(Thanks to Chris Pruitt for this photo of the Brewton Commercial Historical District.)
MARGERY
Margery returned to her mother’s hospital room, a numb expression on her normally animated face.
“What is it sweet heart?” Her mother asked almost immediately. “Where’s that nice young man? Todd was it?” At the sound of his name Margery’s eyes whipped to her mother’s and she let out a sudden shuddering breath.
“Let there be no secrets between us anymore Mama,” Margery said. And she told her everything. About the roadtrip with Todd, and the way he picked out all the best foods. About the way Sean had treated her behind closed doors. About the damn dimple in Todd’s chin that made him so irresistible. Finally, she told her what Todd had only just revealed—the gift he’d shared, and the lie he’d told.
“But the upshot is…you’re going to be okay, Mama.” She said at last softly. “For a long, long time.”
“But Margery…”her Mother paused, “what about you? Will you be okay?”
“Yes,” she said, raising her head in a small smile that she could only hope looked sincere. “I will be. I just need to order us some lunch. There’s a great new wing place in town that I hear has good reviews. I know how you love your buffalo sauce. I’ll call in an order.”
Margery pulled out her phone and walked into the hall. Without even thinking, her fingers automatically opened up the messages between her and Todd from a few days earlier. He’d pulled into a truck stop with a giant cinnamon roll for the logo, and had run in to grab them some snacks to tide them over until dinner.
TODD: So, no trail mix then? ;)
MARGERY: NO. You’ve ruined me for all other trail mixes.
TODD: Granola?
MARGERY: Is it as good as yours?
TODD: Probably not.
MARGERY: Pass.
TODD: Corn nuts?
MARGERY: Do they have the ranch ones?
TODD: No, only Chile Picante and Original.
MARGERY: Pass.
TODD: You told me you were starving.
MARGERY: I am!
TODD: Then what do you want?
MARGERY: What about one of those giant cinnamon rolls? Like on the SIGN!
TODD: You want a cinnamon roll at 3:30 pm?
MARGERY: Todd there is no wrong time for butter filled pastries.
TODD: Oh shit, you’re right. One giant cinnamon roll it is.
MARGERY: *Kissy Face Emoji*
Her face flushed reading the silly banter, and she leaned back against the hospital wall as a pair of nurses walked by, their gazes flicking to her as their heads bowed together in quiet conversation. And so the gossip train begins. She missed the anonymity of roadtrip life already.
How could this have been only a few days ago? And how is it that I miss him this much when he’s been gone all of five minutes?
Without her consent, her mind brought up pictures of Todd’s mischievous eyes, his pleasing smile, and the way his laugh quirked up the left corner of his mouth slightly more than the right. She thought about the way he’d mocked her and teased her to the point of her blushing, as if that was what he was waiting for. She thought of how he’d grabbed her hands at that first breakfast and told her that Sean’s attempts at love and care were not enough. She thought of how safe she’d felt traveling around the country with a man she’d only just met—sharing the beauty of rivers and lakes; taco stands and mom and pop ice cream shops with extra ‘p’s and ‘e’s thrown on the end for good measure.
She thought of Todd’s earnest gaze as he’d told her about his gift, and the hope that had sparked in her chest when he told her that her mother was going to live.
And then she thought of the way he’d looked at her when she’d told him to go—as though it were ripping him in half to walk away from her, even though running was all he’d ever done his entire adult life.
He lied to you, remember? Who even knows how much of that was….was even real.
She shook her head and straightened up. Then she took a deep breath and placed an order for buffalo chicken wings with extra blue cheese dressing on the side.
TODD
Todd stared into the amber liquid of his rocks glass, watching the swirls and whirls caused by the centrifugal force, as his wrist rotated—around, and around, and around.
It seemed like that was how his life had always been too. Hope and despair swirling around the edges, while he tried to live in the shallow middle; never hoping, never longing, never daring for more. He’d called himself “content,” but what he’d really been, was wildly afraid. A coward.
And now it was time to pay the piper. Now, he was swept up into the tornado of uncertainty. The agony of wanting what could perhaps, never be his. The ache of it made him feel human—and the pain of it? That made him feel alive.
And yet, here he was, numbing some of that double edged sorrow with a glass of whiskey in the bar where he and Margery had met only a few weeks before. He told himself he was acclimating. Planning his next move. Deciding where the next adventure lay—now that Margery had told him to go.
But really, he was waiting. Lingering. Biding his time and staying close.
It was quiet in the bar. Barely a patron other than himself, and Todd realized that he’d lost track of the days while driving with Margery—even more so in their rush to return to Brewton.
It was a Tuesday at 2pm, and the large, slightly balding barman, who was not the one who’d been here the first night he’d walked in, was bored with no one to talk to excepting a kitchen staff member named Larry whom the barman, Stan, kept referring to as “the kid.” The “kid”, Todd had discovered, was actually a 20 year old man newly returned from his sophomore year of college, working here at the Brewton Bar as a summer job. Even still, Stan seemed to prefer Todd’s more seasoned countenance, and also seemed to lack the basic intuition that could have told him that Todd desperately wanted to be alone.
Stan’s death wouldn’t be particularly gruesome at least, that was a gift. All Todd had seen was an elderly man in a recliner chair, oxygen tubing winding its way around his ears and into his nose. He could tell from the sounds in the vision that Stan was watching a game of baseball when he sagged down further into the comfort of his recliner chair. A man at peace, going peacefully.
But this peaceful end of life scene was quite opposite of the one Todd was witnessing at this very moment.
“So then I told her, young lady, you live in my house—you’ve gotta abide by my rules. But did she listen?” Stan paused long enough that Todd realized he was expecting an actual verbal response. He cleared his throat softly.
“I’m guessing she didn’t.”
“No, she didn’t. And you know what she said?”
“What did she say?”
“She said, ‘Fine Daddy, I’ll just move in with Sean instead.’”
Todd’s blood turned cold.
“What did you just say?”
“I told her HELL NO! Can you believe she’d rather live with a man she’s been close with for a handful of weeks than with her parents who have loved her all the days of her life.” Todd glanced into the eyes of this man he hardly knew, but somehow felt a shared fear with. His voice had sounded angry, but his eyes were soft and sad. “But of course, she’s 19. There’s nothing I can really do to stop her.”
“Have you…have you actually met this Sean?”
“It’s a small town Todd, and I’m a bartender.” Stan raised his eyebrows incredulously.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen him. Though I don’t know what my baby girl sees in that man…sometimes I think Margery was right skipping town the night before her wedding. And it’s damn creepy that he seems to be moving on so quickly, like she meant nothing to him after all those years together. It ain’t right.”
“Margery?” Todd asked, feigning ignorance.
“Oh! Margery was his fiancee. They were engaged for something like two years before they finally set a date. Of course, they were living together and all, but then! The night before the wedding—she disappeared. At first no one knew where she had gone, but then Helen told us all that the wedding was cancelled. Rumor has it she’d run off with some truck driver and was headed North. NORTH! Can you believe it?”
“Wow.” Todd said, pretending to be dumb struck.
“She got cold feet. Or she got wise. Hard to tell which. But now that my Trisha’s involved with the likes of Sean… I don’t know, I think I sorta wish she’d run off with a trucker too if it meant keeping her away from the likes of him.”
“What do you mean?”
Stan leaned in conspiratorially. “You don’t know? I guess you aren’t from around here are you. Well then, let me tell you what happened the day of the wedding.”
MARGERY
Once the initial shock of her mother’s hospital stay had worn down a bit, and the chicken wings and blue cheese dressing had begun to do their work in calming Margery’s anxious nerves, Margery began to feel a strange itch which she realized could only be the result of being home.
It was like putting on a sweater that had shrunk in the wash—every movement grated against her skin like she was wearing something tight and ill fitting. Somehow she didn’t belong in this life anymore. Even just the conversations with the kind, but curious, nurses who had known her family all her life reminded her that the last time she was here, she was about to get married. And she couldn’t help but notice when they turned towards each other and whispered when they thought she wasn’t looking.
And then I…left? Was kidnapped? Kidnapped and then left to go further North of my own volition?
In the calming of her anger since their last conversation Margery had been playing over all those little moments with Todd over their weeks together. The way he insisted she decide where they go next. The way he cared for her when she was brutally hungover, and introduced her to his family. The beauty he’d shown her along their journey. The goodness of his heart that had… that had kept her alive.
“If I had to choose: your life, or your love… I’d choose your life every time. You’re a star Margery. The damn brightest light in the dark that I’ve ever seen. And the world is a much better place with you in it. Trust me. I’ve seen the alternative.”
His last words to her played over and over again in her mind. And every time she looked over at her mother, and saw the twinkling of mischief in her eyes, it hit her again like a stone. If Todd hadn’t done what he did… I’d be dead, and my mother would be sitting in this hospital bed ALONE.
But the weight of the lie still nagged at her. Dragging down even their most joyful memories, and covering them with a cloud of suspicion she wasn’t sure how to clear.
But one thing she did know for sure, was that now that she was back—the itchy and too small sweater of her life in Brewton, Alabama had to come off.
She needed closure before she could figure out what was next.
It wasn’t cancer.
They’d called in another specialist to look at her mother’s test results. And then another just to be sure. The first doctor had his ass handed to him by both for freaking Margery and Helen out needlessly, and Margery wished she could see the look on Todd’s face as she told him, you were right.
Margery and her mother spent the week swapping roadtrip stories. He mother droned on and on about her most recent murder mysteries and contemporary romance novel’s she’d loved and Margery ate up every minute of it. Life was so very precious. More precious that most people truly imagined.
A week later, after all the lingering affects of Helen’s fall and subsequent head injury had mostly resolved, Margery took her mother home. When Helen had situated herself comfortably in her favorite wing backed armchair in the living room, and begun reading a her new Thursday Murder Club novel, Margery backed slowly out of the room as though she were afraid of disturbing her mother’s peace. But of course, the peace she was truly about to disturb was her own.
“Sean should be at the club right now. I overheard one of the nurses saying he’s been playing every Tuesday at 8 with her son Jimmy.”
Margery turned towards her mother’s smiling face as she looked over her readers.
“How did you know where I was going?” Her mother laid her still open book gently in her lap, her weathered thumb marking her place.
“You’ve been…on a journey Margery, dear. And now you’ve come back. But it’s time to get your things from that low-life’s overpriced suburban nightmare, and move on with your life. Your OWN life. Your real life.”
“I feel like I’m starting completely over.”
Her mother’s eyes sparkled with joy and with a whisper of tears. “I know baby. And that may be so, but I’ve always found that the most painful endings are just the compost for beautiful new beginnings.”
Margery smiled at her then. The afternoon sunshine was playing in her mother’s grey hair where she’d twisted it up with a claw clip. At once she looked angelic and somehow even more firmly and beautifully earthly. Earthly like wildflowers, or blueberries, or the color of the sky as you can only see it from the ground.
“Thanks Mom,” she said at last.
Margery walked out the front door, and closed it firmly behind her.
Margery hadn’t been sure what to expect; but this hadn’t been it.
After driving around in her small sedan for a few extra blocks to make sure that Sean was well and truly gone, she’d gone to the front door and put her key in the lock.
It didn’t work.
That’s strange.
Then she’d gone to the mailbox and checked to see if there was anything for her, what she saw chilled her. Where once their two names had sat side-by-cohabitating-side, she saw only SEAN PENNINGTON and a jagged scribble where her name had once been.
I suppose I deserve that.
That’s when she’d looked up from her place at the curb and saw the red dumpster peeking around the corner of the house where the garage stood.
That’s new. Is he remodeling or something?
She walked over, curious. When she’d looked inside, her heart had sank into her feet. It was full of her things. Her soft cotton dresses, her favorite pair of jeans, the painting she’d bought at last year’s art market, and… her books. She leaned over the side of the dumpster to try and reach the volumes, but she realized pretty quickly that she was going to have to climb in if she wanted to get all of her things out.
She was still staring at all her worldly possessions which had been dumped into the dumpster like so much garbage by the man she’d once shared a life with, when she heard a car door slam and the sound of eerily familiar footsteps behind her.
“Hey Baby,” Sean crooned, his voice grating over her skin, leaving gooseflesh in its wake. “You’re home.”
TODD
Todd leaned his head against the wheel of the his truck as he stared at the text thread with Margery. He’d been contemplating sending her a message every single day for the last week, but he kept coming up empty.
Betsy’s words from a few days before played over and over again in his mind.
“Chin up Todd. She told you to go, and she very well may ask you to come back—but you need to give it time. You told her the truth and now… now it’s up to her. You didn’t give her a choice to go with you that first time, so you’ll give her the choice now.”
Todd leaned back in his seat at the truck stop and sighed. Typed. Sighed again. And put his phone away without pressing send.
TODD: I miss you.
MARGERY
Margery froze at the sound of Sean’s voice and the barely restrained violence in it. She turned slowly towards him and lifted her chin.
“It’s hardly my home when my key won’t even go in the lock. Besides, you never deigned to add me to the Title anyways.”
Sean snorted. “And a good thing too. Or else this whole ‘break up’ would have gotten a whole lot.. messier.” His eyes were gleaming in a way that scared her. “That is what this is, right doll? You leave me at the altar and then sneak back here weeks later to try and get your stuff when you think I’ll be gone.” He set down his golf bag and picked up a driver, swinging it experimentally in a way that Margery knew was far from casual.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to end things, Sean. That… that wasn’t fair to you.” Sean gave a bitter laugh and lurched towards her.
“Fair!? Fair would have been you marrying me like you promised when I gave you this!” He threw down the club and snatched her left hand, and lifted it as if to show her the ring. The ring she was not wearing.
“I took it off a few weeks ago,” she said, pulling a small box out of her pocket and holding it out to him. “After I called off the wedding. Here.”
Sean snatched the box and tossed it into his golf bag. “I suppose you expect me to thank you for this.”
“I… I don’t expect anything Sean… I just came…”
“To get your stuff back. Yeah, I gathered that. How long have you been in town anyways Margery? I heard you’ve been at the hospital for a week. A WEEK. And you couldn’t spare a single moment to call? Text? Let me know you’re back in town?” His smile was the saccharine thing she’d once considered charming.
“I…” Margery stammered, “I wasn’t ready.”
“And I supposed that’s why you called off the wedding too isn’t it. You weren’t ‘ready.’ After you’d been bitching at me for years to propose, and then for the years of our engagement to pick a fucking date, when it all came down to it, you still weren’t ‘ready’ were you?”
“That’s not why I left!” She felt her voice rising an octave and shivered at the look of contempt solidifying his features. “Why is all my stuff in this dumpster?”
“I was tired of holding on to your shit.”
“Sean, it’s been three weeks.”
“Feels a lot longer for those of us not galavanting around the country with a fucking trucker.” Margery’s face burned bright red.
“So the rumors are true. You’ve met someone else, is that it? Some other dick tickles your fancy like I can’t? Is that it? I bet you just wanted to know how the blue collar crowd does it.” His smile was dripping with violence as he towered over her. She put out a hand and held it an inch from his chest.
“Backup Sean.”
“What? I can’t even stand near my own fiancee anymore? Not even after she ditched me on our wedding day.” He pressed even closer.
“I’m not your fiancee and I said BACK UP.” Margery glared into his face, but behind her back, she slipped her phone out of her pocket and sent a text.
TODD
MARGERY: Need you
Todd was driving like a bat out of hell. Flying like a bat out of hell? Driving like a trucker who’d just gotten this startling text from the woman he loved, but hadn’t spoken to in a week after his big revelation.
TODD: On my way. Just keep your location sharing on.
Thank God he’d kept taking small contract carrier jobs in the Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Tennessee area. Thank God that though he’d gone to stay with Betsy and Mike for a day earlier in the week, he hadn’t gone much farther.
Something, that niggling premonition he couldn’t quite shake, had told him to stay close. And by Margery’s second message, he knew that something had been right.
MARGERY: Sean here
Todd drove even faster.
MARGERY
This had been going on for the better part of thirty minutes, and she wasn’t sure how much longer the storm of Sean’s rage would take to blow out, or if it ever would before he’d broken something far beyond repair.
“I’m just here for some closure, Sean. So we can both move on with our lives.”
“You think you’re better than me don’t you? You think you can just go off and ‘move on’ and have your little adventures and leave me behind without consequences? You only care about this stuff that I’ve thrown out, when it was US you threw in the garbage.” Sean was stalking around the dumpster now, flipping the two-part lid open and peering in to examine the contents. “You know, the trash guys are supposed to come get this later this week. But I don’t see a reason to wait do you? After all, you’ve already thrown a match on everything else of value.” He strode over to the now open garage door and grabbed the small jerry can from where he stashed it next to the lawnmower. “What do you say we just go ahead and get that last measure of ‘closure’ right now. There’s a lot of paper in there you know. I didn’t know you had so many books until I nearly broke my back dumping them all in here.”
“No! Please Sean, that’s not necessary. I’ll just take my stuff and…”
“And what!? Leave? Again? I’m not going to make it that easy for you this time Margery.” He lifted the jerry can over his head and began to tip it towards the open dumpster.
“NO!” Margery yelled, trying to hold back the tears threatening to well in her eyes. They’re just books, she told herself, they’re not worth your life.
Then the sound of a familiar engine roared down the street and pulled to a screeching stop at the foot of the driveway behind her. She watched as Sean’s eyes lifted at first in surprise and then doubled down in rage.
“Hey asshole! Don’t you know you need a permit for a dumpster fire that big?”
Margery turned towards the sound of Todd’s voice as relief flooded her. He leapt from the cab and walked towards her with that self-assured smirk plastered to his face. His chin dimple was doing chin dimple things and her heart… her heart was singing a song that sounded something like this: He came. He’s here. He came. He’s here.
Todd and Margery’s story will continue in Part nine!
Phew! You had me going there. Yay Todd!!
GO TODD GO! GO TODD GO!