Chapter 23
Maggie
The bear head was glaring at her.
Not a real one — though honestly, with Colette, who could say — but a fake taxidermy mount she’d dragged back from some West Texas flea market, swearing it was “the best kind of vintage Americana with a wink.” The fur was stiff and uneven, the glass eyes too shiny.
Maggie had been brushing it with a pet grooming glove for fifteen minutes, like she could coax it into looking less like it would consume its owner in the night.
It wasn’t working.
“Stop fussing with it, it’s supposed to look like a fever dream,” Colette called from the back, where she was restacking enamel pitchers. “It’s camp.”
“It’s cursed,” Maggie muttered.
She gave the bear another pass with the brush, and her mind slid where it always did when she wasn’t vigilant — back to therapy.
Her own, not couples. She’d only been twice now, but she was already kicking herself for waiting so long.
The first session with Lauren had been awkward, all intake and “I’ve experienced three major losses in the past three years” and a look she imagined Lauren was going to give her a lot, which was kind of a professional version of “yeesh.” But by the second session, Maggie was crying freely and voluntarily connecting the grief of the termination of her pregnancy and the loss of her mother in ways she hadn’t considered before.
She had a feeling that therapy was going to be good for her.
Lauren had asked about Gwen, of course. Everyone did, in their own way. But Maggie had dodged, pivoted. And then Lauren had asked something worse: “You said you never stopped running. Running from what?”
Maggie had laughed, loud and sharp. “From the obvious. From the part where my mom dropped dead on a Tuesday afternoon and no one prepared me for how much it would hollow me out.”
The therapist didn’t flinch. “What did that loss mean for you and Gwen?”
And Maggie had said it. The thing she’d been carrying like proof.
“She wasn’t there. Not the way I needed.
She was… somewhere else with the love of her life — her career.
Leaving me to sit on the kitchen floor with casseroles I didn’t eat and the strange bureaucracy of dealing with my mother’s death. ”
Her throat had tightened, but she’d kept going. “And once you’ve lived through that? Once you’ve sat in that kind of silence without your person showing up? You don’t forgive it. You can’t.”
The therapist had only said, “I want you to imagine that moment planted a seed, thinking that if she wasn’t there then, then she’ll never be there.”
Maggie had blinked in confusion.
Her therapist continued. “And maybe that’s a seed you’ve been watering every day since?”
Maggie hadn’t answered. Couldn’t. Because it felt true. It had calcified into her bones.
Now, brushing a bear that didn’t need brushing, she muttered under her breath, “I’m not just watering some seed, that’s ridiculous.”
The bell over the shop door jingled. A couple wandered in — matching hats, matching tattoos — cooing over Colette’s barware display. Maggie flashed them a smile, tossed out her usual line about everything’s twenty percent off today, except the cat, then went back to the bear.
The truth was, she liked it here. Found & Chosen was weird and crowded and forgiving. She could sprawl, let her mess leak out without apology. The opposite of Gwen’s world, where everything had to fit in neat rows and nothing was ever left unscheduled.
But grief had no schedule. It was the one mess she couldn’t joke away.
She stared into the bear’s glassy gaze, her own eyes stinging. “You get it, don’t you?”
The couple glanced over, startled, then politely redirected to the shelves and away from the weird lady speaking to a taxidermied bear head that she was only seventy-three percent sure was actually fake.
Colette appeared from the back, hands on hips. “If you’ve bonded with him, I’ll cut you a deal.”
Maggie straightened, brushing hair out of her face. “Don’t flatter yourself. I was just unloading my trauma onto his dead little eyes.”
Colette didn’t miss a beat. “That’s what he’s here for.”
Maggie laughed, too loud, then pressed a hand to her throat. She wanted to believe it — that grief could be absorbed by a wonky, haunted bear and two sessions of therapy. That she could scratch the surface without ever digging deeper.
But the truth sat under her skin, relentless: She’d lost her mother, and she hadn’t stopped running since.
And maybe, just maybe, she didn’t know how to stop.
Rosie had stolen her phone again. Maggie found her under the dining table, little legs splayed, cheeks smeared with peanut butter, holding the screen so close her nose was practically touching it.
“Hi Auntie Izzzzzy,” Rosie shrieked into the camera. “Hi Auntie Keeeeera.”
Izzy’s face filled the screen, grinning. “Well, hello, my sweet angel darling girl. Can I buy you a pony?”
Behind her, Kiera leaned in, softer smile. “Hey, Rosie-posie. Where’s your mom?”
“Rosie, that’s Mama’s phone.” Maggie ducked down, tugging the phone out of sticky fingers before her kid could FaceTime-order a family pack of Taco Bell, not that that would be unwelcome.
Maggie was breathless as Arlo and Jude thundered through the living room, Nerf darts whizzing dangerously close to her head. She dropped onto the couch, kids orbiting like manic satellites, and gave the camera a look that said it all. “As you can see, it’s been a quiet evening.”
Izzy snorted. “Looks like a zoo.”
“Correction,” Maggie said, flipping the phone to show the trail of Goldfish crackers, LEGO bricks, and couch cushions strewn across the rug. “This is a zoo after the apocalypse.”
Rosie crawled onto Maggie’s lap, wedging herself into the frame again. “Show them Puck! Show them Puck!”
Maggie tilted the phone toward the wall, where Rosie’s prized possession — Puck, an aggressively pink stuffed duck the size of a small ottoman — slumped in the corner. Izzy nodded, shrugging. “Puck the duck. Can’t imagine how that could be mispronounced badly.”
The kids whooped, then disappeared again in a flurry of Nerf fire.
Maggie sighed, returning the camera to her face.
Izzy and Kiera were tucked into what looked like their condo’s kitchen, mugs in hand, rings of steam curling upward.
They looked… good. Glowy. Happy in a way that twisted something tight in Maggie’s chest.
“How’s engaged life treating you?” Maggie asked.
Kiera smiled. “It’s good. We haven’t really started planning besides picking the date, but based off of how Pete and Danica are handling it, I think we’re going to put that off as long as possible.”
Maggie laughed. “That’s wise.”
“And,” Izzy added, tone faux-casual. “How are you?”
Maggie forced a smile. “Oh, you know. Fine. Great. Totally thriving.”
Kiera gave her a look — the one that screamed high school teacher. “Maggie.”
Maggie tipped her head back against the couch cushion, staring at the popcorn ceiling. “It’s like… the house feels different now. Quieter. Like something’s missing, but you’re not supposed to say it out loud because then the kids will hear you and realize it too.”
Izzy’s grin slipped. “It’s wild that Gwen really moved out.”
“Yeah,” Maggie said, her voice dipping quieter as she eyed Rosie concentrating on a sheet of puffy stickers across the room.
“She’s… around. For the kids. We worked it out.
Every other weekend with her, all weekdays with me.
They don’t know the details, not yet. To them it’s just…
Mama gets her sleepovers with Auntie Colette, and Mommy gets to make pancakes when she’s here. ”
Kiera’s brow furrowed. “And how are you doing with that?”
Maggie blew out a laugh that scraped at her throat.
“Depends on the hour. Sometimes it feels like freedom, like I can finally breathe without waiting for her work calendar to clear. And sometimes it feels like… I don’t know…
like I left half my heart at the curb with her suitcase.
But hey, at least the Wi-Fi still works. ”
They were both quiet for a beat, Izzy’s mouth twitching like she wanted to crack a joke but couldn’t quite get there. Maggie could feel the conversation tipping into territory she wasn’t ready for. So she did what she always did. She swerved.
“Anyway,” she said brightly, “enough about me and my thrilling divorcée sitcom.”
Izzy’s smile was laced with pity. “At least we’ll be seeing you soon at the wedding.”
“Hopefully,” Maggie muttered, watching Arlo and Jude run into the room again. “If the Nerf crossfire doesn’t get me first.”
The kids shrieked again in the background, and Maggie held the phone steady, letting them wave and shout their goodbyes.
By the time she hung up, the living room was a disaster, Rosie was begging for cookies, and Maggie’s chest felt scooped out and full all at once.
She closed her eyes for a moment, leaning back against the couch, hearing her therapist’s voice again: Is it true, or is it just the seed you’re watering?
But she shoved the thought away. Focused on the joy on her friends’ faces. That was easier.
Much easier than the silence pressing at her from every corner of the house.