Chapter 16 #2
The list of expletives flooding Madeline’s brain was cut off when Monika spoke again. “So, all this . . . ” Monika scanned the parts of the shop that she could see, then gestured toward the unseen rooms. “It’s what? A new start?”
Madeline managed to refrain from gritting her teeth and maintained her bland expression. “Something like that.”
“How . . . quaint.”
Gee, thanks, Madeline thought but was saved from having to try to reply by the buzz of a phone.
Monika glanced at her screen, then popped her eyes up to Madeline’s.
“It was such a pleasure to meet you. I’ll be back to shop .
. . some time.” She swept out of The Second Chance Shop, leaving the bells above the door jangling and a lingering scent of expensive perfume—which Madeline hated herself for appreciating.
“Yay, can’t wait,” she muttered under her breath.
Gwen laughed equally softly, even though the door had closed and Monika was well out of earshot. “My grandson once asked me if she was Cruella Deville—and he wasn’t trying to be funny.”
“Oh no, that’s terrible—yet perfect.” It was true. Monika’s lean-to-the-point-of-emaciated physique and sleek coiffure with its trendy dramatic black streak had reminded her of someone; she just hadn’t realized who. “I’ll never get that comparison out of my mind.”
“Well,” Gwen said a little awkwardly, a moment later, “I’ll just get you to ring these up, and I should head out too.” She held out five beautiful china teacups—a steal because they had no saucers or sets.
“I’m so glad you’re taking these,” Madeline enthused as she wrapped each one in paper. “I worried they wouldn’t find homes.”
“I have an idea for them,” Gwen confessed, a hint of sparkle coming into her tired eyes, “and when I saw how reasonable they were, I couldn’t talk myself out of the tiny splurge.”
“Everyone should treat themselves from time to time. It’s one of the things I love most about my shop. There are some extravagant items, for sure, but there are also lots of treasures for almost any budget.”
“Yes,” Gwen agreed. “It’s wonderful. I love coming here—as you’ve probably noticed.”
“I have, and I’m so glad.”
They beamed at each other, and Gwen turned to leave, then hesitated and turned back. “I’m sorry about all that.”
“About all what?” Madeline was honestly confused.
Gwen waved her hand around. “Monika. Her general passive-aggressive, bitchy awfulness.”
Madeline laughed again. “Well, you definitely describe her well, but her behavior is nothing for you to be sorry about. Besides, she was more awful to you than she was to me.”
Gwen shrugged, and her cheeks went pink, not denying it.
“I am curious about how she knew about my family, though. At first, I thought I was misreading her tone, being paranoid, but she knew.”
Gwen sighed and put her bag of teacups down on the counter.
“Finding tender spots and poking bruises has been Cruella’s favorite hobby for a long time.
I mean, I’ve known her since I was eight, so she has lots of fodder, but as to how she learned your story .
. . It was probably from Kelsey at Jack’s Hardware.
She’s a cashier there, has been for years, though she—as she’ll tell you any chance she gets—doesn’t ‘need’ to work, like it’s some flaw to be a normal person who does. ”
Kelsey. The hyper-chatty cashier at Jack’s, where Madeline’s personal history had no doubt leaked out from little things she’d said to the staff who helped her buy supplies and from the contractor who’d helped her and did most of his purchasing there.
The same cashier who thought Grant was a sweetheart and seemed personally affronted by Madeline even having contact with him, let alone her not thinking he hung the moon or something.
That was how Madeline had the misfortune of falling onto Cruella’s radar? Awesome.
“In my less charitable moments,” Gwen continued, “I’ve wondered if Monika actually pays Kelsey’s wage—uses her as an information source.”
“I don’t know if that’s uncharitable of you or just astute.
” Madeline mustered a wry smile. “Anyway, no worries. It’s not like I hide it—and there are Monikas and Kelseys everywhere, unfortunately.
When I was a teenager, my sister and I continually had run-ins with this group of girls at school.
Our mom always tried to comfort us by saying they’d grow out of it, but I don’t know.
. . . We grow out of a lot of stuff as we mature, of course, and obviously not every kid who was mean in school stays mean—”
“But some do. Some mean girls become mean women.”
“Yep, indeed. The toughest part is not stooping to their level.”
“Amen.” Gwen paused. “Is your mom . . . still around?”
“No.” Madeline shook her head, sighing. This was not the conversation she would have started with to possibly strike up a new friendship. “Both my parents died in my first year of college. My mom had been sick for a long time. Cancer. My dad went six months later. Heart attack.”
Gwen looked somber and empathic, but not pitying. “And then you lost your husband, your baby, and your sister all at once. That’s brutally sad.”
The starkness of it hit Madeline like a punch in the gut. “Well, my ‘baby’ was twenty, but, yeah.”
“I have three kids,” Gwen said softly. “Forest, my son, is the eldest. Rose, my baby, and Lily, my middle. She’s twenty-nine.
My three grandkids, her children, live with me because she—” Her voice caught, and her eyes welled.
Then she shook her head, making a cutting motion with her hand. “I can’t . . . ”
Madeline felt terrible. “We don’t have to talk about it. I’m sorry—just I hope you know they’re lucky to have you. Must be challenging, though.”
To Madeline’s surprise, Gwen sniffed a bit, then laughed. “Challenging. That’s a good word for it—but also a complete understatement. There’s a lot of good in the situation, but a lot of . . . other stuff too.”
“I bet.”
Gwen stretched her hands in front of her and studied her wedding rings. “If you and I had met last year, you wouldn’t have recognized my life.”
Oh, how Madeline related to that sentiment, even if her time frame was a few years longer.
“Mick, my husband, retired—early, to his great excitement. We sold our family house and bought a sixty-foot motor home if you can imagine. The thing was huge. We wanted room to bring the grandkids on trips, an irony that hasn’t escaped me.”
Sensing Gwen’s rush of words was something she really needed to get out, Madeline listened quietly and hoped another customer wouldn’t intrude until Gwen was done.
“We were going to travel wherever the urge took us, spend spring and summers up here, and then snowbird to Mexico or Arizona or just . . . wherever. A new place every year.” Her face was animated, but her hazel eyes were far away, and Madeline knew she was traveling in her imagination with Mick.
“But then, Mick had an aneurism and died, and Lily . . . ” Gwen’s voice petered away, unconsciously or consciously, Madeline didn’t know which.
Eventually, Gwen spoke again, “Anyway, she took a bad turn. And I . . . well, sold the motor home—at a huge loss, of course—and bought a much smaller home than I had initially because the housing market spiked in the interim, plus I needed to keep something back to help with the cost of raising the kids, and they all moved in with me.”
“That is a staggering amount of change in a short time,” Madeline whispered.
“Yes,” Gwen agreed, but now she didn’t sound sad or soft-natured. She was firm, almost defiant. “That’s the other reason I like coming in here. Because I’d already heard your story from Kelsey at the hardware store.”
“What?”
Gwen looked ashamed. “I hope you’ll forgive me, but I was having a really hard time when I heard about you and your shop, just before it opened, and I thought . . . if she can survive and thrive, I can too. Maybe. I hope.”
Madeline stared at Gwen for a very long time.
“If you . . . If I’m . . .” A strangled laugh escaped her.
She didn’t know where to start. With how she spent hours walking her dark store alone?
That up until recently, she’d had more imaginary conversations with her dead sister than she’d had with another living soul?
That if she was Gwen’s idea of “thriving,” heaven help her because she’d need it!
Gwen interrupted her churning thoughts. “I just mean . . . you’re doing it. You keep waking up and putting one foot in front of the other. You tackled something new.”
Madeline stared some more, then scooped up Boots, who’d managed, in his spectacular, preternatural way, to stay virtually comatose through all the Monika-Gwen craziness.
Snuggling his weight against her chest, she breathed a little easier.
“Well, yes . . . all right. I agree that I have worked hard to manage that, at least. One foot in front of the other. Go me.”
“Exactly. Like I said, inspiring.”
Boots started up his engine-like purr, and Gwen looked at her half bashfully, half expectantly. Madeline shook her head, and something akin to happiness rushed through her like water through stones. “You’re as crazy as I am.”
The bell above the door rang, and a parade of people—one couple, a single man, and a pair of elderly ladies filed in.
“Wow, rush hour. That’s my cue.” Gwen said in lieu of a goodbye, then faltered. “I hope I haven’t made you uncomfortable and that you don’t hate me for knowing your personal business and seeking you out because of it.”
“Not at all.” Madeline plunked Boots lightly down out of sight behind the counter and quickly glanced at the shoppers.
They’d all merrily dispersed to various parts of the shop already.
Confident they could manage without her for a bit, she asked a question that had been weighing on her from the moment she discovered Gwen was a widow. “Were you married for a long time?”
“Thirty-two years.”
“And did you love him very much?”
Gwen gave Madeline a long, sad look. “Yes. Dearly—and he, me.”