Eighteen months later…
Maddie made the morning transfer from her bedroom to the couch. She couldn’t muster enough energy to change, so she stayed in her oversized pajamas. Who cared? She wasn’t going out anyway. She snuggled into the faded comforter with the pink flowers and stared at the television while the morning routine went on around her. It was comforting, that routine, even if she wasn’t part of it. Dad came in wearing his blue uniform with the grease smudges on it even though Mom had washed it a gazillion times. He said he didn’t mind the stains; he was a mechanic and proud of it. Even if he did work for the Schaeffers.
Everything about being back home was comforting. Nothing had changed since she was a kid, except that Mom had turned PTA bake sales into something of a career. By six in the morning she’d already baked and delivered her goodies to local restaurants and stores.
And just like when Maddie was a kid, the clowns watched her. They didn’t jive with the country charm décor (farmhouse clutter, Dad called it), but Mom didn’t care. Clowns were nestled between cow and pig figurines, were sitting on top of the pine cones in a bucket, and were tucked into nearly every basket in sight.
Maddie didn’t mind the rustic furniture or the cast-iron duck she stubbed her toe on regularly. But she hated clowns.
Her sister Colleen walked in the front door, looked at her, and rolled her eyes. Just like she had every single morning for the last few months. She was born mean-looking and hadn’t changed much since then. “Wow, big surprise: Baby’s sitting on the couch, still wearing her PJs, and dirty hair to boot.”
Through the magic of maternal instinct, Mom sailed into the room with the brush and planted herself beside Maddie. “Just like when you were a little girl,” she said, running the brush through Maddie’s hair. Mom’s strawberry curls billowed around her hairband. “You were too sick to do it yourself sometimes, but you loved having your hair brushed.”
“Oh, gawd, she’s not a little girl anymore,” Colleen said. “She outgrew the asthma when she was fourteen.”
Mom pushed her big glasses down her nose. “She has gone through hell in a handbasket, and don’t you forget it.”
“How could I? Wayne might be gone, but Baby’s the ghost. She’s never going to get over it if y’all keep babying her—”
Mom shoved her glasses back up to the bridge of her nose. “Colleen Anne Danbury Sewell, I swear you don’t have a heart at all. What if your Bobby left suddenly? Wouldn’t you want your family to rally around you, try to ease your pain? That’s all we’re doing, and…” This was where Mom’s voice got shrill from impending tears. “if you can’t understand that’s what family is all about, I…I have failed as a mother.”
Colleen opened her mouth to say something but let out a sigh instead. “You didn’t fail, Mom. It’s just that Baby’s been getting this kind of attention since the day she was born, and I don’t think you’re helping by doing every little thing for her.”
“I am helping, by giving her time to heal without having to sweat the details. She can stay here as long as she likes, forever even. And you can’t blame your sister for being born with asthma. We almost lost her three times.”
“I know, I know,” Colleen muttered.
“You almost didn’t have a little sister.”
“I know.”
Mom’s shrill voice returned. “It was only by the goodness and mercy of the Lord God that she lived to be here today.”
Maddie always faded off whenever they started talking about her as though she weren’t there. She stared through the picture window to the pink house across the street. That was where Colleen lived with her husband and son, who was standing by the mailbox waiting for the bus.
Maddie had moved farther away when she’d married. Wayne’s grandparents had given them a little cottage on the Gulf, and Wayne had added a pool. But living there alone…heck, living alone period was beyond comprehension. Her family and friends had closed up the house and moved Maddie back home. She hadn’t been back since, not there or to the marina. It hurt too much.
It hurt that life went on. After Wayne died, the sun came up bright and clear, people went to work, and the marina kept operating. Maddie’s life screeched to a halt, but everyone else kept on living. It hurt to see her family look at her the way they used to when she was sick. This time she wasn’t sure she could get better, and she felt like she was letting them down. It even hurt when her dad kissed her on the forehead every morning and said, “Bye, pumpkin. You try and have a good day, hear?” like he really wanted her to, but knew she couldn’t.
Mom grabbed Maddie’s chin and asked, “You okay, Sugar Baby?”
Maddie had heard this question all through her growing up years. For every cough, every sniffle. During the last year, she always answered, “I’m okay,” but couldn’t help the one-shouldered shrug that said, Not okay.
“My poor Baby, you just let your Mom make it all right.” When the kitchen timer went off, she asked, “Would you like a banana pecan muffin?”
“No, thanks,” Maddie answered as Mom went into the kitchen to bring one anyway. Maddie would pick at it until it kind of looked like she’d eaten it.
Mom sailed out of the kitchen bearing the muffin and a mug of coffee for Colleen. “Chocolate raspberry this week,” she said to Colleen before heading back to the kitchen.
Mom changed the flavor of coffee every week to add excitement to the old routine. Dad complained every morning, but she swore he’d come to like it. She’d been doing it for three years. Maddie happened to know that he dumped out his coffee in the front yard (which was why the gardenias were all brown by the mailbox).
Colleen kept running her fingers through her hair as she stared out the window. She had the hair Maddie didn’t, loads of it that fell just past her shoulders. It was, however, the same drab shade of blonde Maddie had. Colleen denied to the moon that she highlighted it, but they all knew she did. It was all Maddie could do to muster the energy to wash her hair, which she just had, thank you very much, Colleen. She just hadn’t brushed it since her shower last night.
Colleen took after Mom, with slanted eyes and a sharp nose. Maddie wasn’t sure who she’d taken after. She got her square face from Dad, but her small frame? The doctor had once told them asthma could postpone the onset of puberty; he’d never mentioned that puberty might never catch up.
Colleen was still looking out the window.
“Bobby go to work early again?” Maddie asked.
“Yep. Hard-working man, he is.” There wasn’t any real pride in those words. “He’s been going in at six for the last few months. Then he gets off early and goes out to the workshop and makes furniture ‘til late.”
“He still talking about quitting Schaeffer Cabinets and starting his own business?”
“He wants to. I told him our finances are just the way we want, down to the dime. In three more years we might be able to afford the down payment on a pool, unless I win the Publisher’s Sweepstakes this year.” She opened the front door. “Have a good day at school, Quigley!”
He waved, rather sullenly Maddie thought, and got on the bus as though his feet weighed ten pounds apiece.
“He wants to be called Q,” Maddie said after Colleen closed the door.
“What?”
When the bus dropped Quigley off, he came over and babysat Maddie, though it was portrayed the other way around. “He wants to be called ‘Q.’ He says it’s cooler. The kids are starting to tease him, calling him Quiggles and Quig Pig.”
“That’s ridiculous. Six-year-olds aren’t cool.”
Just like when they were kids, Colleen gave her the vulture look: hair pulled back, shoulders hunched and face thrust forward. “Playing Nintendo with him for a few hours a day doesn’t qualify you to tell me how to raise my son.”
Maddie crossed her arms over her chest. “We do more than play Nintendo. We play Scrabble sometimes, too.”
“Don’t put thoughts in Quigley’s head, all right? It’s just a phase. And unlike you, he’ll get over it. Unlike you, he’s not waiting for some stupid angel to fix his problems.”
That again. Every day Colleen managed to bring it up with some dig. Maddie pulled the comforter up to her chin. Colleen didn’t know anything about getting over things. She’d never lost one of the most important people in her life. And she’d never had to wait day after day for a promise to be fulfilled.
“Someday I’d like to sit you down and tell you what you look like, moping like a rag doll,” Colleen said. “But you’d go running to Mom.”
As Colleen headed to the door, Maddie said, “Q hates the trolls at your house, too.”
Colleen’s shoulders stiffened. “What?”
“They creep him out.”
The quaint exterior of Colleen’s house belied a cave-like interior filled with trolls. She had Bobby build a wall unit that looked like a tree, with little caves and even a working waterfall. Their furniture was made of lacquered cypress, the walls were covered in dark paneling, and the sculptured carpet was moss green.
Colleen narrowed her eyes. “My home is the only place where I don’t have to defer to your wishes. All my life it was no, you can’t have a dog, or you can’t do this or that, because it’ll make Baby sick, or give in just this once because Baby had a rough night. Between Mom and a husband who spoiled you rotten, no one has ever let you grow up. I’m sorry he died, Baby, I really am. I’m sorry he left, I mean,” she added, because no one was supposed to say the D-word around Maddie. “But just because you’re miserable doesn’t mean everyone else is miserable, too. Just once I’d like to see some evidence that you’re growing up and moving on with your life.”
Colleen waited for a response. Maddie could have come up with some biting reply if she’d had the motivation. Instead she stuck out her tongue.
Mom had turned her big, square kitchen into a bit of country heaven over the years. The floor was covered in a flat, flowery carpet. Dad had scavenged the heavy oak table at a barn sale in Georgia. Bobby had built two open cabinets that were now crammed with plates and pitchers and hanging teacups and all the things that reminded Mom of the farmhouse she’d grown up in.
Ever since Bobby started working late, Colleen and Q ate dinner with the rest of the Danburys. Q’s mouth was in a pout, and his blue eyes were downcast as he picked through his mashed taters for the lumps. Lumps were his favorite. His curls were the color of the copper gelatin molds on the brick wall behind him. His skin was pale as cream except for the spray of copper freckles, just like his daddy.
“How come Dad don’t eat with us no more?” Q asked.
“He’s working hard so we can have a pool someday.”
Q traded a look with Maddie, then went back to spearing lumps. She noticed the flush on her sister’s face. Something wasn’t right. She wasn’t meeting anyone’s eyes. Is everything all right? The words hung in Maddie’s throat. Of course, it was. At least Colleen had a husband to spoon with at night.
Maddie picked at her drumstick, but her appetite disintegrated when she took in the two empty chairs in the dining area. Bobby’s at the table…and Wayne’s, which had been set by the phone, like she wasn’t supposed to notice. If he were there, he’d be tipping his chair way back and making Mom nervous. He’d be telling some joke he’d heard and laughing harder than anyone else at the punch line.
Colleen stopped mid-cut, elbows out at her sides. “Oh, I ran into Wendy today. Darcy told her about a guy who came to town in response to Barnie’s ad. Darcy checked him out, of course. He’s in his late twenties maybe, dark hair. He’s going to be working on that sailboat Barnie started before hurting himself.”
“He crushed his nuts,” Q said. “Nuts isn’t a bad word.”
“I swear he’s proud of it. Anyway, the guy doesn’t even have enough money to stay at Marylou’s, so Barnie’s letting him sleep on his sailboat. I’m only telling you so you won’t get your hopes up.”
That’s how Maddie figured the angel would make her, or his, appearance, a stranger wandering into town. Some of the strangers who stayed at Marylou’s bed and breakfast (Maddie checked every week) were nice enough, but they usually had earthly ties like spouses or children. She was sure one older lady was her angel until she stole Marylou’s jewelry and even the quarters in her coffee tin.
Maddie leaned forward, then realized she’d dipped her elbows in her gravy. “Why?”
“An angel’s supposed to be…angelic. This guy sounds too hot to be angelic.”
“Nicholas Cage played an angel in that movie, and he’s hot,” Maddie said.
“Not really.”
“What about John Travolta? He played a cool angel. A cool, good-looking angel.”
“That was a movie, made up, fantasy. Then again, so is your whole angel infatuation.”
Maddie wiped the gravy off her elbow. “There was an angel in my hospital room that night I almost died.”
“It was a visiting doctor,” Colleen said.
“Then why couldn’t anyone say who she was?” Maddie leaned on the table. “Tell me more about the guy.”.
“Darcy said he had a tattoo on his arm. No angel is going to have a tattoo.”
Despite Colleen’s negativity, excitement surged through Maddie. “An angel can be disguised as anyone. Most of the stories I’ve read—”
“We know,” Colleen said. “We’ve heard them all.”
“If it makes her happy to believe in angels, then let her,” Mom said, then turned to Dad. “Isn’t that right, dear?”
“I don’t think she should—”
“You’re right, she shouldn’t be thwarted by someone else’s cynicism.” Mom gave him and Colleen a pointed look.
Colleen buttered a roll with jerky movements. “But she’s not happy. She hardly ever leaves the house, doesn’t help at the Humane Society, doesn’t go to the marina, or anywhere.”
“She’s as happy as she can be having lost the love of her life,” Mom said, that shrill tone creeping in. “She tried going back to the Humane Society, but the thought of those dogs and cats being put down was just too much to bear. And how can she go to the place where that awful thing happened?”
“She owns it! The Schaeffers have taken it over just like they’ve taken over everything in this town.”
Maddie slid into her own thoughts, but this time those thoughts weren’t never-ending bleak days that rolled one to another without joy. This time she thought about the stranger. It was too late to see him tonight. Her throat tightened at the mere thought of going to the marina.
Mom said, “I haven’t seen that much life in her eyes since…well, since the last time she thought a transient was her angel.”
Dad said, “I don’t think—”
“Of course you don’t think there’s anything wrong with her looking for that angel,” Mom cut in. “What kind of father would you be if you did?”
“Tell me more about him,” Maddie asked Colleen. “What kind of tattoo does he have?”
Colleen rolled her eyes. “It’s a tattoo of…a naked woman. When he flexes his muscle, she dances. And he has long hair. And he has…an eye patch. He’s missing some teeth. And he walks with a limp.”
“I thought you said he was good-looking.”
“Well, you know Darcy. Anything male is good-looking to her.”
Maddie tried to put the items together in the picture of her mind: John Travolta with a tattoo, eye patch, missing teeth, and a limp. “I don’t care what he looks like. I’m going to go check him out tomorrow.”