Chapter 27
It’s easy for me to select the right paint color for my bookstore.
I want this place to be welcoming and full of sunlight, so I choose the brightest white they have, a perfect backdrop for whatever motif I eventually decide on.
Once all the paint is mixed up—because white apparently includes tons of other colors, somehow—I do a full shop at Walmart for the first time since arriving in Arcadia Falls.
I have a long list: cleaning products, home décor, food, and a ball of yarn and a crochet hook so I have something to do at Craft Night.
Seeing the total for that full shopping cart makes me wince, but I’m basically starting from nothing, and Mr. Buckley will reimburse me for the parrot supplies.
The curtains and curtain rods are a onetime thing, and life isn’t worth living without a coffee maker.
Back at the apartment, I carry up all my groceries and dump them on the kitchen counter.
My heart sinks again when I remember the bird cage is empty.
I want Maggie to be here, fussing at me, and failing that, regular Doris.
For three years, I’ve come home to a perky pink-and-gray cockatoo who’s always happy to see me no matter what.
I’ve had someone to share a salad with at dinner, someone to snuggle with on the couch while I read.
She especially liked medical dramas on TV for some reason and would whistle whenever a handsome doctor appeared on the screen.
Yes, even for Hannibal. Doris was a weird bird, and maybe Maggie is weirder, but I want that parrot safe and back in my life.
I put up the groceries, including the fruit and veg I got in case she returns.
If I think about her too much, I’m going to start crying.
Now that I’m anxious and full of energy and eager to avoid staring at an empty cage, I decide it’s time to unload the Explorer.
The big plastic tubs full of my life were easy to carry the ten feet from my old front door to my car, but lugging them up the stairs is a lot harder.
I begin to wonder why people have things and if perhaps I should just upend everything into the dumpster and give the raccoons the coziest night of their lives.
But no. It’s just time on task, so I put in earbuds and a thriller audiobook and keep hauling until the car is empty.
I finish around dusk and fix myself a girl dinner of cheeses, pepperoni, crackers, and fruit.
I’ve added my own Diet Coke to Maggie’s supply, and now the cans are intermingled.
I don’t know if the one I drank with dinner was hers or mine.
“Idiot bird,” I mutter. I open the door and shout, “Hey, Grandma Cockatoo! If you’re out there, holler!” I’m met by silence. “If you’re in trouble, scream!” Still more silence. “Please come back! Let’s talk it out! I have bananas!”
“You are bananas! Quit making all that noise!” someone shouts from somewhere nearby, and I sheepishly close the door.
If she’s out there, she doesn’t want to be found.
Not that it stops me from looking. I head down the stairs and walk the streets of Arcadia Falls jiggling a can of pistachios and singing “My Favorite Things” from The Sound of Music, but I don’t see even a single flash of pink.
At least I don’t see any pink smears in the road.
This time, when I hear the turkey bell go off, I dart into the nearest store, which happens to be Barb’s boutique, and watch from behind the glass as the gobblers strut down the street like they own it.
There is not a pink bird among them, so at least I can rest easier knowing Maggie hasn’t turned the lovesick turkeys into her personal Brute Squad.
Eventually, I head back to the apartment sadly parrotless.
Although Hunter has been attending to other commitments, he does stop by in the afternoon with an unexpected offering: a tub of books.
“You said you might want to sell used books,” he tells me.
I squat down and sniff, inhaling that very particular and unique odor of old paperbacks.
“Seems like it might be of value to the community. I was thinking more cheap romance, but the folks who appreciate VHS might like fifty-cent Heinlein.” I pick up an ancient Danielle Steel mass market—The Gift.
“Where’d you get these? You didn’t rob a library for me, did you? ”
“I would never. They might take away my card.” He frowns.
“If the library ever opens again, that is. But no. I was trapping a possum in Marla’s attic and saw that she had a lot of stuff piled up.
Tons of books. She’s always complaining that she’d love to clean out her attic, so I asked if I could cart the books away for a good cause.
She said to tell you to find them good homes.
There are three more boxes in my truck if you want them. ”
I try to imagine a world in which I do not want four boxes of free books. “Oh, I want them. And I promise to find them good homes.”
The book feels so cozy in my hands; I miss these old, blocky paperbacks that still fit in a purse. I open it to check the inside cover, and a shiver ripples over my entire body.
“Arcadia Falls Gift Swap 1994. Merry Christmas, Marla! Love, Miranda and Maggie.”
It’s my mom’s handwriting.
My mom—
She held this book in her hands, wrote in it, even drew a goofy little wreath with a loopy bow.
Out of all the books in Marla’s attic, this is the one that I picked up.
Magic is just so…magical, isn’t it?
My eyes fill up with tears as I show him the open book.
“Whoa.” His face softens as he looks back at me. “I had no idea.”
“Me neither.” I gently put the book on top of the pile and stand, overwhelmed with emotion. “Thank you.” When I throw myself into his arms, he catches me.
“Rhea, are you…crying?”
He rubs circles on my back as I give a small sniffle.
He knows that my mom’s writing is in this book, but he doesn’t know that Maggie has this same Danielle Steel book on her shelf, probably purchased at the same time, and that she is still missing.
And he doesn’t know that a man has never done anything this thoughtful for me in my entire life and that I’m slightly overwhelmed.
“Crying? No. It’s just the dust.”
He swipes a thumb sweetly over my cheek, wiping away the tears. “Sounds like somebody needs a vacuum. And some Benadryl.”
That gets me laughing again, and then he deposits all the used books downstairs and heads off to his next job.
I pick up the Danielle Steel and hold it to my chest as I watch him pull away.
Bongo barks once from the back of the truck and smiles at me, his tongue lolling.
I realize that Hunter has been parking in my other sacred parking spot. And I like it.
The next morning, I watch from the apartment as Hunter and Cisco arrive with a hefty load of wood.
They unload it and set up a circular saw in the alley, then Cisco heads on out.
Hunter begins his work, and I am fascinated by how serious and immersed he is.
His face shines with the joy and intensity of a conductor mid-symphony, and the cut wood stacks up at an inhuman speed.
Any hope I had of flirting is gone; the man is in love with his art.
I’m aware that just staring at him in awe is not a feasible way to spend the day, so I focus on fixing up the apartment—and looking for Maggie’s grimoire.
Once I’ve got my audiobook blasting, the work goes smoothly.
I begin with the absolute wreck of Maggie’s closet.
It’s so stuffed with her Stevie Nicks wardrobe that I haven’t yet unpacked my own things; it’s just easier to live out of suitcases.
Now I’m faced with the grim task of picking up each dress and broomstick skirt and shawl, folding it reverently, and placing it on the bed to give to charity.
I miss Maggie, but it’s better if I do this part alone. Things are already Landslide-y enough.
I am momentarily faced with the strangest feeling, the sort of sensation for which there is probably an exceedingly long word in German with lots of umlauts: As I fold a slinky satin-and-lace dress, I realize that my grandmother, now a cockatoo, was once a vibrant young woman with a love life of her own, which is how, I assume, my mother came to be.
This feeling is not one I wish to explore any further.
I shove the dress deeper into the stack, which keeps falling over because all the fabrics are slippery, and focus on the work at hand.
I end up with three full bags of clothes and one of shoes and not one single grimoire to be found.
There are no secret doors, no loose floorboards, no telltale rectangular lump in a cozy cardigan.
Still, it’s enormously satisfying, staring at the empty closet, and it feels even better once I have all my own clothes neatly hanging on Maggie’s nice wooden hangers and my shoes lined up on her shelf on the floor.
While I’m in closet mode, I head to the door in the living room that I assumed was a coat closet, but when I open it up, I do not find a bunch of swoopy hippie coats and shawls to donate.
Before me sits the most glorious apothecary chest I’ve ever seen.
Almost like a card catalog on steroids.
“Oh, lordy,” I whisper to myself. “Is this a built-in?” I run my fingertips over the glossy wood, fully aware that a phalanx of people on the Old House Lovers Facebook page I follow would freak out if they could see this treasure.
The drawers range in size from small to large and have hand-painted labels.
Flowers and herbs in one section, feathers and claws in another, stones and crystals in yet another.
I can’t help myself. I have to pull open every drawer, run my fingers through rivers of petals and shifting sands of spices and bins of tiny seeds that I am fairly certain are not actually the eyes of newts.
If this is what being a witch is, I am very much onboard.
Why didn’t Maggie show me this?