The Corner of Forever and Always

by Lia Riley

  How would he make Tuesday happy? Their edges didn’t fit. And if they didn’t match up, how could it work?

  * * *

  Tuesday listened to “Beauty School Dropout” on repeat for the next few days, her least favorite song in the entire Grease soundtrack. Now she got Frenchy on a deeper level. It’s hard not to know what to do next, to take a chance on a dream only to crash and burn.

  Beau meant well. She knew it. Earnestness had been stamped all over his face when he’d spoken the words “community theater.” She loved musical theater. When she was a kid, all she’d done was belt out The Sound of Music around the house.

  She turned off the music app and eyed her mason jar salad. The idea had looked cute on Pinterest. In reality, it was wilted lettuce stuck to rice with a few sad carrot shavings. She eyed the microwave in the corner while plucking the tiara off her head. “My kingdom for a freaking Hot Pocket?” She needed to eat her feelings, and salad wasn’t going to cut it. After Beau offered her the chance to organize the community theater, it was all she could do not to burst into tears on the spot. It wasn’t that it was a bad idea. In many ways it made sense, was even flattering, but that was the problem.

  Her dreams had never made sense, but that’s what made them so wonderful. She’d been a little girl from Moose Bottom, Maine, who was good at softball and could hold a note. She’d gotten audacious. Decided to hell with graduating high school and scooping ice cream while taking community college classes. She’d set her sights on Broadway and declared that is where she’d end up.

  She didn’t expect to land a Broadway show on the first try or get her Actors’ Equity card. She was prepared to pay her dues through grit and hard work. She cheered every time a friend landed a national tour, and after getting drinks with another friend living to do regional work, she’d go home, look in the mirror, and remind herself that everyone had their own artistic journey. While her path was uncertain, that didn’t mean it was a bad thing. She’d always done things her own way.

  But in the end she’d failed. She’d taken a chance and crashed and burned her entire career.

  “You feel as if you’ve gone in a wrong direction?” Where had Madam Magna come from?

  “I’m a little lost,” Tuesday admitted to the woman at the end of the table. “I tried and failed as an actress. No one said it would be easy. I had all these big goals and knew it would take hard work to make it, to live my dream. The trouble was there are others with the same one, and up at the top of the mountain there is only so much room. And not everyone can fit. After New York, I guess I lost confidence in having a place up there.”

  “This isn’t New York,” the older woman said.

  “Obviously,” Tuesday snapped before gesturing to the salad. “I’m sorry. I brought rabbit food for lunch. I thought that eating healthier might cheer me up, but I’d murder somebody for carbs and cheese.”

  Madam Magna walked to the freezer and pulled out a frozen burrito. “You like?”

  “Get out of town—you eat that stuff?”

  She inclined her head, her earrings making a tinkling sound. “There are times when nothing else will do.”

  Tuesday held up a hand. “Can I get an ‘amen’?”

  Madam Magna frowned and moved to the microwave rather than reciprocate the gesture.

  “So what am I going to do?”

  “About what?”

  “My life,” Tuesday said impatiently. “Isn’t that your job?”

  Madam Magna appeared nonplussed. “I tell people the truths they don’t see.”

  “Okay, clue me in.”

  “You already know what to do.”

  “I do?”

  “Listen to your heart; it’s telling you.”

  “No offense, but that’s the best you’ve got? Listen to your heart? What if my heart stays quiet and my spleen gets noisy? Or my gallbladder wants to weigh in? I let down Beau.” Because she was scared. But she didn’t know how to stop being scared. Or how to survive messing up in another job.

  Madam Magna didn’t so much as crack a smile. Tough crowd.

  The microwave dinged. Madam Magna removed the burrito and set it on a paper plate. “You think you are funny, girl. But when you are ready to listen, you will know what to do.”

  And with that she flung the lunch on the table and strode out of the room.

  Chapter Thirty

  Beau muted the Falcons game and stilled, head cocked. The only sound was the soft whirl of the den’s ceiling fan. His ears must have played a trick, imagined car wheels rumbling up the driveway. No one was expected, and his stern personality never invited unannounced visits.

  Shaking his head, he got up and stretched his lower back before padding to the kitchen to refill his water bottle. The back door was wide open. He froze, focusing all of his senses, fighting for cool calm despite the hot surge of trepidation. It had been shut an hour ago when he’d gone in to fix a club sandwich. He remembered because he’d debated texting Tuesday and instead had chosen to step out to the home gym on the side porch for a punishing round of pull-ups. He distinctly recalled turning the lock as he’d come back inside.

  An unfamiliar red car was parked by the carriage house. His heart pounded as his mind raced. “Cocksucker,” he muttered, flexing his hand into a fist. Guess his hearing had been right on after all. Someone was here.

  Someone was in his fucking house.

  “You kiss your mama with that mouth?” a deep voice boomed before a strong forearm gripped him in a headlock.

  “Hold him, Charlie. I’m grabbing the Dial,” a female snapped.

  He opened his mouth to holler and choked as half a bar of soap slid through his lips. The choke hold released and he landed on his knees, clawing the soap from his mouth, fumbling for his dropped water bottle to rinse out the bitter alkaline taste.

  “Mama?” He blinked at the elfin woman frowning down at him, folded arms slammed across her nautical striped shirt, her ashy ponytail bobbing in disapproval. Wendy Marino was a miniature steel magnolia with the temper of a short-tailed shrew if provoked, and bad language ranked next to “chewing with your mouth open” on her list of intolerable offenses.

  He might be thirty-five, but some things never changed.

  “Dad?” He glanced at his father, biceps bulging beneath his skull-and-crossbones tank top. Neat gray dreads hit his chin, while a goatee framed his broad smile.

  “Hey, son.” His accent was a familiar blend of British, South American, and Caribbean.

  “Why didn’t you guys come to the front door like normal people?”

  “Normal?” Mama glanced at Dad, her customary humorous expression returning. “Who does he think we are? Besides, we have a key. We’re not company. We’re family.”

  “Look at him down there cutting-de-eyes at us.” Dad offered a hand up.

  “Thought you’d like a surprise.” Mama tackle-hugged him as he stood. “My, you’ve grown another inch.”

  Beau chuckled. “Not since I was nineteen. Maybe you’re shrinking.”

  “There’s a scary thought.” Mama stared down at her pint-sized frame.

  “I didn’t know you were off the rock.” He used his father’s slang for the island. “It’s been a while since you’ve come stateside.”

  “For days,” Dad agreed, Bermuda slang for “a very long time.” He studied the kitchen, his expression carefully neutral. “Still looks the same.”

  Not for the first time, Beau fleetingly wondered if his laid-back father had ever felt out of place in a classic Southern plantation house. If so, he’d never let on.

  “It was high time we saw our favorite child,” his mama announced.

  “Your only child.” He grinned as he spoke the familiar response.

  “Toe-may-toe, toe-mah-toe.” She rose on her tiptoes and tugged him down to plant an affectionate smack on his face.

  “First you choke me, now you kiss me? What gives, woman?” He feigned an annoyed tone, wiping his cheek. This is what they did. The
y doted on him. He pretended it annoyed him.

  He wasn’t fooling anyone.

  “I’ll take our bags upstairs and then fix us a drink.” His dad hadn’t worked as a bartender in years, but that didn’t mean Charlie Marino had forgotten his way around a cocktail shaker.

  “And I’ll powder my nose.” Mama never wore makeup, but it was her long-standing euphemism for the ladies’ room. She might have sailed from Everland years ago, but you could never fully take the Southern charm from her.

  Beau headed into the living room, clicked off the blaring television, and gathered the stack of dirty dishes and food boxes. The long formal drapes were drawn tight despite the beautiful afternoon, and the air held a musty feeling. His stomach lurched. The place looked like shit, as if some sad sack had been holed up and wallowing away from the world.

  This wasn’t the picture he wanted to paint. He’d gotten himself more or less patched back together these last years.

  Mama and Dad had never said a cross word about Jacqueline. They hadn’t needed to. He’d noticed the worried way they’d watch him when she was around. How Mama would give an extra hug every time she left. The way Dad clapped his shoulder with a reminder that he was there if Beau ever needed anything. Anytime. All he had to do was ask.

  But the words “I’m lost” and “I can’t do this anymore” always formed a logjam in his throat.

  That Mama had never gotten along with Jacqueline should have been a sign right off the bat. She was a woman who could befriend most everyone…like Tuesday in a way.

  He stared at his pool table, pounded momentarily by a shore break of longing, dragged by a rip current of regret. Not for his ex-wife, but for the woman who’d seemed poised to be his tomorrow.

  But tomorrow is promised to no man.

  “I scarce believe. You’ve met someone?” Mama stood in the doorway, a hand pressed to her chest, staring as if she could see all the Tuesday memories tattooed in his brain. Her laugh. Her sigh. The way she’d spun his world off its axis and left him adrift in a strange new orbit.

  “How in the he…ck?” He managed to amend his language at the last moment. He set the dishes back down. “What are you talking about?”

  “There are panties,” she stage whispered. “In your sock drawer.”

  All the blood drained from his face. He wished he could join it, let the floor open into a whirlpool, suck him down. Tuesday’s thong. He’d kept it in his drawer, never sure what to do with it. Seemed a waste to throw it away, but it would have been too awkward to return it.

  “You had a pile of laundry on your bed. I thought I’d help put it away, but—”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Worry about what?” Dad entered the room.

  “Our son has found a girlfriend,” Mama announced, relief plain on her face.

  “No. Not a girlfriend,” Beau bit back. He didn’t know what she was. He was angry, at her, at himself, at the fact that they were so close to something so damn good, but they couldn’t get there.

  She knit her brow. “When I discovered—you know—I assumed. So, a lover, then.”

  He almost wished it had been violent intruders who’d broken into the house. He glanced between them, their arms casually slung around each other. “Anyway, who wants a drink again?”

  His parents frowned at his deflection, but they would never understand. They fit together perfectly. A human jigsaw. The rhyme in a poem. Like milk to the cereal. Not everyone had it easy or got so lucky. And when it came to their only son and love, he couldn’t be more different. He was raw, jagged edges, a discordant verse—a piece of burnt fucking toast.

  * * *

  Tuesday ground fists in her eyes, frowning at the time on her phone. Six thirty in the morning? Who’d ring the doorbell at such an ungodly hour? Alarm thrummed through her veins as her feet hit the carpet.

  Maybe someone had gotten hurt. Maybe Pepper had tripped over one of the dogs and cracked her head against a dresser. Or maybe Miss Ida May had impaled herself on a rosebush thorn.

  She stumbled faster, hand skimming the hallway wall, and reached the living room in a time that would place her on the podium in a fifty-meter-dash event.

  Throwing open the screen, she stared around the empty porch. No one was there. Her wind chime tinkled in the wind. The Everland Examiner sat halfway up the walkway. Had some local tweens had a sleepover and decided to celebrate staying up all night with a game of Ding-Dong Ditch?

  Tugging her robe closed, she stepped on the new NICE UNDERWEAR welcome mat for a better look at the side yard. Her toes bumped a wooden crate, a box brimming with red apples.

  “That’s random.” She picked it up and looked around the empty street one last time before bringing it inside. She’d hefted the apples onto the kitchen counter and was getting out a box of cereal when there was another knock.

  This place was busier than Grand Central Station.

  “What now? A pail of peaches?” she muttered to Tony the Tiger.

  This time someone was there. Flick stood on the porch, no black makeup smeared over her eyes, and her hair tied in a tight braid. She looked smaller, younger, and more vulnerable.

  “May I come in?” she asked in an unfamiliar, subdued voice.

  “Of course. Of course you can, honey,” Tuesday said, closing the door behind her. “Hey, did you bring me apples a couple minutes ago?”

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Sorry to bother you.” Flick’s gaze darted around the living room as if unwilling to settle anywhere long. Her small body was wound tight. Tuesday had a sense that a single touch would fling her across the room like a shot rubber band.

  “Come in the kitchen. I’ll make coffee. Wait.” She froze, shaking her head. “Not coffee. Um, hot milk?”

  Flick snorted. “Sometimes the only thing in the cupboard was my mom’s instant coffee. I learned to boil water by six years old.”

  The casual comment turned Tuesday’s stomach. “Well, in my house you don’t get it until you’re old enough to drive. How about settling for a hot cocoa?”

  Flick gave her a strange look. “You care what I drink?”

  “Um, yes?”

  “Do you have whipped cream?”

  Tuesday resisted a smile. Now she was getting somewhere. “As if I’d offer you hot cocoa and not have whipped cream. And what say you to an extra-fancy peppermint stir stick? I bought a bag from What-a-Treat.”

  Flick grinned. “You’re on.”

  It wasn’t until she was halfway through the cocoa that Tuesday finally pressed.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Harriet got to go back to her family yesterday.” Flick twirled the peppermint stick around and around the mug. “Her mama got custody back.”

  “This news doesn’t make you happy?”

  “Of course. I’m not a monster.” She broke the candy in half. “Her mom wanted her, so she cleaned up her act and jumped through every hoop.”

  “When did you last talk to yours?”

  The girl rolled her eyes. “That woman doesn’t talk. If she has anything to say, she screams it. Besides, Mrs. Boyle was talking this morning to her daughter. I heard her whispering that my mom is voluntarily terminating her rights.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “She’s giving me up.” She broke the peppermint between her teeth, crunching loudly. “She doesn’t want me back. Guess absence doesn’t always make a heart grow fonder.”

  “What about your dad?”

  “Good question. No clue.” She pushed her empty mug away. “Mama said I look like her, and I guess she’s right, ’cept I don’t want to. Who wants to wake up every morning to see the face of the person who wishes that they were never born?” A strangled sound escaped. The refusal of a cry. She wouldn’t give in to the impulse, because if she did she might drown.

  Life didn’t always have a simple beginning, middle, and end. Sometimes the story was a big, honking mess.

 
“Your mother is an idiot,” Tuesday announced. “A donkey stuck in a pile of stupid.”

  Flick stared, eyes wide.

  “That’s right, I said it,” Tuesday slammed her hands on her hips. “She’d have to be not to notice how awesome you are.”

  A tiny smile pulled on Flick’s lips. “A donkey, huh?”

  “Actually, no, because that’s insulting donkeys. She’s like a donkey patty.”

  “Poop?” Flick giggled. “You’re weird.”

  “But you’re wonderful.”

  Flick blushed to her roots. “Why is she throwing me away, then? What’s wrong with me? Should I have acted different? Read more? Told jokes. Kept my room cleaner? Complained less? What did I need to do?”

  “You’re perfect the way you are.” Tuesday stopped smiling. “I mean that. If she can’t see how special you are, you don’t have to change. You don’t need to be perfect to be lovable. She has to be whacked out not to recognize how special you are, and maybe that should mean that I feel sorry for her, but I don’t. I just feel mad. Because I’m on your side. Yours. Not hers.”

  Flick’s lower lip trembled. “You make good hot chocolate.”

  “I know.” Tuesday winked. “Maybe I should be more modest, but if you have a gift you might as well own it.”

  Flick took a shuddering breath and regrouped. “What are those apples doing?”

  “Not much,” Tuesday shot back.

  “You know what? We should make a pie,” Flick said.

  “We should?”

  “Today’s the Harvest Festival Pie Contest. I saw the sign on my way over.”

  “That’s right.” And Beau would be a judge. Maybe this unexpected gift could be a peace offering.

  Tuesday wagged her finger. “Has anyone ever told you you’re smart?”

  “Not enough.”

  “Well, grab an apron, Miss Smarty-Pants. Time to get baking. How hard can it be?”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Tuesday entered the Sweet Brew Coffee Shop for a quick pick-me-up pit stop. Today would be the first time she’d see Beau since their disastrous conversation at the Roxy Theater. Hopefully flooding her system with caffeine would kick-start her courage. Outside the picture window, Everland Plaza was abuzz with activity. Townswomen busily covered rows of folding tables with white plastic cloths while Miss Ida May stood on the gazebo steps and directed the pie arrivals under a banner that read, A SLICE OF EVERLAND: 49TH ANNUAL HARVEST FESTIVAL PIE COMPETITION.