The Three Miss Margarets (2 page)

She looked around the room, checking to see if she’d missed a dust ball or a spiderweb when she’d cleaned it. It was spotless. But it was all wrong, because it was empty. If she closed her eyes for just a minute, Maggie could see it the way it should be, with the things that belonged there. There were four kitchen chairs and a wooden table with a red linoleum top in one corner, a sagging bed that served as both a sofa and place to sleep rammed against the wall. Tossed over it, a hand-stitched quilt pieced together from scraps of denim, blue jeans, and overalls that had become too frayed to mend, and backed with old flour sacks; the antiques dealers who descended on Charles Valley every weekend would pay a fortune for that quilt today. A rag rug—also handmade—protected the precious wood floor, and dominating the center of the back wall was an old Philco cabinet radio purchased secondhand after electricity was installed in the cabin. Those were the things that belonged in this room. She could see it all clear as day, and she could hear the voices laughing. But she mustn’t let herself. Not now. Later would be time enough to escape. Now she had to be clear.

She moved to the window and looked out at Peggy standing next to the car. The poor thing still hadn’t gotten up the nerve to come back in. Well, it was only natural. She was the youngest of the three of them, and she hadn’t had as much time to toughen. Besides, Peggy never had been as strong as she and Li’l Bit were.

Maggie was feeling very strong tonight. She was a little light-headed, and her heart was fluttering. But given the fact that it had been broken, it was doing well to beat at all.

She pulled away from the window and looked back at the bedroom. It wasn’t empty. It was fully equipped.

When she first joined the Roman Catholic Church it was the Agnus Dei that attracted her, a mantra of forgiveness that seemed to her to be the heart of her new faith. The priests said it in Latin then, the majesty of the language giving it a power that was reassuring in those years when she had been so young and needy. The words floated through her mind now.

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.

“Lamb of God, You take away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us.”

But would He? Or had they finally gone too far? The fluttering in her chest pushed up to her throat; the light-headedness became a roaring in her ears. Palpitations, she diagnosed, good doctor that she was. A reduction of stress was what she would prescribe. Her mind made a frantic dash for safety, away from this empty room back to the time when it had been the center of a home. Back to the time when two young girls rolled back the rag rug and danced the Charleston on the wood floor.

That was when it had all begun for her. That was the time that had made her different. Because she and Peggy and Li’l Bit were all different. That was why they had been able to do what they had done. And it was why, after so many years, they were able to do what they were going to do now. Maggie sighed and closed her eyes. It had all come full circle, and it was right to have it happen here in this cabin, where they had made decisions and changed lives. For the better, she prayed.
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.

And now the circle was complete. Except for the one loose end they’d never been able to fix. Except for the girl.

“Maggie?” Peggy’s gentle voice yanked Maggie back from her thoughts. She blinked and saw Li’l Bit and Peggy standing in the doorway of the cabin. Peggy was looking like she’d love to run. Behind her, Li’l Bit was trying to be stoic and succeeding except for her eyes.

“Are you okay, Maggie?” Peggy asked.

She nodded. Of course she was. Now that they were together she was fine. “I was just thinking,” she said.

Chapter Two

T
HE NIGHTLY SHIFT OF GEARS
at the Sportsman’s Grill was starting. The family-dinner crowd was going home to their regular dose of domestic boredom or bliss, and the serious drinkers were moving to the bar. Denny and his band were setting up to start playing. And Laurel Selene was nicely, though not excessively, drunk.

She hadn’t planned it that way. She’d gone home after work, decided she was too tired to rustle up anything for herself, and gone out to grab a quick bite—a burger and fries and one beer. But just when she was about to order a cup of after-dinner coffee, Ed had walked in. Sheriff Ed Hood, her ex-lover: he of the glinting eyes, the slow-moving smile, and the still admirable butt of a high school jock who had not yet totally gone to seed. Also he of the fourteen-year marriage to Cathy Sue, mother of his sons, who were the reason why he couldn’t ever make an honest woman—his words, not hers—of Laurel. So he had dumped her six weeks ago, even though he loved her dearly and would rather cut off his right hand than hurt her.

Which, if she was honest about it, he really hadn’t. The main reason she had stayed with him for six years, besides the semi-tight butt, was the fact that Cathy Sue had her pink acrylic claws in him for life. The thought of Ed suddenly divorced and available was enough to make Laurel break out in hives. Let Cathy Sue fetch his Saturday-afternoon beers and raise his gargantuan sons while holding down a full-time job running her gift shop and smiling gamely throughout it all. At least when Laurel got him for long lunches at the Breezy Pines Motel, he brought the sandwiches.

So it wasn’t the fact that Ed had come into the Sportsman’s Grill with Cathy Sue and the kids that set her off. Laurel had been watching that pretty picture for years and figuring that there but for the grace of God went she. It wasn’t the way he delicately put his arm around his wife and guided her into the booth like she was made of glass. It wasn’t the way he smiled his magic smile at Cathy Sue or the sparkle in her eyes, even after all these years, when she smiled back. Ed would use that smile on anything female that moved, and Cathy Sue had been sparkling publicly since the days when she was head cheerleader for Charles Valley High.

No, what made Laurel cancel the coffee and go for another Bud was the wink he sent her over his wife’s shoulder as Cathy Sue checked her lip gloss in her little hand mirror. It said he figured he could get Laurel back anytime he wanted. And given the way she’d messed up her life, plus the slim pickings testosterone-wise in Charles Valley, he was right. It depressed the shit out of her.

So she had a second beer at the bar, which soon became a third, and by the time the Husband of the Year had called for his check she was working up to a half dozen, and little bubbles of pissed-off were rising inside her like yeast working its way through bread dough. Soon she was gonna have a big explosion of ugly, as her ma used to say. And Christ, if she was thinking of Sara Jayne she really was in trouble.

Mitch, the college kid who tended bar on weekends, broke into her internal riff. “Who the hell is that?” He did a little nodding thing with his chin that indicated something behind her. She turned and focused, after a second, on the front door. A stranger had entered. A man in his late forties was her guess. He was obviously out of his element, but he didn’t seem bothered by it. He scanned the room calmly, then headed for the bar.

Strangers were not a novelty in Charles Valley. The town was home to a world-famous botanical garden called, naturally enough, Garrison Gardens. It boasted, in addition to the Garrison Center for Horticultural Research, a thirty-thousand-acre forest called the Garrison Nature Preserve. Over the years the Garrison nurseries had developed over forty new hybrids of azaleas. For this and other achievements it had received a variety of awards from university agricultural departments and environmental groups that covered two walls of the Garrison Gardens Visitors Center.

On a less exalted and more lucrative note, Garrison Gardens also offered its guests the Garrison Golf Course, Garrison Lake for swimming and boating, the Garrison Country Store, the Garrison Patio Restaurant, the Garrison Recreational Vehicle Campground, weekly rental units in the Garrison Chateaux, and a sprawling hotel built out of heart-pine logs called the Garrison Lodge. The entire enterprise was known to the locals simply as “the resort.” Attaching themselves to the resort and feeding off its leavings like pilot fish surrounding a great white shark were an army of gift shops, art galleries, antiques marts, crafts stores, restaurants, bed-and-breakfasts, and motels, which the trustees of Garrison Gardens allowed to stay in existence as long as they did not offer serious competition to the mother operation.

So Laurel and Mitch were used to visitors in sherbet-colored leisure wear wandering around their town asking stupid questions. Strangers were accepted by the locals as a necessary evil, to be smiled at during peak months, courted during down months, and silently cursed when the roads were clogged with traffic during azalea season.

But this man was not the usual resort visitor. For starters, he had wandered off the reservation. The Sportsman’s Grill was strictly a hangout for locals. The beer was American, the only water served came from the tap, and there was no low-fat vegetarian entrée. Resort guests usually took one look at the menu and ran.

Then there was the matter of the stranger’s clothes. The golfers, hikers, and wildlife aficionados who came to the resort prided themselves on their casual vacation attire. Shorts and rubber flip-flops appeared regularly in the four-star Patio Restaurant at the Lodge. But the mystery man was wearing a jacket, a long-sleeved shirt, and the kind of soft leather loafers that appeared on the pages of men’s magazines.

“Sign on the door says dinner’s from six to nine. Is it too late for me to get something to eat?” he asked, in the accent all America knew from television. Mitch shot Laurel a look. They had themselves an honest-to-God New York City boy.

“Waal, Ah thank we got some frahs ’n’ wangs left, yew wunt summun to looknsee?” Mitch slurred his words, slow and dumb, the way they all did when talking to Yankees, so as not to disappoint them. The man smiled. Not a slow heart-melting smile, it was quick and knowing, as if somehow he could tell Mitch had a four-point grade average and the redneck routine was a crock.

“Sounds good,” he said. “And I’ll have a Johnnie Walker Red.” Mitch sent a waitress off for the wings while he got the drink, and the New Yorker calmly continued to survey his surroundings. Through her mist Laurel eyed him. He had the wiry build of a jogger, which was not a good sign. It could mean he was one of the tribe of lunatics who puffed along the side of Highway 22 breathing in truck fumes every Sunday morning. On the other hand, he didn’t have one of those fake tans some of them got in their fancy gyms. His face was on the bony side, with strong features, a nose that was a little too large to let him be really handsome, and a full mouth. His hair, which was mostly gray, was cut short enough to be either practical or fashionable. His eyes were the most compelling thing about him. Deep-set, under dark lashes, they were a pale blue-gray, like the eyes of a dog that has wolf blood in it. She wondered what he’d be like in bed, which didn’t mean anything; she wondered what every man would be like in bed. Although, when she had enough beer on board she was more likely to try to find out. She was getting to the point of no return now, so this would be a fine time to pay her bill and get her butt out of here. Except that Ed was heading out the door with his family. And as he went he frowned at her, in a way that said he had caught her checking out the stranger and was not amused. That was more than enough reason to have another beer and hang around. She ordered it.

Mitch set a huge platter of wings in front of Wolf Eyes, who looked a little dismayed at the pile, but gamely started to eat. Laurel checked herself out in the mirror over the bar. She was wearing her standard Friday-night eating-out ensemble, a scoop-neck T-shirt tucked into jeans, with a wide belt, and her red cowboy boots. It was a look that suited her; it showed off her small waist, good boobs, and long legs. She liked her body, although she never did anything to keep it in shape, so someday it would probably go lumpy and soft like her ma’s had. But for now it was still good enough to get looks when she walked into a room. She might have gotten more if she’d been willing to fool around with makeup and hot rollers, but she didn’t have the patience. She usually pulled her red hair back with a rubber band, although she had been known to use a barrette if she was feeling the need to be dressy. Her face was composed mostly of circles: round cheeks, round mouth, round brown eyes, and a rounded nose. It was an old-fashioned country face, the kind people never could quite remember. Which was okay. She had ways of being memorable when she wanted to be.

Wolf Eyes had pushed his food away. The grease factor in the Grill’s cuisine quickly separated the men from the boys. Laurel watched him. He had good hands, and that full mouth had a firmness that would be real fine for kissing. But she needed him to turn around and take notice of her so she could gauge what was going on in those pale eyes.

As if on cue, he did. The look he gave her was steady, and he didn’t duck when she returned it. A few seconds passed, or maybe it was a year or two, it was hard to say. And then there it was, that little jolt of electricity that went through her when she knew a man was on the loose and he knew she was and possibility was suddenly in the air. The night was definitely looking up. On the other hand, it was also early. She was sober enough that a voice inside her head was saying that proving a point to Ed might not be worth whatever else she’d be getting herself into. But there was that mouth. And that jolt. She picked up her beer and headed to where Denny and the boys were playing. She could feel the New Yorker’s pale eyes following her as she went.

Mitch had turned out the lights over the restaurant tables so the band was in the only bright spot in the room. She stood on the edge of the pool of light and hummed along for a couple of moments as they wandered through a popular anthem to love gone wrong.

“Hey, Denny, you trying to put these good folks to sleep?” She raised her voice so it cut over the music. Denny rocked in time to his own guitar and asked mildly, “You got a problem, girl?” The regulars in the room started perking up. Laurel ragging on Denny was a favorite Friday night routine.

“Yeah, it’s you and this crossover shit. You forget how to play God’s music?” There was a pause; then Denny swung out of Garth Brooks’s latest and pulled the band into Hank Williams’s old foot-stomping celebration of party time on the bayou. Laurel stayed out of the light and began to sing in the husky alto that was her next best feature, right after her boobs and legs. Then Denny eased over to her and she eased over to him, and finally they were sharing the mike.

“Jambalaya, crawfish pie, filé gumbo.” She sassed out the words as Denny’s guitar did a good imitation of fiddle riffs, and Ricky on the drums set up the beat of an old-time Cajun two-step. “Son of a gun, we’ll have big fun on the bayou.” Denny’s hoarse tenor came in on the harmony under her, driving her and carrying her; then she took the top over his melody and drove him, and Lord, it was like really good sex. The crowd was feeling the heat, a couple started dancing, and the New Yorker was watching her in the darkness.

Denny went into bridge of the song and she quit singing to give the band some space to stretch out. Now she was dancing, her feet and hips moving inside the beat and on top of it. She was drinking and dancing and Wolf Eyes was watching and they were gonna have big fun, son of a gun, and then she felt the wetness as she accidentally dumped her whole damn mug of beer down her front. The cold shocked her stock-still, and she looked down at the sopping T-shirt plastered to her breasts. She had started to step out of the light when something came flying at her from the darkness and landed at her feet. It was Wolf Eyes’s pricey sports jacket. She looked out and saw he had moved to the front of the crowd and was standing in front of her in his shirtsleeves wearing a shit-eating grin. So without taking her eyes off him she began to peel off the wet T-shirt. He stopped grinning and started watching hard. She didn’t know how far she would have gone, but then there were whistles from the crowd and Ricky started doing a stripper roll on the rim of the drum, so of course she had to make a joke out of it. She did a few bumps and grinds, which got her a round of applause. Denny pulled himself back from whatever planet it was that music took him and she heard rather than saw him pick up the jacket from the floor just in case she was drunker than he thought she was and he had to throw it around her fast. Wolf Eyes kept on watching, daring her, as she finally pulled off her shirt and tossed it into the crowd, and Denny slid the jacket on her before half the people in the place realized they were out of luck because she was wearing a bra that night. It was just her little black lace half bra, to be sure, but it wasn’t what a certain element had been hoping for. Catcalls and boos and more laughter from the crowd as somebody rushed up to hand her another beer, and Denny started to play again, and as if nothing had happened she picked up singing where she’d left off.

After that, things got kind of blurry. With the band behind them, she and Denny sang all the good old songs they’d learned from listening to records with his gran when they were kids. They went from Hank Williams to Loretta Lynn to Tanya Tucker to Mother Maybelle Carter and Johnny Cash. Then Mitch left, the band packed up and split, and the crowd thinned out till only the hard-core Friday night regulars were left. Wolf Eyes hung in, still watching her. She and Denny were alone on the stage. Denny handed her a guitar and started playing soft and sweet “Just a Closer Walk with Thee.” He was singing and murmuring the key changes so she could chord with him. She found the harmony and everyone joined in on the chorus. Then the whole room sang “Amazing Grace” and “I Saw the Light” and “How Great Thou Art,” with a few hitting the high note on
art
and the rest cutting out like they did in church on Sunday. Even Wolf Eyes tried to sing along, going lah-lah-lah when he didn’t know the words, which was most of the time. And she knew tomorrow it would be all over town that she’d been singing hymns in the Sportsman’s Grill, drunk as a skunk, with her titties hanging out of some strange man’s jacket. But at that moment it was worth it to be flying so high and feeling so good.