Forever Finley

by Holly Schindler

But how could the faces be so similar? How could she have known what to paint? Where did the idea come from?

  She tried to look into her skeptical little heart, rifle around like she occasionally sifted through junk drawers. What was in there? Even the tiniest broken shard of that old childhood belief that the legend of Amos was actually real? She wasn’t sure anymore. And while she was at it, how did Justin know about this old picture? Where was it hanging? Even the wallpaper seemed unfamiliar to Annie.

  What she did have was a project to share with Justin. Something they could officially start working on together—something far more involved than silly sketches and what-ifs and stray brainstorming paragraphs. The kind of project that had made her race for Missouri as soon as her MFA program wrapped, filled with purpose and excitement. They’d nearly blurted the idea simultaneously when Annie had called his cell, the e-mail containing Finley’s picture still open on her computer screen: an illustrated piece of non-fiction. Yes, a unique blend of art and story that would also document the folklore surrounding Amos and Finley.

  Oh, sure, it was going to be so easy: She and Justin were simply going to gather up all the stories that the people of Finley would be clamoring to tell them. That’s what Annie had thought as she’d driven home. She’d nearly grown breathless remembering all the snatches of tales she’d heard over the years: Amos bringing couples together, Amos calling people to Finley because he knew who would make the perfect additions to his lovely town. As she’d approached her off-ramp, she’d let go of the steering wheel—just for a moment—to test what would happen. Part of her had been disappointed when the car refused to drift toward the ramp all on its own, when it behaved instead in a way that said it would have sped right past the turn to Finley. Next stop—another town, another state.

  Finley wasn’t calling her back—not like the town had called other residents. This had disappointed her. But it had not discouraged her.

  Annie had hugged Justin a warm hello and they had started immediately, off to interview one of the newest residents—Norma, the owner of Norma’s Relics. Annie was certain that Norma would toss her auburn hair from her eyes, lean over the front counter of her antique store, and describe how she had been drawn to town. How her car had broken down in front of an antique store that was for sale—and perfect for a widow looking for new direction in her retirement. Instead, Norma had shrugged, said, “The car just ran out of gas. I don’t know anything about Amos and Finley.”

  “But—but you said—the last time I was home. I heard you—at the Corner Diner,” Annie’d protested. “Like it was all planned; it was so perfect. You did! You said that.”

  Norma had only clicked her pen, suddenly needing to finish inventory.

  They’d tried the Steeles, a pair of recently-retired former teachers. Of course they would love to be in their prized students’ work in progress, Annie had assured herself. But all the Steeles wanted to talk about was their impending trip to New York City, and could Annie tell them which street food vendors were the best? And were tickets to Hamilton really that hard to get?

  The front counter at the Cuppa coffee palace had cleared around them when they’d entered; farmers at the Corner Diner could suddenly talk about nothing other than irrigation practices. “Sure has been dry lately,” they’d say, scurrying away.

  “You’re not joking,” Annie would always respond, flashing the blank pages of her sketchbook.

  They even tried Mark, arguably the town’s biggest eccentric. They’d knocked on the door of the tree house he’d been living in on the outer edge of Founders Park. But he hadn’t answered. They’d found him instead at the nearby riverbank, snapping away with a GoPro. All he’d wanted to talk about were the plants: “Mother-in-law’s tongue,” he’d announced proudly, pointing at the sharp tips on large green leaves. “Native to tropical Africa!”

  Nothing about Amos, though. Apparently, small town people did not exactly take kindly to having their dust disturbed. They liked the way it had fallen, the pattern it had taken. It was their dust, not to be written in by anyone else, their fingertips etching out defiant lines.

  Annie had disturbed the dust in Finley. Or she was trying to, anyway. And everyone in town was going to punish her for it. Make her regret it. Her own family was no particular help.

  “Of course they’re all protective of it,” Emily, Annie’s younger sister, had insisted through a laugh. “This is our story. Finley and Amos belong to us. Nobody around here wants to share them. Or—the flip side—nobody wants to be the simpleminded small-town nutcase who believes in silly superstitions. Which is what a lot of people will think when they read those stories.”

  “Not if Justin and I do it right,” Annie’d protested. “It’s all about presentation.”

  Emily had only snorted a new laugh. “Sorry—it’s just so great to see you, the ever-perfect one, struggle with something. You with your gold stars and honors tassels galore. And here I am stuck taking College Algebra over again next fall.”

  Annie’d frowned. It wasn’t funny. She’d felt certain there had to be a way to get someone to open up. If just one of them did, the rest would follow. Her mind constantly replayed the way that just last January, everyone had flocked to see her, the Finley-raised little girl who was carving out a path of distinction in New York. She could still remember the pop of billfolds snapping open as they’d rushed to purchase artwork from her hometown exhibit. They’d hugged her tightly, their arms still carrying the warmth and good cheer of the just-passed holiday season.

  What if they were right? What if dust was better left alone? She hated to give up on any creative idea—she was usually ferocious when inspiration struck, hitting right back, wrestling it to the ground until it gave in, became a manageable project. But she’d never taken on anything like this—a project that had depended on rooting around in other peoples’ personal lives. It gave her the temporary urge to go back, apologetically smooth out the dust she’d already disturbed. Put it all back where it had started out.

  There. She finally recognized it—the feeling in her chest: Guilt.

  “How far out does Mary actually live?” Annie asked, squinting through the windshield. “I don’t think I’ve ever been out this way—have I?”

  “Nope—at least, not with me,” Justin said. “This is Damien’s relative, not mine. Would’ve seemed kind of—I don’t know—like I was barging in, somehow, bringing a friend of mine up to Damien’s family’s place. You know?”

  Annie checked her watch. They’d been on the dirt road now for what felt like an hour, but when she checked her watch, she was shocked to find it hadn’t even been ten minutes.

  “Oh, she’s just on the opposite side of Founders Park,” Justin said. “Besides, what’s the rush? You’ve got all the time in the world now, grad.”

  She stuck a finger through one of her French braids to scratch at her scalp. This wasn’t the style she’d chosen for her hair in New York. And she really shouldn’t have liked it anymore. She shouldn’t have been grateful that she’d been growing her hair out the past few months, glad that the strands had just gotten long enough for two side-by-side French braids. She should have thought she looked odd—nearly twenty-five years old, in a little girl’s hairdo. But the braids suited her, she thought. They fit.

  What about the rest of it? Did the town of Finley still fit?

  Annie let her fingers trace the bumps in both her braids. Her life felt like two parallel paths, New York and Finley running side-by-side. You can paint anywhere, Justin was always insisting. But that wasn’t entirely true. The capital of the creative world was New York. The same opportunities would not find her easily in Missouri. It would take far more work to land prominent exhibits, be the subject of interviews in art magazines.

  But her roots were here, buried under Finley’s soil. That counted for something, too.

  Justin smiled at her as he pointed through the windshield. In the distance, Annie could see the tiniest spec of an old white farmhouse.
>
  She sighed with relief. And coughed against the dust filling her lungs.

  Justin had done a bit of reverting, too. Just as Annie had returned to the favorite hairstyle of her younger years, Justin had recently shaved off his goatee for the summer. He was wearing a faded University of Missouri T-shirt and khaki cargo shorts that were little more than a wrinkled wad. Without any heavy gel to hold his hair down, the tips were all curling wildly. He no longer had the same serious, intimidating air about him that had set Annie slightly off-ease when he’d shown up for her exhibit in Chelsea. He looked younger, relaxed—but not necessarily exactly like he had in high school.

  Actually, he reminded her of the way her own dad had looked when she was little. Annie remembered being twelve, maybe thirteen, sitting in the back of her dad’s truck while they’d taken the back road to her cousin’s house. It was the only time he’d let her ride in the bed like that: on a back road. The school year had wrapped, and all her work was done, and the summer was new. She remembered how wide-open to adventure the scenery had looked. The whole world had seemed that way—both wide-open and conquerable. Why wouldn’t it? She was young and she had dreams and the word “talented” seemed to bubble up around her everywhere she went.

  Looking at Justin, she began to feel just like she had in the back of that truck. For an instant, she felt sure that what they were doing was good for them—and for their childhood hometown. But when he hit the brakes, making a giant cloud of dust billow over the front of the car, that feeling sprouted wings and flew away.

  She was sure of nothing. Maybe certainty was only for children.

  Justin gathered a messenger bag and popped his door. He marched toward the front porch, his calves flexing beneath the weight of his determination.

  Annie followed, pulling out her own canvas bag, which she’d filled with a digital camera and sketchbooks. And paused, there in the open passenger door of the Impala.

  They hadn’t had a decent rain in more than a month in Finley. The ground was marked by grassless patches that were beginning to crack. Leaves hung limply from branches. The sky wasn’t quite as blue as it usually was in June. And as Justin waited on the front step, he thought that Annie was herself looking pale and dry, too. Like her unusual frown might just crack her face. But the thought passed by like a quickly moving cloud when she shaded her eyes with her hand, relaxing away her squint and any remainders of a sour expression.

  Justin had loved writing to Annie over the past few months. He was more himself on the page than he ever was in person. Even now, at the quarter-century mark, he often felt little more than ten years old on the inside. Bumbling and afraid that somehow the rest of the world had it all figured out and he didn’t. On the page—or even just a computer screen—he had confidence.

  Today was a bit different, though. Even in person, he felt he could stand tall and smile with assurance. Because he knew the woman they had come to see—his best friend Damien December’s own Grandaunt Mary. He could straighten his back as he stood on that step and call out calmly, “Hey, it’ll be fine. I promise. Come on.”

  “There’s something—about this place,” Annie said suddenly, softly.

  Justin nodded in agreement. Everyone said something similar about Mary’s place. And everyone, it seemed, was tickled by a slightly different crop of memories or emotions. He wondered what the area had conjured up for Annie. As for Justin, he often felt his own young self was still out here, racing through the fields, chasing Damien. Not that he was old—not in terms of years. Had he used the phrase “quarter-century” in front of Aunt Mary, she would have tossed her head back and laughed in the way she always had, her body shaking, tears rolling down her cheeks.

  Justin had a theory about aging: It was never the number of years a person had endured that made them feel old; rather, it was a matter of how many decisions a person had made. Once a person had decided on the biggest parts of adult life—a career, a spouse—old age began to settle in. Because it made a person able to predict what the rest of their days would look like.

  Mary was the exception to his theory. Her own decisions—as well as most of her days—were far behind her. So far, in fact, that their outcomes were even now past-tenses: her husband long gone, her sprawling hundred acres of wheat and corn now little more than a small garden tended to by Damien’s parents. Still, she did not seem to him like a woman who was herself at the full-century mark. Only the loss of most of her eyesight had slowed her slightly in the last few years. She still carried her famous apple pies to church socials and attended school productions to clap for the grandchildren of her neighbors.

  Now here he was, bringing her another decision: whether or not to give him and Annie some of her own personal stories. He had a feeling she would. That she would see it as the kind of decision that would allow her to live on, past the date they would etch into the side of her husband’s gravestone. Stories were just that way.

  He motioned for Annie to hurry. She was going to like Aunt Mary. Justin knocked on the front screen to announce his arrival, then opened it himself, letting Annie in.

  The house was as it had always been—or, rather, it was how Justin had always known it. Built before the Civil War, a single bathroom had been added on decades later, the kitchen renovated four times. Electric lines had arrived long after the original construction, allowing for the removal of kerosene lamps and the dangers of candles. Wires had been strung through the house, making the electricity here seem to Justin like Christmas lights added to the branches of a blue spruce after it had been cut and hauled indoors.

  Annie gasped when she saw the framed tintype just inside the front door, hanging on the ’40s-era floral wallpaper.

  “That’s—” She pointed at the image.

  “Yep. That’s Finley,” Justin agreed.

  Annie stared deeper into the black and white image. She’d painted the woman’s hair blond. Chosen a pale blue for her eyes. She’d painted a similar dress shape—the hoop skirt, the high neck, the layers of sleeves. She’d even added the tiniest accidental glimpse of a petticoat. Annie had also labored to paint an intricate ivory lace—a kind of simple shawl—draped across Finley’s shoulders and tied about her throat. The shawl was missing here.

  She’d seen the tintype before, of course. On her computer. But now, standing here…it was almost like standing in front of the actual Finley. Annie got the strange sensation that Finley was still alive somehow, in this very house.

  Justin nudged Annie toward a woman in a modern easy chair. Mary was a tiny thing, slender, with skin like tracing paper. Everything about her had a white hue—her hair, her complexion, her milky eyes. At first sight, she looked to Annie like a bleach spot on the olive green upholstery. She rocked slightly as she knitted by feel.

  A seven-year-old girl eating cookies from a spot at Mary’s feet stood, threw herself at Justin. Giggled as he hugged her.

  “This is Hannah. Damien’s niece,” he told Annie. “And Mary is Damien’s grandaunt.”

  “He’s related to Finley!” Annie announced, the sudden surprise making Mary chuckle and lower her knitting into her lap.

  “Sorry,” Annie said, her cheeks turning the color of the roses in the wallpaper. “I just realized.”

  “Let’s go somewhere,” Hannah whispered to Justin.

  “You’re here to visit Mary,” he whispered back.

  “I hate it when Mom drops me off on her way to the doctor. There’s nothing to do here,” Hannah moaned quietly, gesturing with her empty hands.

  “There’s lots,” Justin insisted. “You’ve just got to keep looking.”

  “Let’s go to the tree house,” she whispered. “The man who lives there is nice. I play up there on his deck when my dad’s trimming trees in the park. If it weren’t for my dad, he’d have limbs poking through every single one of his windows.” She puffed her chest out proudly. “Besides, the man in the tree house has all kinds of neat things—like kites! And he never minds when I get muddy footprint
s on his deck.”

  Justin only steered her by her shoulders to a spot nearby, where she plunked herself down on the floor and sighed with exasperation.

  “Finally, we meet,” Mary told Annie.

  “I’m—”

  “Annie Ames, yes, I know.”

  “How—” Annie started, turning toward Justin.

  He pretended to be absorbed in entertaining Hannah. He knew well that Mary had spent many hours feeding him and Damien—and overhearing their incessant conversations. Annie’s name had always been on his lips. Even when he got old enough to start dating—it was Annie he talked about. What Annie wore, what Annie drew. He and Annie and weekends at Cuppa, exchanging sketches and plot twists for ongoing stories. She was a decision his heart had made years ago, one that he had never acted on. He would not dare. She was his friend. He’d long insisted as much to Damien and Mary both. But neither of them had ever looked at him in a way that said they believed it.

  What about now? Here he and Annie were, having drifted back toward each other, even after the mean-spirited review he’d written of her Chelsea show, his words wounded and jealous and (now that he looked back on it) full of longing. Aiming to hurt her, like the little boy on the playground chasing after the girl he liked and pulling her ponytail until she cried.

  Mary had been at Annie’s hometown exhibit last winter; she’d come with Hannah and her parents. Even from her place at the fringes of the crowd, Justin was certain she had picked up on the nervousness he’d felt being near Annie. And Mary had also surely felt anxious sweat on the side of his face when she’d leaned in to kiss his temple.

  Just yesterday, Justin had called to tell Mary the two of them would be dropping by, and she had yelped a little with delight. She was convinced that something was still bound to happen between the two of them. And she was quick to say as much.

  But Annie would just go back—wouldn’t she? Return to New York? Justin was fine with being a midlist author, releasing a new novel—quietly—once a year or so. Being the newspaperman in Finley the rest of his days. It suited him. New York sneered at him. He had no interest in spending the rest of his life trying to prove to those skyscrapers that he belonged. Why start a relationship that wouldn’t go anywhere? No—why destroy a friendship in order to start a romance that was doomed to end, killed by long distance when she went back to her art shows, her Chelsea, her critics and spotlights?