Twice Shy

MAYBELL’S COFFEE SHOP AU has a musty odor to it, and there are a few trash bags building up along the wall.

“What’s going on in here?” Jack asks, waltzing over.

“I’m renovating.”

He nods, skimming the café. “Looks bigger.”

“I let out the seams of the walls to give us a few extra feet. I’m thinking about adding a hotel to the café. What do you think?”

“I think that’s the best idea I’ve ever heard in my entire life.” He brushes a strand of hair out of my face. “But I’m not surprised. Your ideas consistently amaze me.” His voice drops an octave. “So when are you going to let me take you to Venice on my private jet, you beautiful genius?”

I sigh. For whatever reason, Jack just isn’t doing it for me today. I’m finding his presence grating. “Rain check?” I propose, and his hopeful smile crumbles. He’s devastated, of course. Jack’s been chasing me for months.

The red light on the rotary phone flashes: IRL Calling.

“Anyway, life’s pretty hectic right now,” I tell him, swiveling to check on the batch of apple fritters in the oven. “Let’s try this again another—” Oh, that stupid red light won’t stop flashing.

I send the call to voicemail. “Maybell!” an aggravated voice blares through the speakers.

“Raghh, I was just about to leave, anyway! Give me a minute to wrap this up—goddamn it!” I’ve burned my apple fritters. Here! In my magical coffee shop where nothing ever burns! I whirl again and wipe away the café with a swish of my hand. Wesley’s knocking on my bedroom door.

“Are you in there?” he asks. Rudely.

I bolt out of bed, too fast, giving myself fuzzy brain static. Every time I’m interrupted mid-daydream, it’s an embarrassing reminder that I’ve once again lost touch with reality. I become irritable. “What?” I yell back.

“Sorry to bother you.” His tone is testy. If I ever need a rather large stick, I’ll know exactly where to find one. “The dumpster guys are going to be here in thirty minutes to pick up their containers, so we have to make sure we’ve got the house cleared out as much as possible.”

“I’ve got my half cleared.”

“Are you sure? It looks like there’s plenty of trash left.”

I open the door. Wesley backs up two steps. “That’s not trash,” I reply nicely. “It’s all stuff I can keep or donate.”

“That reddish-purple sofa’s seen better days. I mean, there are springs coming out and . . .” He trails off as his gaze zeroes in on my chest. Or not my chest, but my necklace. My blood can’t tell the difference and rises to the surface, splotching the area in question.

I’m wearing Violet’s pendant, which I found under my bed along with a dust bunny and a colored pencil. It’s stamped with the number 51 to commemorate either Violet’s fifty-first birthday or her fifty-first wedding anniversary, and I rummaged up a chain for it so that I can keep something precious of Violet’s close to my heart.

I watch the muscles in Wesley’s face go lax, the raw grief he exposes for only a second before sending it back into hiding.

“Anyway.” He clears his throat. “Thirty minutes.” His eyes drag down my outfit. “Not too late to add more to the dumpster.”

Message received, and unheeded. I’m wearing gems from my hoard haul: cowboy boots, a turquoise bolo tie, a rhinestone peasant top, and gold culottes. I can’t imagine wasting all these interesting statement pieces. Everything I’ve ever heard about fashion sense is wrong. Less isn’t more; more is more. “What?” I say sweetly, adding a sun hat with cherries and a veil to my ensemble. “I told you these clothes were still useful. And you said nobody would ever wear them. Pah!”

He winces. “It hurts to look at you.”

“You made me burn my apple fritters, so we’re even.”

“When did I do that?” He perks up, sniffing the air. “You made apple fritters?”

“Here.” I hand him the hat. He eyes it like I’m offering a dead skunk, not taking it from my hands. I try to put it on his head, but he’s too tall. I play a game of horseshoes, which one of us finds very amusing.

It lands on his head after seven tries. “Need to get a picture of this.” I dig out my phone.

“Another one for the collection?” He isn’t being mean, I think, but he does take the hat off and pushes my phone away. “I don’t like having my picture taken.”

“Why not?”

“Just don’t.”

“Are you in witness protection?”

He shakes his head, walking away. It’s been less than three minutes and he’s already done with me. “Why is that where your head goes?”

I follow him to the house, trying to catch up but never quite able to match his pace. It’s like he’s trying to escape or something. All the more evidence that he’s in witness protection.

I pounce on him in the kitchen, which is starting to resemble a kitchen again. Wesley’s only half-hidden by boxes and storage tubs, 80 percent of which are filled with plastic ladles and spatulas. I don’t have the heart to get rid of good ladles and spatulas. Or the salmon dish towels, which are a little bit moth-eaten but could still be useful if I ever need to clean grease off the bottom of my car. And a few broken cups, which I can give a second life to with a craft project of some sort. I’ll get into the world of mosaic-making.

“What’s that?” I poke at his thermos of sweet tea.

“Poison,” he mutters. “So don’t drink it.”

“I’m not going to drink your tea. Imagine that: me putting my mouth on somebody else’s thermos.” I glance at the lid and imagine it. “Chill out.”

“If you knew it was tea, why’d you ask?” He turns to lean against the counter. The window above the sink is right behind him, transforming whatever’s written on his face into an indecipherable silhouette.

“There’s nobody else around here to talk to. I don’t know how you can be so quiet all the time, unless you’re arguing. You’re the most argumentative and the least talkative roommate ever.”

He doesn’t reply, face tilting up. I think he’s underlining my point. And surveying me, it feels. My skin goes hot and itchy.

I don’t like loaded silences. When someone is quiet I tend to assume they’re thinking unpleasant things about me, so I have to stem that flow by distracting them with conversation. Conversation proving I am an all-around great person and definite friendship material. “I don’t know anything about you, really,” I ramble. “Which is weird, don’t you think? If we’re going to be living together for . . .” I haven’t considered how long we might be living together. If neither of us ever wants to give up Falling Stars, we could be puttering around the estate together as geezers. He’s already grumpy as a young man—I can’t imagine what kind of sunshine his nineties have in store for us.

Still no reply.

“Silent treatment again?” I shift into a defensive pose, arms crossed. “Very mature.” I think he knows that lounging in front of the window turns his face to shadow, all the light hitting me and lighting me up instead. Vulnerability and uncertainty creep in.

“You should see what your face looks like,” he muses after a spell. His voice sounds different. Smokier. The volume hasn’t changed but the words register in my ears as coming from point-blank range; we’re not close at all and yet we could be standing in a tight closet, his mouth right above my ear. A shiver rolls down my spine. I hate to think what my face looks like now.

I have no response to this, so I stomp off. I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure I hear a dark laugh curling after me.

I’M STARVED FOR HUMAN attention and Wesley’s the opposite of a warm friend, so I call my mother. When she doesn’t answer, I find Ruth’s phone number on Violet’s calendar, which still clings to the fridge in the cabin. The box for April twenty-eighth is scrawled with unsteady writing that unintentionally carries into the twenty-ninth: Dr. Porter 1:45.

I wonder if anyone’s canceled Violet’s appointment with Dr. Porter. It’s unnerving to think about her standing here marking the calendar with April plans that will never come to fruition.

“Hi, this is Maybell,” I practice while the phone’s still ringing. “I’m calling to check in!” I don’t know why I’d check in with the home health aide of my dead aunt, or if she’d care, but it’s too late now.

She doesn’t pick up. I’m both relieved and disappointed.

I poke around drawers and cabinets in the cabin. Fold my laundry. Tweak the arrangement of hoard baubles on a shelf in my room. It was ludicrous of Wesley to think we should throw out the snow globes that lost their water—they look like magic crystal balls now.

I pick up an old note I brought with me when I moved here: it’s from Violet, one of her rare responses to my holiday cards. I’m so happy to hear from you! I hope you enjoy your holidays and are doing well. Love, Violet. This note proves I wasn’t a total letdown. She still loved me. Or maybe she was just saying that . . . maybe she was just being nice . . . except she left me the house, so she probably did love me . . . except she left it to Wesley, too . . .

I’m still carrying the note around, lost in my daydreams, when Wesley’s voice blooms unexpectedly over my shoulder and I scream. “Aghhh!”

He jolts back. “Jesus.”

“Stop sneaking up on me! For the love of god!”

“I’m not! I’ve been standing here for like five minutes. How did you not hear the microwave beeping?”

I’m in the kitchen, evidently. Wesley’s eating leftover DiGiorno, shoveling it into his mouth while it’s still steaming.

“Oh.”

He jerks his head at my note. “All I was saying was that I wrote that.”

“You what?” I flip the note over, as if there might be a second one on the back.

“I wrote that on Violet’s behalf. I remember assuming it was for one of Violet’s old-lady friends, because of the name Maybell.” He shrugs.

“What’s wrong with the name Maybell?”

“Never said there was anything wrong with it,” he replies lightly. “Anyway, got a couple moving trucks coming to haul furniture and big-ticket items away to auction. Violet was a packrat, but lucky for us she had some good stuff hidden here and there. The jewelry should go for a high price, especially, and if we’re thrifty we might be able to use all that money to fund renovations.”

“I’m going to advertise an estate sale,” I inform him. “For the items that you thought were too inconsequential to take to auction in Maryville.” I try not to come off as accusatory, but it’s a sore subject. I get the feeling Wesley wages an eternal battle between needing to be the wallpaper and having to be the centerpiece. He takes charge in situations even when he doesn’t want to and I do. Let me be the centerpiece! I’d love the opportunity to shine. “There’s so many products still in their boxes, brand-new, that it’s stupid to not try to sell them.”

“Here?” The pizza he’s holding up goes sideways, a mushroom sliding off. “An estate sale here?”

“Yes.” I can’t resist. “Your expression. It’s like if a person could be crispy.”

“Crispy?” He makes a face.

“There’s your other expression. You have two of them. One is crispy and the other is sour milk.” I point, grinning. “Wait. That’s a new one. Mystified.”

It’s like he waves a wand over his face, how rapidly it goes blank. “Your expression is—” he begins, then clams up.

“Go on,” I dare him.

“Never mind.” His cheeks are turning pink. Not mystified, not sour milk, not crispy. One might almost think Wesley Koehler has become embarrassed.

It makes me want to poke the bear. “What were you going to say?”

“Nothing.”

He stomps off, and I laugh. He stomps harder.

It’s all fun and games until he tracks me down after the trash has been hauled away, tossing me rubber gloves and a mop. “Hope you don’t mind getting your hands dirty, miss big-shot event coordinator.”

I’m stretched out lazily in an empty claw-foot bathtub that inexplicably sits in the center of the ballroom, reading the smutty parts of one of Violet’s old Harlequins. He glances at the cover and a muscle in his cheek jumps.

“I’ve been getting my hands dirty since I got here,” I retort dryly. “You aren’t the only one who’s made a few trips to the dumpster, sir.”

But I don’t think I’ve appreciated the irony until now, easing the gloves over my fingers, that I’m being forced into taking up the housekeeper role again. I wish we had the budget to hire a professional cleaning crew, but we’ve got to save money wherever possible and that means fumigating, painting, scrubbing, bleaching, patching, all by ourselves. My gaze darts to the ceiling corners, where Violet might be watching us and, it can only be assumed, laughing wickedly. I am starting to visualize her with horns instead of a halo.

“Don’t mix chemicals. Make sure to keep the windows open while you clean. If you pass out, it’ll take an ambulance half an hour to get here.”

“Thanks, man.” I give him the thumbs-up, but my gloves are too long, so it just looks like I’m holding out my hand at an odd angle. “I’m aware that mixing chemicals is a no-no, but it’s good to know if I pass out you won’t even drive me to the hospital.”

“You’re the one who pointed out I could be saving money on gas,” he replies, leaving me to single-handedly fix up the first floor. It isn’t fair. He’s going to get his floor done so much faster, since he’s got all those muscles to help out. I think his workout regimen involves deadlifting logs.

You know what sucks? Not having the electricity turned on yet. If I could run a vacuum hose along the baseboards it would save my back from having to stoop and scoop debris into a dustpan every five seconds. I think a cat’s been living in here, too, because whenever I work the broom I see little cat hairs floating away from me, refusing to be dustpanned. The walls in the west wing aren’t that bad, but they do bear plenty of scuff marks. If I can rub those off, that’ll save me a paint job.

I run to the bottom of the staircase and scream up: “Have you seen the Magic Erasers?”

At first, I think he’s ignoring me. But then a heavy object clatters between the floors, between the walls. I open the broken dumbwaiter in the foyer to find a chunk of brick that sloughed off the chimney, a piece of paper taped to its front. NO. In aggressive capitals.

“You couldn’t have just yelled that?” I holler up the metal chute. “This required more work than saying no!”

I close the door and a minute later the dumbwaiter rattles again. I pull out a remote control for a toy airplane. The message taped to this one reads: will you bring me the lysol wipes

This man’s unbelievably stingy with his decibels and he’s got to have the best-preserved vocal cords ever. When he’s a hundred years old he’ll be able to sing like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

Grumbling, I grab the wipes from the kitchen, which is operating as our home base for cleaning supplies, and run them up the stairs.

“Down here,” he calls from the end of a hallway on my right, sticking his hand out a door to wave. I don’t make front-door deliveries. I chuck the wipes like a football right as he emerges, which means the package hits him in the neck. “Ow!”

“Sorry.”

“What’d you do that for?”

“I said sorry! Why didn’t you just go get them yourself?”

He frowns and rolls his shoulder, which in my opinion is a little dramatic. I didn’t hit his shoulder. “My legs are tired.”

“So are mine!” They aren’t, truthfully, but my arms and back are, so I want credit.

“You’re not the one going up and down stairs all day.”

“If you let me have a few rooms on this floor for my guests, I’ll be your errand girl,” I offer. “You’ll never have to come downstairs again.”

He tuts. “Not a chance.”

This is when my attention homes in on the pile of used-up Magic Erasers in the room he just vacated. They’re sitting in front of an ornate ivory wardrobe that matches one I’ve got downstairs, its built-in oval mirror reflecting my fury. “You liar.”

Wesley follows my line of sight. “Oh, those Magic Erasers. Sorry. I just used the last one.”

I seize the Lysol wipes from his hands and throw them down the dumbwaiter.

He has the nerve to go, “I didn’t really want them anyway,” at my back as I march off, stomping hard enough to rain more plaster below onto floors I just swept.

THE COMMUNAL MOOD IN Falling Stars spikes in temperature from rankled to downright irate when we decide to work right through lunch and dinner, subsisting on Violet’s expired pretzels and Wesley’s sweet tea, which he doesn’t know he’s sharing.

Night’s falling, but I don’t want to be the first one to give up. I’ve stolen a few peeks and I know he’s got four rooms upstairs totally spotless. But what’s the point of a billion rooms if you aren’t going to hold on to any furniture to put in them? It’s freaky empty up there. Even your thoughts would echo.

“We’ll have to get the electricity turned back on again,” Wesley shares when he finally lumbers downstairs for the last time. I know he’s finished for the day because he’s brought all his trash bags down with him. They reek powerfully of bleach, which knocks me back in time to Around the Mountain and its persistent chlorine smell.

Thank god this day is over. I drop my extendable feather duster, sagging along a wall.

“After the auction and estate sale, I hope we’ll have enough money left over to dig a pool,” I muse aloud.

A choked laugh bursts from Wesley’s throat. “We’ll be lucky if we make enough to cover all the costs for new flooring, new windows, new pipes, new drywall—the only pool you can afford is one of those round plastic kiddie ones from the dollar store.”

“Pessimist.”

“One of us has to be realistic.”

“I get it,” I groan. “You’re Mr. Reality Man and you have no tolerance for good vibes or whimsy, but you know, dude, you’re really starting to bum me out.”

“Mr. Reality Man? What kind of superhero lottery did I lose? And for your limited information, you aren’t the only one who wants this place to succeed in some capacity.” As an animal sanctuary. Which will not, by the way, turn a profit. How am I the impractical one here?

He continues to tally up costs. An electrician. New insulation, which he tells me will save us money on heating and cooling in the long run, which I already knew. Mansplainer. I suggest solar panels and he’s visibly jealous he didn’t think of it first. “Should fix that dumbwaiter,” he mentions. I want to crack a joke using the word dumb but I’m too tired.

“We’ll need to hire a real landscaper,” I say, adding to the list.

“I’m a real landscaper.”

The waist-high grass twenty feet from Falling Stars doubles over in laughter. “Are you, though? The grounds are a mess.”

“It’s an ecosystem.”

Lazy justification for a mess. “When I stayed here,” I reply airily, and he’s heard me begin enough sentences this way that he’s already rolling his eyes, “the yard was immaculate. Neat hedges. Short grass. There were violets and roses and all sorts of beautiful flowers that you could actually see, not covered up by weeds.”

“Those aren’t weeds.” He gestures to the wall, as if I have X-ray vision and can view what lies outside. “That’s Cain’s reedgrass. Smoky Mountain manna grass.”

“Well, it looks awful.”

“Ugh. I can’t—you are just—” He shoves a hand through his hair. At the rate he’s doing that, he’s going to end the week with bald patches.

“What? It does. Don’t you know anything about gardening? You want to get plants that are pleasant to look at. Tulips. Snapdragons. I’ll send you a link.”

“Violet specifically instructed me to grow those plants in large quantities because they’re endangered species, along with Virginia meadowsweet and spreading avens and Blue Ridge catchfly, because conservation is more important than the useless aesthetics of neat hedges. I’ll send you a link.”

“Oh.” I stand tall, but I don’t feel it.

Wesley takes all the height I’ve just given up and adds it to his own, towering over me. “Nature conservation was important to Violet. I don’t know if it was when you stayed here, but she hired me after she heard about the diminishing numbers of Fraser fir and ginseng being poached from the parks. She felt it was her responsibility, with considerable acreage at her disposal, to replenish what humans have destroyed.” He’s getting all worked up over this. “Is it pretty? Not necessarily. Sometimes chaos serves a larger purpose.”

“But you want to raze it, you said. For your pig nursing home.”

“First of all, this is not the first time you’ve mentioned pigs,” he tells me, vehement. “When did I ever say pigs? Not that I’m not going to get pigs, but you keep going back to that one animal—” He waves a hand. “Never mind! I’m not razing all of it, just a few acres, and none of the endangered plants. Some of the property is wild but can be altered without hurting the environment.”

“So . . . some of the property is simply neglected, you mean.”

“You think that’s neglect?” He angles his head, facial muscles clenching, and takes a stride toward me, then another, getting up close in my personal space. Oh, wow. When his eyes flash like that, they don’t remind me of root beer or bronze coins. They’re daggers glinting in starlight. He’s never invaded my personal space before, as if I am an ogre to be shied from, so I must have really touched a nerve. “You have no idea how much work I’ve put into that land. Weeding out invasive species and adding flowers to attract endangered birds. Over a hundred boxes put up for native pollinator bees. There’s a method to the madness.”

I don’t have anything intelligent to say. “Okay, but it still doesn’t look good.”

If I could read auras, I think Wesley’s would be black as the night sky right now. His wild stare fixes on me for a tick too long, which sends my nervous system spiraling; my automatic reaction is to smile, and he definitely takes it the wrong way. He stalks off and doesn’t speak to me for days.