Sweet Tea and Sympathy

  “Big lot of fuss over nothing,” Tootie said with a sigh.

  Margot asked, “Why didn’t you just go get the dog’s paperwork in the first place, Tootie?”

  “You heard him, I’m over the county limit.” She sniffed. “I’m old. I’m not stupid.”

  “So when do you think Dougie might come back to check on my completely fabricated story?”

  “Oh, who knows? Dougie’s harmless. Under normal circumstances, he’d probably just forget about it. But I think it’s Sara Lee that’s got him all stirred up. She’s been jawin’ to whoever will listen about how you’re ruining the Founders’ Festival.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Sara Lee was Dougie’s high school girlfriend. He never quite got over her and she knows it. And she can’t strike back directly at you, so she’s trying to get to you through me.”

  Margot’s brow furrowed. “High school romances run deep around here, don’t they? So if I keep working with the planning committee, there’s a chance you could lose your dogs? Should I tell Kyle that I need to back off from the festival?”

  “Oh, honey, I have a long-standing feud with Animal Control. They’re always threatening me with something. Don’t let it rattle you.”

  “I am not used to being targeted by municipal agencies. I am comfortable with my being rattled.”

  Margot propped her hands on her hips, staring down at Arlo. “You’re not sleeping at my house. My shoes will remain unchewed.”

  Arlo dropped his head to his paws, whining pitifully as he gave her literal puppy eyes. Margot rolled her eyes, and in doing so caught sight of the shabbier yellow house.

  “Hey, Tootie, the house at the end of the row, the yellow one with the green roof? Who lives there?”

  Tootie pursed her lips. “Well, um, you did, hon.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  Aunt Tootie walked toward the unkempt cabin. “That was the cabin that your dad built for your mama. They moved in right after the wedding.”

  Margot absorbed this new piece of information. “But he doesn’t live there anymore? It looks like it hasn’t been kept up in years.”

  “Right after your mama left, he moved into the sleeping cubby at the funeral home.”

  “He’s been sleeping at the funeral home for thirty years?” she exclaimed.

  “He couldn’t sleep at the house anymore,” she said. “Said it was too quiet. We tried to keep it up for him. Leslie and I do what we can so the inside doesn’t get too musty. But he doesn’t want us putting on a new roof or carpet. I think part of him was afraid you might not recognize it when you came home.”

  “I didn’t recognize it,” she said, shaking her head. “This doesn’t look at all familiar.”

  She stared at the forlorn little cabin, its windows reflecting nothing, like blank doll’s eyes. There was no life inside this house. There hadn’t been life there for years. And she didn’t feel the faintest tug at her memory while staring at it. Shouldn’t she be able to remember the first place she called home?

  “You wanna go inside?” Tootie asked. “I have a spare key.”

  Margot shook her head. “I think I’m going to go see Kyle, talk to him about this new development with Dougie. And then I need to look up how to file a dog license.”

  “Aw, honey, don’t worry about it. I have the papers in my desk at home.”

  “Of course you do,” Margot murmured. She patted Arlo’s head and walked toward her truck. She paused midstep. “Tootie, when you decided where I was supposed to sleep, why did you put me in Marianne’s old cabin instead of the one that belonged to my parents?”

  “Well, first of all, I wanted someone close enough to hear me calling for help when I inevitably fall and break my hip when E.J.J. is out of the house. Stan’s old cabin is too far away for that. And I did it because I didn’t think you were ready to face that memory head-on, yet. You and Stan are still circling each other like cranky bears. You need some time.”

  “Thank you, Tootie.”

  “But mostly the hip thing. Those Life Alert commercials scare the hell out of me.”

  KYLE SAT AT his kitchen table, iced tea glass sweating between his hands as Margot gave him an account of Dougie’s vigilant defense of animal licensing at Sara Lee’s behest. Margot had obtained his address from Marianne, because in small towns, everybody knows everybody’s address. The Archer home was an adorable recently built Cape Cod saltbox on the water, with blue shutters and enormous pots of mums growing on either side of the front door. Even from the driveway, Margot could see a dock stretching out behind the house. The wooden sailboat was tethered to the dock, bobbing lazily with the waves.

  Hazel had opened the door, wearing a rainbow-striped shirt with a chimpanzee on the chest and electric-blue leggings paired with silver tap shoes. She hadn’t greeted Margot in any way, simply yelled for her father and skulked off to her room.

  The inside of the house was a little less well kept than the yard. It was clean but cluttered, with dolls—dressed like tiny drag queens?—and coloring books littering the polished wood floor of the large living room. The sofa was huge and squishy-looking, made of a sturdy, dark blue cotton. Paperback detective novels and academic journals were piled high on the coffee table. The degrees missing from Kyle’s office were found here—a bachelor’s in education from the University of Virginia, a master’s from some private college in New York she’d never heard of. Big picture windows framed a beautiful view of the lake, but the long blue curtains that accented them could use a good washing. Overall, the effect was cozy, but it made Margot’s hands itch to sort everything into some semblance of order.

  Framed pictures were scattered over every spare surface, mostly family shots showing both girls at much younger stages, beaming from the arms of a beautiful dark-haired woman with laughing brown eyes. This must have been Maggie, she mused, noting with a twinge of shameful envy the easy, joyful grin on the younger version of Kyle’s face as he stood with his arms wrapped around his wife. They looked like such a happy family. Even shy, solemn Hazel seemed to glow in the way only settled, happy children could. The only dark spot was a baby picture of June, dimpled and chubby, cradled in the arms of a thinner, paler Maggie. Kyle was smiling at the camera, but there were dark circles under his eyes and pinched lines around his mouth. This seemed to be the last picture they’d taken before they lost Maggie.

  It was easier to grasp what Kyle had lost, and somehow harder, standing here in the home of a dead woman. Was she wrong to think about Kyle as a potential partner when she couldn’t guarantee him anything? What about his girls? She’d never dated a father before. And it was simple to say it didn’t matter when those girls weren’t in the next room with all their expectations and adorable eyes.

  The kitchen, where Kyle led her after he’d recovered from the shock of Margot showing up at his door, was equally homey. From the carefully coordinated spring-green tile and curtains and countertops, there was a sense that at one point someone—Margot guessed Kyle’s late wife—had very patiently decorated this kitchen to be a magazine-perfect, “heart of the home”–type room, but since that time, the space had been filmed over with #1 DAD mugs and crayon drawings secured with alphabet magnets. It smelled of some buttery concoction that was bubbling in the oven. It was everything her mother detested in a home—in that there was evidence that people (and, horrors, children!) lived there.

  Margot shook her head, somehow feeling guilty for thinking of her mother here, in the home of a woman who had loved her child so much she had literally died for her. So she focused on explaining Sara Lee and her weird struggle for power over what amounted to nothing.

  “I can’t believe Sara Lee would do this. Who tries to steal someone’s dog because they’re threatened over a community festival? It’s like starting a knife fight over a telethon. It doesn’t make any sense!”

  “I can give her kids detention,” Kyle told her, grimacing. “And head lice. I have that kind of pow
er.”

  “While I appreciate your willingness to take my anger out on small children, my conscience demands that I say no,” she said, sipping her iced tea. It was unsweetened, and therefore didn’t make her throat close up when she drank it.

  “I could just talk to Sara Lee about her Game of Thrones–style attempts to wrestle control of Founders’ Day from you.”

  “I don’t need you to fight my battles for me. I didn’t come here to tattle on her,” she told him. “I just wanted to warn you that if you receive any mysterious e-mails from ‘me’ claiming that I want male strippers and a simulated-snow ski ramp in the town square, get a verbal confirmation.”

  “Well, the head-lice-and-detention offer stands. Sara Lee’s oldest son cut four inches off of Hazel’s ponytail on the first day of school. He has payback coming.”

  “How do you deal with this?” Margot asked. “All the petty squabbles and backbiting?”

  Kyle rose and grabbed a bag of vegetables from his freezer. He put them in the microwave and set the timer. “You’re telling me that you’ve never dealt with petty squabbles or backbiting in the Junior League set?”

  “Yeah, but it was over . . .”

  “Important things?”

  “Well, more money. Yeah, there’s no way for me to finish that sentence without sounding like a pompous ass,” Margot conceded.

  “Not really,” he teased, smirking at her.

  “I am never going to fit in here.” She sighed. “And a few weeks ago, that really wouldn’t have bothered me all that much.”

  “And now?”

  “Well, it doesn’t bother me a lot, but it bothers me more than I’m comfortable with,” she muttered. He grinned at her and bent to remove a casserole dish from the oven. She couldn’t make out the contents of the steaming dish, but she could see that it was crusted over with crispy-looking crushed cornflakes.

  “I’m assuming that the programs and presentations are coming along on the kids’ end, because I can handle a lot of crises, but mass stage fright from a bunch of third graders is sort of outside the realm of problems I can fix with a sewing kit and a sense of determination,” she said.

  “We’re on track, I promise,” he said. “I have a little more control over the staff, since I can fire them if they don’t do what I tell them. I can’t fire parent volunteers.”

  Margot lifted a brow. “Can’t you?”

  June burst into the kitchen in a flurry of yellow tulle.

  “Daddy, I’m starving,” she proclaimed dramatically, sagging against the fridge. The bright yellow tutu she was wearing was offset by a pair of purple-and-black-striped tights and a blue Monster Math Squad T-shirt.

  “Oh, June, I don’t know how you’re still alive after only consuming three packs of Cheez-Its the moment you hit the door after school.” June’s jaw dropped, her big brown eyes wide with shock. “Yes, I know about the two extra packs. Because I am Dad, and I see all.”

  June turned her gaze to Margot, who grimaced. “I have no input into this situation at all.”

  June crawled into Margot’s lap and put a hand on either side of her face. “Hi, grocery store lady.”

  Small children were not at all respectful of personal space bubbles.

  Margot pursed her lips, if for no other reason than to keep June’s thumbs out of her mouth. “You can call me Margot.”

  “Where do you live? How old are you? Are you married?”

  “I live over on the McCready compound. It’s not nice to ask a lady how old she is, and no, I’m not married.”

  June gasped. “You live with the funeral people? That’s so creepy.”

  “June,” Kyle said, his tone a little sharp.

  “No, she’s right,” Margot said. “It is occasionally creepy.”

  “You talk funny,” June told her. “Where are you from?”

  “I’m from Chicago,” she replied.

  “Do we sound funny to you?” June asked, with her father’s twinkle in her big dark eyes.

  Margot nodded. “A little bit, but not like most of the people in town.”

  June asked, “Are you here to see me?”

  “Absolutely, who else would I be here to see?”

  “I like your hair. It’s even lighter than mine. Is this your real hair or do you dye it like my teacher?” she said, taking the nearest of Margot’s loose locks and stretching it across her own forehead, as if she was trying on the lighter shade of blond. Margot tried to ignore her immediate internal warnings about head lice and various germs that June could be carrying home from school, but she did gently tug her hair out of June’s grip. And Kyle had brought up the head lice, specifically.

  “It’s real,” Margot said. “But I do add some highlights every once in a while, just to keep things interesting.”

  “Ms. Marcum tells the other teachers that’s what she’s doing, when she’s standing out in the halls, but she leaves on Friday with a bunch of gray and always comes back without any gray hair. So I think she’s doing something else.”

  “You are very observant,” Margot told her. “But you probably shouldn’t say anything like that in front of other grown-ups.”

  June preened at the compliment and seemed to forget the rest. “I like you. Are you going to stay for dinner?”

  “Oh, no, I just came over to talk to your daddy for a second. I should be going,”

  “No, stay!” June insisted.

  Margot glanced at Kyle, shaking her head. “Oh, I couldn’t.”

  “Stay.” June growled, flopping her arms over Margot’s shoulders and sagging against her.

  “What is happening?” Margot whispered, awkwardly patting June’s back.

  “How do you feel about macaroni and cheese?” Kyle asked, brows lifted as he watched his daughter. The microwave dinged. He pulled out the bag of vegetables and tossed it back and forth between his hands. “And broccoli?”

  “I like macaroni and cheese,” she said. “No comment on the broccoli because I don’t want to be a bad influence on your children.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “June, why don’t you go tell your sister it’s time for dinner?”

  June detached herself from Margot’s neck. She pointed her finger in Margot’s face. “Don’t move.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  “And wash your hands!” Kyle called after her as June ran out of the room. “With soap!”

  As an afterthought, he added, “And water!”

  “Is the tutu a fashion choice or is there a costume involved?” Margot asked.

  “The tutus are an after-school-only accessory,” he said. “We have a whole policy about it. We had to write one, after the great tutu war of 2015.”

  “I think I saw something about that on the news.”

  “Many lives were lost.”

  “I don’t have to stay, if it’s going to make you uncomfortable,” she said. “I didn’t mean to intrude. I didn’t even think about it being dinnertime.”

  “No, you should stay,” he said. “June gets something in her head, expecting that it’s going to go a certain way, and then she gets rattled if it changes. As far as the girls know, you’re a friend who’s helping me plan something for the school. And if you wouldn’t mind, I would like to keep it that way. I don’t introduce them to women I spend time with . . . outside of the house.”

  “Understood. I am a mere distant acquaintance. What can I do to help?”

  “Well, my cooking skills, such as they are, have been exhausted by this feast you see before you. But could you set the table? The dishes and silverware are out on the counter—I’ll grab an extra plate.”

  June returned, waving her hands in the air and declaring them clean. She helped Margot put four place settings on the table while Kyle poured milk for the girls. Hazel slunk into the kitchen, watching Margot warily. It seemed the older Archer girl didn’t like last-minute changes, either. She sat down and began quietly picking at her dinner.

  Margot felt very awkward, sitti
ng down with the little family. This was not her place, with Kyle’s children, enjoying a home-cooked meal. She decided she would eat as quickly as possible and then make her excuses to run back home.

  Kyle’s baked macaroni was serviceable, but not much compared to the casseroles her family had left in her fridge over the last few weeks. Still, he’d made sure there was something green on the plate. And the girls were drinking milk without complaint. Clearly he was doing something right.

  June kept up a steady stream of chatter about her school day, the mean boy in her class who stole a classmate’s lunchtime cupcake, the picture of a dog she’d drawn in art.

  “Daddy, can we hang my picture of the dog on the fridge?” June asked.

  “Sure,” he said, glancing at the crowded fridge. “We may have to cull out some of your earlier works. Your rainbow period is probably going to go.”

  “That’s fine.” She sighed. “Because having a picture of a dog is as close as we’re going to get to one right now.”

  “Well played, June,” Kyle said, frowning, turning to Margot. “The girls have been doing extra chores and keeping their grades up to prove that they’re ready to have a dog.”

  “We’ve been waiting forever,” June groaned.

  “Six weeks,” Kyle told Margot. She wondered if she should bring up Aunt Tootie’s abundance of dogs, but she was sure Kyle wouldn’t appreciate her interjecting in this conversation.

  So instead, she said, “My mom wouldn’t let me have a dog when I was growing up. She was allergic.”

  “My mommy died,” Hazel said, finally looking up at her as if Margot’s response was some sort of personality test.

  Kyle went tense, and for a second, Margot got a glimpse of that miserable stranger she’d seen wandering around town. His lips pinched together and he turned his eyes on Margot, pleading and apologizing all at once. He looked so miserable that Margot couldn’t find it in her to be irritated by Hazel’s indirect challenge. She was a little girl who was sad and angry over an absent parent, and that was something Margot knew something about.