“I was… distracted.” I gesture vaguely at the wall.
He nods and steps into the room, but keeps a respectful distance.
“She added to it every year. Said it helped her remember why she did what she did. All those people, all those moments, that’s what the bar was really about.”
“There’s a photo of me.” My voice comes out strange and thick. “I didn’t know she had it. I don’t remember it.”
“She had a lot of things.” Wyatt moves to stand beside me, looking at the wall. “Letters. Photos. Newspaper clippings. She kept track of you best she could. Your graduations. Your engagement announcement. Your mother’s obituary.”He pauses. “She cried when your mom died. Even after everything, she cried.”
“They never spoke. My mother and Mavis. Not once in all the years I was alive, that I know of.”
“No, but that didn’t mean Mavis stopped loving her or you. Mavis had more love in her heart than anyone I’ve ever known. If you take away nothing else from this experience, just know what a phenomenal human she was.”
He turns to look at me, and his expression is softer than I have seen it.
“She talked about you sometimes. Wondered what you were like and if you were happy. She worried about you.”
“She didn’t even know me.”
“She knew enough.” Wyatt shrugs. “You see, Mavis had this gift for seeing people. Like really seeing them. Not just what they showed the world. She saw something in you that made her believe you needed to be here.”
I think about what Dolly said last night. What Harlan said. What everyone keeps saying. That Mavis believed in me. That she thought I belonged here. That she was never wrong about people.
“What if she was wrong this time?” I ask quietly. “Like, what if I’m not what she thought I was?”
Wyatt is quiet for a long moment.
Then he says, “Well, there’s only one way to find out.”
CHAPTER 5
After Wyatt leaves - he came by to drop off a spare key and check that I had everything I needed - I spend the afternoon settling in.
I unpack my small amount of belongings, hanging my clothes in a closet that is still full of Mavis’s things. It feels kind of strange. Her wardrobe is as eclectic as her decor. She has vintage Western shirts, flowing bohemian dresses, and a surprising number of sequin items that I can only assume were for theme nights at the bar. I push them to the side, making room for my pencil skirts and silk blouses, and try not to feel imposter syndrome.
I make a quick grocery list based on what is in the pantry and then realize I have no idea where the grocery store is, so I add ‘find grocery store’ to the list.
I try to connect to the Wi-Fi only to discover that the password is MavisRocks1989, and the connection is slower than anything I have ever experienced since the dial-up era.
By late afternoon, I am restless and frustrated and desperately in need of something productive to do. And that is when I remember the bar’s financial records.
Harlan mentioned that the bar was profitable, and Wyatt confirmed it had been running smoothly, but I am a businesswoman, or I was before my business failed, so I need to see the numbers for myself.
I find the office downstairs, a small room behind the bar, crammed with filing cabinets and a desk that has seen better days. The computer is ancient, running some version of Windows I didn’t know still existed, but it turns on, and that’s what matters.
The financial records are, in a word, a mess.
Not in a bad way, exactly. More in a ‘this system was designed by someone who valued intuition over organization’ way.
There are spreadsheets, but they are labeled things like ‘Money Stuff 2023’ and ‘That Thing Harlan Needed’. There are folders full of receipts, some organized by date, some by vendor, and some apparently just by vibe.
But as I dig deeper, a picture starts to emerge.
The Rusty Spur is definitely profitable. Not wildly so. I mean, it is not a gold mine, but it is solidly and consistently profitable. Revenue has grown steadily, but slowly, over the past decade. Expenses seem reasonable, and the staff is paid fairly.
There is even a small emergency fund that Mavis called the ‘Oh Crap Account’.
More interesting than the numbers, though, are the notes.
