Morning Glory Circle (8 page)

“He says God sees everything we do,” Meg said. “He says you can’t hide anything from God.”

“Maybe God would want you to help keep Margie from hurting other people,” Maggie said. “Maybe telling me what you know will help someone else.”

“That Margie is just awful,” Meg said, now that she believed she had God’s permission to gossip.

“What’d she do?”

“You know her mother has rheumatoid arthritis,” Meg said. “Doc Machalvie prescribed her a new anti-inflammatory pain medication that is supposed to be great for that. Well, Margie came in to pick it up, and when she saw how much the co-pay was, she refused to pay it. Delores was the pharmacist on duty that day, and she told Margie she was going to report her for elder abuse. Margie bought the medicine, but when Delores left that night her tires had been slashed.”

“Did she tell Scott about that?”

“No,” Meg said. “She didn’t have any proof it was Margie who did it.”

“I have just recently begun to find out how vindictive that woman can be.”

“Ask around,” Meg said. “Almost everyone I know has a Margie story. She got mad at me because she wasn’t invited to my wedding shower, so my wedding invitations somehow went missing for a few weeks after I mailed them. Some people never received theirs.”

“Did you report her?”

“If you can’t prove it what’s the point? She’s wicked but she’s clever.”

As she was leaving Machalvie’s, Maggie ran into her brother Patrick, who was crossing the street from the service station, where he worked all morning, to the Rose and Thorn, where he worked all evening.

“Aren’t you going home for lunch?” she asked him.

“Can’t,” he said. “Ian got held up and I have to open the bar by myself.”

Their Uncle Ian used to be the police chief before he retired at the beginning of the year, and now he drove a school bus and managed the family bar. Maggie headed to her parents’ house to get lunch for her dad, known as Fitz, and her Grandpa Tim.

“I was beginning to think you’d forgotten about us,” her father said gruffly, but Grandpa Tim smiled and blew her a kiss as she passed his recliner. The Irish setter known as Lazy Ass Laddie only stirred from his cozy spot next to the heater long enough to thump his tail at Maggie, then curled it back up and closed his eyes.

Back when Maggie was still in grade school, her father had fallen off a ladder while painting the trim on the house and broke some vertebrae in his back. Her mother often said the only thing that cushioned his fall was the six-pack he consumed before he got on the ladder. After a couple surgeries failed to help relieve his pain, Fitz declared he was done with hospitals, and had since relied more heavily on medication mixed with alcohol to control his pain.

Maggie heated up some leftovers, made Lazy Ass Laddie go out in the backyard to pee, and then served the two men on TV trays in the front room. Maggie washed up their dishes when they’d finished, and her grandfather winked at her as she left. Grandpa Tim was Bonnie’s father, and reportedly started smoking back in Scotland at the tender age of six. He suffered from emphysema and had recently undergone surgery and radiation treatments for throat cancer. He couldn’t talk above a whisper.

Maggie stopped back in at the bakery to tell her mother she’d taken care of lunch, and found her mother resting behind the counter during an unusual lull. She told her mother a bit about Caroline.

“All the money she’s got and you’re buying her toothpaste and groceries,” Bonnie said. “That makes no sense to me.”

“She just got back in the country and doesn’t have any American money yet.”

“There’s a bank not twenty yards from here full of American money, and her the richest woman in the county. That’s how the rich stay rich, daughter. They’re always looking the other way when the bill comes.”

When Maggie returned to the bookstore she found out from Jeanette that Caroline had gone upstairs for a nap. Maggie looked at her tab and saw she had picked out mostly news magazines, some big city newspapers, and chamomile tea. Maggie went upstairs to her apartment and took her purchases to the kitchen, after closing the door to the bedroom, where she could see a Caroline-shaped lump under her quilt. She fired up her computer and looked up some vegan recipes to see if she could make lunch out of anything she had purchased.

Caroline slept through lunch clear until 3:00 p.m., at which time Maggie warmed up the baked sweet potatoes, green beans with garlic and onion, and whole grain muffins she had prepared for lunch. Caroline ate a couple little bites of everything, and pronounced it all delicious, but didn’t actually consume more than a half-cup of food, all told.

She told Maggie about meeting Drew, and already seemed to know more about him than Maggie did. Maggie knew Drew had been in Belize with the Peace Corps for a year between college and vet school, but she didn’t know he’d been back to visit several times.

“He was in the Peace Corps with a person who I know really well,” Caroline said. “It’s such a small world.”

Maggie made her friend some hot chamomile tea, and then gently broached the subject she was determined to discuss.

“Are you feeling okay, Caroline?” she asked her, as she reseated herself across from her friend at the table.

“I’m fine,” Caroline said, but she was shaking her head as she said it. “I’m just tired.”

“Would you say we have the kind of friendship where complete honesty is acceptable?” Maggie asked her.

“Gosh, I hope so,” Caroline said, sounding surprised.

“You look like you might be ill,” Maggie told her, as gently as she could. “I’m really worried about you.”

“I’m fine, really,” Caroline said, and jumped up to take her plate to the sink. “You made way too much food. Do you think anyone downstairs would want some?”

It never would have occurred to Maggie to offer her staff food from her kitchen. For one thing, she rarely cooked for herself. For another, she kept her private life very separate from her work life. Most of her employees had never even been upstairs in her apartment. Caroline had quickly changed the subject and Maggie sensed that any more questions about her health would be shut down in a similar fashion.

“What are your plans?” Maggie asked her instead.

“Up in the air, really,” Caroline said. “I need to go over the bequest issues with the executor, and probably sign a million papers at my bank trustee’s office, and then I’m just going to relax. I need to take some time to process Theo’s transition, both spiritually and mentally.”

“You mentioned some monks were coming?”

“Oh yeah, they might. There are about twelve of them, and some staff members. Their abbot recently transitioned planes, and their retreat center was destroyed in a wildfire. The lodge is plenty big enough for all of us.”

“What do they do exactly?”

“They’re Zen Buddhists,” Caroline said. “They spend most of their time meditating or chanting, but they also train candidates who are seeking ordination into the order, or who just want to teach meditation.”

“Isn’t meditation just praying?”

“Meditation can be different for everyone. For me it’s all about putting aside my ego, ignoring the constant chatter inside my head, and finding that stillness where there is peace and the knowledge that we are all one.”

“I’d sign up for that,” Maggie said. “The voice chattering inside my head is most often my mother’s.”

“I can teach you,” Caroline said. “It helps keep you in the now moment instead of worrying about the future or regretting the past.”

“What else is there to do?” Maggie asked her. “I mean, besides working to make money, taking care of the family, and all the church and community stuff that I have to do. Worrying is just watching out for the bad stuff that might happen, so I can be prepared, and regret is what I feel when I fail.”

“Regret and worry don’t really change anything, they’re just unnecessary suffering. Try just being,” Caroline said. “Just accept what is.”

Maggie couldn’t imagine accomplishing all she had to do, looking after all the people she cared about, and keeping vigilant against the potential troubles that seem to always lurk nearby, if all she did was relax and accept “what was” all the time.

“So, besides meditating and teaching meditation, what do the monks do all day?”

“Not much else. Some orders keep bees, garden, or perform community services, but their particular mission is to teach others to meditate.”

“There may not be a big call for that in Pine County.”

“The universe will bring them what they need, and will draw to them the people who need what they have to offer.”

“Just meditating all day would get kind of old after a week or two, I would think,” Maggie said. “Don’t they ever get bored, lonely, or depressed?”

“The Buddhist way to approach suffering is to serve others in order to get away from feeling sorry for yourself,” Caroline said.

Maggie though Caroline looked so sad when she said that. She wondered if all her frantic running around trying to save the world was really just an attempt to distract her friend from how unhappy she was deep inside. Maggie then had the uncomfortable thought that she herself might be guilty of the same thing, running around Rose Hill taking care of everyone, and keeping so busy she didn’t have time to think about what she was missing in her own life. Maggie decided a change of topic was called for, so she told Caroline about the Winter Festival coming up, and all that had to be done to prepare for it.

“I would love to help,” Caroline said.

“Great,” Maggie said. “You can help out in the bakery with me and Hannah tomorrow. My mom will really appreciate the extra hands.”

“Count me in,” Caroline said. “Sounds like fun.”

“I need to go to a committee meeting tonight and I might be home late. I’ll sleep on the couch when I come in this evening so I won’t wake you,” Maggie said. “You’ll really need your rest if you’re going to work in the bakery tomorrow.”

“Thank you so much for letting me stay,” Caroline said. “I’m so glad we’ll have a chance to catch up tomorrow. I’ve spent all our time together today telling you all about me, but I want to know what’s going on with you.”

Caroline went to the front room and Maggie cleaned the kitchen. She tried to imagine how she would feel if she, like Caroline, was alone in the world with only that pretentious pill Gwyneth for family, with no home or friends to return to when she was tired and cold. Maggie didn’t think any amount of money or any number of worthy causes could fill that kind of deep pit of loneliness in her own soul. She decided to do her best to make sure Caroline didn’t feel lonely. She would be a good friend to her, and help her however she could.

Maggie left Caroline lounging in the sitting room with her newspapers and magazines, and walked up to the community center to attend the final Winter Festival prep meeting. Hannah was already there and had saved a seat for Maggie. The mayor’s capable secretary Kay was running the meeting in his absence, as usual, and she had everything planned down to the smallest detail. Stuart and his wife Peg may have taken turns being mayor every four years, but Kay was the one who actually ran the town on a day-to-day basis.

Maggie looked around until she found where Scott was sitting, with his chair tipped back against the wall at the side of the room, looking right at Maggie with that blatant warm regard that made her feel nervous and happy all at the same time. When she crossed her eyes and stuck her tongue out at him, he grinned and shook his head.

When the meeting was over, Maggie told Hannah that Caroline would be there to help in the morning.

Hannah said, “I’ll believe it when I see it,” in a way that irritated Maggie.

“Don’t be like that,” Maggie said. “She’ll be there.”

“We’ll just have to wait and see about that, now won’t we?” Hannah said with a smirk.

Hannah left and Maggie found Scott waiting for her outside the community center, which used to be Rose Hill High School.

“May I walk you home, Miss?” he said, and offered her his arm.

She smacked his arm away, saying, “I don’t need police protection to walk three blocks, thank you very much.”

“Then can I buy you a drink somewhere?”

Maggie considered him a moment, then said, “I’m really in the mood for a beer and a bowl of pretzels. I ate a healthy lunch and I need something bad to balance it out.”

“I better come along if you’re going to be bad,” he said, “just to keep an eye on you.”

They walked down to Rose Hill Avenue and crossed the street to the Rose and Thorn, which was full of people. Maggie snagged them a booth and Scott got their drinks: beer for Maggie and a soft drink for himself. Scott smiled at her warmly from across the table, and Maggie was equal parts irritated and pleased.

“Any sign of Margie?” she asked him.

“No one has seen her. I have this feeling she’s somewhere having a laugh over us all worrying about her.”

Maggie told him the stories Meg Kelly had told her, about Margie slashing Delores’s tires and sabotaging Meg’s wedding invitations, and Scott shook his head.

“Why don’t people tell me about these things?” he asked. “That’s what the police are for.”