Forever Finley

by Holly Schindler

  “I think I finally get it,” Mark whispered. Now that he was listening, he was certain that the moon seeds were speaking to him—it was true. They were showing him the way. And not just to Jo’s side. They weren’t just showing him Jo was the one for him. They were telling him how to be with Jo. Or course they were. He hadn’t been looking at it right. He’d been too busy looking at everyone else, at their engagements and their same addresses and last names, when all he needed to really see was Jo. “We don’t have to grow the normal way.” As he stared, his eyes held fast to the long spaces between the blooms. “You don’t have to be here, in this tree house. We can grow together and remain separate at the same time. Enjoying and loving each other—yet apart. Together, but still on our own. That’s what you always wanted, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Jo whispered. “It doesn’t mean I don’t feel something less. I want you, and I want my own life. It doesn’t have to be either-or, does it?”

  And at that moment, Mark knew it didn’t. It wasn’t less at all—it was theirs, which meant it was every bit as unique as the vines spilling from the pot in his hands, growing two separate blooms that shouldn’t have been together, sharing space on the same vine.

  “Is that woman—is that—?” Jo whispered.

  “Finley needed Miriam’s overalls because her dress wasn’t right,” Mark said. “And the way she talked, it was like she hasn’t always been here in Finley. Not until recently. That legend. All those stories. Those silly stories about Amos and his Civil War sweetheart, and being reunited. Maybe all that’s in the midst of coming true.”

  Jo wrapped her fingers around Mark’s. “Maybe she’ll find him tonight.”

  The moon seeds, the Heart Moon—it all defied logic. But hadn’t the two of them defied it, too? Mark of the mismatched socks and polished, womanly Jo?

  “Maybe we’ll be witness to the miracle of a forever love,” Mark whispered. He had felt a twinge of something like this last spring. But even then, when Jo had reached for him, and he’d thought, “magical,” what he’d really meant was wonderful and glorious and utterly surprising. Now, though, he knew—he’d seen it with his own eyes. Fairy tales were real. So was the seemingly impossible. So was—well—magic.

  Jo turned her wet eyes toward Mark. “Maybe we’ve already…” she tried, her voice hiccuping with emotion. “Maybe we…We have.”

  Mark touched her cheek. Anything could happen under the red glow of an August Heart Moon.

  Song for September

  For some, dreams often linger like a haunting melody.

  Michael is a failed musician at heart and a coffee shop barista by day. Once the most promising songwriter in the area, he now plays backup at another musician’s weekly gig, avoiding any chance of further defeat. Will the century-old legend of his hometown provide the magic he needs to finally succeed? Will Michael have the power to assist in the long-awaited reunion of Finley’s first sweethearts?

  Michael watched from the fringes. It was where he belonged.

  Which sounded awfully pouty. Like something a moody teenager would say. But Michael couldn’t help it—it was how he felt. Especially now that a giant clump of Finley residents had gathered at the same place, all at once. Oh, sure, he saw them all on a near-daily basis. Every single one of them came to Cuppa, the coffee shop his mother owned, the same coffee shop where he served as the star barista. That was how everyone thought of him, actually: the best barista in town, the only one with the patience and a hand steady enough to master drawing intricate latte art with perfectly steamed milk—snowflakes in the winter and four-leaf clovers on St. Pat’s Day and even something that resembled an open book, pages flipping about, come the start of a new school year. But for the most part, the Finley-ites came to the shop on a slow drip, if he were to use a coffee metaphor. He could take dealing with them and their perfect lives one at a time, two at a time.

  Michael hadn’t anticipated so many showing up on the ancient Powell farmland. It was his rehearsal, after all. His and Gary’s. Rehearsal for the fundraising concert. But word had spread about their plan to do a soundcheck (in Finley, words were as easy to spread as margarine on hot toast), and suddenly, everyone involved in Natalie and Damien’s wedding gift had taken it upon themselves to come, too. So now, it wasn’t really just his rehearsal. It was a giant brainstorming session. An attempt to get everyone on the same page.

  Having everyone here all at once overwhelmed him. Especially since this chatter wasn’t small talk, not like it was at Cuppa, Oh, such a lovely sunset last night and How is your mother, Michael, I heard she had a touch of the flu and Do you have any of those lemon bars left? No, here, now, everyone was showing off their own particular talent. And it was driving him crazy. Because once upon a time, his steady hand had been good for far more than drawing latte art. Once, he was the best guitar player around. Destined for greatness, that’s how they’d all talked about him when he was sixteen and he used to busk on the town square, just him and an open guitar case and everyone would stop and toss him their allowance or the money they were going to use to take their girlfriend to the movies that weekend. They did that—they used to all gather and toss him money, knowing he was saving it all for a trip to Nashville. Now, though…

  “…foundation support,” he heard coming from the back of Mary’s house. Cody, Michael’s boyhood friend, the one who’d taught him to shoot a slingshot and then given him a black eye when Michael’d used it to knock a bird’s nest from the branch of an oak tree, squatted to point out a few boards to the side of the back step. “See here, how this is starting to crumble, too?” Now that he was grown, Cody reminded Michael of the Brawny paper towel guy. Short brown hair, various plaid shirts always rolled to the elbow.

  It would make sense that the house was starting to give in a few places. It was, after all, the oldest house in the entire small town of Finley, owned by the oldest resident. No, Michael reminded himself, the house is actually older than Finley. Built before the Civil War, during a time when the area was just wild swaying grasses as far as the eye could see. Well—grasses and a river snaking lazily through the rocky Missouri earth.

  The Steeles squatted beside Cody, their faces wrinkling into the same worried expressions they’d sometimes worn when they were Michael’s high school teachers—when they’d wanted to make sure Michael was absorbing the full impact of their lessons. Just because it’s not music doesn’t mean you shouldn’t learn this, too, Patricia Steele used to scold him. Not that he’d thought of her as Patricia then. It was “Mrs.” in those days, and her worried looks had always translated into How am I ever going to get through to him? At this point, it translated into How will we ever fix that? Still relatively recently retired, the Steeles had renewed their togetherness (and own personal sense of purpose) with a new life calling. Flipping houses. Cody had become their go-to man for the big jobs, the old student now the teacher.

  And the Powell farmhouse, it seemed, was quickly becoming a far bigger project than the Steeles had imaged they would ever take on.

  “Roof…” Michael heard Cody tell them. “Oh! And I meant to tell you. My plumber…”

  Yes, there were serious jobs that needed tackling. Patricia Steele sighed, placed her head in her hand. “How are we ever going to get all this done before the wedding?”

  The great Powell Renovation Project had come to life quite accidentally. Natalie and Damien had sent out wedding invitations. Designed by Annie Ames, a successful young artist back home after officially affixing the letters MFA to her already long list of credentials. Finley residents were smiling before they’d even finished sliding the invitations from the thick linen envelopes, because Annie had created the most lovely, cozy, wintry cards. The kind of cards that had instantly brought to mind fireplaces—home and hearth—and steaming mugs and two people underneath the same crocheted afghan. And the interior? “We request your presence, not your presents,” the invitation proclaimed in silver calligraphy.

  No presents! Everyo
ne in Finley had gasped with surprise. It had gotten to Michael, too. He’d found it heartwarming, actually. Unexpected. He and his own bride, Ashley, had registered, just like engaged couples always do. They’d picked out a bunch of glass vases at a nearby Target, some sort of panini press at a Bed Bath & Beyond. Why? They’d never made a single silly panini. Not since February, when they’d married. It seemed so thoughtless to him now.

  But in Finley, a good deed was never met without a better deed, an even more selfless deed, following in its wake.

  No presents! everyone had repeated. That will never, never do!

  They wanted to give Natalie and Damien a gift anyway. But what?

  …Saw Damien at the hardware store, one random Finley-ite commented. He’s inheriting the old Powell place from Mary. Gonna live there and care for her after the wedding.

  It made sense. Mary was his grandaunt, after all. And Damien was her not-so-secret favorite relative. Besides, Mary had already put the full century mark behind her shoulder; she needed three number-shaped candles on her birthday cakes. It was time to settle such matters.

  Lots of repairs needed out there. Gonna cost those young people a mint.

  Collectively, the Finley townspeople had smiled. Together, they would fix Mary’s house. They’d climb on top of the roof of that old house and take turns nailing the new shingles down, if that’s what it took. And yet…Finley residents rubbed their chins, frowned. Time and elbow grease didn’t cost anything, but shingles were expensive. So was paint. What if they had to call in an expert? An electrician, say?

  A fundraiser. A concert. Yes! They would sell tickets! Put all the money into an account at the bank—kind of like the biggest-ever chip-in bridal gift. Undoubtedly, the people of Finley would have donated the money without a concert. They would have all gladly made special trips across town to the Finley Trust Bank. But who didn’t love a good get-together? Besides, it was kind of like throwing Natalie and Damien early combined bachelor / bachelorette parties.

  Who would they get to play? A concert did require—well—you know—a band.

  “We’ll play!” Gary had shouted. No. That wasn’t right. He’d said, “I’ll play.” But Michael had been accompanying Gary for several weeks during his Thursday night performances at Cuppa, playing and singing backup. And so the “I” had morphed into a “we.” In another most accidental way.

  It was Gary that was the draw. That’s who people were coming to see. Michael would be in the background—on the fringes, as usual—the accompaniment for the talent.

  “This is really starting to add up,” Patricia moaned, her worried expression intensifying as she eyed the spiral notebook in her hand.

  Cody nodded. “Yeah,” he agreed. “I wish we’d gotten started a couple of years ago…” He’d meant it as a joke, but Michael could tell from his expression that he’d been partially serious, too. Like most humor—it cut to the truth.

  “…gourds…” Annie said as she waved Michael a quick hello, then walked in her usual fast clip, right past him. Even now that she had been back from New York for—what?—a couple of months, it seemed, she still walked everywhere at the same insane pace that Michael imagined life was lived in the Big Apple.

  In less time than it took him to nod a hello back, she was already too far away for Michael to hear all of what she was saying to Justin, that friend of hers from the paper, who would probably cover the fundraiser in his relatively new “About Town” column. But Michael could make out enough to understand that Annie was hand-carving gourds to sell at the fundraiser. Even before the official goal had been announced by Cody and the Steeles, everyone had suspected the grand total would require something other than just selling concert tickets. Like, say, holding a silent auction for Miriam Holcomb’s blueberry jam, a baby blanket hand-knitted by Mary herself, an antique first edition of some classic work of literature from Jo March Books: Depository for the New & Used, and apparently, hand-carved early gourds from the community garden.

  “I thought—if we go with the primroses, we could add them to the chairs, see?” Mark Quigley, Finley’s expert on all things flora and fauna, was telling Natalie.

  “Chairs!” Norma Johnson immediately chimed in. “I was thinking we could use vintage, mismatched chairs—wooden folding chairs, basic dining room chairs…as long as they had the same basic shape, see…”

  Was she talking about seating for the concert? Wasn’t everyone just going to stand in front of the makeshift stage?

  “Do you think that would work with the tent, though?” Natalie asked her. “We’re using a heated tent—it’ll have a floor, but I’m concerned about chairs being too heavy, bulky…might be muddy…”

  “I can work with that,” Norma said. “I figured the tent would have to be heated…”

  “With transparent sides!” Natalie added. “Hopefully, this December, we’ll have some snow in time for the wedding—and the guests will be able to look out at the sparkling surroundings…”

  They were talking about the actual wedding. The people of Finley weren’t just here to brainstorm the repairs. They were here to brainstorm the ceremony, which had recently moved from Finley’s oldest non-denominational church to the Powell farmland.

  Somewhere on the opposite side of the property, Michael’s wife, Ashley, squealed with laughter. She was talking about her wedding dress, he knew. Even now, she loved to relate the story of her own beautiful, agonized-over, multi-thousand-dollar dress being attacked, mere hours before their Valentine’s Day nuptials. Shredded by a stray cat who had wandered in through the open door of the same bridal shop where Ashley’s dress had been protectively propped on a headless mannequin so as not to acquire so much as the tiniest wrinkle before being picked up. The dress had then been rescued—no, turned into a regular one-of-a-kind designer original—by Kelly, their wedding planner.

  She was here, too—Kelly was. Chiming in on the story, her voice climbing the scale as her enthusiasm intensified. Kelly’d come back home a fashion failure, Michael remembered. But the story of Ashley’s rescued wedding dress had gone viral, and suddenly, Kelly was talking about the whole crazy thing via satellite on GMA, and after the pictures of the dress had flashed on national TV, there were calls. Lots of them. In addition to planning weddings, Kelly’d begun fielding dress requests from brides across the country. There was even talk of her doing a line of gowns with David’s Bridal. Michael had dismissed it at first as girl talk gotten out of hand, but Ashley’d recently told him Kelly had hired a contract lawyer.

  “…well, the bride loved the raspberry, but the groom was sold on the coconut…” Ruthie, the waitress from the Corner Diner, was saying to Michael’s mom. “…done a few birthday cakes, a retirement cake, but this is the first wedding cake my bakery’s ever been hired to do…brand-new business…”

  “…so I thought we could probably fit the camera into the headband in her veil,” Nathan—the in-town web designer and all around tech-support guy—was telling Damien.

  “She’s going to love that,” Damien was saying. “Cameras are literally Nat’s life. Her calling. Getting to film the day from her own perspective, relive what it looked like from her own eyes…”

  “We’ll need little chairs, too,” Natalie was informing Norma. “For all of Damien’s students. His kindergartners are coming. He’d never entertain the thought of getting married without them all here. Those kids—they’re everything to him.”

  “I can do that,” Norma was agreeing. “My antique store’s put me on a first-name basis with some of the best pickers in the Midwest. All I have to do is just put out the word and—”

  “…how about a rich espresso to compliment the sweetness of the coconut…” Michael’s mother was asking Ruthie. “…a wedding-original espresso brew…”

  Michael was jolted by the realization of just how many people were actually involved in getting these two people hitched. The only people involved in planning and preparing for his own wedding were members of his immediate fam
ily. But good night, it seemed the entire town had their fingers in this wedding. (That was how Mary swore: “Good night,” she’d say, emphasis on the night, always with the kind of force that made Michael feel slightly shocked, like he’d just heard his second-grade teacher drop a few sailor-approved phrases.)

  Michael’s mother started to turn toward him, but he swiveled away before he could catch her eye. Was she going to try to rope him into being the barista at the wedding? Drawing steamed-milk hearts on her espresso all night?

  Of course she would. That’s who Michael was now—a barista. And backup for Gary. Mostly, though—a barista.

  Good night, it seemed that none of the Finley residents had simply just grown up or come into their own; instead, they had bloomed. They were all here, all supplying their personal talents to this crazy wedding: coffee and decor and cake and the dress and the video footage. Michael had a sudden desire to start popping everyone’s pretty balloons—again, metaphorically speaking.

  Someone tugged on the back of Michael’s shirt. He half-expected it to be Hannah, Damien’s niece. The little girl who’d been tromping all over Mary’s land since his arrival, searching for her lost cat. She’d already asked Michael twice if he’d seen the poor thing. An orange tabby that answered to Winston. He hadn’t. He wasn’t going to, either. The cat, he’d learned from Damien, had already been gone nearly five days. This close to the wooded section of Finley, it probably meant that Winston had crossed paths with a wolf, one used to expecting a stray chicken or two to still be hanging out near the ancient coop next to Mary’s old garden. A fat house cat would have surely presented itself as a special treat.