I had a vague memory of being in that big house when I’d been little. I’d thought it was a kind of fairytale castle—lots of rooms and stairs and wide open wood floors, plus the biggest widest porch I’d ever seen. I had a warm recollection of being happy there.
“And you always helped me with the babies. You were a good helper too, since you had two younger sisters and lots of practice with them. You were a big help with Michael here.”
Michael cleared his throat as if this news was somehow embarrassing.
I laughed, trying to imagine the well-built man across from me as a baby. “Really?”
“Oh yes, dear. I wondered back then if the two of you wouldn’t be the end of this silly feud right there. When you were near, Michael was happy and calm—and he was the fussiest of fussy babies, let me tell you.”
“Wonderful,” Michael said under his breath.
“Oh, I loved having the two of you around. So sweet, always laughing together, even though you were so much older, Addison.”
I cringed. Even as a little kid, I was practically a spinster.
My sister appeared at the curb, pulling her car to a stop and then stepping out, one hand adjusting her bouncy brown ponytail. She smiled at me through the window, and a little surge of relief ran through me.
“Here’s Paige,” I said, happy to see my sister coming through the door and eager for a change of subject.
Paige looked between Michael and me with a question written on her face, but she was in doctor mode, so didn’t ask questions except of Mrs. Easter and about the fall. A few minutes later, she had her patched up, had given her a prescription for an anti-inflammatory, and had scheduled her a follow-up appointment for Tuesday.
And just as suddenly as the odd little meeting of old daycare companions had begun, it was over.
“Uh, I guess I’ll see you,” Michael said, standing.
He might have been a Tucker, but he sure was pretty to look at, all muscles and golden-red hair with those deep blue eyes and a tiny cleft in his perfect square chin. But still, he was a Tucker, through and through.
“I won’t expect to see you back in here,” Mom said, coming to stand in front of him, arms crossed.
“Mom,” I hissed, appalled. We could feud without saying rude things, I thought.
“No need to worry, ma’am. My uncle would kill me if he knew I’d set foot in here,” Michael assured her, his face hardening. “Glad to see you got the place put back in order though.”
“If you’re referring to that stunt your cousins pulled, you should know it took two days to get all the furniture off the ceiling and the plaster repairs up there cost a fortune,” Mom’s voice had turned to ice.
Paige pressed her lips together hard, trying not to laugh. I hadn’t seen it in person, but Paige had sent me photos of the cafe turned literally upside down. I still didn’t know how the Tuckers had managed to fasten all the furniture to the ceiling like that. It was a feat. If it hadn’t been so costly to repair, it would have been pretty funny.
“Well, it looks all right now. I’ll see you around,” Michael said, clearly enjoying Mom’s distress. Jerk.
“Better not,” I said, not wanting my mother to have a heart attack here on the spot.
“A lot of silliness,” Mrs. Easter chimed in. “And time for it to end.”
Mom let out a little “hmph,” spun on her heel, and returned to her spot behind the counter.
The feud had gone on so long, I doubted it was ever going to end. But as I watched Michael head out the door and break back into a jog, a little part of me wanted it to.
3
Employee of the Month
Michael
“Can you stack that feed?” I called back to Virgil, my cousin—who also happened to be my employee.
“Stack it yourself, asshole.” Virgil was not winning employee of the month this month. Or this century. He and his brother Emmett were bent over the register counter, heads together, with a pad of paper between them and an aura of no-fucking-good wafting off them like thick morning fog.
I dropped a heavy hand on Virgil’s shoulder, pulling him to face me. I had at least thirty pounds on the guy, who was barely twenty-one, and his brother was a year older and about three inches shorter. “Listen up, Virge. I’m not ‘asshole’ around here. I’m the boss, and if you want to keep pulling the deposit that’s keeping you in Half-Cat Whiskey and cheap beer, you’d do well to remember that.”
Virgil didn’t look the least bit chastised.
“Same goes for you, Emmett.”
His brother had the intelligence to nod his head, as if he agreed with me.
I would have liked to get some actual employees in here, but my father made some kind of deal with his brother Victor before he died, and these guys had been handed down to me along with ownership of the store. There’d been a time when I’d had plans for this place, when I could envision it becoming something I was excited about running, owning. But that was when I thought I’d be going to college and coming back for it, maybe getting a few years of pro soccer under my belt and my wild dreams out of my system.
“What the hell are you two cackling about over here anyway?” I asked, already regretting the question as a wicked smile overtook Virgil’s face.
“Remember the moose?”
Simple question, really. And for most people, a question like this would trigger an obvious memory, if they did, in fact, have a moose-related memory. Sadly, I had about thirteen moose-related memories, and none of them were good.
“Yes,” I said, not wanting to be drawn too far into a conversation that generally ended with me agreeing to put the bucket on the heavy-duty tractor on my back lot and close my eyes to whatever happened next.
“This time, we’re gonna set him inside the Muffin Tin.” Virgil’s voice got high and squeaky with excitement, and Emmett nodded his agreement, rubbing his hands together. Emmett did a lot of nodding, and not a lot of speaking. That was probably thanks to the lisp he’d always had, for which he’d been relentlessly teased as a kid. Now he let Virgil do all the talking, which was a shame, because Virgil’s brain usually caught up to his mouth about three days later.
“I don’t think so,” I said, crossing my arms and pulling myself to my full height.
The moose sat in Verda Tanner’s garden most of the time. It was a monstrous bronze thing, cast solid and just about to scale, so all told, it weighed somewhere around a ton. It was a bit of an oversized lawn ornament, most of the town agreed, but Verda’s late sculptor husband had cast the thing during his “bronze age” and she loved it. I’d overheard her talk about it once (after the moose had been relocated to sit beneath the huge tree in the town square wearing a shirt that read: Tanners. They’re not smart, but at least they’re ugly. She’d cried and moaned, and even flung her arms around the moose and talked to it as if it was her dead husband. It kind of reminded me of an old episode of Sanford & Sons I’d seen once, where the old man played by Redd Foxx would look to the heavens and talk to his dead wife. I felt a little guilty, thinking about it.
Point was, the woman loved the moose, and moving it around town was a huge hassle. And thinking about the feud now made me think of Addison Tanner, and her pretty brown hair and sad dark eyes. She had a bit of a smart mouth, maybe, but I didn’t feel any animosity toward her. In fact the idea of hurting her—even a little—made my own heart ache a bit for no explicable reason. It just seemed like maybe she’d been hurt already. And moose-related antics might hurt her more—even if not directly. Verda was her aunt, after all.
“C’mon, Mike,” Virgil pleaded. “I’ll move all the feed you want if you let us borrow the tractor tonight.”
“No.” I sighed as a beat-up blue Camry pulled into the lot out front. “And you’ll move all the feed right now because I’m paying you to do it.”
Virgil and Emmett exchanged a look, but they headed off to the back of the store together, hopefully to start hauling feed. But probably not.
&n
bsp; I turned to the front as the bell over the door rang out, and forced a smile for my ex-wife, who looked upset and frazzled as ever, Daniel trailing behind her. Fridays were kid-trade days. I had Dan every other week, Friday to Friday.
“Hey, Shell,” I said, trying to make my voice light and happy. She’d broken down in tears a few times before when I hadn’t sounded happy enough to see her.
“Oh, God, Mike,” she started, her voice already a wail as she dropped her keys on my counter and leaned heavily on her forearms, bowing her head. “It’s been such a day.”
I smiled over her head at Daniel, who looked pretty unfazed by “the day,” and when he stepped behind the counter, I pulled him into a bear hug. “Missed you, little man,” I told him as something inside me snapped closed. I felt loose and incomplete when he wasn’t around. It was always a relief to have him back. “Where’s your stuff?” I glanced around for his pack, his schoolwork.
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” Shelly wailed. She lifted her head, and I saw tears standing in the eyes I’d once thought could change the world. I knew now those bright blue eyes only had the power to change my life, and not necessarily for the better. She was still pretty, and if you’d put her in a cheerleader uniform, she’d look a lot like the girl I couldn’t quit thinking about at sixteen. But now? Now I’d take one look and realize none of that—the blond hair and high voice—mattered to me anymore. I’d been young and impulsive back then, and I hoped I was wiser now.
I didn’t need bright blue eyes and a pretty little rosebud mouth.
I didn’t need the tight little body wrapped in a low-cut shirt or a cheerleader’s top.
I needed to focus on being a responsible father to my son. And that was all I needed. All other paths led to ruin. I’d already proven that.
“We were running so late, and Daniel was dragging his feet, like always, playing that stupid game on the computer and everything, and I’m already late for work now.” Shelly’s litany of excuses wasn’t new.
“We can swing by your place on our way home and grab his stuff, okay?”
She huffed. “You can’t just walk into my house whenever you want, Mike.”
Daniel sidled away, disappearing between a couple aisles, undoubtedly sensing a fight coming on. “I don’t want to go to your house, Shell,” I told her in as calm a voice as I could muster. “But Daniel needs his homework so he’s prepared on Monday. And I can grab his clothes and wash them so you don’t have to.” It was couched in the form of a generous offer, but the truth was that Shelly just never bothered to wash Daniel’s clothes, and half the time I got him back as some disheveled version of the stinky kid at school.
Shelly’s priorities weren’t quite aligned with my own, as it turned out.
“You don’t have to,” she said, dropping my gaze. “The maid should be coming tomorrow.”
Shelly did not have a maid. She had very little in the way of resources, and she had lost her last two jobs, and was now working at The Shack as a waitress. I could do a little laundry if it made my son’s life better. And hers.
We were not a good couple in the long run. But that didn’t mean I wanted to see her suffering. It was just hard not to resent her a little when I felt like my son wasn’t being taken care of properly. But Daniel loved his mom, and none of her sins were egregious—just a little lazy. It wasn’t perfect, but it worked.
“Okay, well, we’ll just grab his stuff then.”
“I’m late for work,” she said, looking relieved. “Bye Dan!” she called to the store at large.
“Bye Mom,” came Dan’s voice from the back of the store.
I was just about to head back and see how he was doing when the store phone rang.
“Tucker Feed and Farm,” I answered automatically. I’d been delivering that greeting since I was twelve.
“Ah, yes, hello. I’m looking for Michael Tucker?”
“Well then, it’s your lucky day. Speaking.”
“Sir, my name is Augustus Anders. I’m an attorney here in Singletree. I represent Filene Easter.”
Oh shit. What was this? Was the old lady suing me for helping her out of the street? My stomach soured. This had the Tanner stink on it.
“Go on,” I said, managing to sound civil.
“Would you possibly be able to come to my office this afternoon, sir? Maybe around five?”
“Can you tell me what this is about?”
“Mrs. Easter passed away two days ago,” he said, and my mind stopped spinning, frozen suddenly with an image of the sweet old face I’d looked into just a few days before. “And she set up a trust before she died. You are one of the co-trustees.”
“Um.” That made no sense at all. My mind was spinning. A trust? What?
“By law, it will be thirty days before the will can be read in full, but the trust is already established and passes directly to the trustees upon the death of the administrator.”
“Um.” I was a fount of intelligent questions. And my heart had begun to ache a little—I hadn’t known Mrs. Easter well, but I’d seen her just a few days ago, and she’d been spry and bright in her combat boots and poufy white hair. I sighed, feeling suddenly sad and exhausted. “Okay.”
“So you’ll come?”
I’d already forgotten his original question. “Come?”
“To my office. Today? At five?”
“Oh. Sure, okay. Can you text me the address?” I gave him my cell phone number and hung up, staring out the window for a long moment after. What in the world would Filene Easter have put into a trust for me? It made no sense at all.
4
Tuckers Smell
Addison
“I cannot bake another cookie,” I moaned, wiping my hands on my jeans and sinking into the single hard chair Mom kept in the kitchen at The Muffin Tin. “I don’t know how you do this all day every day.”
Mom smiled at me and turned back to the batter she was beating in the standing mixer. “It’s my calling,” she said, and I knew she was right. Baking and running The Tin made my mother happy, and I was glad. She deserved to be happy.
The atmosphere in the back had improved slightly—we’d learned that morning that Filene Easter had died in her sleep a few days ago, and for the first part of the day, it was hard to believe. I’d just seen her—she’d sat in Mom’s shop and drank tea!
“She was very old,” Mom had said, consoling us both as we tried not to cry over the loss of one of the town’s most entertaining matriarchs. Mom took it harder than I did—Mrs. Easter came into the Tin often. But I’d just seen her, had just talked with her. Her and Michael Tucker. For some reason, that day had lodged in my mind in a strange way, as if it held some kind of meaning I didn’t understand.
But most of my life lately seemed to be just a collection of unfortunate events, none of them meant anything, I guessed. And Mom was right, Mrs. Easter was very old. We’d been told that she died peacefully in her sleep, and that her housekeeper had found her in bed the following morning—that she was even smiling.
It made me glad to hear that she’d died happy. Maybe she’d been in the midst of a wonderful dream. I hoped so.
My little sister Amberlynn turned from a bowl of cookie dough. She was a high school teacher, but Fridays were often early release days, and today she’d had time to come to the cafe after her meetings. “You should have seen Mom the week they had to close the place to get all the furniture off the ceiling. Mom not baking is like having a rabid Tasmanian Devil around.”
“Oh, you,” Mom said, swatting at my sister’s shoulder.
“Well, I wish I had your energy,” I said. “Maybe I could figure out what the hell I’m supposed to do with my life.”
Mom stopped bustling around and looked at me, undoubtedly wondering if I was finally going to tell her what had brought me home, broken and crying at thirty-five, when she’d believed I had it all.
I did have it all. Or at least I thought I did.
The kick-ass career in f
inance.
The swanky co-op apartment overlooking the Hudson.
The hot musician boyfriend. (Not the rock star kind, if you’re wondering. Luke was a violinist.)
An eight-year relationship that seemed destined for permanence.
It’s crazy how one person in a relationship can believe it’s one thing while the other can see something completely different.
Because clearly, one person was an idiot. And the other person was busy planning a whole separate life.
Mom sighed after waiting a few minutes for me to spill, and said, “It will all work out, Addie. You’re a strong, smart girl.” And then she bustled right back out to the front counter, leaving the silver kitchen door swinging in her wake.
“Are you ever going to tell us what happened?” Amberlynn asked.
“Maybe not,” I said. “I just don’t want to even hear myself saying it all—I know it’s real. I know it’s over. But I just feel like such a fool about it.”
“Still in the denial phase, then,” my little sister quipped, sliding a tray of cookies into the oven. “Let me guess.” She leaned against one of the work tables, bracing her hands behind her as she looked at me. “So it’s over with you and Luke. And based on your weepy eyes and general ‘poor me’ attitude, I’m guessing he ended it.”
Ouch.
“And . . .” She drew this word out, pulling her lip between her teeth in thought. “I’m guessing you quit your job or something, since you don’t seem in a hurry to get back. Considering you haven’t even visited in three years because of that job, that much is pretty clear.”
Another direct hit.
“So . . .” Whatever she was going to say next was interrupted by the ringing of the shop phone, which she swung around and answered, her voice bright and cheery. “Muffin Tin.”
Falling Into Forever Page 2