Forever Finley

by Holly Schindler

  His current lecture on the chemical content of loamy soil, a study in sustainability for community gardens in Missouri, wound to a close. Mark shut his laptop and pulled himself from his kitchen table. He dipped his ladle into a long-simmering pot of homemade vegetable soup. And as he dug into his dinner, his mind drifted back toward Jo.

  Faces in Finley really were landmarks—every bit as much as the statue of Amos Hargrove, town founder, that stood at the edge of the Finley River. Mark had always known which face he’d encounter when he turned a corner in town. And Jo’s had always been a face associated with the turn that took him to her stretch of the square, to Jo March Books, a store that her own mother had opened and named after her.

  Jo’s mother had apparently made a habit of naming everything in her life after something or someone she loved. Jo herself had been named after her mother’s favorite character in all of literature. And Jo March Murdock had even early on been a mirror-image of her Little Women namesake: she’d been something of a tomboy growing up, headstrong, a lover of stories, determined to live her own life on her own terms.

  At least, that was how Mark had always thought of her. But not with an unusual amount of admiration. Tough and headstrong was just what Jo was, the same way a mountain was tall, simply by definition. A person didn’t admire a mountain for being tall—that’s what it was supposed to be. And that was exactly how Mark had always viewed Jo.

  She’d married. The marriage had ended two years ago. And Jo had stayed right there in her shop. She had herself behaved like some hardy plant that should have gone black with a hard frost but hadn’t. She didn’t crumble beneath the end of her marriage, and she didn’t simply just reach out and grab the first available man whose smile offered the tiniest spot of sunshine. She had continued on, strong as ever.

  No—stronger, even. She’d given her store a push. Maybe the kind of push she’d never been able to when married to a Willoughs (a life that required dinner parties and mingling, a word that could bring hives to Mark quicker than a patch of poison oak). Hers had become a destination store—a place where authors still rushed to hold signings (even in the age of e-everything), a store where her own book recommendation meant something. Placing a book on the home page of her website could literally put a novel on the literary map.

  Jo was quite layered, Mark had begun to realize over the past couple of years. Not just tough. She was also as soft as cashmere, the way she curled around her much-loved books. She had the stamina of a marathon runner. And she was smart—Mark liked that maybe most of all. Management of any business took intelligence, of course, but the books stacked on her front counter—the ones she read during lulls between bursts of traffic—ranged from literary fiction to cozy mysteries to philosophy to scientific non-fiction.

  As he’d watched it all, Mark’s admiration had finally begun to sprout. Jo March was awe-inspiring—every bit as much as a landscape marked by majestic-looking mountains. Why had he never seen it before? And as his respect for her took root and spread, so did another feeling—a warmth. Maybe not love exactly, but it could have been the beginning of it. The appearance of the tiniest green shoots of affection shocked him. Especially since he’d known Jo for so long. They’d grown up together; she was merely a landmark he passed every day.

  Only, she wasn’t. Not anymore. Not by a long shot.

  He knew what she thought of him, though: a clumsy, bumbling ne’er do well. How could he miss her raised eyebrows and the shakes of her head? Still, though, he wanted her to see him in a different way. The same way he was beginning to see her differently, too. After a long seesaw period marked by somewhat uncharacteristic self-doubt, he’d purchased the book online. Meticulously wrapped it. Mr. Darcy, he remembered, had gotten something of a bad rap, too. Elizabeth Bennet had initially pegged him all wrong in the novel. And March—that was how he’d begun to think of her, when he caught sight of her through the front window of her shop, a phone in one hand, the other busily shelving a new display. Not Jo, but March, because it reminded him more of the character she was named after. So tough, so hardy.

  He’d enlisted her new friend Norma to help soften her toward him, but he was well aware that it might take far more than a few neighborly words to do the trick. It would also take more than just a book. Especially since she didn’t know it was from him. He had to be careful about this. He had to be strategic. Mostly, he knew that if he wanted Jo to develop feelings for him, he was going to have to plant a few seeds, then give the feelings plenty of time to grow. You couldn’t force open a bud, after all. That left you with nothing. Waiting for it to bloom all on its own, though—that left you with something absolutely beautiful.

  After pouring the remainders of his soup into a plastic Tupperware dish and sliding it into his fridge, Mark hurried through his tree house straight to the small window seat in the back of his home. This was, in part, why he’d chosen a tree house—especially a tree house here, along the river. It allowed him the privilege of seeing a large stretch of the mysterious river. The same river that defied logic, grew plants it shouldn’t have.

  “Magical,” he muttered. And shook his head at himself. “Magic” was a trashcan term. It was just a word that got tossed out when the earthly reasons behind amazing occurrences weren’t visible quite yet.

  He should know. He performed a little bit of “magic” every single day.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Jo poured herself and Norma two glasses of wine and put her copy of Pride and Prejudice near her dinner plate. They had made it a habit to dine together most nights, though Jo assumed she looked forward to their meals more than Norma. She loved Norma’s anecdotes. She seemed to get the quirkiest of Finley characters over in her antique store. Sometimes, they weren’t even Finley residents. They’d just been told about the shop, and about Norma, and how she would offer them a fair price for their great aunt’s estate. Her stories made laughter bounce through Jo’s kitchen—the same kitchen she had been a girl in, the kitchen she had returned to more than two years ago, as she’d begun divorce proceedings.

  “He said to tell you it was from Amos. When you hounded me about who left the book. And he was sure you were going to hound me. Does that mean anything to you?” Norma asked.

  Jo snorted a laugh. “Haven’t any of your customers told you about Amos yet?”

  When Norma shook her head, Jo explained, simply, “He founded the town of Finley. And his name has always floated through the air—it’s the word everyone uses to explain the inexplicable. You know.”

  “I know?”

  “Oh, any weird coincidence. People say he’s behind it. They use his name around here instead of ‘luck’ or ‘providential.’ Get this—some even claim he calls people to the town. Like he knows who’d be right for this place. He’s the excuse people give when they get homesick.” When Jo glanced up, Norma’s eyes were wide. Shocked. “Don’t tell me—”

  “My car, though,” Norma said. “How it broke down. And suddenly, I was here. And I’d never been to Finley before. Maybe I did feel a little like I was being drawn this way. Was I? And what about the traffic I’ve been getting? To hear the old owner tell it, business had really been going down. But once I moved in, I’ve had a steady stream of customers. What if—”

  “Don’t be silly. It’s just the power of suggestion,” Jo insisted as she finally settled into her own seat.

  After a pause, Norma pointed at the book. “What makes you think it’s your ex?”

  “Because I—it’s one of my favorites.”

  “It’s one of every woman’s favorites, isn’t it?” Norma pressed.

  “I was reading it a lot. Toward the end of our marriage.”

  Jo ran her finger across the brown leather cover—this edition was one of those lovely celebration-of-the-classics with gilded letters across the front and detailed pen and ink illustrations between each chapter. Jo remembered that in the months leading up to their separation, she’d decided Richard had himself been a book with a
beautiful, expensive cover and not a single decent passage on the inside.

  In the beginning, though, she had so looked forward to what she’d felt sure would be both an adventure-driven and emotionally fulfilling story with him. Why wouldn’t she? Richard had wooed her with lovely adjectives whispered passionately into her ear. His words had sped her heart and raised goose bumps all over her body and tightened her scalp and made her tingle, all at the same time. Well—the words and his handsome face and his pedigree (the Willoughses had owned and operated the Finley bank for several generations) and the way Jo got jealous stares when he pulled her chair back in restaurants or took her hand as they walked the town square. He was there for her when her mother died and he whispered another string of words—this time, not the words of a lover, but of a family, of permanence, and suddenly, they were married and she was moving out of the apartment above the bookstore and into his house. The apartment became an in-case-of-emergencies location where Jo could spend the night when the weather turned bad or she worked late on inventory and her eyelids turned so heavy that she knew a drive home would be dangerous.

  The more pages she’d turned in Richard’s story, though, the more disenchanted she’d become. The reality was that Richard was a man who, because of his family’s connections, their prominence, had never had to become proficient at anything. He was a man at a fancy desk with a nice smile. A man who could not so much as stop a leak in the kitchen sink. Each time he touched the faucet, it only dripped louder…until this thought came to Jo: Richard was a drip.

  Once the thought took root in her brain, it was there to stay. She couldn’t dig it up. She couldn’t kill it. It only grew as time went on and Richard left the management of the house to her. It grew each time she filed their income taxes or retrieved the car from the mechanic or dealt with the roofers herself.

  She began to read Pride and Prejudice, mostly to avoid conversations with him. And when Richard asked her how she could possibly stand to hit the last page and immediately return to line one, all over again, she had responded by saying, “Elizabeth had Mr. Darcy all wrong.” Perhaps it was the disgusted growl that came out along with her words—but the slump in his shoulders had made Jo believe he’d known exactly what she’d meant by that.

  Jo had found it not long after: a bracelet that did not belong to her. Under the bed in the master bedroom. A few days later, a wineglass in the still-dripping kitchen sink bearing lipstick markings in a shade of red Jo never wore. And she knew. Someone else had decided she liked the look of Richard’s outer cover, too.

  She’d moved back into her apartment above the bookstore—and there she’d remained for the past two years. A few weeks ago, she’d heard that Richard (who had himself fled from Finley immediately after their divorce, like a dog suddenly delighted to find the gate open) had inexplicably returned to Finley. A customer had told Jo while she’d rung up her purchase. Told her quietly, leaning over the counter and patting her hand, like maybe she thought she needed to prepare Jo, soften the blow. Jo had simply shrugged—and it hadn’t been a lie. She’d meant it, that shrug.

  Now, though…with the gift of this book, it was almost like he was saying that the way she’d thought of him—Richard the Drip—wasn’t right. Like he was asking her to look again. Like he really was romantic leading man material. Richard wasn’t himself a literary man. He’d never loved her store as she had. But the March…maybe he was trying to tell her he remembered. That he knew that once, it had been part of the name people had called her: Jomarch. Was that it? He was telling her he’d paid attention? If it was, how did it make her feel?

  “I guess I’ve been spoiled a bit by books. Part of me still imagines a hero,” Jo murmured. “Old-school. Cape and boots with buckles.”

  “That’s not a hero, that’s Captain Morgan,” Norma warned her, pointing at the rum bottle on Jo’s counter.

  Jo laughed. She reached across the table and squeezed her friend’s hand. Norma was right; grandiose ideas were childish—every bit as childish as the teenage girls who came to her store looking for romance novels with hot book boyfriends. As childish as tree houses and kites and ice cream cones.

  Yes, Jo was past all that. Jo had grown up long ago. Best to leave the ideas of heroes and magic to storybook-land. To Finley’s silly tales of Amos Hargrove.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Mark knew better than anyone in the town of Finley that the spirit of Amos Hargrove didn’t really exist. And he knew because he was himself responsible for good deeds attributed to Amos. He was the one taking care of Finley residents. Performing little miracles every single day. The silly tale of Amos allowed him to do his work in secret.

  It had been going on for years, actually: Mark listening in on conversations in the diner (or at any one of the hundreds of part-time jobs he’d taken, all to further his “Amos” endeavors). Jotting notes regarding what he’d overheard in one of the little spiral notebooks he kept in his shirt pockets. The beautiful part was that it never took much—something utterly simple could completely change a person’s outlook. In the past few months, under the cloak of night, he’d strung Christmas lights on the porch of a woman who had just lost her husband. He’d arranged for a Thanksgiving turkey to be delivered after a horribly-timed holiday firing. He’d written “Happy Birthday” across the windshield of a Honda belonging to a teenage girl who had bemoaned over her weekend Cuppa treat that no one would remember her day—not now that her best friend had moved away.

  That wasn’t all he’d done—not even close. He’d tracked down the owner of a class ring he’d found buried in a soil sample he’d taken from the Finley park and mailed it to him (providing no return address on the box). He’d left decorations on the oldest graves in the National Cemetery, lifting the load for the arthritic caretaker. He’d used his part-time landscaping job at the elementary school to gain entry to the faculty lounge, where he’d hung an ad for the apartment building across the street from the same National Cemetery because he’d recently overheard a kindergarten teacher—Damien—tell his friend over a Cuppa latte that he was having trouble finding an apartment that suited him, felt comfortable.

  Mark’s favorite, though, of all his behind-the-scenes efforts, were the bulbs he’d planted around the same elementary school (and beneath the cloak of night) three years ago—all to surprise the students and faculty with a sea of spring daffodils. They’d bloom again soon, he knew.

  Through it all, residents just kept tossing out Amos’s name. If it was too good, too sweet, too unexpected, or if it led to something wonderful, Amos Hargrove was most certainly behind it.

  Mark didn’t mind not getting credit. A secret was always deliciously fun. This way, he was never hounded for help; he got to choose whose life he would touch and how. Sure, there were always other too-good things that people attached Amos’s name to—things that Mark wasn’t responsible for. That only made Mark hope there were other people in town just like him. People who were listening, jotting down notes about their fellow residents. Observing. And acting on it—helping out anyone who might need it. To him, the idea that there were living people on the earth willing to do something for others was far more extraordinary than the idea of the spirit of Amos Hargrove still hovering over the town.

  He pretended to be headed for his morning latte from Cuppa, walking slowly to be sure he was in the right spot when Jo’s store was scheduled to open. And when she flipped her sign, she saw it, as he knew she would: a pot of jonquils on her front stoop. Jonquils because the first two letters were the same as her own name and because, in the language of flowers, they represented the desire for affection to be returned.

  The door flew open; she squatted and reached for the tag: “Dearest March…”

  She smiled. And laughed. It was a nice laugh—a feminine laugh. But Mark thought her laughter also sounded that morning a bit like an overwound music box—the kind that could play an absolutely beautiful song if it just relaxed a bit.

  Later that afternoon, he r
eturned with the kite he’d made the night before. It looked like a bluebird, with outstretched wings and a yellow beak and a long feathered tail. He set it to flight on the green patch of grass in the middle of the square, in perfect view of Jo’s store. A bluebird of happiness sure to bring unfettered melodic laughter to the one he had made it for. Because surely she would come out, to marvel at the kite he’d created with the help of the very book she’d sold him.

  Only, Jo wasn’t coming.

  Mark frowned, wound his kite back in, and headed for her store.

  He found Jo talking to a man who leaned against the counter in a funny way—one hand on his hip, the other beneath his chin. Like a man posing in a catalog. Mark had to swallow a laugh when he saw it.

  Until he recognized him. Richard Willoughs. Her ex.

  Neither one of them looked up. They were lost in each other. “You look really good, Jo,” Richard was saying, and Jo was staring at Mark’s flower. Mark’s flower. And he knew: she thought it had come from Richard.

  Mark became uncharacteristically angry. He had meant to make Jo’s head swivel his way, and all he’d managed to do was turn himself into a bee that was cross-pollinating Jo’s flower with Richard’s.

  Mark left, stomping out of the bookstore. He fumed a moment on the sidewalk. Amos, he thought. What would the legend of Amos Hargrove do?

  He would give Jo what she cherished most: words. Poetry.

  He lunged for the antique store entrance. “Typewriter,” he barked at Norma. “I need a typewriter.”

  ∞ ∞ ∞