t an issue when they were more or less equals, but when he got promoted . . . not that Libby thought she was let go because management knew they were sleeping together. But, you know. Office politics always figure into these things. And everyone knew Paul was a favorite with the owners. Getting Libby out of the picture made things cleaner.
“Paul here.”
“Hey, it’s me.”
“Hi, babe. What’s up?”
He sounded funny. Maybe.
“Guess who just showed up, looking for a place to stay?”
“I dunno, who?”
“Maisey.”
“Oh yeah?”
Now, that was weird. Libby had told him about Maisey and Maisey’s mom. You’d expect a response that was a bit more . . . focused. Something with at least a hint of outrage.
But Libby wasn’t the sort of woman to act petulant. He was at work, after all. “Would you believe it—Gina told her she could live with me.”
“Oh, no kidding?”
No mistaking it—something was going on.
“Paul, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
That confirmed it. “Not nothing. What happened?”
“I’ll tell you later. I’m not sure. They’re calling us all together this afternoon. Right at 4:00.”
Uh oh. Cal4 upper management had a formula for announcing layoffs. And at 4:00 p.m. company meeting was not a good sign.
Libby made the obligatory sympathetic noise, but truth to tell, her real response was more like, oh brother, here we go again. Which wasn’t fair, and she immediately felt guilty about it. What was an annoying long term houseguest compared to maybe losing your job? So she took a deep, very silent breath and said, “You’ll be okay.”
>
“Yeah,” he said in the same muttery voice. “Look, I’ll see you for dinner, right?”
“Sure. You wanna do ribs?”
We’d found a new ribs place on Culver a month before.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Good luck, Paul.”
“Yeah.”
Libby couldn’t really say Paul was happier since jumping over to the marketing side of the shop. In some ways, it was more stressful. Even though he was a bit closer to the decision-makers. The researchers used to joke, in the lab, that the Cal4 execs didn’t even know their real names. They used to put labels on their foreheads, the same labels they used for labeling samples. And joke that it was new corporate policy to help Robbie and his son keep them straight.
Libby turned off her cell and grabbed a box of files to take upstairs to her office.
Maisey had blown up an air mattress and pushed it up against the wall beneath the loathsome northward-facing window. She had the window cracked and was sitting on the mattress, smoking a cigarette.
Libby glared at her but decided to postpone that battle until some other time.
♦ ♦ ♦
Paul leaned over and pecked Libby’s lips, then slid into the booth across from her. He looked okay. Anyway, he didn’t show any signs of being newly jobless.
“So—who’s gone this time?” Libby closed her menu.
“Nobody,” he said. “You’re never going to believe this.”
“No layoffs?”
“Nope. We’ve been acquired.”
“Acquired?” Now this was something different. Not that rumors didn’t flare up from time to time. But Libby and Paul both knew enough about the company’s bottom line. Cal4 wasn’t exactly the coveted jewel of the nation’s biotech industry. “Who by?”
“A cosmetics company.”
“Oh, Paul, you’re kidding me!”
“Nope. Dormet Vous Lustre. ‘Making your skin like yesterday’s, today.’”
Libby had seen their ads. On late-night cable, if she recalled correctly. And website pop-ups. Yech. “Paul! Why? What—”
When Libby Met the Fairies and her Whole Life Went Fae Page 2