A Spot of Bother

by Magenta Wilde

  “Wow. I almost want to go just for that alone,” I said.

  “No, trust me, you don’t. But don’t sweat the rest. Bring one of your lovely cakes or pies if you like. For the record, you’ll win my dad over with anything pecan or coconut. Then sit back and meet the family. Hopefully you like them enough that I’ll end up getting lucky.” He gave me another kiss, this one softer.

  I felt a bit of the panic abate, but I still felt a bit wired from the news. I chewed at my thumbnail as thoughts raced through my mind. Did I have a good pecan pie recipe? Maybe some kind of coconut bars? Vanessa would probably be amused if I came back with a story about a crazy date that Roger’s brother brought along. So would my pal Trish. I couldn’t wait to share the refrigerated peanut butter comment with her. She’d die to hear that description.

  “Come here,” Roger pulled me prone and propped himself over me, hovering his lips tantalizingly close to mine. He slowly lowered his face to mine, giving me a kiss that started slow and quickly turned steamy. “I think your mind is all over the place since I shared my little announcement with you. Fortunately I’ve got a second wind and think I know a way to help you unwind.”

  “Oh really? You’re Mister Know-It-All all of a sudden,” I teased.

  “Oh, I know things.” His smile was mischievous as he sat back on his haunches and tugged me onto his lap. “Since you’re a take-the-bull-by-the-horns kind of woman, how about a little reverse cowgirl action to distract and tire you?”

  Perched on his lap, I could feel he was ready for a — how should I describe it? — ride. I was happy to oblige.

  6

  “ You’re what?”

  Mom was incredulous when I told her Roger wanted me to go to his family’s house for Thanksgiving.

  “That’s fantastic,” Vanessa beamed, pausing from her task of setting out more holiday candles and soaps.

  “No, it’s not fantastic,” Mom said. She looked a bit tired, but overall in pretty good shape for the amount of alcohol she’d imbibed the night before. I guess the mystery whiskey or whatever it was turned out to be non-poisonous, if not hangover-proof. She was clutching tightly to some sort of green concoction, taking pained sips from it every minute or two. She usually opted for a burger and fries or a massive omelet to combat a hangover, so the shift in remedy surprised me.

  “What’s in that?” Vanessa asked. “It looks gross. It smells weird, too.”

  “Oh, this?” Mom peered inside the container, squinting at the contents almost like she was afraid they’d bite her. “It’s a hangover blend I whipped up. It has broccoli, kale, lettuce, cabbage, garlic, ginger, onion, some grapes, a Granny Smith apple, peas…”

  “Peas?” I’d never heard of peas going into a smoothie before.

  “I put anything green in there. What? It’s a healing color.”

  “Is it helping?” Vanessa looked curious, hopeful.

  Mom shrugged. “Eh. Maybe?” She took another sip and grimaced. “I think a Big Mac would do me better. One of you should go get me one.”

  “I don’t think McDonald’s is serving lunch for at least another hour,” I offered.

  Mom glanced at the clock and rolled her eyes. “Killjoy.”

  “Just drink your hangover juice.”

  Mom held up the container. “I think I know what this needs.” She turned to Vanessa. “Is that bottle of vodka I had here, that day we …”

  “You mean the day you …” Vanessa cut in, giving me a nervous glance.

  Mom sighed and went on. “Yes, that candy cane vodka that I used to make happy hot cocoas.”

  “You mean when you made yourself a happy hot cocoa,” Vanessa corrected.

  Now Mom rolled her eyes.

  “You two aren’t fooling me,” I said. “That vodka is gone. It was a slow day and we’d had a dusting of snow and you decided you needed extra warming up.”

  “You’re not mad,” Vanessa hedged.

  I shook my head. “I know you’re not going to get hammered on the job.”

  “So there’s no more of that vodka left?” Mom asked, returning to her priorities.

  “Would you really want some peppermint vodka mixed into your green goo?” I asked.

  Mom thought about it for a moment. “I guess not. But a shot on the side — that hair of the dog, you know — might help.”

  “Well, if it’s any consolation, there is some cucumber-melon vodka someone gave me a while back. That’s got a green component to it. It’s under the sink in the breakroom. Have at it.”

  “Cucumber melon?” Mom asked. “Is it any good?”

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “I’ll let you be my guinea pig.”

  Mom looked at her green drink again. “It can’t make this any worse.”

  She left and a moment later returned to the store area, unscrewing the bottle in question. She gave it a sniff, shrugged, and then poured a hearty shot into her health drink before taking a long, but pained swallow.

  “How is it?” Vanessa asked, as Mom held her eyes closed. She held up a manicured finger, telling us to wait.

  A full minute later, she burped and went on. “I think it’s starting to help.” Next took another drink from the bottle again before recapping it. “Okay, that’s blunting the pain. Now let’s go back to you abandoning me for Thanksgiving. Me! Your mother!”

  “So,” I continued, heaving out a long sigh, “why is it so bad that I said I’d go to Roger’s for Thanksgiving? I can still pop in here before or afterwards, if you would like. I know I’d like to, but since we see each other every day just about, and often for long stretches, it’s not like you’re missing some yearly window to see me.”

  “Thanksgiving is our holiday,” Mom pouted.

  “Since when? We mainly sit around and eat and veg out for most of the afternoon and evening. Sometimes we get the energy to watch a movie after Tom gets his fill of football. Or we make bets about how many times he’ll get up and fetch a plate of leftovers. For the record, it’s pretty much always four, except for that one year he deep-fried the turkey, and he went back for a fifth go.”

  “Well, Jordan will be disappointed,” Mom argued. “It’s his first Thanksgiving with us.”

  “So you’re definitely not going to try and visit your family out by Manistique?” Vanessa asked, turning to our youngest and newest worker, who’d followed my mother out of the breakroom and was listening to our conversation.

  The tall teen shrugged, a lock of his dark brown hair tumbling over his forehead as he jerked his shoulders up and down. “To be honest, I hadn’t thought of it. I thought I’d just hang around here. If you didn’t want me around I figured I could just stay up in my apartment.”

  “Of course we want you,” Mom scoffed. “Don’t let Poppy’s selfish plans make you think you’re not wanted.”

  “Now don’t paint me as a bad guy,” I warned. “Roger brought it up last night. It caught me by surprise, and I am a bit nervous to meet most of his family, but since we’re an item, I figure I should go. Plus, you keep throwing my ring size at him, so you should be thrilled. You’re just complaining for the sake of it.”

  Mom smirked. I knew she was happy with the development. She just wanted to rag on me for the sport of it.

  “That Poppy is spending the holiday with Roger and meeting his family makes sense to me,” Jordan said. “He is her boyfriend, after all.”

  “Oh, you, shush,” Mom hissed. She pointed in the direction of Thingamajigs. “Why don’t you go to my shop and see about decorating it for the holidays, hmmm?”

  “When I asked last week about decorating, you said you never decorated the store for the holidays,” Jordan replied. “Just the house.”

  “Well,” Mom started, “I remembered I found a lot of decorations at that big estate sale I cleaned up at a few weeks back. I figure we could use those to decorate, and also price them, so if anyone should want something …”

  “Ah, the Golden Rule for Fiona decorating her shop comes into play,” I sa
id.

  “What rule would that be?” Jordan asked.

  “If Mom has decorations to sell, then she’s got stuff to decorate with.”

  “That sounds about right,” Jordan nodded.

  Mom gave him a mild swat.

  “What? It sounds like something you would do.”

  “I suppose, but mind your elders anyways. I’m a wreck since I learned my daughter has plans to abandon me this holiday. And this,” she sighed as she rested a manicured hand above her heart, “after I labored for twenty-three hours — twenty-three! — to bring her into this world.”

  Vanessa and I began clapping in unison. “Bravo! We need a Fiona Bingo game,” I crowed. “We would have gotten two dabs on the card, one for cooch-ripping labor, and one for family abandonment.”

  “What would the prize be?” Jordan asked, his eyes keen.

  “The satisfaction of knowing you’re right,” Vanessa replied.

  Mom shook her head. “Still, you’re abandoning me, your poor dear mother, on the biggest family holiday of the year.”

  Oh, she was laying it on thick. I even felt a pang of guilt as she uttered the statement. Even so, I said I’d be visiting Roger’s family for the holiday and I was sticking to that. No sense in waffling.

  “Oh, Fiona, stop griping like that.” It was Tom, who’d slipped in through the side door of my shop.

  “What?” Mom replied. “I’ve been abandoned by my only child.” She began fanning at her eyes as if she was trying to thwart the march of tears.

  Tom shook his head. “Need I remind you that you’ve been over the moon that they’re getting serious, my little cactus flower?”

  “But she’s casting me aside. I’m a widow, after all. How could she be so cruel?”

  “A widow?” Tom and I said in unison.

  “Your husband is right here,” Tom went on, jabbing his thumb at his chest.

  “But my second husband …,” Mom continued, blinking fast and furious.

  “Your first husband, you left after three months when he tried to manhandle you too much,” Tom corrected, “and your second husband, you divorced. You instigated that divorce, too. And you never let any of us forget that detail either. I’m not sure you can claim a grieving widow status if you’d been divorced from the man in question for several years.”

  “Loss is loss, no matter the circumstances,” Mom argued.

  “Do you want the girl married or not, my little cactus blossom?” Tom asked, his tone pointed.

  “Well, she is thirty.”

  I shook my head in disbelief. Now was a good time to start cleaning some shelves, I thought to myself, as I picked up a feather duster.

  Mom was silent a moment, and then she picked up a fresh head of steam. “But if they marry they’ll move, and where will that leave me?”

  Tom groaned and plopped down on the couch. “You realize if they do marry Poppy more than likely will move into Roger’s house?”

  “Would you do that?” Jordan asked. “What about your house?”

  “I’m renting that place,” I explained. “Roger owns his place, so I think Tom does have a point. If we marry, that is.”

  “Eh, it’ll happen,” Tom said, waving a hand casually in our direction.

  “Do you have a touch of the sight?” Vanessa teased.

  “No,” Tom went on, “but I have decades on most of you — and a pair of working eyeballs — and after a while the writing on the wall gets easier to read. That Fletcher idiot Poppy used to date, you knew that was a matter of time before that imploded.”

  “Hear, hear,” Mom said.

  Tom paused to let my mother cast her two cents, then continued. “Then we had a couple rounds with Scott. He is a good guy, and was really good for Poppy in terms of having a good relationship, but they’re not a match. In between there were a couple other guys, that one who taught at the college for a year, and then that guy across the river, he managed some shop at the mall. He was alright, but it was another case where even though things were going well, that magic, so to speak, wasn’t there.”

  “That’s a good way to put it,” I agreed.

  “Fine,” Mom groused. “So there’s that magic between Roger and Poppy, but they still might pick up and abandon me.”

  “Oh, Fiona!” Tom snapped. “You’re just going on to hear the sound of your own voice. “Roger owns a home — and a business — in town! If they get married, more than likely they’ll live a block closer to us.”

  “Oooh, a whole block,” I teased. “Maybe I’ll compensate for the difference by putting up a huge wooden fence all around, to protect our privacy.”

  “You’d need a dome,” Tom muttered.

  “And camouflage,” I added.

  “I’m not the prying sort,” Mom said, her tone prim.

  The statement — clearly a lie if you were at all familiar with Mrs. Fiona Wheeler — drew loud guffaws from around the room, the hilarity doubling when Tom gave a loud snort of amusement.

  “What? What’s so funny?” Mom asked.

  “Just think about what you said, my little cactus flower. It should become obvious,” Tom drawled.

  7

  “S’mores fudge?”

  I looked up when I heard the question. It was Amber, who’d glided into my shop as silent as a ninja. She held a large sack stamped “Farley’s Fudge,” and shook it in my direction as she approached.

  “S’mores?” I asked. “That must be the good smell I was picking up earlier today.”

  She pulled out a small white cardboard candy box, lifted back the lid and began slicing away at the fudge inside with a small plastic knife. I accepted a bite. “Thanks. Oh, this is good. You just out on a treats run?”

  She took a nibble, nodding. “Yeah, we had some issues, so I thought I’d grab some goodies while getting lunch.”

  “What kind of issues?”

  “A toilet sprang a leak,” she said.

  “That’s never fun.”

  “No, definitely not, but at least it just leaked water and not, um, dirty water.”

  I smiled at her prim word choice. “Did you call a plumber, or is Scott handling it?”

  “He shut off the water, and then got a plumber. The guy came over surprisingly fast. I wasn’t expecting that.”

  “Is it Earl Simmons?”

  Amber nodded. “How did you guess? Are you that psychic?”

  “I know things, but in this case I know Tom recommended Earl to Scott. Earl and Tom have been friends for ages, and Earl is pretty fair, does good work, so it’s logical rather than magical in this case.”

  “Good to know,” Amber smiled. Then her expression turned serious. “Do you believe all the talk about the location being cursed? I mean, it does have a history of failures, but a lot of people give me this look — a pitying look — when I tell them where we’re planning to open a pub.”

  I nodded. I knew the look well.

  “What do you think about folks saying it’s cursed?”

  I shrugged. “I’m not sure if I believe in locations being cursed. Maybe there’s something unhappy that happened in a certain spot and it leaves an imprint of some sort, but I don’t think a place can be all bad. I’ve always thought of it like cleaning house. A good scrub and you’re good to go.”

  “But what about all those businesses that failed there before?”

  “I don’t think all of them were the best choices, or there were other circumstances.”

  “For example?”

  I thought back. “Well, when it was a gay bar for a hot minute, a pastor got caught frequenting the place.”

  “Really? What happened there? Did the cops come in or something?”

  I shook my head. “No, the guy’s wife followed him, and found him, with, er, his mouth full, let’s say? She ran out screaming, caused a scene, ended up throwing a big rock through the window and it happened to be on a Friday night so the town was pretty packed. Soon they drew a crowd and when some other folks were caught fleeing the pr
emises — folks who didn’t want anyone to know their whereabouts that night — it all kind of imploded.”

  “Why’d they go if they were afraid of being caught?”

  “There was a back entrance that a lot of regulars used to disguise where they were headed. After the wife caught her husband and made that scene, however, a couple church groups started protesting around the site. Like, literally all around the site, to watch all entrances and activity going around the building. Patrons didn’t want to be outed on their way in, so business died off fast and it closed down.”

  “Yeah, that doesn’t quite sound cursed,” Amber agreed. “What about the other businesses?”

  “Some I don’t think were right for the spot. An ice cream parlor, a whole place dedicated to ice cream all year round, I don’t think was a great fit for us, not when we get several feet of snow each winter.”

  “True. That makes sense. Though I have gotten the weird craving for ice cream in January now and then. Coldest day of the year and I want a frozen treat. Makes no sense.”

  “Me, too,” I smiled. “Or wanting soup on a hot day. Then there was a pizza parlor, which seems like it would have been a given, considering how much people love pizza, but the pies burned a lot or the dough was gooey.”

  “That could be a curse,” Amber cut in.

  “It could be, but the owner had never opened a restaurant before, so it could have been that they weren’t prepared. I would not simply write it off as a curse,” I said.

  “What about the Irish bar? That seems like it should do well. Murphy’s does, after all.”

  “You’d think so, but I still think that was just bad management. The owners made ridiculously strong drinks, and they never cut anyone off, even when they should have. There were fights and the cops were always called. Also, they got caught serving to minors a few times. I don’t think that’s a curse,” I said. “I think that’s stupidity.”

  “I suppose so,” Amber sighed. “It’s just that I hear things, that there were other problems, some of the same ones we’re experiencing. Cold drafts, weird hazy images in mirrors, lights flickering. That doesn’t sound like bad luck or bad management to me.”