Chapter 4
4
What on earth was Mr. Extra Spicy doing in her café, especially when it wasn’t even open yet, and Maggie was pretty positive he could not possibly be the gaming type? She stared at him gormlessly while he—Zach, because she hadn’t forgotten his name—grinned. Once again, he’d sounded flirtatious when he’d spoken. Maybe it was a default setting, like when Buzz Lightyear switched to Spanish in Toy Story 3 . Zach just couldn’t help himself… But then again, maybe it was that way with all ridiculously good-looking guys. They flirted as naturally as they breathed. They probably didn’t even realize they were doing it… or the effect they had on their all-too-willing victims.
“I can?” she answered, sounding dubious, when she’d remembered how to form words. “Help you, that is?”
“You’re opening a boardgame café?” he demanded, and she nodded dumbly. “And that logo out there on the banner—is that Sylvana?”
Syl-what ? “Umm…” Maggie stared at him blankly. “I…”
“Yes, it is.” Ben’s voice, coming from behind her, had her spinning around. Her son was standing in the doorway of the kitchen and stockroom, looking uncertain but also hopeful and even a little defiant. There was clearly a lot going on here, and she had no idea what any of it was. She turned back to Zach, who was giving a slow, approving kind of nod.
“You play RainQuest?” he asked Ben, and Ben nodded back. “What are your stats?”
Her son then reeled off what sounded to Maggie like a whole lot of gibberish—something about strength, endurance, shapeshifting, combat skills, potion making and a few others, followed by a bunch of numbers and a couple of caveats—“I bought an extra skill point from the guild” and “I chose healing over strength, I think it’s a strat,” none of which Maggie really understood.
“What are yours?” Ben asked Zach, and he reeled off a similar list of gibberish. They stared at each other for a moment in what looked like approving assessment, and then Ben asked, “What do you play as?”
“Halfling, usually, but sometimes an orc.”
Her son snorted. “No way.”
Zach rolled his eyes. “Tell me you are not an elf, or like, I don’t know, a selkie .”
“Djinn, usually,” Ben replied with dignity.
Zach gave a slow, considering nod of acceptance. “Decent,” he proclaimed, and Ben grinned.
To Maggie, they might as well have been speaking in a foreign language; they were , and yet it was one Ben was fluent in, and Zach apparently was, too. She simply could not get her head around that… but she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen her son so animated.
“What’s your username?” Zach asked, and Ben wrinkled his nose, looking uncertain again.
“Alacenima.”
Zach nodded, instantly understanding. “Elvish. Cool.”
Ben’s eyes widened with surprise. “Most people don’t know that.”
Zach’s mouth quirked in a wry smile. “Then clearly they’re not serious about gaming. Or Tolkien, I guess.”
Her son laughed then, a sound that filled Maggie with joy, because she heard it so rarely. She still wasn’t entirely sure what was going on, though. Was Mr. Extra Spicy actually a gamer ? A serious one? That was her mind officially blown.
“Have you played the latest update?” Ben asked, and Zach frowned.
“You mean the Almedian waterfall extension? Yeah, I’ll be honest with you, I was a little disappointed with the interactive map.”
Ben’s face lit up. “Me too!”
“I mean, you want more than a couple of clicks, right? And they clearly hadn’t done enough with the woodland maze. Way too easy, and the treasure boxes were, like, seriously disappointing.” Zach grinned, and Ben grinned back. Watching them share a moment of gaming solidarity almost made Maggie laugh. This was so very unexpected… and wonderful.
“So… you play RainQuest?” she asked Zach, which was not only a painfully obvious question, but it also had the effect of pouring cold water all over their conversation.
He turned, managing to look amused, knowing, gorgeous, and slightly embarrassed all at once. “Yeah.” He nodded toward the banner in the window. “And you’re opening a boardgame café?”
Maggie looked around the empty room, at the box of small business software she’d only just started to sort through. “Hopefully,” she replied.
“Mom.” Ben sounded both exasperated and a little hurt. “We are . That’s why we moved here.”
“Right.” Maggie decided a formal introduction was needed, and she stuck out her hand. “I’m Maggie Parker, and this is my son Ben.”
“And you both eat black olive and pineapple pizza,” Zach added. “Zach Miller.” He shook her hand, his palm warm and dry, his grip firm and sure. And she did not feel any tingles from his touch. That pleasurable awareness rippling along her skin was something else entirely. It had to be, because Zach Miller was at least ten years younger than her, and she wasn’t looking for romance of any kind anyway.
Zach glanced at her, a smile lurking in his eyes, as if he could sense her reaction, which was a truly mortifying thought. Maggie slipped her hand from his and he turned back to Ben. “So, where did you move from?”
“Greenwich.” Ben ducked his head, his bangs sliding into his face, as if just the memory of where they’d come from and what had happened there was enough to have him slipping back into his old ways, hiding behind his hair, trying to disappear.
“Cool.” Zach nodded, jamming his hands into the pockets of his jeans as he rocked back on his heels. Maggie noticed the way the taut denim stretched across his powerful thighs and quickly jerked her mortified gaze away. “Do you play RQ in person,” he asked Ben, “or just online?”
“Just online,” Ben half-mumbled. Maggie knew what he was thinking—that everyone in high school had thought he was a major geek for being into the fantasy game—and had made sure he’d known it. The fact that Zach, of all people, was into it too was, in its own way, an unexpected blessing. She was grateful, but she still felt blindsided by the whole notion. Mr. Extra Spicy was not quite who she’d assumed he was.
“Me too,” Zach replied. “Hard to find real-life gamers, but it would be awesome if you got a club or something going here. Do you play solo or in a team?”
“Solo, usually.” Ben’s expression became animated again. “I was in a team with a human and an elf for a while, but I was seriously carrying them. And the human was, like, a total bot.”
Zach nodded knowingly. “Sometimes it’s better on your own.”
That was, Maggie thought, an achingly prescient remark, because Ben had been on his own friendship-wise for most of his life, and certainly since middle school.
Zach looked around the empty room. “So, looks like early days for this place,” he remarked with a friendly smile. “When are you hoping to have that grand opening?” He nodded toward the banner plastered to the window.
“Well…” Maggie began, before Ben interjected firmly.
“February first.”
Maggie gaped at him for a second. “Ben,” she protested weakly, “that’s only two weeks away.”
“We can do it, Mom.” His tone was truculent, but his eyes pleaded with her. Heaven knew, she wanted to agree with him. She wanted to make this happen for her son, but… there was so much to do , and she didn’t know how to do pretty much any of it.
“We can try,” she finally replied, knowing she sounded unconvinced, and Ben’s pleading gaze turned to something like a glare. As much as Maggie wanted to wave a magic wand and make it all happen, she knew she had to be realistic… for both their sakes. March seemed much more likely.
“Well, if you need any help, let me know,” Zach told her. “My sister and I manage Miller’s General Store, so we know a thing or two about starting a business in this town.”
“Oh…” Maggie had no idea if the offer was offhand or genuine, and so she couldn’t think of how to respond.
“I mean it,” Zach continued, an earnestness to his tone she hadn’t expected. “It can be hard, knowing where to begin with this kind of stuff.”
“Did you start the store from the ground up?” she asked curiously. She was trying to envision him as an entrepreneur; she realized, somewhat to her shame, that she hadn’t been imagining him as anything more than eye candy.
“My parents did,” he replied. “About forty years ago. Bought an old barn and turned it to a general store, offering an eclectic mix of the necessary and the unique.” He sounded like he was quoting from the store’s sign. “They retired four years ago, and by that time the store was pretty much just kind of sputtering along. It was an everything-and-nothing store, if you know what I mean. They made a living out of it, just, but we’re trying to repurpose it for the twenty-first century.”
Intrigued, Maggie asked, “So what does that look like?”
Zach’s smile was wry as he gave a little shrug. “My sister and I disagree on that point somewhat, so we’re still trying to figure it out. But we’ll get there.”
Did she detect the tiniest note of bitterness in his voice? “You grew up here, then,” she surmised.
He nodded. “And pretty much never left.”
It sounded like something between a confession and a warning. Clearly there were depths to Zach Miller she hadn’t appreciated during their admittedly very brief first meeting. “We’ll have to stop by sometime. It sounds like an intriguing place.” She glanced at Ben, wanting to draw him back into the conversation. “Have you been by there, Ben? To the general store?” She knew he’d had a wander through town yesterday.
Ben shook his head. “Not yet.”
“It’s on the outskirts of town, about half a mile past the church,” Zach told them. “You’re welcome to stop by anytime. And I meant what I said about helping.” He smiled at Ben. “As one gamer to another, I’d seriously love to see a place like this open in town.”
“What’s your username?” Ben asked abruptly.
Zach gave a grimacing sort of grin. “Zachanator.” He held up one hand. “I know, I know. All I can say is, I was young when I made it, and it sounded cool. And once you build up your stats, you don’t want to change, you know, and lose everything?”
A smile lurked about her son’s mouth. “Yeah, I get it.” He hesitated and then blurted uncertainly, “Maybe I’ll look you up.”
“Yeah, you should.” Zach glanced at Maggie, a question in his eyes. “Assuming that’s okay, of course…”
“You mean online?” she asked. “Um, okay.” She wasn’t entirely sure what the parenting protocol was meant to be here. Her rule had been that Ben could only play with people he knew, but it hadn’t ever been an issue because he so rarely gamed with anyone else. And she supposed he did know Zach Miller… sort of.
“When do you play?” Ben asked, and Zach shrugged.
“Evenings, mostly, from seven onwards, but not every day.”
“Okay.” Ben nodded, smiling, seeming both relieved and excited. “Great.”
“Well, I should go.” Zach glanced at Maggie, and she thought she saw another question in his blue-green eyes, this one more personal, but she didn’t know what it was or how she could possibly answer it. This whole conversation had bordered on the seriously surreal. “I guess I’ll see you around?” he asked, and she heard the same kind of hesitancy in his voice that she’d heard in her son, and she didn’t know what to make of it. Zach did not seem a hesitant kind of person.
“Yes.” She nodded. “I’m sure we’ll both see you around.”
He nodded back, waved to Ben, and then he was heading back out into the street.
“Well,” Maggie said once the door had closed behind him. “That was unexpected.”
“RainQuest is a really popular game,” Ben told her, somewhat reprovingly. “Lots of people play it.”
“I know. I just didn’t expect…” She wasn’t sure how to finish that sentence. “Anyway,” she remarked brightly, “nice to know there’s some interest in the community.”
“We can get this place going by February first,” Ben told her. “We just have to work at it.”
“Speaking of work…” She glanced at her watch. “You need to finish your chemistry.”
“ Mom .” Ben rolled his eyes. “I want to work on this.” He gestured to the boxes of boardgames stacked in the stockroom. Ben had been in charge of ordering them all; Maggie wouldn’t have even known where to begin with all the different games that were available, but Ben seemed to know about every single one. So far the many boxes hadn’t been opened, never mind organized.
“We made a deal, Ben,” Maggie reminded him as gently as she could. “We’d do the boardgame café if you’d do your schoolwork.”
“It’s boring,” he muttered. “And stupid.”
“It’s school,” she replied, making sure to keep her tone light. “Sometimes it can be both of those things, but it’s still important. Why don’t you finish your chemistry and then you can get back to the games?”
“Fine.” With ill grace, dragging his feet, Ben headed for the stairs, closing the door behind him with a borderline slam.
Maggie sighed as she turned back to the box of small business software. A wave of loneliness was sweeping through her, and she’d learned to just let it happen rather than attempt to resist its pull. Life was hard. Moving to a town where you knew no one was harder still, especially when grief was still your main emotion, along with a treacherous helping of guilt. She wanted to believe it would get better, she did believe it, she just wished she knew when . Or how.
She thought about calling Lynn, but she was afraid her sister would simply tell her to pack it in and head back to Greenwich, or even to Boston to be with her. Those weren’t solutions, Maggie knew. She needed to give Starr’s Fall a real chance, and to do that she needed to make an effort.
With determination, she picked up the software manual and started to open it. When Ben had first come up with the idea of opening a boardgame café—from his hospital bed back in May—they’d agreed he would be the gamer guy, organizing the games and the café space, while she would handle the financials and the food.
Fortunately, thanks to Matt’s generous life insurance policy as well as the proceeds from the sale of their house, money was not an issue, and wouldn’t be for some time. Maggie had a day-long barista course booked in Hartford in a few weeks’ time, although she was reluctant to leave Ben alone for an entire day. He’d insisted he’d be fine, but…
Maggie didn’t want a repeat of last spring. She didn’t think she could survive it, and there was a very real and frightening risk that Ben wouldn’t.
But she couldn’t let herself think like that, not here in Starr’s Fall, which was meant to be a new beginning for them both. Taking a deep breath, Maggie reached for her laptop and headed back to the desk in the stockroom that also served as an office. The least she could do was to start figuring out an accounting system for Your Turn Next.
Half an hour later her eyeballs were aching, and she’d waded through pages and pages of how to navigate the red tape of small business ownership. She desperately needed a coffee, and she should probably check that Ben was actually doing his schoolwork. With a sigh, Maggie pushed away from the desk, only to still when a woman’s voice called out, “Hello…?”
“Hi, can I help you?” Maggie asked as she came into the front room. A woman stood in the doorway, balancing a bouquet of early daffodils and a plastic-wrapped plate, a little wiry-haired dog at her feet, his head tucked firmly between her ankles. It was Laurie Ellis, Maggie recalled, from Thanksgiving. “Hi,” she said again. “Nice to see you.”
“Welcome to Starr’s Fall!” Laurie’s smile was bright as she held the flowers out. “I brought you some housewarming flowers?—”
“That’s so kind.” Maggie came forward to take the flowers, smiling down at their cheerful yellow heads. “They’re lovely.”
“And some chocolate chip cookies,” Laurie continued, brandishing the plate. “How are you settling in?”
Considering the rush of loneliness she’d just experienced, Maggie wasn’t sure how to answer. “Mixed,” she finally admitted. She felt too tired to be anything but honest right then. “But it is early days, I know, so that’s to be expected.”
“Moving is hard,” Laurie agreed sagely. “I only moved here myself in September, so it hasn’t been that long for me, either.”
“Really, only September?” Maggie experienced a pang of envy. That was four months longer than they’d had here. “You seem so settled already.”
“The people of Starr’s Fall were very welcoming,” Laurie replied. “Wait until you meet them all—you’ll have to join the Starr’s Fall Business Association! And I came here to invite you and your son to dinner, actually, if you’re free. Nothing fancy, just a few people over, so you can meet some of the locals.”
“Oh… that’s…” For a second, Maggie floundered. As much as she wanted to make friends, she’d been in a state of social hibernation for so long that the thought of having dinner with strangers, well-meaning as they most likely all were, was nothing short of terrifying. “Very nice,” she finished a bit lamely. She couldn’t say no, she already knew that. It had to be glaringly obvious that both she and Ben were free, and if she turned down the first invitation she’d received in Starr’s Fall, chances were she might not get another one. This was all part of making an effort. It was just so hard to do .
“Tomorrow night?” Laurie asked, eyebrows raised in expectation.
So soon? Panic swirled in Maggie’s stomach and crawled up her throat. “Umm…” There was absolutely no good reason why not. “Sure.” She smiled weakly. “Thank you.” Ben was not going to be pleased, she knew. His state of social hibernation had been even more pronounced than hers. Yet this was why they were here, wasn’t it? Why they’d come to Starr’s Fall in the first place. To start over. To make friends. To have a total life reset, if such a thing was possible.
“Great.” Laurie beamed at her and then, after thrusting the plate of cookies at Maggie, who took it, she bent down and scooped up the little dog. “This is Max,” she told her. “He can be a little shy at first, but then can’t we all?” Her smile was so full of warmth and understanding that for a second, Maggie’s eyes stung.
“Yes,” she agreed as she scratched Max under his chin. “We can.” Maybe they really should get a dog, she reflected. Or a cat. Or both, even. Why not? Matt had been allergic to cats and hadn’t wanted the hassle of a dog, but she and Ben were free agents now. They could finally do what they wanted, with no one to sigh or scowl or make pointed remarks under his breath.
Stop thinking like that.
“Great.” Maggie found she had to clear her throat. “Thank you so much for being so welcoming. It’s really kind of you.”
“No problem. Shall we say six-thirty? Tomorrow?”
Panic fluttered once more beneath Maggie’s ribcage, but not quite as strongly as before. Maybe they could do this. It would no doubt be stressful and emotionally exhausting, but still… possible.
“Six-thirty tomorrow,” she repeated as firmly as she could. “Wonderful. Can I bring anything?”
“Just yourselves,” Laurie replied, and with one last sunny smile and a wave, she turned for the door. “See you then!”
“See you then,” Maggie agreed. The door closed behind her, and she sagged where she stood. Now she had to break the news to Ben that they were going to have to be sociable. That conversation was going to go well… not.
With a sigh, she turned and headed upstairs. Their apartment, at least, was becoming cozy; their old family room sofa dominated the living room but there was still room for the painted armoire that hadn’t fit up the stairs to her bedroom. It had been too shabby chic for their house in Greenwich, but was now filled with books and pottery that had been in boxes since her marriage. Was it wrong, Maggie wondered, to feel a sense of liberation at having her own things displayed around their little home? It wasn’t as if Matt had forbidden her from having them in their old house. It had just felt a little like he had.
“Ben?” she called as she headed into the kitchen, where her son’s desk was wedged under a window. After what they referred to as an accident, although it really hadn’t been, she’d insisted his computer be in a public space rather than his bedroom. Too many bad things could happen behind closed doors. Too many bad things had .
Ben was hunched over the computer, clicking madly on the mouse.
“You’re not doing schoolwork,” she observed as she gazed at the screen that was full of the vivid green and purple graphics of RainQuest.
“I finished it,” he replied. “It was easy.”
“Already?” He shrugged in reply, and she suppressed a sigh. The online school she’d enrolled him in was supposed to be challenging, but surely there was something wrong with the educational system if he could finish a day’s work in less than ninety minutes. Or was Ben really that smart? “What are you doing?” she asked.
“Checking Zach’s stats. He’s, like, really cracked.”
His awed tone almost made her smile. Maggie leaned against the doorframe as she watched Ben continued to click. “What does cracked mean in this scenario?” she asked.
“He’s really good,” Ben explained. “His KD is insane…” Maggie had no idea what a KD was, never mind what qualified as insane, so she just nodded.
“We’ve been invited to dinner at our neighbor Laurie’s place tomorrow night,” she said in as casual a voice as she could manage. “Do you remember we met her back when we came at Thanksgiving? Laurie Ellis. She runs that little pet store, Max’s Place.”
“Huh… okay…” Ben mumbled, his gaze still on the screen. Then the penny dropped with a thud, and he swiveled to face her. “It’s just you going, though, right?”
“No, Ben,” Maggie replied gently. “I thought we should both go. We were both invited.”
A look of trapped terror came over her son’s face as he pulled the sleeves of his sweatshirt over his hands in what had become something of a nervous tic. “Mom…”
“You know what we agreed,” she reminded him quietly.
Another proviso—that he would try to make friends in Starr’s Fall, even if he was doing online school. Ben shook his head, more of a reflex than anything else. Maggie understood his fear. For months now it had just been the two of them, hiding away from the world. It was hard to come out of that. Hard to know even how to be.
“Like I’m going to make friends with some middle-aged mom?” he said with an attempt at a sneer.
“ I’m the middle-aged mom,” Maggie pointed out. “Laurie is only in her twenties, and as far as I know, she’s not a mom. Besides, you can make friends with anyone, Ben.” She stopped, not wanting to point out that his success rate at making friends with kids his own age was pretty poor.
Ben turned back to the screen and resumed clicking, this time with a morose sort of concentration.
Deciding not to press for an actual acceptance, Maggie walked to the fridge and opened it, surveying its paltry contents for something to make for dinner. She should do a proper grocery shop, she thought with a pang of guilt. Fill the fridge with all kinds of good things. She wanted to have the will as well as the energy to do that, to do lots of things like that—make soup and knit blankets and write flowery messages on handcrafted cards—but right now it all eluded her.
She thought about Laurie’s kind housewarming gifts which she’d left downstairs. She glanced back at Ben, who was once more engrossed in the make-believe world of RainQuest, and she suspected that at the moment it felt like a safer place than Starr’s Fall.
Changing locations, Maggie reflected, did not mean you actually changed yourself . Your feelings, your fears, your weaknesses… they all remained depressingly the same. Had she really thought she’d suddenly, magically become a sort of cheerfully capable and socially confident business-minded woman, simply by moving to Starr’s Fall? Or that Ben would suddenly not be an antisocial, game-obsessed teenaged boy with scars on his wrists he still had to hide?
She closed the door with what would have been a slam if not for the soft sucking noise of the fridge’s suction liner.
“Ben,” she asked, “do you want a cookie?”
No reply.
Maggie headed downstairs for the plate of homemade chocolate chip cookies. Maybe she’d eat them all herself, and she’d binge-watch a few of her favorite episodes of Is It Cake? while she was at it. Some things, it seemed, really didn’t change.