The Mountain Between Us (16 page)

“Emphasis on the grease.” Danielle began beating the eggs. “We scrubbed for days getting everything clean enough to repaint.”

“People were starved for good food,” Janelle said. “So we were busy from the first day we opened our doors.”

“And people didn't give you a hard time because you're a couple?”

“We didn't exactly wear signs that said, ‘Kiss me, I'm a lesbian, ' ” Janelle said. “But most folks figured it out pretty quick. We didn't try to hide the fact that we loved each other.”

“Some folks gave us a hard time.” Danielle transferred the eggs to the bowl of a mixer and added pumpkin. “Somebody spray-painted vulgar sayings on our house, and somebody else burned down our chicken house. But we had friends who defended us.”

“Jake Murphy, Maggie's dad, threatened to beat up anybody who harassed us, and he built us a fireproof brick chicken house.” Janelle pressed the circle of dough into a pie tin. “Things calmed down after that.”

“Small towns get a bad reputation for being cliquish and narrow-minded, but here people have learned to get along and either ignore or accept differences,” Danielle said.

“I think they have to.” Janelle ladled the cherry filling into the crust. The scent filled the room, making Olivia's mouth water. “We're all kind of stuck here together come winter, and it's easier if you know you can depend on your neighbor for help.”

“I'm not crazy about the idea of being stuck here for the winter,” Olivia said. “I mean, people can leave if they want, right?”

“Most of the time,” Danielle said. “But when the big snows come, the passes on either side of town sometimes get blocked. Never for very long, but we've learned to order extra supplies for backup.”

“Remember that year when the only thing left on the menu was eggs, pancakes, and pasta?” Janelle said.

“Bob was threatening to poach a deer just so we'd have something different to cook,” Danielle said.

“You don't miss the city? Someplace bigger . . . more cosmopolitan?”

“Sometimes I'd love to be able to see a movie in the theater without having to drive thirty minutes.” Janelle began rolling out a second crust.

“I miss being able to walk into a gourmet grocery and buy everything I need for a special dinner,” Danielle said. “Here I have to order from a Web site and wait a week for anything more exotic than mushrooms and peppers.”

“But this is home now,” Janelle said. “Our regular customers are like our family. Where else can we have Thanksgiving dinner with everyone we know?”

“Is that really a good thing?” Olivia asked. “Presumably, whoever wrote that graffiti and burned your chicken house is somewhere in that crowd. And then there are sourpusses like Cassie Wynock.”

“Cassie definitely doesn't approve of us.” Danielle laughed. “But that's the thing about families. There's always some nutty aunt or skeevy uncle whom you don't really care for. But they just make everybody else look that much better.”

“Aren't there ever people you wish you just didn't have to see again?” How much easier would Olivia's life be if she didn't run into D. J. every time she turned around?

“I think if someone bothers you, it's because you need to learn a lesson from them,” Janelle said. “Everyone has something to teach us, about life, or about ourselves.”

What lesson had D. J. taught her? Not to give your heart away to someone too insensitive to accept the gift? Fat lot of good that education had done her. “What if you've learned your lesson and they still annoy you?”

“Then you haven't learned the right lesson.” Janelle shrugged. “It's only a theory.”

“Maybe some people are just here to annoy you,” Olivia said.

“Everyone can teach us something. For instance, you have inspired me to explore my creative side. See.” She indicated the pie crust she was decorating with cutout bits of pastry in the shape of flowers and leaves.

“You have a fierceness I admire,” Danielle said. “People don't impress you. They have to prove themselves to you. That takes such strength, to see beyond the surface that way.”

Was this her they were talking about? It was true that people didn't impress her, but she'd always figured that was because she was so unwilling to risk connecting with them. Distance always felt safer. “I never thought of myself as fierce,” she said.

“I don't mean it in a bad way,” Danielle said. “Just that you have good protective instincts. You're a survivor. Like that pioneer woman you're painting. After all, you came here with your boy by yourself and you're making a place for yourself, on your own terms.”

“Eureka is the perfect place for that,” Janelle said. “People here are more about breaking rules than following them.”

“Which can make things interesting sometimes.” Danielle added cinnamon and nutmeg to the pumpkin-pie filling in the mixing bowl. “Once the city tried to repaint the parking stripes in front of the Dirty Sally so that they slanted the opposite direction. Something to do with controlling traffic flow. But it didn't work. Everybody ignored the markings and parked the way they always had.”

“Good thing I'm painting a mural and not parking stripes,” Olivia said.

“I hope the mural is just a start,” Danielle said. “I hope you find other outlets for your art.”

“Tourists would buy those T-shirts you paint, I'm sure,” Janelle said. “And the jewelry you make. You wouldn't do much business in the winter, but you could do well in the summer, I think. And these days you can sell stuff online, too.”

“The Internet has saved towns like this,” Danielle said. “People don't have to go away to find work.”

“They just have to work two or three jobs together,” Olivia said. That went for non-artists, too. Look at Jameso, who taught skiing, tended bar, drove Jeep tours, and did odd jobs around town.

Danielle laughed. “Isn't that how it always is with artists?”

Olivia loved how they thought of her as an artist; that was a better compliment than saying she was fierce. “Maybe I'll try some of your suggestions. Thanks.”

“Of course.” Janelle transferred her finished pie to the baker's rack. “Only a few more pies to go. Will you be staying much later?”

“A little longer. I want to get this ram finished before I call it a night.” And she wanted a little more time to absorb everything they'd said. Could she make it as an artist staying here in Eureka? Was that even what she wanted? Was she brave enough—fierce enough—to stay in one place long enough to face down D. J. and her own insecurities, and everything that had kept her moving from place to place all these years?

Was she brave enough to make Eureka, with its crazy cast of characters and at times claustrophobic lifestyle, into her home? The idea seemed as exotic and daring as welcoming all the crazy aunts and skeevy uncles into her living room for dinner, and learning to love them along with her dearest friends and relatives—maybe because it meant learning to love the crazy, skeevy side of herself. You didn't get much fiercer than that.

C
HAPTER TEN

M
aggie stared at the blank computer screen, willing the words to come. Was there any slower news time than the week of Thanksgiving? “Rick, maybe we should just run two pages of pictures of the kids coloring turkeys at the elementary school and call it good,” she said.

“We promise the advertisers at least sixteen pages, so we have to come up with words to fill them.” With these helpful words, he disappeared into his office and shut the door.

Maggie stuck her tongue out at him.

“Didn't your mother ever tell you not to do that in case your face froze?”

“Lucille!” Maggie stood to greet her friend. “Please tell me you've come to save me from a life of drudgery.”

“I have. Can you take a break for a couple of hours and help decorate the school cafeteria for the dinner tomorrow?” She held out a large cardboard box. “I found a bunch of decorations in the back room of Lacy's, and some of the other women are bringing their contributions.”

“I'd love to help.” She shut down her computer and grabbed her purse. “Anything to escape trying to get five hundred words out of the installation of the new sign at the bank drive-through.”

Lucille handed Maggie a box. “Do you want to drive over to the school?”

“No, let's walk.” Maggie shrugged into her coat and pulled a knit cap over her ears. “My doctor says exercise is good for me; plus, it's a nice day.”

They stepped out into the crisp air. The sun shone in a cloudless, turquoise sky. If not for the bare trees, it might have been September rather than November. “I guess I'm glad the snow's held off,” Lucille said as they crossed the street and headed toward the school. “It saves us the expense of plowing, but I can't remember a Thanksgiving without snow on the ground.”

“More time for Bob's snowfall pool to bring in money,” Maggie said. “It has to snow soon, right?”

“You'd think, but weather's doing weird things all over the country, so who knows?”

“Rick's got a whole front page planned when the first snow does arrive. That's how slow it's been this week . . . he's planning ahead.”

“As mayor, I can appreciate when the town is quiet enough to not make any news,” Lucille said. “Except, of course, for the continuing budget crises, which the press never tires of.”

Maggie noted the tension around the older woman's mouth. Lucille had become the beleaguered face of Eureka in newscasts and newspaper and magazine articles that ran all over the United States, calmly explaining over and over how some “bad investments” had led to the emptying of the town coffers. “Has it been very hard for you?”

“I can't help feeling responsible, and it's more than humbling to have your personal foolishness written about and talked about all across the country. It was bad enough when the Colorado stations reported on it, but then the national news wires picked it up. Apparently a broke small town plays well with viewers.”

“It's not that the town is broke,” Maggie said. “People love hearing about how everyone has pulled together to keep things going. The Thanksgiving dinner is a great feel-good story. You don't look like a fool—you're a heroine for keeping the tradition going.”

“It wasn't me,” Lucille said. “A whole group of people came together to make this happen.”

“If everyone is pitching in to hold the dinner this year, what did you do before?”

“The last couple of years we've had the dinner catered. Some people still brought special dishes, but the caterer did most of the work. We asked people to donate what they could, but the city picked up most of the bill.”

“That must have been expensive.”

Lucille nodded. “It was probably time to cut back, but I guess we'd gotten lazy. We wanted to keep the tradition going but didn't want all the work.”

“I think people are enjoying the work,” Maggie said. “Everyone in town is talking about the dinner. They're really excited about it.”

“This is the way it was done years ago, with everyone bringing food to contribute. I think people missed that sense of coming together as a community and hadn't even realized it.”

Tamarin Sherman and Shelly Frazier met them at the door of the school cafeteria and relieved them of their boxes. “Katya and Olivia brought orange and brown crepe paper streamers,” Shelly said. “And I got butcher paper from the grocery to use on the tables.”

“Cassie is here, too,” Tamarin said. “She didn't bring any decorations; I think she mainly came to supervise.”

The cafeteria was a buzz of activity. Katya and Olivia stood on ladders, taping festoons of crepe paper to the ceiling. Other women tacked construction paper pilgrim hats and cornucopias to the walls. Cassie was arranging a pile of pumpkins and gourds at the front of the room. “I've got a bunch of pinecone turkeys and little pilgrim dolls in these boxes,” Lucille said. “I thought we could use them on the tables as centerpieces.”

“We need to get the tables covered first,” Tamarin said. “Maggie, can you help me with that?”

“Sure.” She hurried to take one end of the industrial-sized roll of butcher paper. She and Tamarin rolled the paper down the length of one set of long tables, tore off the strip, and taped them in place.

“This is going to be the best Thanksgiving dinner ever,” Shelly said as she helped Lucille unpack the boxes. “Everyone is going all out with the food. I heard Janelle and Danielle are baking forty pies.”

“It's kind of nice, everyone pitching in this way to pick up the slack,” Tamarin agreed. “It's more like when the dinner first started, back when the miners got together.”

“Except we're liable to have a bigger crowd than ever this year, what with all the publicity in the paper and on the news stations,” Katya said. “We don't want anyone to go away hungry, so everyone is bringing extra.”

“I think it's disgraceful, having our problems broadcast to the world that way.”

All heads swiveled toward Cassie, who had turned away from her pumpkin arrangement to scowl at Lucille. “It's one thing to lose all the town's money to that man, but you ought to have some pride and not broadcast our strained circumstances to the world.”

“Cassie!” Tamarin hissed. “That wasn't Lucille's fault.”

“Then whose fault was it? She's the one who's being interviewed on TV. She's the one who talked the town council into hearing her boyfriend's proposal. If it hadn't been for her, none of this would have happened.”

The others exchanged horrified looks.
Someone ought to slap that woman,
Maggie thought. But, of course, no one would. Lucille continued unpacking tissue-wrapped turkeys and dolls, as if she hadn't heard, though Maggie noticed the tips of her ears were bright red.

“She's embarrassing us all,” Cassie continued, her tone growing more strident.

Olivia started toward the librarian, as if she would, indeed, slap her, but Maggie got there first. “Oh, shut up, Cassie!” she snapped.

It was the librarian's turn to flush red. “What did you say?”

“You're one to talk. As if you'd never been taken in by a handsome, smooth-talking charmer.”

Cassie's expression grew even more sour. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Don't you? I don't know what happened between you and my father, but clearly he sweet-talked his way into your good graces and then left you high and dry. It's why you hate him so much. Why you hate me.” She met the shocked stares of the others. “Jake may have been my father, but I heard enough stories to know what he was like. What men can be like.”

“That was a private matter,” Cassie said. “It didn't affect the whole town, the way Lucille carrying on with that man did.”

“Don't act so high and mighty, Cassie.” Lucille looked up from her boxes. “Don't think I didn't notice you flirting shamelessly with Gerald. You all but admitted if he hadn't been so interested in me, you'd have done your best to reel him in.”

“You're imagining things,” Cassie said, but her face remained bright pink.

“The fact is, none of us are saints,” Lucille said. “What's done is done, so instead of sniping at each other we ought to stick together. And do what we can to protect other women from men like him.”

The others murmured in agreement. The words sounded good, Maggie thought. The problem was men—and women—weren't predictable creatures. She'd never have predicted her first husband would cheat on her after almost twenty years. “Sometimes you can't know what people are really like,” she said thoughtfully. “Relationships are gambles. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.”

“And some women are just stupid,” Cassie huffed. She turned and practically ran from the room.

“Is she calling us stupid or herself?” Katya asked.

“Maybe a little of both,” Lucille said.

“I'm sorry you had to hear that,” Maggie said.

Lucille waved her hand dismissively. “Cassie doesn't bother me. If she judges herself half as hard as she judges others, she deserves your sympathy much more than I do.”

Katya turned to Maggie. “Enough of sad subjects. I hear congratulations are in order.”

Maggie flushed. She hated how her emotions were so close to the surface these days, but she supposed she'd have to learn to live with it, like living with morning sickness. “Thank you.”

“Then it's true?” Tamarin asked. “You're going to have a baby?”

“Yes, it's due around the first of June.”

“Maggie! You've been keeping secrets.” Shelly embraced her.

“Not a secret. I mean, everyone will figure it out eventually.” She smoothed her shirt over her still-flat stomach.

“How exciting!” Tamarin said. “What does Jameso think?”

She had no idea what he thought, only what he said. “He's happy. A little nervous, but then I am, too.”

“You'll make a great mother,” Lucille said.

Shelly looked wistful. “I wish I could have another baby.”

“Not me,” Tamarin said. “I was thrilled the day I changed my last diaper. Now that my boys are old enough to dress and feed themselves, I'd never go back to sleepless nights and dirty diapers.”

“Well, I won't be going back there either,” Shelly said. “Charlie got snipped after Shanna was born. He said we had a boy and a girl and that was enough.” She sighed. “Still, I miss babies.”

“I'd love to have another baby one day,” Olivia said. She'd been so quiet Maggie had forgotten she was there.

“You still have time,” Maggie said “You're way younger than me and this is my first.”

“I guess.” She bent and pulled another paper-wrapped turkey from the boxes. “Let me help you with these, Mom.”

Lucille patted her daughter's arm.
There's a story there,
Maggie thought.
A private one I'll never know.

“Have you thought of names for the baby yet?” Tamarin asked.

“Maybe Jacob if it's a boy.” Her father had been an asshole at times, but he'd also been a good man to many, and she liked to believe he'd done the best he could for her.

“Murph would have liked that,” Lucille said.

“I'm having a hard time imagining my father as a grand father,” Maggie admitted. “He seemed like such a wild man.”

“Wild men sometimes make the best fathers and husbands,” Katya said. “When they decide to settle down, they have already sown all their wild oats. They are ready for the quieter life.”

Maggie thought of Reg, with his biker leathers and long hair. He definitely seemed the wild-oats type. “Jake was sixty and he'd never settled down,” she said.

“I don't think she's talking about Jake,” Olivia said.

Maggie gave Katya a questioning look. “Do you mean Reg? I can see how he might have been a little wild before you two go together.”

“I didn't slow Reg down,” Katya said. “Getting older did. But I was thinking of Jameso. I think he may surprise you.”

“Maybe you're right.” Maggie had certainly learned that life was full of surprises.

Talk turned to what everyone was bringing to the dinner. Maggie had signed up to contribute paper plates. “I'm not much of a cook,” she admitted.

“I'm making mashed potatoes,” Olivia said.

“From scratch?” Shelly asked.

“Of course. I've got to peel twenty-five pounds of potatoes tonight. I offered Lucas a nickel a potato if he'd help.”

“Word to the wise,” Tamarin said, “don't eat the sausage balls.”

“The sausage balls?” Maggie asked.

“Bob brings them every year. He makes them out of his homemade venison sausage and jalapeno peppers. They're so hot they'll set your whole body on fire.”

“There was a rumor going around that he brought the same batch every year,” Shelly said.

“Oh, I don't think that's true,” Lucille said.

Tamarin made a face. “They are starting to look a little petrified.”

“I'll stay away from the sausage balls,” Maggie promised, joining the others' laughter.

“We're lucky to have so much to choose from,” Shelly said. “I did an article for the historical society newsletter a couple of years ago about the early Thanksgivings. The miners ate wild turkey, cornbread, and pumpkins, potatoes and parsnips they grew. That was it.”

“And at the end of the meal they passed around jugs of homebrew and everyone took a sip,” Tamarin said. “Even the prim old ladies.”