Magnolia Bay Memories

by Babette de Jongh

  Heather had been leery of the idea of having Jasper and Winky together in the same house, but Reva claimed to have communicated with both parties and negotiated a mutual peacekeeping agreement.

  So, here Heather was, leaving work early to do some pre-storm grocery shopping and then make it to the vet by 4:30 to pick up the cat. Heather wished she had time to run by the house and change clothes—even take a shower—before going to Mack’s vet clinic. She was way past the point in her life when she needed to impress anyone, but she didn’t want to offend anyone, either. And the sad fact was, she had worked so hard today to batten down the hatches at the shelter and the barn that she knew for a fact that she… Well, she wouldn’t say she stank exactly, but she wasn’t as fresh as she’d prefer.

  She had, in fact, at one point in the day been so hot and drenched in sweat that when she took her phone out of her back pocket, the screen displayed a device overheating message shortly before going black. And on top of that, the thing was so wet that she feared for its battery. Reva had given her a bag of rice and a couple of cool packs, and Heather’s hopefully not-dead phone was turned off and (please God) recovering in the side pocket of her laptop case.

  But the pre-storm preparations at the shelter and the barn were necessary, and when Heather got home, she would have to do them all over again at her house. Fortunately, there wasn’t much to do at her place that she hadn’t done already, except shop for enough groceries to get the family through a week and then tend to Charlie.

  Heather had Charlie’s safety concerns covered. She had spoken to her neighbor up the hill earlier in the day—before her phone died—and the woman had said that yes, of course, Charlie could bunk with her horse in their much nicer barn that wasn’t in danger of flooding or blowing away.

  The neighbor and her husband had given shelter to Charlie in past storms, and the lady reiterated that they were happy to have Charlie hang out at their place anytime.

  Heather and Erin just needed to pack up a few gallon Ziploc bags with horse food, then lead Charlie up the hill. The neighbors had more than enough hay, and the lady had joked that if Heather tried to bring more hay, she would stuff it down Heather’s shirt.

  Heather did the grocery shopping and also bought a gift bag and filled it with some weather-the-storm essentials for her nice neighbors: flashlights, batteries, candles, a bottle of wine, and some edible goodies that wouldn’t require refrigeration.

  It was good to have good neighbors, and Heather wanted hers to know how much they were appreciated. She also bought all the supplies Winky would need, then picked him up at the vet. When she got home, she got Winky settled in the mudroom. Then she carried an armload of grocery bags into the kitchen, set the bags on the counter, and walked to the bottom of the stairs. “Kids,” she yelled, “please come help with the groceries.”

  “Okay,” Josh answered. She heard his bedroom door open. “I’m putting my shoes on.”

  “Thank you, Josh. Please make sure your sisters heard me.” Jasper came running down the stairs, bypassing Heather in a beeline for the mudroom. “Do not bother that cat,” she said to the dog, who ignored her.

  While the kids brought in the groceries and put everything away, Heather started a big pot of soup, using up as much of the food in her freezer as possible so it wouldn’t go bad if the power went out. Also, if the power stayed out for a while, they’d have something quick and easy to warm up on the gas stove. She made plenty, enough to take some to the neighbors when they brought Charlie over there.

  When everything was done and the soup had cooled enough to transfer the neighbors’ portion to a big Pyrex bowl with a lid, Heather and Erin gathered all the gifts for the neighbors and took a handful of Ziplocs out to the barn to fill with Charlie’s food. “Would you bring Charlie in from the field while I scoop his food?”

  “Sure.” Erin took the halter and lead rope off the hook next to Charlie’s empty stall and walked to the open barn door that led to the field. “Mom?” she said a second later, her voice tentative. “Charlie’s not out here.”

  “What?” Heather zipped the last bag shut and put it in the feed bucket with the others. She dusted her hands off and walked to where Erin was standing in puzzlement. “He’s got to be…”

  But he wasn’t. The big open field didn’t have any nooks or crannies where a thousand-pound horse might hide. And Charlie wasn’t there. “What on earth…?” Then Heather remembered seeing Quinn’s truck pulling a horse trailer that Heather had assumed was full of hay.

  And Adrian’s car was right behind it.

  “Those fuckers,” she muttered under her breath. What in the world were they up to? Why would Quinn and Adrian take Charlie without… Then she remembered that her phone was sitting in a bag of rice in the side pocket of her laptop case. “Help me bring all this stuff back inside,” she said to Erin. “I’ve got to make a call.”

  “Are you going to call the police?”

  “No. I think I know where Charlie is. I bet Quinn and Adrian decided to take him to Bayside Barn.” And she couldn’t even be mad about it, since she hadn’t been available for them to call. They’d probably decided between the two of them that she didn’t have the good sense to make provisions for Charlie’s safety during the coming storm.

  Their mutual vote of nonconfidence got up her nose, but again, given her previous track record, she couldn’t much blame them for that either.

  She dug her phone out of the rice, and it turned on without a hitch. She could see that Adrian had tried to call several times. She didn’t want to risk hearing the residual anger in his voice, so she sent a text:

  Hey, did you and Quinn steal my horse?

  His reply came in under a minute:

  We did. Friends helping friends.

  “Passive-aggressive much?” She refrained from chastising him about the fact that she had the situation handled and didn’t need him and Quinn butting in, because what would be the point? Heather knew Charlie was fine, probably munching hay at Bayside Barn by now. No harm, no foul, and she had bigger fish to fry.

  I had it covered, but thanks for helping, friend.

  “Come on,” she said to Erin. “We’ve got a lot of work to do before it gets dark.”

  ***

  The next day, Adrian leaned back in the first-class seat to Dallas and signaled the flight attendant for another Bloody Mary. He’d driven home late yesterday evening after dropping Charlie off at Bayside Barn. It had rained all the way home, but he’d driven in worse weather. After all the pre-storm hoopla, it had ended up being a nonevent, a blustery wind and a whole bunch of rain but nothing extreme enough to warrant all that preparation.

  He sipped his drink and glanced idly around the cabin. The woman across the aisle was exactly his type. He studied her when she wasn’t looking.

  Her makeup was a work of art. Her expertly crafted hair was blond, but not Heather’s sort of blond—more like an artist’s palette of highlights and lowlights and everything in between, shown to best advantage by a perfectly shaped cut and ten minutes with a blow dryer, flat iron, and curling iron. Her fingernails were too perfect to be real, her silk blouse and linen pencil skirt were smooth and unwrinkled, and the shoes she had tucked neatly under the seat in front of her were pointy-toed high heels. Her bright-red pedicured toenails peeked through the shiny hose that covered her ballet-barre-class legs.

  The mimosa she sipped from a champagne flute had a neat circle of red lipstick on the rim, and whenever she sipped, she always placed her lips in that exact spot.

  This dry-clean-only woman was Heather’s exact opposite. Exactly his type.

  He looked away before she noticed him looking. Before Heather, he’d have flirted. But he knew that if he caught this bright little fish, he wouldn’t have the heart to do anything other than throw her back into the water.

  Opening his laptop, he got to work tweaking his present
ation for the Dallas client. When the plane started its descent, he slipped his laptop into his briefcase. At the end of the flight, he was the first to stand and grab his bags from the overhead bin. He hustled out of there in a hurry, though he had more than enough time to check in to the hotel, prepare for the presentation, and get to the meeting on time.

  The week in Dallas evolved into two weeks, then three. He wowed his new client with his dedication and attention to detail. He started work early and kept at it till long after dark. Fueled by coffee and alcohol, he made a truly disgusting amount of money and secured a long-term client in the process.

  But none of it made him happy.

  ***

  Working at the shelter more than full-time in these first few weeks was eating Heather’s lunch, but she and the kids were working it out. They had begun to fall into a routine, with the kids coming on the bus to the shelter half the time and home half the time. On the kids’ home days, Heather pushed the two employees she’d hired to finish by 5:00 so the kids would only have to be alone for an hour or so. On their shelter afternoons, she stayed late and caught up on shelter laundry and paperwork.

  She almost didn’t have time to miss Adrian.

  She had decided to keep Charlie at Bayside Barn—temporarily at least—and made a point of coming early each morning to feed him sliced apples before turning him out into the field for a day of grazing. Charlie enjoyed the company of the other animals, so paying a smaller-than-fair boarding fee—which was all Reva would accept—was well worth the money. (Especially now that she actually had money.) Quinn or his son, Sean, rode Charlie once or twice a week, and Sean kept Charlie well groomed.

  Charlie didn’t have time to miss Adrian either.

  Winky was still a standoffish little pisser; he had managed to escape the mudroom in less than twenty-four hours and disappeared to nobody-knew-where for almost a week. They’d only known he was still in the house because the food in his kibble bowl was steadily disappearing and the litter box was being used.

  He also peed in other places—Heather’s shoes, the bathroom rug, even the kitchen counter—just to make a point. He’d begun to be more visible lately; sitting on some piece of furniture or other, high up enough to glare down at the family in general and Jasper in particular. Heather hadn’t been able to find any more of Winky’s hygiene indiscretions recently, but her closet was beginning to smell vaguely of cat piss.

  According to Reva, Winky did have time to miss Adrian.

  But Heather couldn’t do anything about that other than keeping her closet door closed.

  Some of the grants Adrian had applied for needed his attention, and Abby lived in fear of messing up on OSHA-compliance rules or nonprofit paperwork requirements. Desperate to get a handle on the things for which they had depended on Adrian, Abby had sent texts and emails, only to receive immediate out-of-office responses but no follow-ups. Abby and Heather did their best to take up Adrian’s slack, but it wasn’t easy, and the uncertainty of it all ignited Abby’s anxiety.

  But all in all, the new shelter was running smoothly, and people from the community were beginning to bring in—and adopt out—animals. Heather stayed busy, and she loved her new job because it gave her a sense of purpose and worth. But Adrian kept invading her dreams—and often her nightmares—so she wasn’t sleeping well, and none of the things she spent her days doing made her happy.

  ***

  Winky roamed the house alone, looking for a new way to show his displeasure. That dog, as he had taken to calling Jasper, had gone with Heather to the shelter as usual, so Winky had the place to himself, but it didn’t give him any joy.

  He had hoped that coming here to live with Heather would allow him to encourage her to take Adrian back so they could all be together. But Heather had begun keeping many of the doors closed, and he was running out of new and interesting places to pee. He settled for scratching at the doorframe to Heather’s closet until the soft wood hung in curling shreds and tiny paint chips littered the carpet, which he had also peed on for good measure.

  Then, all out of pee, Winky sat on the back of the couch and looked out the window at all the tasty little birds who clustered around the bird feeder with complete impunity.

  Reva popped into his head, asking him once again to please stop peeing outside the litter box.

  He replied, once again, that he would stop peeing when Adrian showed up.

  Reva tried to explain that this rift in Winky’s intended family was as much Adrian’s fault as Heather’s because while she had started the problem by being too afraid to love him with her whole heart, he had finished it by stomping off in a huff instead of attempting to understand.

  Fine, whatever. When Adrian showed up, Winky would pee on his shoes. But Adrian wasn’t here, and neither were his shoes, so all Winky could do was torture Heather and hope it would force her to bring Adrian home where he belonged.

  They were at a temporary impasse, but Winky was determined to win the war. However, even a cat of means such as himself had few weapons at his disposal. Winky leaped onto the bookshelf and knocked off a few framed photos, then headed back to the kitchen to drink as much water as he could hold.

  Chapter 19

  Hungover from the see-ya-later bar party the night before, Adrian boarded the plane back to NOLA feeling like a piping-hot stack of ass. His head pounded, his mouth was dry and sour-tasting, and his gut felt rough and jumpy. The cold shower had done nothing to loosen the vise squeezing his temples, and the supplements and painkillers he’d taken this morning only sat in his stomach and disagreed with one another while he suffered.

  “Bloody Mary,” he said to the flight attendant when she walked past. Hair of the dog might help; it was all he had left to fall back on since the bacon, grilled cheese, and fizzy fountain Coke he’d had for breakfast hadn’t yet managed to soak up the alcohol permeating the tissues of his digestive tract. He’d made an appointment at the Remedy Room for an IV hangover cure, but he had to get through the flight first. He closed his eyes, clutched the armrest of his first-class seat, and tried to hold on until then.

  The flight attendant brought his drink, and he cracked one eye open just enough to grab the cool glass and bring it to his mouth with trembling fingers.

  As he sipped his drink, he vowed never to drink alcohol again.

  Never again, after he finished this Bloody Mary.

  “Well, hello, you,” a smooth, feminine voice said from across the aisle. “Don’t I recognize you from our flight to Dallas a few weeks ago?”

  He turned his head as slowly as he could manage and opened his eyes just enough to spy the woman through slitted eyelids. It was the perfect-for-him woman from the flight out, sitting in the very same seat as before.

  “I was planning to give you my card so we could get together sometime, but you hyper-spaced out of that plane like you had somewhere to go.” She extended a manicured hand across the aisle. “Hi. I’m Tina Tanner. I’m a headhunter for the Benson Group.”

  “Really?” He’d used that group before to staff new and merging companies. He shook her hand without moving any more than necessary. “I’m glad you reached out…so to speak. I just recommended your company to a new client.”

  He introduced himself, and they exchanged cards. He glanced at hers to remind him of the name she’d just said but he hadn’t paid attention to: Tina Tanner. He repeated the name silently to himself so he wouldn’t forget. Tinatanner Tinatanner.

  They talked for a bit about mutual clients and businesses they’d worked for in the past, but when the conversation lagged, she gave him a sympathetic look. “Rough night?”

  “Nothing wrong with the night besides the fact that I heartily regret it this morning.”

  She laughed, a light trill that made his teeth ache. “Poor you.”

  He lifted his glass, took a sip, and winced as the acidic drink coated his esophagus. �
��Hair of the dog isn’t working today.”

  They talked hangover cures for a minute, but when the plane hit some turbulence and he had to close his eyes to weather the bumps without hurling, she took pity on him and minded her own business for the rest of the flight.

  As they headed down the Jetway toward the terminal, she walked faster to keep up with him. “I apologize in advance for being so bold,” she said, “but I’ve learned to go after what interests me in life, and you interest me.”

  His bloodshot eyes felt grainy when he glanced over at her.

  “If you’re not married or otherwise taken—”

  “Not married, not taken,” he growled. Thanks to Heather, Tinatanner might just get what she was after.

  ***

  Feeling marginally better after the IV hangover cure, Adrian went back to his loft determined to take a restorative nap. Jamie, possessing her usual radar, opened her door just as he passed by. “Hey, neighbor,” she sang. “I can’t see the surface of my dining table any longer because it’s covered with your packages. You want to come get them so I can eat at my table one of these days?”

  He turned and focused a bleary eye on her. “Can it wait until after I take a nap?”

  “Oh, man,” she said. “You look rough.”

  “You should have seen me earlier,” he replied. “If I promise to take you to dinner or something, can my packages hold down your dining table for another hour or two?”

  “Sure.” She cocked her head to one side. “Is there anything I can get you?”

  “Thanks, but I think what I need more than anything is sleep.”

  “Okay, friend.” Jamie smiled, a sunny smile that lit up her face. “Have a nice nap.”

  He nodded and made a sound that was supposed to be an acknowledgment, but it came out sounding more like a growl.

  Inside his loft, he dumped everything by the door, filled a glass with water he didn’t drink, stripped down to his underwear, and climbed into bed. But sleep proved elusive. Shreds of thoughts teased his consciousness, preventing him from letting go. He thought of the emails and texts from Abby that he’d ignored, letting his auto-responder settings do the talking.