He answers on the first ring. “Maggie.”
She still feels boozy, but boozy sexy instead of boozy sad. “Hey, baby, I miss you.”
“Here Without You.”
Her lips curl up slowly. He’s talking to her in song titles. It’s a good sign. She answers with the artist. “Three Doors Down.”
She hears him muffle his phone. It doesn’t keep her from hearing the woman’s voice in the background. “I have to take this,” Gary says. Then Maggie hears her say, “You’re crawling out of my bed to take calls from her?” A door slams. Then another.
“Where were we, gorgeous?”
Maggie doesn’t give a fig about the other woman, whoever she is. Gary’s never pretended to be anything but a horndog, even when he and Maggie were together. It’s probably Jenny. She’s a nutjob and hates Maggie, but she makes herself available to Gary. Very available. “About to have phone sex because it’s urgent, urgent.”
He laughs. “Foreigner. We can do better than that. Where are you?”
“Switch me to FaceTime.”
Gary might be shit as a boyfriend, always on the road, sleeping with whatever groupie catches his fancy in every town, but he’s sexy as hell. She switches their connection to FaceTime and his video comes into view. He’s shirtless. Because he stays in great shape for the cameras, his chest and abs are chiseled. His shoulders make a yummy inverted V, and his collarbone begs for her tongue. His sandy blond hair is mussed from whatever he took his shirt off for.
His green eyes, though, look at her like she’s the only woman in the world. At least for now. “Better?”
“Much.”
“Damn, you’re beautiful.”
She wants to ask if she’s prettier than the woman in the other room. She figures she’s older. In fact, she doesn’t get it. Gary can have and does have any woman he wants, eighteen and up—or so he claims, anyway. Why thirty-seven-year-old her?
“Thank you. You’re not bad yourself.”
“So where are you?”
“Amarillo by Morning.”
“George Strait. Amarillo? I won’t ask why.”
She bites the inside of her lip. Guilt is swelling inside her, demanding she deal with it. Now. “I’m sorry you got dragged into the thing about the vandalism at my shop.”
He nods, slow and rhythmic, like he’s bobbing his head to music she can’t hear. “That sucked.”
“And for ending things between us.”
“That sucked worse.”
“Are you still mad at me?”
“Not mad enough, apparently.”
She hears the woman’s voice again. “Are you coming back, Gary?”
His jaw bulges as he clenches his teeth. “Sorry. Just a second.” He turns his face, leaving his movie-star handsome profile onscreen. “No.” He throws a T-shirt over his shoulder, giving her a quick glimpse of the enormous gold ring he insists on wearing. He adds a diamond to it for each million records he sells. Pretty soon he’s going to need to switch to something bigger. Like a bracelet. Or a belt. The background behind him blurs as he starts moving.
Maggie hears keys jangling. “Where are you going?”
“My truck.”
“I didn’t tell you to stop what you’re doing.”
“I lost my appetite.”
Her forehead creases. She leans toward the screen. “I can’t make any promises, Gary.”
“I can be very persuasive.” He winks at her. “But I’m not asking for any.”
“You were. Before.”
“Yeah, and then you left me. I’ve had six months to rethink things.” He smiles, opens a door, shuts it behind him. Bugs buzz a globe light behind his head. “Just get your ass home. Tom Clarke is coming to town tomorrow, and he’s about to discover I’m upgrading to a new manager, so he can focus all his attention on his hot new clients. We can celebrate my independence from that thieving jackwipe together. And my other good news, which I’ll tell you after I’ve fucked you until neither of us can walk.”
Maggie doesn’t want to get into Gary’s latest complaints about his manager. Gary should have shitcanned him a decade ago. A pang of loneliness echoes inside her. She wants it to be Hank on the screen, Hank telling her to come home. She wants to point Bess north and leave now. But that won’t happen. God knows she still needs someone who will scratch her itch, and Gary knows all her itchy spots. That has been enough before. It can be enough again, can’t it?
Louise noses her hand.
Maggie fondles the dog’s ears reflexively, offscreen.
Onscreen, Gary’s face holds the possibility of salvation. She closes her eyes to save his image for when she’ll need it. When she opens them, she tilts her head. Her hair swings forward, silky against her cheek. Baritone vibrato and soaring soprano twin in her inimitable voice. “Keep the bed warm, music man.”
Three
Maggie’s hangover remedies have kicked in by the time she nears Round Top the next afternoon. Alka-Seltzer, a gallon—literally—of water, and a Joe T. Garcia’s Mexican food lunch in Fort Worth counterbalance the sweltering heat sans air conditioning. It was at Joe T.’s that she’d read her texts while she paid her bill.
The first was a surprising group text initiated by Wallace, with Ethan, Emily, and Michele: Hey, new girlfriend. Have a safe drive.
She’d smiled and replied: Heading straight to see that friend you asked me about ;-) Gonna wash that Wyoming man right out of my hair.
Wallace responded immediately with OMG send pictures. Or video. Kidding. Sort of.
Maggie laughed, pocketed her credit card, and read a text from Gary: You’re bailing, aren’t you? It made her squirm. He knows her well.
Maggie: Eric Church. “Like a Wrecking Ball.”
She’d hit the road again singing songs from his Outsiders album.
No, this time she isn’t bailing. Who would have ever thought Gary Fuller would be a safer place to land than Hank Sibley?
Hank. He’d still been blowing up her phone during the drive—she’d ignored his texts at Joe T.’s, out of self-preservation—but it had slowed from an incessant shelling to an occasional shot. She gets it. During her week on Piney Bottoms, things between them had become electric. He’d kissed her. She’d saved him. They’d come close to rekindling things, until Sheila’s news. Because Maggie had run, Hank didn’t get to tell her thank you or explain himself or say goodbye. It wasn’t fair to him. He hadn’t done anything wrong, but that didn’t change the facts or how bad they hurt.
She’d kept her mind mostly off him by voice-dictating lists of things to do.
Take Michele dinner and a gift.
Prepare for antique week.
Repair the Coop.
Create “junque” from Wyoming haul.
Meet with insurance adjuster.
Get a report from the Lee County sheriff’s department about the incident.
Clean up after the renter.
Pick up Omaha and Nebraska from Lumpy.
Fix Bess’s air conditioner.
Call Mom and Boyd.
About that time, she’d sniffed, smelled a hint of dog puke, then added a last item.
Get Bess professionally cleaned.
Other than that, she’d surfed radio stations, run a mental best-of-Maggie-and-Gary slideshow to get herself in the right headspace, and thanked the good Lord that Louise kept her breakfast down.
Now, on Highway 290, she notices a new antique venue. It’s in a white metal building that’s been standing vacant ever since she can remember, halfway between Burton and Carmine. Cars and trucks crowd the dirt lot out front. A big sign hangs over the door: CRUSTY CRAP. Underneath, a smaller sign reads RICKEY SAYLES, PROPRIETOR. A decrepit black fringed buggy leans on its traces near the front door.
Maggie groans. Rickey Sayles. He’d tried to buy the Coop from her a few months before. When she turned him down, he opened his own shop. She’s been told he’s bad-mouthing her to any who will listen, bragging that he’s going to kill off th
e Coop. That makes him a viable suspect for the vandalism, in her opinion.
“Bless your heart, Rickey.” She salutes Sayles’s new venture with a bird, then exits south toward Round Top.
Fifteen minutes later, she parks at Royers Round Top Café. There’s a very full low-sided rain-collection tub under a porch gutter. She lets Louise out for a drink. The dog jumps in and thrashes happily in the water.
“Not what I had in mind,” Maggie informs her.
She puts the wet dog back in the truck and heads inside. At the counter, she orders their Steak Special OMG! for two, to go. With Texas Trash pie, Gary’s favorite. A whole one. She may not be in love with him, but their sexual reunion, if nothing else, is cause for celebration, as is the good news he promised her. And what is better for celebration than a place like Royers, whether dine-in or to-go, especially with pie? She orders two more, Chocolate Chip for Michele for her help with the Coop, and Pecan for Lumpy, for hoteling her goats.
She admires the interior with eyes fresh from her time in the wild, wild west of Wyoming, where there is nothing like Royers, not even close. Posters, flyers, photos, and curios in a rainbow of colors are plastered over every square inch of ceiling and wall. It’s like a big welcome-home hug.
While she’s waiting on her food, Maggie texts Michele.
Maggie: I’m back.
Michele: So I hear, through the Amarillo grapevine.
Maggie: The rumors of my behavior are grossly exaggerated.
Michele: I love you. Sorry you’ve had a tough time. Go easy on Gary.
Maggie: Not in my playbook. I love you, too.
Michele: See you soon?
Maggie: Tmrw.
In an attack of daughterly guilt, Maggie quickly texts her mother next.
Maggie: I’m back, Mom.
Maggie stares at the phone, expecting an immediate answer, but none comes.
A waitress with multicolored pastel hair slinks up with Maggie’s food, interrupting her texting. Heather has always been Maggie’s favorite, and her hair clashes perfectly with the frenetic vibe of Royers. “Here you go, Magpie. How’s Boyd?”
Boyd Herrington, former senator and presidential candidate, is Maggie’s birth father and a Royers regular. He’s not to be confused with her nonfamous—and no longer living—adoptive father, who was an ultrareligious member of the Wendish Lutheran community. Boyd is now a lobbyist, and about to be immortalized on the big screen, like Maggie, thanks to the true-crime book Michele has penned and the movie soon due for release: The Love Child and Murder That Toppled the Herrington Dynasty. Maggie, of course, is the love child. At the center of the book is the murder of Maggie’s birth mother, Gidget, an artist and gallery owner and an escapee from the Wend culture, like her daughter. Maggie’s adoptive mother, Charlotte, was none too pleased when Gidget bequeathed Michele the task of finding her long-lost daughter, or that Michele was successful and wrote about it. But Boyd? Boyd is pleased as punch about Maggie, the book, and the movie.
“Boyd is Boyd.” Maggie smiles. “I’ve been out of town a few weeks, so I haven’t seen him.” She hands Heather her credit card.
Heather swipes it through the reader. “I hear ya, hon. How his wife puts up with his shenanigans, I’ll never know.”
Boyd is a man whore, like Gary. Maggie would have to give that parallelism some thought, some other time. Boyd had even hit on her once prior to learning she was his daughter. She shudders. Thank God she doesn’t go for slick, rich older guys, especially not after she’d suffered through a few too many creeps in the early days of her music career. Heather hands Maggie a curly slip of paper, and Maggie adds a twenty percent tip and her signature.
“Thanks, Heather.”
“Don’t be a stranger.”
Back in the truck, Maggie offers Louise a piece of roll. Louise gulps it down.
“What, no thank-you?”
Louise grins and wags her tail.
During the drive to Gary’s, Maggie drums the steering wheel and works on her a cappella rendition of “Bombshell.” She only hates herself a little for enjoying it. The sun is setting, and traffic is light. A little silver sedan crosses over into her lane headed into town when she’s halfway to Gary’s house. She smashes her palm into the horn, steers right, and tries to keep Bess off the shoulder. Ditching while pulling her trailer could be fatal. The sedan driver reacts and returns to the other side of the road.
“Crazy-ass!” Maggie shouts.
After that heart-thudding encounter, she has the road to herself.
When her pulse is more normal, she sings again. “Bombshell, baby.” She thumps her chest like Ava does in her videos.
Maggie laughs, until she sees dark gray smoke in the distance. Her brow furrows. As the daughter of a volunteer firefighter, she grew up understanding the language of smoke.
She mutters aloud. “It’s too dry for burning. Grass and wood smoke is grayish white. Oil and plastic burn black. Dark gray . . . dark gray is bad.”
She presses the accelerator. Bess strains for more speed as they ascend a hill. Around the last corner before a long straightaway to Gary’s, flames shoot skyward and disappear into gray smoke.
The source, when she sees it, breaks her into a cold sweat. It’s Gary’s old wooden house. His jacked-up red Chevy Silverado is outside, parked way too close to the burning house. Flames lick outward, threatening to devour it.
“Shit, shit, shit.”
She fumbles for her phone as she floors the accelerator. Using her knees to stabilize the steering wheel, she presses 911, send, and the speaker button. Holding the phone to her ear with one hand, she takes the turn to Gary’s too fast. Bess careens off the pavement onto Gary’s driveway. For a moment, Maggie loses control. The trailer fishtails.
“No!”
Maggie mashes the brakes and grabs the wheel with both hands, trying not to jackknife. The phone slides off the seat into the floorboard. Louise joins it.
A calm female voice says, “911. Please state your emergency.”
“House fire.” Maggie shouts toward the phone, first giving the address. “Gary Fuller’s place. I’ve just pulled up. His truck is parked outside.”
“Please hold while I dispatch emergency response.”
“I can’t hold. There could be someone inside. Like Gary.”
“What’s your name, ma’am?”
“Maggie Killian.”
“Ms. Killian, please remain in your vehicle and wait for the firefighters.”
“Not a chance.”
Maggie gets as close to the house as she dares, then shuts the engine off and jumps out before the truck’s completely stopped. The fire shoots sparks that reach her hood, but she doesn’t care. She throws open her door and jumps out, falling to her knees. She scrambles up, Louise hot on her heels.
“Gary,” she screams. “Gary, where are you?”
Louise is barking hysterically, but all Maggie hears is the answering roar of the fire. She needs to get in, to figure out if Gary is inside, but the door is inaccessible. The entire front side of the house is engulfed in flames. Her heart pounds faster than the hooves of a racehorse. House fires are her worst nightmare. Once, when she was only eight or nine, her dad was called to a house fire. He didn’t have time to take her home before he responded.
“Stay in the car no matter what. Your mom will be here soon,” he’d told her, his brown eyes stern, his voice an order. “Promise me.”
“Yes, sir, Daddy,” she’d said, but she’d barely been listening to him.
He’d left her in the car. Maggie had never seen a serious fire before. She was curious about what her gentle farmer father did on his mysterious hero callouts. The leaping flames were mesmerizing to her. She snuck out of the car to get closer. But her fascination turned to terror when a woman about her mom’s age suddenly burst out an upstairs window along with the sound of shattering glass and earsplitting screams. The woman ran through the air, arms and legs churning, which was bad enough.
B
ut what made it truly horrifying was that she was on fire. Her granny-style nightgown. Her long blonde hair. Her house shoes. When she hit the ground, her screaming stopped. A firefighter leaped onto her, wrapped her in a heavy blanket, and rolled her over and over. To Maggie, it looked like an alligator wrestling its prey, something she’d seen on TV.
Maggie had run for the car and slammed the door behind her. She buried her face in the tweed upholstery that never lost the smell of smoke after that night, no matter how many times her mom shampooed it. She’d jammed her fingers in her ears to block the sounds. When that didn’t work, she’d sung to herself. She still can’t hear “Ring of Fire” without thinking of that night, to this very day.
Since then, burning buildings—and the thought of people inside—haunt Maggie. But today she’s more scared of finding out later that Gary was in the house and that she could have saved him if she’d tried than she is of the flames.
Maggie charges toward the back of the house. Gary spent an obscene amount of money to have a yard designer install native grasses and flowers that thrive year-round. It’s a geographically correct flora obstacle course now with tall brown grass and late-blooming yellow flowers. She zigs, zags, and hurdles her way across it. Halfway through it, she catches her foot. The ground knocks the wind out of her and something hard and sharp digs into her knee. She kicks her feet in a panic and twists to see what has her. Her boot is caught in a hose snaked between clumps of prairie grass. As she extricates herself, she sees a long slit in the hose. It doesn’t make sense to her, but she has bigger problems. She frees her foot. Her knee is throbbing, but she ignores it. She scrambles to a crawl, fights to get herself upright, and takes off again at a run.
Her voice cracks with strain. “Gary. Gary!”
The flames are even worse in the back than in the front. His bedroom is back here, looking out on rolling hills, pasture, and oak groves. Is he inside? She prays he’s not. That he’s in town having dinner with his manager. Or that he got out earlier, and he’s on the other side of the house wielding a hose, unable to hear her.
Maggie Box Set Page 30