Chapter 3
“I’m so sorry!” I blurt.
The poor man is using his napkin to try to contain the spill, but his tablet has gone dark and his chips are now soaked. He’s around my age, with tanned skin, longish palomino hair pulled back at his nape, and tattoos peeking out of his rolled-up flannel.
He looks up, annoyed. His eyes are an arresting hazel gray, his eyebrows dark. “Do you have any napkins?”
“All I have is an angry cockatoo and abject mortification.”
He does a double take as if actually seeing me—and Doris—for the first time.
“You know that chicken salad’s a little underdone?”
“She’s not lunch—she’s my emotional support cockatoo.”
“She’s doing a real bad job of it. Are you okay?”
I must look like a complete idiot, standing in the middle of this crowded restaurant holding a pink bag and having a panic attack.
“Oh, Captain!” Doris shrieks. “Shipoopi!”
Colonel, who’s been watching all this play out, collects napkins from the surrounding tables, and all three of us mop up the spilled tea.
It’s as awkward as it sounds, and Doris isn’t helping.
Any moment, I’m afraid I’m going to get kicked out of the sandwich shop, which is the only way I could be more embarrassed.
“I’m okay. But I really am sorry. Looks like I killed your tablet.”
He picks it up and messes with the buttons. Brown liquid drips out of every tablet orifice. “My sister gave it to me for Christmas, and she’s going to be furious with me until she finds out a bird did it.” And then—a devastating smile. “A bird, and a pretty girl. That should mollify her.”
I’m not sure which is more swoony, his smile or the fact that he can correctly use the word mollify in a sentence.
“I’ll pay for it,” I say, knowing full well I can’t afford to. “Or—is there a bookstore downtown? I’ll buy you a copy of whatever you were reading.”
A wry shake of the head. “I wish we had a bookstore, but no. Closest we’ve got is a spinner rack of cookbooks at the—”
“Abraham?” Colonel barks, drawing my attention.
The second-oldest man in town sits down at the table beside ours.
The last customer’s trash is still there, and the man picks through the abandoned basket, crunching on someone else’s pickle.
With his long gray beard, shiny pink head, and sleepy brown eyes, I wouldn’t be surprised if this guy was Abraham from the actual Bible.
“Yessir?” Abraham says, blinking in surprise as if he has no idea where he is.
“Who’s watching the store?”
Abraham looks around in alarm. “Which store?”
“The one you’re supposed to be watching.”
Abraham scratches his beard and inspects whatever he found there. “I reckon it’s watching itself. Hasn’t got into trouble, so far.”
“We’ll see about that,” Colonel says disapprovingly. “Ah, lunch!”
He turns away from Abraham and wiggles with joy as Lindy, a harried-looking woman in her forties wearing a cat sweatshirt and leggings, places our food on our table. “Enjoy!” she calls before galloping back into the kitchen.
But I can’t sit down to eat—I’m still holding a parrot backpack and a wad of tea-soaked napkins.
“Are you using your extra seat?” I ask the handsome man with the destroyed tablet. “I need someplace to put this miscreant bird before she ruins someone else’s lunch.”
“I’m meeting a friend, but I think I have something that might work.
” He fumbles with his keychain, pulling out a weird little device that looks like brass knuckles and a coat hanger had an awkward child.
“It’s a purse hanger,” he tells me, showing me how to hook it on the edge of the table.
“If your emotional support cockatoo likes swings.”
When he holds it out, I take it, and soon Doris is indeed dangling happily from the table. I pull a baggie of her favorite nut mix out of my tote bag and give her enough to keep her busy. The guy is still watching us like we’re the best show on TV.
“So why do you have a purse hanger?” I ask, because honestly, he’s the first attractive man I’ve seen in years who wasn’t also in my kindergarten Christmas pageant, and I want to keep riding this high.
“Oh, it’s for all my purses,” he says. “I’ve got at least a dozen. One for every day of the week and an extra big one for Sunday, with a matching hat.”
Just then, his friend shows up—a sharply handsome Latino guy in his early twenties. He gives me a mischievous smile, holds up his phone, and says, “Could you please say that again while I’m recording? The thing about all your purses?”
The first guy bursts out laughing again.
“Nothing wrong with a good purse. But to answer your question, my grandmother is terrified of the flu and gave me that thing so I could open doors without touching them. I put it on my keychain so she won’t ask me why I’m not using it. But you can keep it. For your parrot.”
“And what will your grandmother say when she finds out it’s gone?”
He grins, making me feel a little giddy. “I’ll tell her I gave it to a beautiful woman, and she’ll stop trying to set me up with that nice girl from her yoga class.”
I’m about to say something else vaguely flirty, but with the new guy there, we have an audience. Instead, I thank my knight with shining purse hanger and sit, my back to him.
My grilled cheese is delicious, and my attention is captured by the black-and-white photos on the wall, showing the downtown square in times past. Soon Colonel is dabbing at his chin with his napkin, having eaten his sandwich in basically one big gulp like a snake.
I’m not done eating, but I’m anxious about having uprooted my entire life to come here, and I’m still a little flustered by talking to the cute guy, so I put the rest of my sandwich in the basket and help bus the table.
On the way out, I glance back, but the two men are having an intense discussion, scribbling on a napkin as they eat.
I pocket the purse hanger. The cute guy said I could have it, and anyway, if I stick around, maybe I can try to return it some other day.
“So, you certainly had an effect on Hunter Blakely,” Colonel begins once we’re outside, as if he were reading my mind.
“I had to help clean up his tea,” I say innocently, tucking that name away for later.
Colonel raises his eyebrow. “As my granddaughters say, there was definitely tea involved.” He clears his throat. “Well, anyway. If you’re ready to get down to business?”
I can’t wait a moment more to ask all the questions bubbling up about this place, my grandmother’s will, and my future here, but Colonel seems to live on his own schedule.
“Ready as the day I was born.”
He leads me to the corner and across the street, then stops in the middle of the row of storefronts, most of which are closed or abandoned.
“What do you think?” he asks.
The building before us hasn’t been painted recently.
It’s not cute like Lindy’s or homey like Marla’s Home Cookin’.
The brick is patched and stained, and the big plate-glass window is dirty and mostly blocked by old cardboard cutouts from the movies of my parents’ childhood, sun-bleached and sad.
There’s Arnold as the Terminator, Howard the Duck, Morticia Addams, and Darth Vader, all gazing out from within like they’re trapped in a time capsule.
When I look up, the second-story windows are all similarly unwashed and covered by ivory-yellow blinds, crooked and bent like someone’s been playing basketball inside.
Across the big front window, barely visible unless you’re standing in just the right spot without too much glare, someone has painted, badly, the words Arcadia Falls Video Emporium, and even more badly, underneath that, the other is a candy store with a psychedelic gnome theme on the other corner. Honestly, I kind of wish I’d inherited that instead.
Except, well, when I look more closely, this place is…
not that bad. The brick is grimy, but that can be cleaned.
Or better yet, painted. A nice, crisp white, maybe, with the framing stark black.
It needs a real sign, at least. The coterie of dingy cardboard heroes has to go.
The windows upstairs look gross, but blinds are easy to take down and cheap to replace.
It has good bones, and if I understand correctly…
“So we would own it all outright—me and my sisters? It would be ours free and clear, with no mortgage or liens or anything? The whole thing?”
Colonel nods and gestures grandly, as if he were offering me the world. “Upstairs and down, free and clear, all yours,” he agrees. “Although your sisters aren’t on the paperwork. You can split things with them however you like if everything goes according to plan.”
“So we would own all four…” I trail off, considering it.
“The video store, then the next three storefronts.” He points off to the left, to a closed hardware store, then a closed antiques market, then what looks like an ancient movie theater, big enough for just one screen.
“Your grandmother owns—owned—most of the block. Everything except the candy store. This is the only business she could keep up, toward the end.”
“So all I have to do is sign some paperwork?”
And then there’s a pause. A very meaty pause.
“Yes, but…there’s just one condition.”