Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Even feeling reassured that the wedding rings didn’t make or break how much Spencer knew that she loved him and how excited she was about the wedding, Margo still hadn’t been able to give up trying to find them. The result was that she was at her wit’s end about it, because she still hadn’t been able to figure out where they might have gone. She’d searched high and low, and she couldn’t find them anywhere. She was running out of places to look, and no matter how many times she tried Nora’s advice to try to retrack her steps, she just ended up feeling more confused, and like she was chasing her tail.
She’d finally decided to try the general store. Maybe, she thought as she drove over to Sugar Maple on her lunch break, she hadn’t taken them with her. Maybe she’d set them on the counter while they were taking all of the boxes and bags out to the car, and accidentally left them there, in her hurry to get Melanie dropped off at The Mellow Mug and get back to work.
It seemed unlikely, and she didn’t know why Leon wouldn’t have called her about it, but she couldn’t think of anything else to try. She was running out of options, and time. And if they really were lost for good, she thought she should probably try to order replacements. At the very least, a stand-in for the wedding day until she could get them replaced. Necessary to prove their love or not, she couldn’t quite imagine a wedding without an exchange of rings. It seemed like it would be a let-down, if not for her and Spencer, then for the guests.
She felt reluctant to tell Leon what had happened, even though she knew the kindly older man wouldn’t judge her. But she still felt embarrassed for misplacing something so important. At this point, finding the rings was more important than her pride though.
“Hey there, Margo,” Leon said with a grin. “Here for a deli sandwich? I can whip something up for you.” He gestured to the counter in the back, where Margo knew the general store served a variety of hot, quick biscuit sandwiches in the morning and cold sandwiches in the afternoon. Everyone in Evergreen Hollow loved it, it was a quick alternative if you couldn’t get out to Rockridge Grill to sit down or get takeout, especially during the lunch rush. The cold sandwiches made for a good, quick dinner too, sometimes.
“Normally, I would say yes,” she said, her stomach growling at the thought of a cold-cut sandwich with all the fixings and a side of salt and vinegar chips. But she didn’t have time for that today. “Actually though, I have something else going on.” She chewed on her lower lip, feeling her face heat. “Remember how I sent out my wedding bands to have them engraved?”
Leon nodded. “I sure do. They came back pretty quick. Anything wrong with the order? Did they misspell something?”
Margo shook her head. “No—they were great when I looked at them. It’s just…” She swallowed hard. “I can’t find them anywhere,” she admitted. “I thought I tucked them away in my room at home, but they’re not there, and I’ve searched all over. My room, my office, my purse, camera bag, the car, everywhere I can think of that I might have stashed them without thinking or they might have dropped out. All of my coat pockets.”
She frowned, chewing her lower lip. “I thought maybe I left them here and didn’t realize it. Maybe I set them down on the counter and didn’t actually grab them before leaving, even though I could have sworn I did.”
“They weren’t on the counter when I came back in from helping you girls,” Leon said slowly. “I would’ve called you for sure if I’d seen them. But it’s possible you tucked them in your pocket and they fell out in the back room, going back and forth and grabbing all of that stuff. Or…”
“Or what?”
He scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Bethany was helping out too. She might have swept them up, not realizing what it was, and tucked those little boxes away somewhere. She gets cleaning surges every now and again,” he added with a grin. “But the trouble is, she doesn’t really know where everything in the store goes. The grooming salon is her primary domain, and even though she helps out here, she’s never quite figured out the method to my madness.”
Margo clasped her hands together. “So maybe she accidentally moved them?”
He chuckled. “Possibly. We’ll find those rings if they’re here. Come on, we’ll look. You hop up on a ladder back there and check the storeroom shelves, and I’ll look under the counter.”
“Thank you!” Margo said eagerly, coming around the counter to head back to the stock room. “I haven’t told Spencer I lost them,” she added, pausing briefly. “I’m really hoping I never have to.”
Leon patted her hand comfortingly. “We’ll find those rings. He’ll never need to be the wiser. Just a little mishap in the middle of all the wedding chaos, that’s all.”
Reassured, Margo headed back to the stock room. She found the ladder without any trouble, leaning it up against one of the well-organized shelves to start combing through them for the ring boxes, when she suddenly heard Spencer’s voice from the front of the shop.
“Hey there, Leon. Thought I’d come and get a quick sandwich before I run back to the clinic. Maybe one for my head nurse, as well, she hasn’t stopped all day. No time to run over to the Grill, but I’m starving?—”
Margo jumped, nearly hitting her head and then almost slipping off of the ladder in her startlement. Her foot slid, and she grabbed the edge of a shelf, praying she wouldn’t bring it all tumbling down. She clung to the ladder, swallowing hard as she tried to listen for what was going on out in the shopfront.
A stack of cookie tins rocked, and she grabbed them, gritting her teeth as they clanked together as she slid them further back onto the shelf. The ladder shifted as she did, and she stifled a yelp, hitting her elbow and nearly knocking over a set of wooden figurines that were neatly lined up next to her.
She gripped the ladder tightly, holding her breath as she tried not to fall or bring the whole storage room down around her, feeling clumsier than she ever had in her life. Or like a cartoon character, madly grabbing onto whatever she could to stay upright, all the while trying not to knock anything else over and somehow only managing to make more noise in the process.
She definitely didn’t have a future as a cat burglar. Maybe the world’s clumsiest cat.
“Did you hire someone to help out at the shop?” she heard Spencer ask jovially. “Sounds like they’re taking the whole storeroom out back there. Or do you have mice?”
Oh no.
Margo swallowed hard, torn between climbing down the ladder and being afraid that if she did, she’d only knock into something else and cause another near-avalanche.
“Ah, must be Bethany back there,” Leon said casually, and she heard him crossing the shop, probably headed over to the sandwich counter to draw Spencer away. “On one of her organizing kicks, I imagine.”
“What am I doing?” Bethany’s cheerful voice rang through the store as the little bell chimed that meant she’d emerged from the grooming salon on the other side, instantly exposing the white lie.
Margo squeezed her eyes tightly shut, her heart thumping. She’d been hoping so badly that she could just hide this entire disaster from Spencer, and that he’d never have to know that she’d almost lost their wedding rings. She knew he wouldn’t be mad at her, and Nora believed that he wouldn’t even be disappointed, but she wasn’t a hundred percent sure about the latter. And she didn’t think she could stand for him to be disappointed with her.
“Hey there, Spencer,” Bethany said to him.
“Hi, Bethany!” Spencer greeted her in return, and Margo chewed on her lower lip. “Just grabbing a quick bite.”
“I figured I’d get him in and out of here,” Leon said cheerfully, but Margo could hear the hint of awkwardness as he tried to keep covering for her. She knew she should be using the time she had right that second to keep looking, but she was sure if she moved a muscle she’d cause some other racket, and then Spencer would have more questions. “Busy day for our town doctor.”
“Well, you have a minute while Leon makes you your sandwich,” Bethany said cheerfully, oblivious to the entire charade. “I was hoping you’d stop by sooner rather than later, I had something I wanted to show you.”
“What’s that?” Spencer asked, evidently distracted from the noise for the moment. Margo felt a brief burst of relief, but it was abruptly shattered when Bethany spoke again.
“Leon ordered a mystery shipment of Christmas ornaments, and a bunch of them were medical-themed! Cute nurse hats and stethoscopes and a little anatomically correct heart. Absolutely adorable. I thought they’d be perfect for your clinic Christmas tree.” Two sets of footsteps came closer to the storage room, and Margo’s breath caught as she realized Bethany was leading Spencer over to where she was.
“I’m actually just about done here. I think he’s in a hurry, Bethany, ” Leon called out, clearly trying to stop them, but from the sound of the footsteps getting closer, it seemed that he was failing.
“It’ll just take a minute,” Bethany insisted. “They really are so cute.”
Margo’s mind raced, knowing she only had seconds to come up with a plan. The best thing she could think of in the moment was saying that she’d started helping Leon out at the store, which made absolutely no sense, since she worked at The Gazette Monday through Friday. Also, Bethany would know that Leon had said nothing to her about any such thing, and she also didn’t want to lie to Spencer. Which left her with very few options.
She looked around frantically, seeing a large stack of boxes at the back of the room. With no other plan that she could think of, she scrambled down the ladder and dashed into the dark corner, getting behind the boxes just as the door to the storage room opened and Bethany and Spencer walked in.
“Look,” she heard Bethany saying. “There’s this whole box.”
There was the sound of Bethany dragging down a box and opening it.
“Leon, you need to put the ladder away!” Bethany yelled back out into the shop, and Margo heard Leon’s answering grunt.
“These are the ones,” Bethany said, and Margo crouched further behind the boxes, hoping that there wouldn’t be that many ornaments, or maybe that Bethany wouldn’t insist on showing Spencer each individual one.
“Those are cute,” Spencer said agreeably. “I’m not sure if there’s room on the clinic tree for any more ornaments, but I’ll be sure to look. If there is, those would be perfect.”
“I’ll set them aside for you,” Bethany said decisively.
“Oh, you don’t have to?—”
“Well, I can’t imagine anyone else is going to be all that interested. They’re perfect for your clinic.” There was the sound of the box being closed and moved, and Margo bit her lip, hoping that she was almost home free.
“Spencer! Order up!” Leon called cheerfully from out in the back of the store.
“There’s my cue,” Spencer said. “I’ll get back to you on that.”
Just as Margo was almost certain that she’d gotten away with it, she felt her leg start to cramp. She shifted, desperate not for it to get bad enough that she’d make a sound, and her foot slid, her elbow going out to catch herself and knocking right into the stack of boxes next to her.
She gasped as the top half of the stack came tumbling down, leaving only the small amount of shadow that she was in to hide her.
Spencer looked around abruptly at the noise, just as he let Bethany walk out first, and his eyes widened with confused surprise as he saw Margo standing there uncertainly.
“Margo?” He frowned, looking entirely confused. “What are you doing back there?”
“I…” She swallowed hard, trying to think of an excuse. “Leon had some new decorations he thought we might like to use for the wedding. He wanted me to come in and look at them, so I decided to come in on my lunch break and have a look around. But he couldn’t remember which boxes they were in, so I did some digging.”
Spencer raised an eyebrow. “Did you find them?” He still looked confused, and Margo couldn’t blame him. She knew she looked ridiculous, behind a stack of boxes in the back of the Sugar Maple storeroom.
“Um, yes! I think so.” She reached down, grabbing the first thing she could find out of the box near her feet, and held it up.
Spencer’s look of confusion only deepened, and Margo realized why a second later. She was holding up a neon orange feathered boa—the box was filled with them. They had absolutely no place in the wedding, and she honestly couldn’t figure out why Leon had ordered them at all. Maybe for some sort of theme day at the school. It was the only possible explanation she could imagine, at least at the moment.
Spencer tilted his head, looking between the boa and Margo. “How does that fit with the wedding?” He walked closer to where she was standing, taking a look at the boa. “It’s very—bright.”
Margo could feel her face burning, and she felt sure that Spencer could see it too. “I—thought it would keep the guests’ necks warm,” she stammered, fully aware of how ridiculous every word sounded. “And it might add a pop of color. Everything is red and white, a little extra might… add something.”
She trailed off, trying not to wince as she saw Spencer trying to make sense of what she was saying.
He smiled, leaning in to give her a kiss on the cheek.
“Maybe we should give that a little thought,” he suggested. “You could even bring one home with you, see if you still like the color tomorrow. It’s worth sleeping on.”
Margo stifled a laugh, realizing that he thought the wedding stress was getting to her, and completely addling her senses. He had no idea just how accurate that really was.
“Okay,” she agreed. “You should probably go get your sandwich.”
“I should. I have to run back to the clinic. Have fun digging,” he added, giving her another quick kiss and then hurrying out of the storeroom to grab his lunch order.
Margo chewed on her lower lip once he was gone, slumping against the wall as she tossed the boa back into the box. That had been a complete disaster, and she was still in the same predicament as ever.
She still couldn’t find the rings.