I sigh. “I don’t know what I need, if I’m real honest.”
“None of us do, really. You think you’ll suddenly understand everything when you’re an adult, and then one day you have bunions and just as many questions. Look, I’ve got to get back to work, but can I give you my number? I’ll do anything I can to help with your grandmother’s affairs.” She leans in close. “Or if you just want to know more about her. Or your poor mama. I’ve got so many stories.”
I can’t tell Tina that my grandmother is still around to personally get on my last nerve, so I just take the business card she gives me and thank her. She hugs me again, and I hug her back, because it occurs to me that this is as close as I’ll get to hugging a matriarch who cares about me and actually has arms instead of wings. That’s when I realize that we have something else in common.
“Tina, I’m so sorry about your mother,” I say.
She just holds me closer. “And I’m sorry about yours. I’m here whenever you need a hug.”
I don’t dare tell her there’s only a fifty-fifty chance she’ll ever see me again. Thirteen thousand dollars could give my sisters and me the breathing room we need to get by, even if it won’t solve all our problems forever.
It’s a beautiful morning, so I figure I’ll walk around town and see everything it has to offer. I’m sitting on this enormousdecision, and I’ve really only seen a couple of places here. Giant elms or oaks—I don’t know which, but they’re really big—stretch over the streets and make the sidewalks buckle dangerously around their roots. I pass a toy store, a pizzeria, a bakery, a seafood place, a yoga studio and juice bar, a potter, a couple of clothing and jewelry boutiques, a soap and candle store, a crystal store where my grandmother must’ve been a platinum card holder, a store that looks like it’s nothing but dog stuff, the Chamber of Commerce and Visitors’ Center. There’s MacGillicuddy’s, a big, sprawling restaurant off the main square that kind of looks like a treehouse, and a brewery and meadery that still has horse ties out front. Again, I’m struck by how much foot traffic there is, and by how many cars are clearly cruising for a parking space along the packed main drag.
Just across the square are Maggie’s properties—my properties, I guess—and I squint and stare at the video store, trying to imagine the possibilities. A coat of paint, a good cleaning, some flowers outside. Just getting rid of the movie cutouts and washing the windows would be transformative. I walk toward it, imagining what it would be like to see it as a destination, a haven, a home, instead of a rock tied around my neck while I’m stuck in the middle of a river.
What if this were my town?
What if I made a life here, a life that didn’t involve constantly avoiding a persistent tow-truck driver and his angry cop brother, where I could become whoever I wanted to be? What if I closed the old book and started a new story?
On the other hand, what if it’s an utter failure? Maybe a car will drive into the plate-glass window, and a raccoon will scamper in through the hole, and then it’ll bite me and I’ll have to get those awful rabies shots in my stomach?
I can picture a thousand ways things could go wrong. I’m good at telling those stories.
The simplest is this: I put my heart and my soul into this place, and it fails, and my sisters and I lose everything.
I’m directly in front of the video store now. Inside, the boiled peanuts gently steam as Abraham sleeps in a lawn chair off to the side. An older couple inspects the movies, picking up boxes and reading the backs before putting them down again. The fishbowl is full of coins and crumpled bills. What is it with this town and fishbowls full of cash, anyway? If nothing else, that dusty glass bowl contains enough to pay Abraham each day, so I guess that’s considered breaking even.
My hand slips into my pocket, and my fingers trace over the old leather dictionary I found in my grandmother’s safe-deposit box.
Maybe it seems silly, but several times in my life, I’ve found my answer in books. Words are my Magic 8 Ball. I unsnap the leather case, close my eyes, and flip to a random page, putting my fingertip down on the thin, crispy paper.
When I pick it up, I learn that the word I’ve blindly landed on isdestiny.
13.
Ordestitute,maybe,which is just under it.
Could be either one, and I don’t trust one-offs.
I flip through the dictionary nine more times.
Nine.
Nine.
The words I land on:stay, tome, inherit, absolute, stores, future, dream, succeed,and, oddly,squirrel.
“One more time,” I say firmly.
As if laughing in my face, the dictionary gives me one more word:magic.
“This shit is rigged,” I mutter.
Fate seems determined to keep me here, but I am a very logical woman, so I need to do more research. I start by walking into the video store and standing at the counter. The two customers are still browsing. Abraham is snoring gently, so I call his name, but that doesn’t help.
“Just drop a few dollars in the fishbowl when you find whatyou want,” the lady customer says. She and the man are in their seventies and at the point where they’re starting to resemble each other, outside of his mustache and her perm. “He’s hard to wake up during naptime.”
“So how does the store keep track of the videos?” I ask, because these folks seem local and friendly.
