Eunice Wilder’s voice was gentle and soothing as she set the reusable grocery bag filled with litter and food beside me. Taking a seat across the table, she crossed her stockinged legs at the ankles and gave me a sad smile, her lips pressed together gently.
I took a bite of one of the cookies she left out. “He won’t care,” I started boldly. “He sleeps in the office of the bar anyway. He hasn’t really been in the apartment much since we moved in.”?
I didn’t want to look up, but I could feel Eunice and Vance Wilder’s concerned eyes washing over me. Lee sat next to me, close enough for comfort, but not touching me directly. His presence was calming and kind, and I let the feeling wrap around me like a blanket.
“Oh, I see. So, what do y’all do for dinners? Or to get ready in the morning for school? Not that it’s our business, you can tell us or not. Up to you,” Vance Wilder said, spreading his hands in a disarming gesture.
I met Mr. Wilder’s concerned stare with a tight-lipped grin. “Charlie and I are pretty good at taking care of each other, Mr. Wilder. Speaking of, I should get home to my brother. He’ll likely be worried and probably have a few questions about Pickle the cat.”
Eunice let out a small giggle, and they both rose to their feet when I stood. “Leland will walk you home, of course. You come back and see us any time, Magnolia Pruitt. Our door is always open.”
“Your family is really nice, Lee.” He hadn’t tried to hold my hand again as we walked toward my apartment, and my fingers suddenly felt cold and empty. He was quieter than he had been all night.?
“Everyone’s got their flaws, Maggie. Besides, you haven’t met my brother yet.”
We stopped at a corner to let a horse and carriage pass. “Why do you keep calling me Maggie? No one ever does.”?
He looked both ways before guiding me across the street. “I figured as much. It’s the first thing I ever gave you—a nickname. But it won’t be the last.”?
I rolled my eyes. “What is with you, Leland Wilder?”?
He stopped and turned me toward him, smiling so big I thought his stupid face might break.?
“Magnolia Pruitt, you’re the kind of girl they write songs about, you know that?”
That made me cackle and snort. “You’re thirteen years old, Lee. And we just met! What makes you think you can go around talking to me like that? You sound like the kind of boy my momma would warn me about if she was still here.”
“Well, you’ll just have to wait and see then, won’t you?”
Chapter one
MAGNOLIA
Iwas surrounded by mounds of paperwork with the stench of stale beer and cigarettes permeating in the air from another slow night at the bar. My brother, Charlie, sat across from me, mindlessly thumbing through a stack of papers I had handed him to keep him busy—fully knowing he wouldn’t understand a lick of it.?
With his head bent, I noticed some silver strands poking through his once vibrant auburn hair. Small, slightly noticeable flecks of freckles still dotted his nose and cheekbones, not quite like the millions of round, brown spots that used to cover his entire face.?
Having just turned thirty, he didn’t look like my big brother anymore, but a stately, well-groomed gentleman. He looked up and shot me a sympathetic smile.?
“I think you’re kind of in deep shit, Magnolia. The bar really isn’t in good shape,” he murmured, as he leafed through another pile of papers.?
“Do you even understand anything that’s in front of you right now?” I asked.?
He let out a puff of a laugh. “No, not a word. I can help you cover some of Cole’s funeral costs, but the overhead from the bar is quite a lot. I just don’t understand. Why did he leave this place to just you and not both of us? You shouldn’t be the only one taking on this debt.”
“What would you have done, though? Shut down the art studio? Your river-front rent is astronomical as it is. At least I own this building now.”?
He nodded, and I watched the wheels turn in his head. Charlie had moved out of our apartment shortly after graduating from Savannah College of Art and Design. He took odd jobs around the city, eventually saving enough money to open his own studio on River Street.?
The owner of the building, Jordan, allowed him to rent the studioapartment just above the space for a small fee, on the condition that he would collaborate on wine tastings and art shows. Jordan had recently opened his own wine shop, Cheese, Please!, in the space next door with his partner, Doyle.
And while I missed having my brother around, I was glad to free up the space in my apartment that was filled to the brim with his pieces of junk… or art.?
Charlie was a reclamation artist, or so his business card proclaimed. Charles Abner Pruitt, Reclamation Artist, it said—I wouldn’t just make that up. He had gone to SCAD to study painting and fine art, but somehow, in the throes of boredom and artistic frustration, he’d begun finding discarded items from the streets and dumpsters and he turned them into works of art. He did sculptures, paintings, pretty much anything. He took ugly things and made them beautiful.
“It’s mixed media art,” he told me one time, and I nodded and smiled because that’s what you were supposed to do when you fully supported and loved someone but had absolutely no idea what they were going on about.
After he moved out, he left me with a few of his “installations,” as he called them. One time, he was hanging a map of the USA made of old license plates and mile-long CVS receipts over my mantle and I said, “I’m sitting on a cash cow if you ever get famous. Maybe move things along for me, slice an ear off or something.”
