The Darling Songbirds

by Rachael Herron

  ‘You mean she was going to make up some excuse so that she could get away from her partner and spend a stolen night with you?’

  ‘Stolen nights are like stolen cars. They’re called hot for a reason.’

  ‘You’re worth more than a night or two, sugar.’ He tapped the end of her nose. ‘There’s a reason Hugh was half in love with you. There’s a reason I am.’

  ‘It’s the ginormous size of my rack. I know. I hear it all the time.’

  ‘It doesn’t hurt.’ But Adele’s breasts flashed into his mind. The perfect size of them, the way they felt in his hand, the way her nipples had budded under his breath.

  ‘Okay, spill.’

  ‘What?’ He grabbed a spoon out of the small drawer next to the sink. Taco Sauce hissed at him. ‘Gimme some of that.’

  Dixie yanked the ice-cream out of his reach. ‘You don’t get to try to fix my love life without at least returning the favour.’

  ‘I have no love life to fix.’ He ignored her fake-surprised look. ‘I know you don’t believe me. But it’s true.’ He had anger. Confusion. A terminal case of lust that had only gotten stronger having had Adele in his arms. But no love life to speak of.

  ‘You didn’t come back last night, do I need to point that out? I am the one who closed the saloon. I am the one who walked Max Fitzgibbon home when he couldn’t find his car keys – because I’d hidden them two hours before – and by the way, you owe me for that because he tried to grab my boob. Don’t worry, I dodged, and when he was passed out in his comfy chair, I wrote Don’t Grab Boobs in Sharpie on his forehead.’

  ‘Damn,’ Nate said admiringly. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘That’s a good one.’

  ‘I’m hoping it will sink in through his skin and maybe he’ll remember it next time.’

  ‘I’ll tell him he’s not welcome anymore.’

  Dixie rinsed the cloth and washed her hands. ‘Are you serious? If you had to toss out all the problems, your saloon would be even emptier than it is. I’d be out of a job.’

  ‘Speaking of that …’

  ‘Uh-oh.’

  ‘I can’t guess what’s going to happen, but, well, I’m going to be real honest here – if you get another job offer, you might want to think about taking it.’

  ‘Shit. Seriously, what happened last night with her?’

  ‘I don’t know. A lot.’ That was true. He’d been hit by a truck – that’s what had happened. ‘But whatever it was, it convinced her that she should stay.’

  ‘Stay? As in stay-stay? Like, not sell the Golden Spike to you?’

  ‘That’s what it sounds like.’

  ‘Seriously? But what about you? Hugh promised the place to you.’

  ‘He always said I could have it if they didn’t come back. Hugh’s dead. She and her sisters are very much alive, and this one is back.’

  ‘She just doesn’t know what she needs.’

  Nate grabbed and got the ice-cream away from Dixie. ‘Sure. I’ll let her know. Every woman loves to hear that, right?’

  ‘This is just one of those times, my friend.’

  ‘What kind of time?’

  ‘When you have to save her from herself.’ Dixie took the pint back, took a spoonful and held it out towards the cat, who was slinking out from under the sink.

  ‘I have a feeling she doesn’t need saving. Just like that cat doesn’t need chocolate ice-cream.’

  ‘Of course she does. Adele, I mean. Look at her. She showed up from nowhere, left her home of how many years to come sell a property? God, now that I think about it, of course it makes sense. She’s running from something. It would have been a whole hell of a lot easier to hire a company, one of those property management thingies? They could have sold it for her. She didn’t need to come all the way out here. There’s a reason she came out here herself. She’s looking to be saved.’ Dixie sat up excitedly and the spoonful of ice-cream plopped to the tiles.

  ‘Waste of chocolate peanut butter there.’

  ‘She just doesn’t know it. This is just a people problem. You’re so good at taking care of people, take care of her! Find out what she needs by keeping the Golden Spike, and figure out how she can get that some other way. That’s all.’

  Nate twisted his hands into fists, pressing the knuckles into the tops of his thighs until it hurt. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Unless you don’t want her to leave.’

  He shot her a bouncer’s scowl. ‘Don’t be stupid.’

  ‘I’m many things that are maybe less than ideal, but stupid ain’t one of them. You know you won’t get her to leave unless you figure out where she’s supposed to be going, right?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He hadn’t known that until just then, but damned if he’d admit it to Dixie. ‘I just don’t think I’m the one to do it.’

  ‘You’re the one who deserves the Golden Spike. You. Not Adele, as nice as I think she is.’ Dixie held up the recently truant cat that now had ice-cream all over its face. She waved the cat’s legs at him. ‘Taco Sauce agrees.’

  Nate could hear it purring from where he sat. ‘Damn.’

  ‘You can do it.’

  ‘Do me a favour.’

  Dixie smiled. ‘I owe you so big. Name it.’

  ‘If Adele calls you today, don’t answer.’

  She blinked. ‘Okay.’

  ‘It’s just that –’

  ‘I don’t need to know, boss. I won’t answer. Now pet the cat. It’s good for you.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  After she pushed the porch swing against the wall and picked up the fallen bolts, Adele stood on her tiptoes and examined the wood above. She didn’t know much about wood or construction, but the beams looked like they were made of corrugated cardboard. What did dry rot look like, exactly?

  Tension pulled her nerves taut. Thinking about her sister made her nauseated. Thinking about Nate made her want to come right out of her skin (her sensitive skin, the skin he’d licked and touched and slid against …).

  God.

  Adele looked at her cell phone. Only nine in the morning. It was early enough that Nate shouldn’t be at the bar yet.

  She didn’t know where he was.

  He wasn’t with her. He’d left. He’d left furious.

  But this – staying, keeping the Golden Spike – was the right thing to do. Something iron-like had settled into the base of Adele’s spine and for the first time in a long time she knew that there was something she wanted to do that was bigger than just writing and rewriting songs. Songs were important – Lord knew sometimes they were life itself – but even Adele could admit they were ephemeral. At the end of her life, she’d have a pile of invisible words set to music. Nothing she could touch. No building. ‘No home,’ she whispered.

  This collection of buildings, though, was home. It was tangible. Built by her kin, her blood.

  This was home.

  Adele hadn’t been in Hugh’s office for eleven years, but as soon as she unlocked the door she felt it again: this was where she belonged.

  How had she and her sisters just assumed Nashville was their home, instead of this place?

  This room had been Uncle Hugh’s sanctuary, a place he loved even more than his upstairs lodging. A tacked-on addition on the south side of the saloon, it had been built by hand by Adele’s father and Hugh one summer. Adele had been young, not more than five, but she’d remembered that year as one of her father’s happiest. Molly and Lana had been tiny, three and two years old.

  Adele remembered how her father had swung her up into his arms, getting her out of her mother’s hair by taking her with him to play in the sawdust all day. One of the photos on Hugh’s wall showed Adele in a pink sundress and yellow shoes holding a hammer that was almost as big as she had been. That been her favourite accessory that summer. Her mother had even put a loop on her dresses, and every morning, Adele had dropped the hammer through it in the morning. She’d been bad at hammering actual nails, always bending them,
but she’d been very good at hammering everything else: the ground, boards, the side of the building. Uncle Hugh had called her his best little helper and she remembered the feeling of her father’s hand resting heavily on top of her head in the warm sunshine.

  The office smelled of pipe smoke and old paper, a musty mix of something that felt like happiness. Adele turned slowly, taking in the room.

  Uncle Hugh had outfitted the small room simply, with a rough-hewn heavy desk and a matching chair that spun. An old wooden filing cabinet stood in the corner. The walls were hard to see under the dozens of calendar pages tacked to them. Charlie’s Feed and Seed had always printed the best Darling Bay calendar every year. They were beach scenes and product placement, combined – harrows on the sand, tractors on the dunes. Hugh had been sentimental about the photos and never wanted to get rid of the last year’s pages, so he’d started tacking them up in 1989, and now they were as much part of the decor as the dust motes dancing in the sun streaming through the window.

  Adele peeked through the glass.

  Nate’s truck still wasn’t in the lot, and he probably wouldn’t get there until just before opening at eleven. If he showed at all, that was.

  He’d been so angry.

  He would get over it though, right? It was a huge blow she’d dealt him. She knew that.

  But they could work it out. Surely they could. Like adults.

  Adele sat at the desk, feeling the comforting curve of the wooden seat under her. How many times had she spun in this chair while Uncle Hugh pretended to be grumpy about it?

  Even though she hadn’t seen Nate since he’d left her room in such a furious hurry that morning, his presence was palpable here. A set of steel strings was on the desktop, new in its package. A couple of spy thrillers were next to the lamp, and she knew Hugh hadn’t read the genre, preferring westerns and the occasional romance novel.

  Inside the desk’s biggest drawer was the ledger she’d come in looking for. And there, on the first page, was Uncle Hugh’s handwriting. She would have recognised it anywhere, dark and sharply slanted to the left. The particular way he made his four, with three adjoined legs. The sight of it brought a tightness to her throat she hadn’t expected, and she flipped the pages forward, impatient with herself and with Uncle Hugh for never moving to a damn computer system.

  And there in the last half of the book, about eight months back, the handwriting changed. Straight up and down numbering in a clean hand. Nate’s writing. He’d obviously taken over this part of the running of the Golden Spike a while ago. Why hadn’t he mentioned that when she’d asked him for the office key? Had Hugh gotten too tired to do it?

  Had he really been that close to selling to Nate?

  Adele shook her head, as if she could shake out the emotion that was making her thoughts feel heavy and sluggish. She got out the old plug-in calculator from the bottom drawer and pulled out the stack of bank statements that was in the drawer above it.

  Time to get down to business. Adele didn’t have entrepreneurial experience except with her own career, but she’d made that work. She filed her own quarterly taxes and knew how to maximise her deductions. A business like this would naturally have – she opened the first envelope with the most recent date – quite a bit more money than her own slim business account.

  She reread the amount on the bank statement.

  This wasn’t right.

  There had to be another account. The bank balance in front of her was barely larger than her own personal chequing account.

  She rummaged through the rest of the desk, opening everything she could, before she realised that no, this was it.

  This was all she had to work with. This, and her own cash. No wonder Nate hadn’t been able to make any improvements on the property. The Spike had no capital. Just the buildings themselves. It explained the recalcitrant dishwasher and the groaning coffee machine. The cracked skylight. The paint job, sorely needed. The shuttered café, and the defunct hotel.

  This could be the biggest gamble she’d ever made. She had no idea what she was doing, and the chance of failure was high. How the hell would she get everything done with no money and no experience? Would Nate stay on to help her? Could she afford him? Did she want to?

  She heard Uncle Hugh’s voice in her mind. ‘One day at a time.’ It wasn’t until she was in her early twenties that she’d realised this was an AA slogan, and he’d probably picked it up from the people in his saloon who had slipped off wagons a time or two.

  But it helped.

  One piece of this puzzle at a time. Fix the saloon (hard but doable). Get her sisters back, tuck all the songbirds in the nest (impossible perhaps but she’d try anyway).

  Keep Nate from … No, keep herself from – God, she didn’t even know how the sentence in her mind should end. She couldn’t even form the thought, let alone rate how difficult it might be.

  She picked up the ledger again.

  By eleven, Adele had touched every piece of paper in the office, and not one of them had made her feel better. The only good news, the only tiny scrap of it, was that there were no liens on the property. At least Uncle Hugh had been too proud to borrow money to fix it up. Or would that have been so bad? A loan on either the café or the hotel would have allowed food to be sold and rooms to be rented. Hard cash coming in was what was missing. The mark-up on alcohol was good, but the only nights the money really flowed were Fridays and Saturdays and even then it seemed to run as reluctantly as a California creek in August.

  Adele’s phone pinged. She blew her hair out of her eyes, wishing for a hair tie. It was hot and airless in the office, something she hadn’t remembered.

  FYI, it’s my day off.

  Adele’s face heated. There weren’t enough words on the screen to be able to read into them, but she could give it a try. Was this about last night? She rubbed her eyes with the palms of her hand. She was sweating at her hairline. She’d need to buy a fan, or put in another window.

  The fan was a lot more affordable.

  She tapped back, Of course. Would Dixie come in, then? Is that how they worked their schedule since Hugh died? Why hadn’t she thought to ask Nate about what they did, concretely, on a day-to-day basis?

  As if he could hear her thoughts, another text came in: Dixie sent me a text – she’s sick today.

  It was a plan. One they’d set up, together. They wanted her to panic. Of course they did.

  So – even though her heart was racing and sweat was wetting her shirt – she wrote back, Not a problem. See you tomorrow?

  No response.

  She took a moment to imagine him – was he on his boat? She wanted to see it. How big was his bed? A twin? He was so tall – how would he fit something so small? Did boats have beds bigger than that, though? Was he lying there looking at his phone, satisfied with plaguing her? Or was he feeling the same way she was – shaken to the core? Scared?

  Did his skin ache, like hers did? She felt as if she were running a fever. The only thing that could cool her was more of him. More of his touch.

  And more of his laugh, which was the most distressing part of all. Sex was just a thing. Two bodies, rubbing together, making heat. But the laughter they’d shared while in bed together was like nothing she’d ever known. The connection. Sparks from their touch, reflected in their eyes. He’d seen her, the whole package of faults and worries and silliness and excitedness. And she’d seen him, the way when he was loving her there was nothing else for him in the whole world, the difficulty he had in letting himself go, letting himself feel pleasure, the way – when he’d given himself over – he’d looked like he could reach up and touch the moon.

  Whatever that thing was between them, it had been intoxicating and immediately addictive. She wanted – needed – more. Could he possibly know how quiet her brain had gone in those two hours she’d lain in his arms like she’d been meant to be there all her life?

  What if his not coming in today was about that and not the fact that she was
going to keep the bar?

  A low ache tugged at the back of her neck – a headache, threatening like a storm. She rummaged in the desk drawers until she found a rubber band. She pulled back her hair so tightly her facial skin felt taut. Moving forward.

  This was business. That was all it was.

  She could run a damn bar for one damn day. How hard could it possibly be?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Six and a half hours later, Adele knew the answer to that question.

  Unlocking the bar and setting up the till had gone uneventfully at a quarter past eleven. No one was waiting on the doorstep, not even Norma or Parrot Freddy. She scrubbed the bar’s single toilet with bleach. She hummed cheerfully as the sun came in the front window. It lit up the dancing dust motes, sure, but they were pretty. She could take care of the problems. One by one, she’d fix this place up. It would be fun. Satisfying.

  A beer truck arrived at noon. Adele greeted the driver cheerfully. Time to learn! She waited to watch what the driver did, but apparently it was the guy’s first day, and he looked at her with a slack jaw when she asked him to just do whatever the last guy did. She was the one who rolled the kegs into the back room and lifted each one, her arms shaking with the effort of the fifth. He disappeared so fast after the last keg was unloaded she didn’t even have time to ask him how they were billed.

  Norma came in at one o’clock, but her mood was different. Instead of her normal long blue dress, she was clad head to toe in black. She was quiet, and she drank steadily. When Adele asked if she was okay, she didn’t answer. She just pushed her glass over the counter for another martini. Had she gotten a text from Nate, too?

  After four martinis, Adele started to worry about her. How were you supposed to know when to cut someone off? Was it based on alcohol tolerance? Size? History? Norma was still quiet even after she ordered her fifth, but was it an explosive quietness? Adele couldn’t tell.

  Two men came in at three o’clock, followed by two more fifteen minutes later. They all sat at a table and played cards.