Now and Then and Always

by Melissa Tagg

  It was all Marshall could do not to laugh at Sam’s blink-and-you’d-miss-it grimace. “I’m the chief of police, Eunice, remember?”

  “Does your title really matter at a time like this? When Frank Roosevelt’s life hangs in the balance?”

  They followed the woman into a house that smelled of potpourri and felt overly warm. Practically balmy. She rushed them through a cramped living room and into the kitchen.

  Where her parakeet lay in a nest of blankets atop a table. Dead as its namesake.

  And Sam, for all his nonchalance earlier, seemed completely stumped. “Uh, Eunice, I assumed Frank had escaped his cage again. This looks a little more . . . serious.”

  “Maybe it’d be better to call a vet,” Marshall offered.

  Eunice appeared to notice him for the first time. “I don’t know who you are, but I’ll thank you not to interfere.” She waggled a finger at Sam. “Well, do something.”

  “I’m just not sure what it is you’re wanting me to do, Eunice. Bury him?”

  “Of course not. I’m starting to wonder how you got elected.”

  Sam took a long breath and Marshall barely quelled another chuckle. “Ma’am, I wasn’t elected. Again, I’m the police chief, not the county sheriff.”

  “Then act like it. Why do you think I called you?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m trying to figure out.”

  She threw up her hands. “Your taser. I want you to try reviving Frank with your taser.”

  And that was it. Marshall pitched from the room before the laughter clogging his throat could make it out. He burst outside and let his amusement free. Oh, this was worth giving up an hour of work at the house.

  By the time he reached Sam’s squad car, he had his phone out, ready to text Beth. She’d love this. Alex would get a kick out of it, too. He’d probably tell the rest of the precinct and Captain Wagner’s laughter would boom the loudest.

  But with one glance at his screen, his mirth ground to a halt. A missed call. Penny.

  He stared at her name, at the little photo underneath it. Russet hair in tight curls just like Laney’s. The shape of her lips, her wide-set eyes—also Laney’s.

  But she had my chin. Everyone said so.

  He pressed his eyes closed, but when he opened them, Penny’s name still looked back at him.

  No voicemail and he might not have listened even if there was. What could she possibly want? It’s not as if they’d left any dangling threads between them. Everything had been divided, all the papers signed. The divorce lawyer had declared theirs one of the swiftest he’d ever wrapped up.

  Penny had found herself a whole new life. A new baby with a new man. They’d probably even finalize things one of these days, get married.

  The driver’s-side-door opened. “Welp, if I were an elected official, I’d have just lost Eunice’s vote.”

  Marshall turned over his phone, screen hidden against his knee. “That’s . . . too bad.”

  Sam tipped his head. “Kind of expected you to be out here busting a gut.”

  “I was. I just . . . ” He turned off his phone entirely and stuck it into his pocket. “So what happened? You weren’t in there long.”

  “When I wouldn’t tase Frank, Eunice kicked me out. I asked her if there was anybody I could call, told her how sorry I was, but she wouldn’t have any of it.” He started the car.

  “Tough day on the job.”

  Sam snorted. “Not as bad as Frank’s day.”

  Laughter found him again, and he pushed away Penny’s intrusion. Sam started the car and in seconds, Eunice’s house disappeared from the sideview mirror. “Listen, I actually do need to get back to the B&B soon. And I still need to stop at the hardware store.” In other words, time to pick up where they’d left off.

  Eyes on the road, Sam nodded. “All right, then. Look, Hawkins, I’m not above admitting that maybe I’m just hankering for some real police work. But I can’t kick it—the sense that there’s more to Lenora Worthington’s disappearance than first appears.”

  That word again—disappearance. “Mara knew her, though, and she seems to believe the woman capable of skipping town.”

  “How much do you know about Mara Bristol?” Sam propped one elbow on his door’s armrest.

  “You don’t think she had something to do with Lenora’s leaving?”

  “I don’t know what to think. Other than something feels off. I trust my gut. Maybe there’s a simple answer. Maybe not. But I aim to find out. Hard to know exactly where to start. It’s not like anyone’s filed a missing person’s report.”

  Which likely meant he hadn’t gone as far as checking cellphone records, street cameras, or credit card activity yet.

  But from the look on his face—lips pressed into a thin line, expression grim—he wanted to. “So.” Sam pushed his sunglasses out of the way and glanced over at Marshall. “Feel like a little detective work?”

  The dining room table didn’t feel nearly sturdy enough under Mara’s feet. Both arms strained around the glass bowl of the tarnished brass chandelier. If her position was precarious, Jenessa’s was shakier still. She perched on a stepladder atop the table, reaching over her head to fiddle with the chandelier’s chain.

  “I’m really starting to think we should wait for Marshall’s help with this, Jen.”

  The knees of Jenessa’s cropped jeans were eye level with Mara. How did she manage to make denim and a long-sleeved plaid shirt tied at the waist over a white tee look fashionable?

  Mara had barely finished cleaning up the muffins and scrambled eggs she’d thrown together for breakfast this morning when she’d heard Jenessa’s knock on the B&B’s new front door.

  Marshall had gone in to town a while ago and promised to return with a paint sprayer. The first-floor ceilings were in for a makeover today. Mara’s job in the meantime was to move or cover furniture, lay tarp over the floors, and attempt to remove this beast of a light fixture.

  “How very un-feminist of you, Mara. We don’t need a man to get this job done.”

  “Hey, if there were any brawny females around, I would happily accept their help, too, but—” The chandelier’s weight dropped into her as Jenessa loosened the chain. “Whoa. Give me some warning.”

  Jenessa clasped the chain with her fists, leaning from the stepladder. “I’ve still got it. Kind of.”

  “Yeah, well, my arms are about to give out, so—”

  “What in the blazes?”

  Both women jerked. Lucas stood in the dining room doorway—something between a glower and a smirk on his bronzed face, a backpack slung over one shoulder. Jen wobbled on her ladder, one hand abandoning the chandelier to steady herself.

  Leaving Mara with even more of the weight. Oh dear. She felt her legs bend, her arms weaken. “Oh no, oh no, oh—”

  The whole table shook as Lucas jumped up to help, his arms shooting out to rescue the bobbing bowl, its dangling glass trinkets clinking against one another.

  Jenessa let out an exasperated sigh. “And here I was just saying we didn’t need a man’s help.”

  Muscles bunched underneath Lucas’s long-sleeved T-shirt. “Well, you needed something.” His voice was taut as he helped Mara lower the chandelier to the tabletop. “You could say thank you.”

  Mara wiped dusty hands over her faded overalls. Had the light fixture ever been cleaned? And—gross—were those dead bugs inside the bowl? “Well, I’ll say thank you. I would not have loved for my obituary to declare death by chandelier crushing. I appreciate the help.”

  Lucas had pulled his long hair back today—half-ponytail, half-knot. He looked even less like Garrett when he allowed himself to grin. “That makes one of you.”

  Jenessa gave him a mock glare. He returned it and hopped off the table, pushing up his sleeves as he landed on the floor. Then, with a hurried jerk, he yanked them back down.

  But he hadn’t been quick enough. Mara could barely stifle her gasp at the sight of the red, mottled skin of his arms. Scar
s that could only have been produced from horrific burns.

  He looked away and retrieved his backpack. “I’m heading over to the orchard, but if it snows, we won’t get far on pruning. I’ll probably be back early. Um, if you’re still painting or whatever, I can help.”

  Mara slid off the table. “Oh, you don’t have to do that. I feel bad enough that you’re a paying guest here and the place is in disarray.”

  “Doesn’t bother me. I like staying busy.”

  Jenessa eased off the stepladder then jumped to the floor. “I’m covering a school board meeting, so I won’t be here later. Coming for Sunday dinner, Luke?”

  “Don’t I always?” He turned and moments later the sound of the front door closing echoed through the house.

  Jenessa was quiet for a long moment. “Afghanistan,” she finally said, low and meaningfully. “He doesn’t like to talk about it.”

  “Do they go all the way up his arms? The scars?”

  Jenessa nodded, her gaze on the window that overlooked the parking lot, compassion or maybe concern filling her eyes as she watched Lucas toss his backpack into his truck.

  “How do you know him?” Mara stacked one dining room chair on top of another. “And Sam too. You seem like an unlikely trio.”

  Jenessa turned, blinking away her emotion. She pulled the stepladder from the table, folded it up, and leaned it next to the stacked chairs Mara had slid over to one wall. “We’re friends because we’re three single adults in our 30s in a town full of minivans. People don’t realize what it’s like being single when almost every community and church event is set up for families. It’s a bummer sometimes. But it’s less of a bummer when you’ve got a group. Sam and Luke are much more than my friends. They’re my . . . my family, I guess. Maybe it sounds silly.”

  “I don’t think it sounds silly at all.”

  Because hadn’t Mara gone half her life wishing for the same thing? Someone to fill in the gaps left by Dad’s physical absence and Mom’s emotional abandonment. But she didn’t have siblings and, pathetic as it sounded, she’d never really had friends either. At least, not the kind who stayed with her from one season of life to another. There’d been too many moves, never enough time in one place.

  And though some of the families she’d nannied for had been plenty kind and welcoming, she’d never truly felt a part of their circles.

  “You’re lucky to have them, Jen. And they’re lucky to have you.”

  “I really am. And they really are. Especially considering I’m making lasagna this Sunday. It’s already assembled and in the freezer.” She dragged the last dining room chair to the edge of the room. “Sam and Lucas come over every Sunday after church. Well, Sam comes over every Sunday. Luke spends half the year working on a fruit farm in Mexico. But when he’s in town helping his sister with the orchard, he never misses dinner. Though he usually skips the church part.” She turned to Mara. “You should come too. To Sunday dinner. And church, if you like.”

  Church. Huh. It’d been, what, seven or eight years since she’d attended a service? She’d always felt a little out of place. Her faith, a little too flimsy. Her life, a little too unimpressive. She believed in God, though. Uttered a prayer now and then—like on the night she’d arrived at the Everwood.

  “No pressure, of course,” Jen added quickly. “If church isn’t your thing, I hope you’ll still come to dinner. You can even bring Marshall. I’ll play reporter, and we can uncover all his secrets.”

  “How do you know he has secrets?”

  “A handsome man with mysterious gray eyes arrives in town during a thunderstorm . . . He has to have secrets. Otherwise, it kills his whole vibe.”

  “Well, I’m pretty sure it’d take more than lasagna and a round of Twenty Questions to get him to spill them.” She’d never even gotten a straight answer out of Marshall as to why he’d left that meeting last night. The man was a hundred kinds of helpful, but so far, he didn’t seem at all inclined to talk about his life prior to blustering into her world.

  She knew his profession, though. And from a couple of comments over breakfast this morning, she’d picked up that he was on some kind of extended leave of absence from his job. Though she got the feeling if she ever asked why, he wouldn’t be eager to share.

  Mara inched the chandelier to the edge of the table. What were the chances she and Jenessa could heft it out of the dining room?

  Jenessa leaned the stepladder against the wall. “Speaking of secrets and mysteries, did you know your friend Lenora isn’t the first Everwood owner to up and vanish?”

  Mara abandoned the light fixture. “What?”

  “I wasn’t joking last night about doing a story on your quest to save the B&B. I was doing a little fact-checking, looking through some newspaper archives. Turns out back in the early sixties, this young couple who’d run the place for about seven years simply disappeared. It’s Maple Valley’s own little cold case.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “The police tried to track them down, but they never got a single lead.”

  Mara gripped the straps of her overalls. “Why were the police involved? I mean, it’s not a crime to leave town.”

  “Yeah, but it was the way they left—one night they were here, the next morning they weren’t. They didn’t tell a soul and it didn’t make sense. They’d made a home here. They had a whole life. They had friends.”

  That hadn’t stopped Dad. He’d had friends. He’d had a whole life. Mara’s hands slid from her overall straps to her pockets. Two decades and still the hurt found ways to resurrect itself. It’s why she never listened to the radio anymore. The chances were just too high she’d hear one of Dad’s songs and feel the old ache.

  “Not to mention they had a thriving local business,” Jenessa went on. “Guests were staying at the Everwood when they vanished. Police wouldn’t let the guests leave town until they’d been questioned, but they didn’t get any leads.”

  Two sets of disappearing B&B owners. Nearly sixty years apart.

  Except Lenora hadn’t vanished. She hadn’t disappeared in the middle of the night. She’d packed a suitcase and walked out the front door in the light of day.

  Wait, Lenora . . .

  “Did the articles you read mention a kid?”

  Jenessa’s forehead wrinkled. “Hmm . . . I dunno. I was skimming pretty quickly. Why?”

  “Lenora’s parents ran the Everwood for a while when she was young. I don’t know the specifics of the timing, but what if her parents were the owners who disappeared?”

  Jenessa’s eyes lit with intrigue. “Forget uncovering Marshall’s secrets. I’m beginning to think this house has a few of its own.”

  The image arose of that little room behind the fireplace. “You have no idea.”

  Marshall found Mara in the attic, surrounded by boxes and cloth-covered furniture. A burning sunset streamed through the lone circle window, casting an orange-ish hue over the room. Dust clung to the air, along with the stuffy scent of old cardboard.

  He climbed the rest of the way into the unfinished space, tufts of insulation peeking through the attic’s wood walls and ceiling. He made a mental note to look at the roof tomorrow, see what he could do about patching leaks. “I wondered where you’d disappeared to.”

  Mara piled one box onto another, the window’s light adding golden hues to her red hair, which was currently laced in two haphazard braids. He’d showered after a full day’s work, but clearly she hadn’t allowed herself the same luxury. She still wore those overalls from earlier, now splattered with paint, and her arms were covered in tiny flecks of white thanks to the sprayer he’d used on the ceiling all afternoon.

  “She was looking for something up here.” Mara bumped into an ornate standing mirror. An antique? Why was it stuffed away in the attic? A little polish and it’d make a nice fixture downstairs.

  “You’re talking about Lenora?” If so, it was handy timing. He’d been meaning to broach the subject all day, talk to Mara ab
out Sam’s concerns, confess his growing interest. He’d tread lightly, of course, but the more he thought on it, the less he was able to dismiss the strangeness of it all.

  But Jenessa had been around when he’d first returned to the Everwood and, later, Lucas Danby.

  Mara huffed and the strands of hair that’d escaped her braids fanned around her face. “I heard her puttering around in the attic all the time. Why didn’t I ever ask what she was looking for? Or better still, offer to help her go through all this stuff? Was I just that wrapped up in my own mess?”

  There was a trace of something frantic in her eyes. If it’d been there earlier in the day, he’d missed it. But it was there now, as obvious as it was troubling. He wanted to ask what had brought this on, but even more, he wanted to ask about her “mess.”

  “How much do you know about Mara Bristol?”

  He’d bristled earlier at Sam’s question and whatever it might imply. Yet he’d be lying if he denied his own curiosity.

  But prying into Mara’s life was not the reason he’d followed the sound of her thumping footsteps to find her here. “You never ate supper, Mara.”

  She finally looked at him—more than a spared glance this time—and noticed the bowl in his hands. “You brought me cereal.”

  “In a bowl. With milk. And a spoon. The way it’s meant to be eaten.”

  “I’m so hungry I can’t even think of a good retort.”

  He sidestepped an old dresser and handed her the bowl. “Are you looking for something up here?”

  She shook her head. “Thank you. And no. I just had the silly idea that if I came up here and took a look around, something would click into place and I’d suddenly understand . . .”

  “Why she left?” he finished for her.

  “Or why she bought this house in the first place.” She dropped onto a plastic tub, folded her legs.

  And he had the instant and foolish but irresistible thought that she was just plain endearing in this moment. Maybe it was the braids. The overalls. The paint smudge on her cheek. Made him think of the cover of Laney’s beloved Anne of Green Gables. All Mara was missing was a straw hat.