Wife for Hire

Chapter 10

Maggie hung up the phone and sat back in her chair, staring sightlessly out her study window. It was early afternoon but the sunlight was weak, the world gray and obscure behind a curtain of falling snow. The orchard had been reduced to white mounds where snow had drifted from the last storm. The trees endured the cold in silence, reduced to skeletons beyond the sound of the muted footfalls and slamming doors that signaled life in the farm house.

It was the sort of snow people said would continue for a long time. Small, dry flakes that sifted straight down. Maggie knew a lot about snow now. Wet snow, dry snow, windblown snow, snow that was good for skiing, snow that was good for sledding, snow that was good for building snowmen. At happier times she would have been thrilled by it because she was usually a woman with an adventuresome spirit. But these weren’t happy times.

Maggie was lonely in a house filled with people. She’d imposed it upon herself. She saw no other way. For five months she’d kept to her room, working day and night on Kitty’s book. Hank had respected her isolation; Elsie had groused about it.

Now her tenure was coming to an end. Her six months would be complete in January. She’d accomplished her goal. She’d written the book. She’d even managed to sell it. Just minutes ago she’d spoken to her agent and learned she was a rich woman. Apparently she wasn’t the only one who found the information in Kitty’s diary to be interesting.

But the victory was flat. She was miserable. Cutting Hank out of her life had only produced heartache so strong that at times it left her breathless. Thank goodness the book had demanded her attention throughout most of her waking hours. Now that it was finished she was bereft.

She had to start a new project, she told herself, but nothing appealed to her. She looked down at herself and knew she’d lost weight.

“Pathetic,” she said to Fluffy, curled in a ball on the corner of the desk.

Elsie knocked on the door and walked in. “Pathetic,” she said. “Everyone’s downstairs trimming the tree, and you’re up here looking like death warmed over.”

Maggie smiled. She could always count on Elsie to jolt her out of self-pity. Elsie was brutal but effective. And there’d been a lot of times in the past months when Elsie had kept her going with scoldings and hugs and hot soup.

“To night’s the Christmas party,” Elsie said. “Does your dress need pressing?”

Maggie shook her head. Her dress was fine. It was a little big on her, but the style allowed for that. She wasn’t sure she cared anyway.

Laughter carried up the stairs with the smell of pine and spicy cider. Hank’s parents, his Aunt Tootie, Slick, Ox, Ed, Vern, Bubba, and their wives and girlfriends were downstairs, helping with the tree.

If she were a good wife, she’d be down there too. She’d used the same tired excuse of working on her book to steal away to her room. No one knew the book was done, much less sold.

Lord, what had become of her? She was a coward, she thought. She wasn’t able to face other people’s happiness. Especially now that it was the Christmas season. This was a time for family. A time for love-and Maggie was loveless. Tears trickled down her throat. Hormones, she told herself, swallowing hard.

Elsie shook her head and sighed. “You’re so hard on yourself,” she said. “Why don’t you let yourself have some fun?”

Because if she gave in just a tiny bit, her resolve to leave would crumble like a house of cards, Maggie thought. Skogen wasn’t going to change. Hank’s father wasn’t going to change. Bubba wasn’t going to change. Just as her mother and Aunt Marvina weren’t going to change. And the most painful truth was that Maggie wasn’t going to change.

She didn’t belong in Riverside and she didn’t belong in Skogen. If she wanted happiness, she was going to have to go searching for it. Surely there was a place where she would be accepted and feel comfortable. Surely there was a town out there that offered a compromise between dumpsters and apple trees.

“I’ll have fun to night,” Maggie lied. “I’ll just work a little bit more, and then I’ll quit for the day.”

“Everyone misses you,” Elsie insisted.

They didn’t miss her. Maggie knew that for a fact. She could hear the laughter. She could hear the conversation that bubbled between old friends and family and never included her. For months now life had gone on in the farm house, and she hadn’t been a part of it. Hank had gone from the baseball team to the football team to the hockey team. The cider press had been delivered and was operating, and the pie factory was close to becoming a reality.

“No one misses me,” Maggie said. “They’re having a perfectly wonderful time without me.”

“Hank misses you,” Elsie said. “He looks almost as bad as you do. He laughs, but his eyes don’t mean it. You’d see it too if you weren’t so stuck on your own misery.”

Maggie wondered if what Elsie said was true. She knew part of her wanted it to be so. She knew that there was a scrap of hope she hadn’t been able to completely smother. Her love for Hank smoldered deep inside her. She couldn’t extinguish it no matter how hard she tried. It burned constantly and painfully. Every day she faced the unpleasant realities of her predicament and exerted every ounce of discipline she possessed to do what she felt was best for herself and for Hank, but the dream remained.

Deep in her heart she knew she hadn’t held to the agreed-upon six months through any sense of honor. It had been that damn dream that had kept her in Vermont.

For weeks she’d been dreading the Christmas party at the grange hall. It was the one social event she couldn’t possibly avoid. Now that it was at hand she felt numb and exhausted even before the ordeal began.

She sat on the edge of her bed with her bathrobe wrapped tightly around her. Her hair was still damp from the shower; her toes were pink from the hot water. A depressing lethargy had taken hold of her. At least she wasn’t in one of her emotional moods, she thought. Lately she’d been succumbing to crying jags. No one knew. She cried quietly with her face stuffed into her pillow. She cried late at night when everyone else was asleep.

There was a soft rap on her closed door. “Maggie, can I come in?”

It was Hank. Probably wondering why she was so late. She should have been dressed half an hour ago, but she couldn’t seem to finish the task. “The door’s unlocked.”

He wore a dark suit with a white shirt and red tie, and the corner of a red silk handkerchief peeked rakishly from his breast pocket. The sight of him made her heart feel like lead in her chest.

Hank Mallone would never want for female companionship, she thought. Once she was out of the scene, women would be flocking to his doorstep. He was sinfully handsome and in a few years he would be wealthy. The contracts for his pies and cider were pouring in. After the first of the year when the pie factory opened, Skogen would be at a hundred-percent employment thanks to Hank.

He sat beside her on the bed and placed a small paper-wrapped box in her hand.

“It’s customary in my family to give a gift on the night of the Christmas party. When I was a little boy, my parents always gave me a special present just before we left. It would be something I could take with me. A pocketknife, or a pair of red socks, or Christmas suspenders. And my dad would always give my mom jewelry. I know this is hard to believe, but in his own way, my dad is actually quite romantic.”

She hadn’t expected this. Wasn’t prepared for it. In the last two months they’d barely spoken, and she harbored a secret fear that he finally wanted her to leave. He’d stopped trying to make conversation, stopped finding excuses to touch her, stopped trying to coax her from her room.

And now he’d given her a gift. She didn’t know what to make of it. She held it in her lap to keep her hands from shaking, but she wasn’t entirely successful. Emotions too long held in check were tumbling to the surface, making it difficult to think, making it difficult not to smile.

For months now she’d treated him badly. And how had he responded to that? He’d bought her a gift!

He sat quietly watching, seeing the confusion in her face, seeing the pain mingling with a sudden infusion of unexpected joy. He’d been waiting for this moment for months, knowing that even if her book wasn’t finished, even if all feelings for him were gone, she’d have to give him this evening.

He drew a shaky breath while she stared at the box. He hadn’t been sure she’d accept it. He wasn’t even sure she’d open it. Now that he saw the range of emotions play across her face, he knew things would work out.

He pulled her onto his lap and cuddled her close to him.

“I haven’t wanted to bother you these past months. I know how hard you’ve been working on your book.”

She thought she owed him an honest reply. “My book is done. It’s been done for a little over a month now.”

He understood her reasons for not telling him. She’d been using the book as an excuse to remain aloof. He’d suspected as much. He hadn’t heard any computer noises lately. The slight hurt, but he struggled not to let it show.

“Can you tell me about it? Is it good?”

Maggie laughed softly. It was an odd question. It was like asking a mother if her firstborn daughter was ugly.

“I’m not sure if it’s good, but it’s sold. I’ve kept my promise. Aunt Kitty’s diary will be published in book form.”

He gave her a squeeze. “I always knew you could do it.”

She liked the sound of pride in his voice, and it triggered a surge of pride in herself, bringing the first rush of excitement over her success.

“I wasn’t that sure,” she said. “I still can’t believe it.”

She was smiling. First with her mouth, then with her eyes, then every vestige of sorrow vanished. It was as if the sun had suddenly come out in all its blinding glory. Maggie Toone wasn’t a woman who took easily to unhappiness.

She remembered the package, and her fingers fumbled with the wrapping paper. “I love presents!” she said. “I love surprises!” She opened the box to find a pair of diamond stud earrings. “Oh!”

He pushed a curl behind her ear so he could see her face more clearly. “Do you like them?”

“Yes! Of course I like them. They’re beautiful. But…”

“But what?”

She slouched against him, some of the old tiredness returning.

“I can’t accept these. This isn’t the sort of present you give to a…” She searched her mind for the appropriate word, but couldn’t find one that defined their relationship. “Friend,” she finally said. “This isn’t the sort of present you give to a friend.”

“It’s the sort of present I give to my best friend.”

“I thought Bubba was your best friend.”

“Bubba is my second best friend.”

She thought he’d given up, but he’d only been lying low. She had to give him something for tenacity. And she had to admit-she was pleased. The dream was dancing around inside of her. She couldn’t control it.

“It isn’t going to work,” she said. “Skogen hasn’t changed.”

He looked confident. “It’ll work. It was never necessary for Skogen to change. You just haven’t seen it yet. You haven’t figured it out.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I was just like you. I had to get away. Trouble was that for a while my problems kept following me. That’s because you can’t run away from your problems. You only end up with the same problems in a new location.

“Then one day I was sitting in a crummy hotel room in Baltimore, and I realized I’d grown up. Somewhere along the line I’d sorted things out. My identity wasn’t dependent upon the people around me. I didn’t need my parents’ attention or approval. I didn’t need to be the class clown or the macho stud or the star quarterback. I just needed to do things I found personally satisfying. Like studying about agriculture, and improving my granny’s apple orchard.

“I think you’re a little like that. I think you needed to get away and write your book. And I think you needed some time alone to get in touch with Maggie Toone.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know if it’s that simple. I don’t know if I can stand the isolation of living on a farm.”

“You’ve imposed your own isolation. We brought your little red car up here, but you haven’t used it. You just need to get yourself out on the road. You need to cuss out a few old ladies, give a few rude hand signals. You need to hit those shopping malls once in a while.”

“Vermont has shopping malls?”

“Mostly we have towns,” he admitted. “But they’re just as good as a mall. Burlington even has a pedestrian street. Doesn’t that get your adrenaline going?”

Not nearly as much as sitting on his lap, Maggie thought. Still, it might be worth an investigation.

“And if you want to get out of the house on a regular basis, you could go back to teaching.”

“No. I don’t think so,” Maggie said. “I think I want to write another book.”

“Have you got an idea?”

She shook her head. “My creative energy hasn’t exactly been at an all-time high.”

“My Uncle Wilbur ran the county newspaper for forty years. He retired in 1901. We have crates and crates of papers in the basement of this house. I went down to check on them the other day. They’re fragile, but they’re still readable. Maybe you could find a new story in one of them.”

Maggie’s heart beat a little faster. Forty years’ worth of old newspapers in her very own basement! It might be worth marrying Hank just for the newspapers alone!

Wait a minute. Hold the phone. She was getting carried away. Okay, so the Gap had come to Vermont and there was a book lurking somewhere in Hank’s cellar. What about all those weird Skogenians who didn’t like her? What about Bubba? What about Vern? What about Mrs. Farnsworth and her quilts?

Hank kissed her on the nose and set her on her feet.

“We need to get going. We don’t want to miss Santa Claus. You go put your earrings on and finish getting dressed, and I’ll warm up the truck.”

Ten minutes later Maggie was sitting in the truck, studying her earrings as they sparkled in the rearview mirror. She really shouldn’t be wearing them, she thought. She hadn’t intended to, and then somehow they’d managed to become attached to her ears. She wouldn’t keep them, of course. She’d wear them to the dance, so as not to be rude, and then as soon as she got home, she’d swish them in alcohol and put them back in the box.

It would be different if she were legally married to Hank. It might even be different if she knew for sure about the shopping street in Burlington. Actually, now that she knew the shopping street was there, it didn’t seem nearly so important to her.

She watched the last of the apple trees disappear from sight as Hank drove down the road, and she thought how pretty the trees were draped in snow and moonlight. She thought the town was pretty, too, when they passed through. Big Irma had strung outdoor lights around the general store, the bank was spotlighted with a green wreath on the door, the cafeteria and the beauty salon were trimmed in blinking lights, and the real estate office had decorated the fir tree in its front yard.

“Drive slower!” Maggie said, pressing her nose to the window. “I can’t see the decorations when you drive so fast!”

“I’m only doing twenty-five miles an hour. If I drive any slower, we’ll be going backward.”

She’d come back tomorrow to take a closer look at the Christmas tree, she decided. She wanted to see it in the daylight. And maybe she’d stop in at Big Irma’s and buy some maple syrup candy to send to New Jersey.

In a matter of minutes they were at the grange hall, and it might as well have been the PNA. Halls are the same the world over, Maggie concluded. There was the same wonderful dusty wood floor, the same happy pandemonium of excited children and convivial adults. And because this was a Christmas party, there was a feeling of expectation. Santa would soon be here. And after Santa had handed out the candy canes and coloring books there would be dancing, and after the dancing there would be the special coffee cake made by the Smullen twins.

Maggie handed Hank her coat and looked into the crowd. “Oh, look,” she said, “it’s Vern! In a tuxedo!”

“Yeah, Vern always wears a tuxedo to the Christmas dance. He inherited it from his Uncle Mo.”

“What happened to his Uncle Mo?”

“Heart attack,” Hank said. “He was a waiter at a fancy restaurant in Burlington. That’s where the tuxedo came from.”

Vern winked at Maggie and she waved back.

Ed Kritch came over. “You be sure and save a dance for me,” he said to Maggie.

Maggie looked at him suspiciously. “You won’t kidnap me again, will you?”

Ed chuckled. “Naw, I wouldn’t do that. That was something, wasn’t it? I tell you, I just about fainted myself when Elsie Hawkins pulled that bazooka out of her purse. Yes sir, I guess that story’s gonna get told around. I guess that’s almost as good as the time Bucky Weaver burned his barn down trying to shoot Hank here.”

Hank looked pleased. “Before you came into my life, I was the sole source of entertainment for this town,” he said to Maggie. “It’s a real plea sure to share the limelight.”

A Christmas tree had been placed in the middle of the dance floor and a ring of people began forming around the tree. The band played “Here Comes Santa Claus” and the people sashayed around the tree in time to the song. Hank and Maggie joined hands and sashayed around, too, looking over their shoulder, watching the front door for the arrival of Santa Claus.

The door opened and Santa appeared, and every child in the hall sent up a squeal of delight.

“Ho, ho, ho,” Santa said, joining the party. “Has everyone been good this year?”

“Yes,” they all answered.

Dancing continued around the tree, and Santa made his way along the chain, talking to children, passing out his coloring books. When Santa got to Maggie, he stopped and took her hand.

“Has Maggie been good his year?” he asked.

Maggie felt her face flame. Santa hadn’t talked to any of the other adults.

Santa took a coloring book and a candy cane from his sack and gave it to Maggie. “Only the best girls in Skogen get these,” he said to Maggie with a wink.

A roar of approval went up from the crowd.

The world blurred for a moment, and Maggie’s feet forgot to move to the music. She looked first to Hank and then to the other faces in the chain. They liked her! Maggie realized. Even Hank’s father was smiling at her from across the room.

Maggie clutched the coloring book and the candy cane to her chest and dutifully thanked Santa. She took a good look at the man behind the beard and narrowed her eyes.

“I know it’s you, Bubba,” she whispered. “I’m gonna get you for this!”

Bubba smiled, gave Maggie’s hand a squeeze, and moved on.

Maggie smiled after him. She smiled because all of a sudden she liked Bubba very much. And she smiled because Santa had found her, way out in the rolling, snow-covered hills of Vermont-and he’d given her a coloring book. She was blinking furiously, but the tears were spilling down her cheeks. She buried her face in Hank’s chest and snuffled into his tie.

“It’s just that I l-l-love coloring books,” she said, sobbing.

Orville Mullen was on the other side of Maggie. “Probably pregnant,” he said to Hank. “That’s the way they get. They cry over coloring books and baby bibs and little booties. When my Elaine was pregnant, we couldn’t walk past the baby food jars in the Acme without Elaine bursting into tears.”

Mrs. Farnsworth came over and put her arm around Maggie. “You need to do some quilting,” she said. “It evens a person out. And you get to gossip too.”

“I don’t know…” Maggie said, blowing her nose in Hank’s red silk handkerchief.

“Doesn’t take much time at all,” Mrs. Farnsworth told her. “A Saturday afternoon once a month, and you can tell us about your Aunt Kitty’s diary. We’re all dying to read the book when it comes out. It’s not every day we get a real author moving into our town. Maybe we can even hold a book-signing party.”

A book-signing party? Maggie clapped a hand to her mouth to stop the giggles. She was going to be famous. Not enormously famous, of course. After all, she wasn’t Nora Roberts. Still, she’d be a little famous. And the quilting club would give her a book-signing party. Maggie chewed on her bottom lip. She had a problem. A name problem.

“You’re going to have to marry me as soon as possible,” Maggie said to Hank. “I have a name problem. When the quilting club gives me a book-signing party, what am I going to write? They think I’m Maggie Mallone when actually I’m still Maggie Toone. You see, it will be much too confusing unless we get married right away.”

She chewed on her bottom lip. “I realize it’s been several months since you asked me to marry you. Maybe you’ve changed your mind. I couldn’t blame you if you have.”

Hank grinned down at her. “Let me get this straight. You want to marry me so you can autograph copies of your book for the quilting club?”

“Yes.”

He couldn’t resist teasing a little. “I don’t know. That’s not very romantic. I’m not sure that’s a good reason for marriage. What about Skogen? You sure you can live here?”

“Of course I can live here! Skogen’s a terrific place to live!” Her voice turned lower, more serious. “And I love you.”

He took her in his arms. “I love you too. And I’ll be happy to marry you.” Then he kissed her long and hard. Right there in front of the whole town for everyone to see.

“Nice to know he’s not doing it in people’s barns anymore,” Gordie Pickens said. “He sure was something as a youngster, wasn’t he?”

Bucky Weaver, old Dan Butcher, and Myron Stone house agreed.

And the band played “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” for the fourth time.