Maggie tossed her rose onto Roger’s grave and stepped away as the first shovelful of dirt hit the coffin. She cringed. It made no sense, but somehow, the thud of that dirt made Roger’s death more final. She recalled feeling the same way at A.J.’s funeral too.
Turning, she strode through the headstones with the rest of the mourners as she made her way to Pablo’s car and climbed into the back seat. She’d rode to the cemetery with him and his wife. Despite the fact she’d given her notice yesterday, Pablo had offered her a ride, but she should have known he would understand her decision to leave her position.
Aiden had never arrived at her apartment, never answered her messages, and she’d given up expecting him to do so, but she couldn’t stay here anymore. She’d lived in Boston her entire life; she’d never considered leaving. Now, she couldn’t wait to get away.
She’d anticipated jumping into life and starting to live it with Aiden. Now, she would jump in and start living it without him. She’d travel the country and do things she’d never dreamed of doing. She’d been so determined to have security, she’d never realized she’d put herself in a little box. It was time to get out of that box. When she was done exploring, maybe she’d come back to Boston, but she wasn’t making any long-term plans, at least not for a while. And she wouldn’t look for Aiden anymore.
The idea of never seeing Aiden again caused her to scratch at her skin. She felt torn between her grief for Roger and her burgeoning hatred toward the vampire who had walked into her life and tossed it upside down.
Why had he said those things to her about matehood and being with her forever if it had all been lies? Why had he played such a game with her? Was he somewhere watching her now and taking pleasure in her suffering? Did Roger’s death bring him more joy over her misery?
Those thoughts ran through her mind, but none of them felt right to her. She didn’t think he’d been lying to her or playing with her, but she didn’t know why he hadn’t contacted her or answered her messages.
She didn’t think something had happened to him. A part of her believed she would have known if he’d died. Had he somehow broken his phone too and wasn’t getting her calls and messages?
She’d tried calling him a couple more times, but she’d only received his voice mail. Even if he had broken his phone and never received her texts or calls, he knew where she lived. At least he knew where she lived for now. She would be moving soon. She hadn’t given her notice to Mrs. Mackey yet, but she would soon.
“Are you coming to the bar with us, Maggie?” Pablo inquired.
She lifted her head and blinked when she realized he’d already driven out of the cemetery and was in Brookline. “Ah, yes, yes, of course.”
The idea of sitting alone in her apartment again wasn’t something she could face. She’d been so entrenched in her melancholy she hadn’t taken the time to celebrate Roger’s life, to laugh and drink and reminisce with others about him. She intended to do that today.
Straightening her shoulders, she scratched at her arms as she determined not to let memories of Aiden intrude. Today was about Roger. She’d wasted enough time grieving a relationship that never was.
• • •
Maggie spent the next two weeks packing her things and planning her trip. Every spare minute she had, she devoted to searching for her mother’s real identity. She’d told Aiden the past was best left to the past, and at the time she’d meant it, but that had been then, and now she wanted answers to something. She had no answers for what happened to Aiden, but she had a small chance of finding answers for this.
Never before had she considered learning her mother’s story. She’d assumed, if the police hadn’t been able to uncover her family, she’d never be able to do it. And honestly, she hadn’t wanted to know.
What if knowing made things worse? What if her mother had fled a situation almost as bad as what she’d stumbled into while in Boston? Learning her heritage had always seemed like a pointless waste of time, but it had become the best distraction she had from memories of Aiden.
Inevitably, he would creep in again, and a sense of loss so extreme would fill her that some days she had to force herself out of bed. Going to work didn’t help. It was only a constant reminder Roger was also gone.
Before, she’d thought she would miss working on the ambulance, but she was glad to be done. Yesterday, her coworkers bought her a cake for her last shift, and they took her out last night to celebrate. Next week, the day after she ran the marathon, she would leave Boston. She had too many people counting on her not to participate in the race, but she couldn’t wait for it to be over.
She slid the packing tape over her last box and set the roll on top of it. Glancing around her tiny apartment, she expected to feel a sense of loss, but she felt none. She had no more room in her for more losses.
Most of her things would go to the Salvation Army, and she’d already scheduled for them to come the Saturday before the marathon to pick up those things. She’d have to sleep on an air mattress for a couple of days afterward, but she was all right with that. She’d experienced worse sleeping accommodations in her life.
She could have held off packing everything so soon, but she crammed doing as many things as she could into her every waking minute. She was certain she would sink into a pit of despair if she stopped for even a second. At the very least, she’d scratch at herself like a flea-infested cat if something didn’t occupy her hands.
The scratching thing was getting on her last frayed nerve, but she couldn’t stop it. The second she wasn’t doing something, she found herself unconsciously scratching.
That was why she had to keep moving now. She removed her coat from the hook by the door. With her packing done, she couldn’t put it off anymore; she had to go.
• • •
Once she decided to travel, Maggie cashed in her small retirement plan at work. She’d taken a hit on it, but she’d had no other choice. The two hundred dollars in her savings account wouldn’t take her far out of Boston, especially since she hadn’t owned a car.
With the retirement money, she’d bought herself a decent used car and still had eight thousand left for her trip. She planned to travel the country, see the redwoods, the deserts, the Pacific Ocean, and any other thing that caught her attention. It would be her, Blue, her plants—though she’d given many of them to her neighbor—and the open road.
It didn’t make her feel as happy or free as she’d hoped, but she was looking forward to it.
Maggie pulled her car onto a dirt road. The springs and struts creaked as she eased it over the ruts and icy puddles. All around her, the jagged peaks of the White Mountains rose high into the air. The lonely, stark appearance of the snow caps matched her mood.
After half a mile, she spotted a small white trailer set on a large expanse of open land. Maggie pulled in behind a rusting pickup and parked the car. Her heart raced, and sweat coated her palms as she stared at the trailer.
Yesterday, she’d stumbled across a recent article from a New Hampshire newspaper. The report announced plans for a twenty-fifth high school reunion. With the article was a picture of the celebrating class on the first day of their senior year. Maggie glanced over the eager, teenage faces in the photo and froze when her gaze fell on one of the women.
If she hadn’t known better, she would have sworn she was staring at a photo of herself. The names listed below the teens revealed she was instead looking at a picture of Mindy Shea. Maggie searched the internet for more about Mindy Shea, but there’d been nothing beyond that photo. So, she’d started looking for Sheas in the newspaper’s distribution area and came across a Marsha Shea. She’d uncovered this address for Marsha in Ossipee, New Hampshire.
Shea. It could be her mother’s last name and possibly hers. She could have a last name beyond the Doe given to her at birth.
She probably should have called Marsha before showing up on her doorstep. It would have been the sensible, polite thing to do, but something more than her car had driven her here. If she’d called and been told to stay away, she didn’t know if she would have been able to. She wanted some answers to something in her life, and Marsha may have them.
This may have been the first impulsive thing she’d ever done, and she didn’t care if it blew up in her face. Nothing could be worse than these last couple of weeks. She’d played it safe for more years than she could count, afraid of getting her heart trampled, but playing it safe hadn’t kept her protected from loss. Plus, she’d decided that playing it safe was boring.
“Strap on your helmet. It’s time to start living, Maggie,” she said aloud.
Shutting the car off, she opened the door and climbed out. The crispness of the air robbed her breath from her, and she pulled her coat closer as she walked toward the trailer. Most of the bushes and plants surrounding the sun porch didn’t have leaves, but they were all neatly trimmed.
A fenced-in area blocked off a patch of land to the left of the trailer. Maggie suspected it became a garden in the spring. Behind the garden was a chicken coop, with a dozen or so chickens huddled together for warmth. Surrounded by woods, Maggie couldn’t see any neighbors nearby.
Snow still covered the lawn, but the slate walkway was clear beneath her feet. Maggie pushed her anxiety aside as she climbed the steps to the sunporch and rang the bell beside the storm door. The inner door of the trailer opened, and a woman emerged. The woman took one step before freezing.
“Mindy,” the woman breathed and staggered toward Maggie.
A stab of guilt pierced her. “No, my name is Magdalene. I’m Maggie.”
The woman gawked at her before shaking her head. “You look… like… like… a ghost.” The woman’s eyes continued to survey Maggie as she pushed open the storm door. “Can I help you with something?”
“I… uh… I think I might be your granddaughter.”
Tears spilled down Marsha’s unlined cheeks. Maggie guessed her to be around sixty, yet she barely looked older than forty-five. Her auburn hair had streaks of white running through it, but it remained more red than gray. Unlike Maggie’s eyes, and those of her mother, Marsha’s were the color of the sky, but there were more similarities in their looks than there were differences.
It hit her that her mother might have also chosen to name her Magdalene to continue the M name tradition.
“Looking at you, honey, I think you may be too,” Marsha said, and before Maggie knew what the woman intended, she found herself clasped against a pair of ample breasts as Marsha held her close and sobbed.