The front door bangs open. Maggie takes a few quick steps in that direction, worried it could be the strange woman she’d just seen, now barging into the house. First a male voice floats in, then a female one. The door closes. Ava and Collin appear, arms wrapped around each other, cheeks flushed. Not the woman from the backyard.
Collin straightens and releases Ava. “Well. Hello.”
Maggie says, “Collin, Ava, may I introduce you to my mother and Michele’s father. Charlotte and Edward Lopez. They’re newlyweds. Collin and Ava are friends and houseguests of Michele’s.”
The two couples exchange greetings. Collin and Ava congratulate Edward and Charlotte.
Ava slips her arm back around Collin. “We’re just, um, going to change clothes.”
They giggle their way upstairs and shut their bedroom door.
Charlotte and Edward exchange a glance, then burst out laughing. Maggie shakes her head and groans.
Sixteen
With Omaha and Nebraska’s plight resolved, Maggie and Louise make it back to Flown the Coop by noon, careful to avoid crossing paths with Leslie. Maggie’s barely unlocked the door when her phone rings. Caller ID tells her it’s someone with her insurance company. She stuffs her keys in her bag and sets down her laptop, a sandwich, and a thermos of ice water, then answers.
“Maggie Killian speaking.”
A voice so deep it’s almost inaudible comes on the line. “Maggie, this is Franklin Best. I’m the adjuster on your claim. I’m in your area, and I thought I’d see if you’re available for me to come by and get your statement.”
Barry White. Johnny Cash. Elvis. Maggie tries to picture him. “On a Sunday? Well, feel free. I’m at the shop this afternoon.”
Louise chases a mouse out the front door.
“Perfect. Half an hour?”
“Half an hour.”
They end the call. The heat is oppressive. Maggie doesn’t want to turn on the air conditioner because of the broken windows, but she finds an intact fan and sets it up, leaving the front door open for circulation. She pulls her thick hair into a ponytail off her sweaty neck. She tries to secure it with a rubber band from the counter, but it breaks.
“Shit.” She drops her hair.
Louise pads back into the store and flops down in front of the fan.
“Where have you been?”
Her tail thumps, but she doesn’t answer.
Maggie shuffles the soundtrack from O Brother, Where Art Thou? on her phone, since the iPad that doubled as her cash register and stereo system didn’t survive the attack on the store. When that’s successful, she digs into the web orders. Running back and forth between the piles of damaged merchandise and the laptop at the counter, she checks availability and drafts emails apologizing for the delay, or in some cases, the impossibility of fulfillment. She’s pleased to see that several of the Wyoming items she posted while stranded in the Cowboy State have already attracted buyers.
Hank’s face flashes in her mind, and for a moment her heart free-falls. Why hasn’t he called or texted? She’d thought she didn’t want to hear from him anymore. Now that she’s initiated the phone number change, she’s not so sure. Be careful what you wish for, right?
With a mental shake, she refocuses on the web orders. She’ll replace the sold items with new inventory tonight. She’s selective about what she posts, since inventory can change so quickly. But to keep people interested at all price points, she likes to rotate a constantly changing variety of products. Frankly, she sells a lot of T-shirts, socks, and locally sourced merchandise. That’s a blessing today. She stores most of them in the barn except for a few display items, and nothing in the barn was damaged.
When she’s through the order backlog, she starts fulfillment, order by order, then adds the tracking information to each of the draft emails before sending them. She’s only finished half the packages when a voice deep enough to rattle glass—if there was any left—resounds in the silence between the ending of “I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow” and “Down to the River to Pray.”
“Maggie?”
The inside of her store is dark from the boarded-up windows, and because Maggie hadn’t turned on the lights when she came in. A man in the doorway is backlit by the sun. It isn’t Barry, Johnny, or Elvis. More Rick Astley, circa 1987, with a red pompadour that doesn’t quite go with his indigo jeans and company golf-style shirt.
Louise rushes the door, growling, but a beat slower than her normal protective self.
“Louise, come.”
The dog ignores her command. That much is normal, anyway.
“She’s friendly. Sorry. I’m over here on your left.” Maggie waves after she sees his eyes track her voice.
He moves, light as a dancer across a stage set, through the stacks and wreckage. “In the flesh. Wow. So nice to meet you.” He holds his hand out the last ten feet as he approaches, grabs hers, and gives it a hyperactive shake.
“You’ll forgive me if I’m not as enthusiastic, given the circumstances. Coming back to this mess was a real downer.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Is it okay for me to start cleaning up and fixing things?”
“I’ve got what I need, picture-wise. Usually our insureds check with law enforcement too, but, if they’re a go, you’re a go.”
Maggie doesn’t give two shits what Junior and crowd want after they’ve insulted her with insinuation and suspicion. They hadn’t told her not to, and that’s good enough for her. “Great. I’ll get the contractors in ASAP, then.”
“Your friend Michele already got quotes for us.”
Maggie pats a stack of papers she’d found on the checkout counter that doubles as the shop desk and storage cabinet. “Got ’em.”
Franklin clears his throat. He picks up a chipped corbel and examines it, or pretends to. “I expected you to be more burned than you look.”
“What?”
“I heard about the fire at Gary Fuller’s. And how you tried to save him.”
“My dog did more than me.” Maggie nods at Louise.
“There was a picture with the article online, so I would have recognized you anywhere.”
“Picture of me? What article?”
He stretches taller and puts down the corbel. “People.com. Lead story. The picture was of you singing in a bar in Amarillo.”
“Oh. My.” She hasn’t led People.com in many years, and she doesn’t want to now. Especially when no one had even contacted her before they ran the story. But she needs to read the article. Even if it hurts, she needs to know what law enforcement and the rest of the world are being fed about her.
“It even mentioned the break-in here, and a bunch of stuff about your trouble in Wyoming. The upcoming movie about you, too. Mostly it was about the fire at Gary Fuller’s, though. And, um, history stuff. It was great.” He bounces on his toes, then frowns. “Other than they called you a black widow. That seemed a little extreme.”
Exactly what she’d thought of herself as, so Maggie can’t fault them much. She remains silent.
Franklin’s frown grows stricken as the silence stretches. Finally he blurts out, “On the way here I heard some of your songs on the radio.”
“The oldies station?”
“No, it was a Houston country station. They played a whole set of yours and Gary Fuller’s music. They talked about your ties to Houston. Like your birth parents, Boyd Herrington, and the gallery your mother owned there. And the movie, of course.”
“How . . . nice.” Maybe it would have been better to get her record rights instead of this shop. Nah. She’s done with all of that. “Well, as you can see, I’m fine.” She holds up her arms. “Just some minor burns.” She drops the sunglasses she’s wearing to hide her singed lashes and brows down her nose. “And my eyelashes and eyebrows sacrificed themselves like they were supposed to.”
Franklin pulls out his phone and rotates it several times in one hand. He holds the phone up. “Could we, I mean, would you mind if we were in
a picture together? One without your sunglasses?”
Thinking it better to replace speculation with truth, Maggie beckons him with her fingers. “One. And I’m fine with you posting it, but not selling it. Got me?”
“Absolutely.” He snaps a picture, and then shows it to her. “Is this okay?”
“Sure.”
“Is it true that after you quit your band they got in a crash and everyone died?” He rushes to add, “That’s what it said online. It’s so sad.”
His words are a blow to the solar plexus. She knows she wasn’t responsible for the wreck. Highway patrol blamed it on a deer who leaped in front of them on the Wyoming interstate. But if she hadn’t run off, if the band hadn’t chased after her and Hank, if Davo hadn’t been so upset when he got behind the wheel, then maybe he would have reacted faster. Kept the van on the road. Not rolled it into a ravine.
She’d reached out to all their families. Sent flowers. Found out the record label had settled with all of them. Her brain knows it wasn’t her fault. Her heart just never believed it. At least that’s what her counselor had told her in rehab.
“One person survived.” Celinda Simone. The only other woman in the band.
“Do you still keep in touch?”
Maggie had never spoken to Celinda again. She’d tried, after reading she’d had something like a dozen surgeries, but couldn’t reach her. Maggie steps back, hugging herself. His questions are intrusive and painful. “Franklin, if you don’t mind, I don’t like talking about that part of my life.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“It’s fine.” Maggie sighs.
“I’ve been going on. I’ll stop. It was just surreal. I was pinching myself that I was on my way here to meet you.”
“It’s okay. Let’s just get my statement done.”
Franklin appears contrite, and he works fast. The statement takes ten minutes, with no surprises.
Afterward, he clears his throat, looking reluctant to leave. “Obviously we can’t pay out until law enforcement is done and we get a copy of their report. Just in case of the unlikely event of insured involvement.”
Has Junior put a bug in his ear? Maggie rolls her eyes, but with her face turned away from him. “I understand.”
“I mean, I’m not saying there is. Just, you know, doing my job.”
“It’s been a shit week, though, Franklin, and I’m running out of capacity to let anyone’s job roll off my back.”
“Yeah. I get it. Well, thanks again. For the statement. And the picture. I’ll be in touch when things progress or if I need anything else.” He turns to go, then spins back to her. “And I’m very sorry about your boyfriend. He was a great musician.”
Maggie wouldn’t classify him as a boyfriend or as great. Successful, yes. But that’s not the same thing. “Thank you.”
“You’re better, though. The DJ was saying so, too. Iconic.”
Dinosaurs are iconic. Or are they just extinct? Like me. She manages to say, “Thanks,” then waves goodbye.
She locks the door behind him and turns on the air conditioner. Damn the electricity bill. Louise doesn’t react other than to groan and roll over with all four paws in the air. Maggie finishes filling the online orders, washing the road dust off the Wyoming finds, and triaging those and the shop contents into four piles: ready, easy-fix, hard-fix, and trash. She photographs the trash from every angle, then loads it onto the trailer. Hard-fix she pushes, drags, and carries into the barn. Easy-fix she crowds into a staging and work area behind the counter, which allows her to keep creating while tending to customers.
Sweat soaks through her tank top and runs down her arms and legs. Her stomach growls. She wolfs down her sandwich and drains the last of her ice water from her thermos before dusting, sweeping, and mopping. She checks her phone when she’s done. It’s past three. But she wants a semblance of order. She needs it. So she spends an hour putting out the merchandise and arranging it artfully. She uses space to her advantage, along with additional inventory from her barn storage. The Coop ends up looking more customer-ready, save the broken windows. Now, if only the house was Maggie-ready, she’d feel a lot better.
Michele’s voice interrupts her. “Knock, knock.”
Louise lifts her head, wags her tail, and resettles her jaw between her paws on the concrete floor. Maggie studies her dog. She hadn’t even gotten up when Michele walked in. What’s wrong with her?
She smiles at Michele, though. “God, I hope you brought cold beer.”
Michele holds up a can. “Will a Diet Coke do?”
“Like a life raft to a drowning man. Gimme.” She scrunches her fingers to hurry Michele over.
Rashidi follows Michele into the shop, along with Collin and Ava. Michele hands Maggie the Diet Coke.
“Wow, you work hard. This place a war zone last I see it.” Rashidi’s island lilt and diction seems appropriate somehow.
“Yah mon.” Maggie winks at him.
Ava raises her perfect, full brows and runs a finger across the spotless display nearest the door, a set of middle school lockers repurposed into a cabinet. “You must have been working hard. You’re looking rough.”
Maggie is too tired to rise to the bait. She drinks the entire can of Diet Coke without pausing.
“Great place,” Collin says. “Impressive collection of road signs.”
Maggie salutes him with her empty can before ziplocking it into her sandwich bag. “Tip of the iceberg. I have an entire warehouse out back.”
“You open for business?” Ava waggles a T-shirt two sizes smaller than Maggie would have suggested for her.
“Not to the public, but I take money anywhere, anytime.”
“I’m shopping, then. Collin.” She hands him a hot-pink satin purse.
He pops a hip out. “How does this look with my nail polish?”
The others laugh as he follows Ava around the store.
Michele touches Maggie’s dirty elbow. “I hear you got the news.”
On a day in a week of a lifetime overfilled with news, good and bad, it takes Maggie a moment to remember. “We’re sisters.”
“You okay with it?”
“If they’re happy, I’m happy. And I think they’re happy. Are you?”
“I am. I . . .”
Ava looks up from examining the sock display. Her voice goes back to the islands. “Michele think they move a little fast. But everyone else think Michele move a little slow.”
Michele snorts. “I wouldn’t have put it that way.”
“So when you gonna make an honest man of me?” Rashidi demands.
Michele shakes her finger at him. “No pushing.”
“I gonna be pushing, pulling, and everything else to get you to the altar if I have to.”
Michele actually smiles at his response, a far cry from a year ago when a declaration like that would have resulted in her locking herself in her room and Rashidi out of it.
“Get a room,” Maggie advises them. “And it was fast, Michele, but your dad is safe with my mother. She had a gadabout spell, but she’s a woman of GAWD and will make him a fine wife.”
Michele turns to Rashidi. “I need a minute with Maggie.”
He makes a face at her. “Well, fine, then.” Then he winks at Maggie and chases down Collin and Ava. “Load up, Ava. You can afford it.”
Michele puts her head so close to Maggie that their hair mingles, the short Hispanic sister and the taller part-Crow, part-Wendish one. No one would mistake them as blood relations, but their hair color is a perfect match, if you don’t count Maggie’s artful gray streaks. “I got a call from Junior today. Lee County and Fayette County—including the fire marshal—want to set up a joint interview with you.”
“Lovely.”
“They suggested now.”
“Uh-uh. I’ve got to go get ready for the wedding thingy at Mom’s church.”
“Which is why I told them I’d check with you for Monday.”
“If I have to, Monday isn’t th
e worst day.”
“Chin up. We’ll get to the bottom of this.”
“We’ve got to figure out the email clusterfuck.”
“I have a technology expert who can take a look at that starting tomorrow. It’s going to be okay, Maggie.”
Maggie says, “Thanks, sis,” and winks, but in her heart she thinks It’s never going to be okay again.
Seventeen
Maggie shortcuts to her bedroom through Michele’s side door. She wants no more of the canoodling twosomes. She flops onto the bed with Louise, who is as lackluster as she is. They both groan. Next up, Maggie has her mom and Edward’s ceremony and celebration. She stares at the orange-peel pattern in the ceiling. Balcones would help, if daytime drinking weren’t so ill-advised before a church ceremony. She has two and a half hours to self-medicate somehow. What would Michele do in her position? Her friend and new sister is a paragon of self-control. She’d go for a run or a bike ride or a swim or something. Those are out of the question for Maggie.
But she can do Michele-light.
She pulls a free beginner yoga video up on her laptop and a yoga mat out from under the bed, where Michele keeps it for guests, as if everyone is as health conscious as she is. Maggie strips to her underclothes and follows the video. For the next ten minutes, she ducks from dog kisses on the mouth and realizes the full extent of how she’s been betraying her own body. It’s stiff, and her movements are anything but strong and fluid.
“We have to do better, Louise. Exercise. Eat right. Sleep more. Drink less.”
Louise agrees, her tail wagging extra hard.
“We could do daily goat yoga. Offer it to the antique show guests as a draw to the Coop.”
Louise barks and sits up with her paws raised.
“You’re feeling better, I think. I’m sure they’ll think you’re cute, too.”
Louise paws at Maggie with one leg.
“You think I’ll feel better if I take you for a walk?” Maggie checks the time on the laptop. “I’ve got fifteen minutes.”
She turns off the yoga. One refrigerated water bottle to-go later, Maggie, Gertrude, and Louise stop at the pen to put halters on the goats, then make a circuit of Nowheresville with them, detouring through the greenhouse buildings that hold Rashidi’s home hydroponic farming equipment and experiments. Louise stops every few hundred yards to retch or squat.
Maggie Box Set Page 37