Chapter 18
UNDERCURRENTS
When I get to Agnes’s house, I slam the car door and hustle up the steps.
I overslept this morning, and I’ve been running late all day, which is not helpful when I’m seeing Agnes, who likes to have a coffee and a chat.
Well, they all do, really. I rap on her faded blue wooden door and look at the weeds sprouting through the concrete.
What happens when you’re too old to take care of things for yourself anymore?
When the door opens, Marge is there, Agnes peering over her shoulder like a momma cat training her kitten.
Both of their beady, watery eyes are fixed on me.
Marge shuffles forward in her tweed skirt, thick wrinkled tights, and slippers, and rubs her hands together, as her dachshund, Dolly, appears between her legs.
“Marge, what are you doing here?”
“We’ve got some news about that man of yours,” Agnes chirps from behind her, glasses perched on the end of her nose as her loose gray bun slides perilously to one side on her head.
“I wasn’t aware I had a man,” I say, and Agnes tsks at me.
“The one you were asking me all those questions about,” Marge says, eyes gleaming. “Rig.”
I might have known the granny mafia would have their ear to the ground. Nothing gets past Marge. I thought I’d gotten away with that conversation about Rig and his family history, but clearly she filed it away. I run my eyes over her soft gray curls.
Agnes flaps her hand. “The one who’s been living with you.”
Oh God, they know about that, too? So much for lying low. I push past them into the house. “He spent a few nights with me to avoid all the people in town who were pissed he lost that fight.”
“A few nights, eh?” Agnes says, with a knowing wink. “Tell him he can stay with me for a few nights if he likes.”
Honestly, they’re incorrigible.
“You and I were talking about the woman he was with, Sadie …” Marge says, waving Agnes away as I move down the hallway past the old, paneled doors. They turn and trail after me like a couple of sheep.
“Yeah, yeah. Sorry, ladies, I know he’s a womanizer, but I had my reasons for letting him stay. Now, can we skip the lecture so I can start washing your hair?”
Marge taps her nose. “But all is not what it seems,” she says.
I’ve reached Agnes’s bathroom with her old salmon-pink fixtures and tufted chenille bath mat, and I look at Marge over my shoulder.
“That Sadie girl has been telling whoppers,” Agnes adds, grinning. Marge bounces on her toes, which, frankly, is no mean feat given how unsteady she is most of the time.
I take in their thrilled, wrinkled faces and sigh. Does it really matter? It’s not like Sadie was the only one. Did any of it really mean anything to him? “I know you like your gossip, but I’ve got to do your hair, and …”
“You can do both of us together. Can’t she, Marge?”
“That’s why I came over here,” Marge says.
“To save you time, sweetie.” She pats my arm.
Then she leans in. “So the word on the street is that they were seeing each other, and he agreed she could tell the apartment people they were a couple to help her get a lease on a place. They don’t rent to single people at the complex she’s in. ”
He told me about that. “It’s none of my business,” I say.
“So you don’t want to know?” Marge says, looking at me out of the corner of her eyes as I turn the taps on the basin so I can wash their hair.
“She waltzed around town saying they were moving in together, and Rig got pissed and told her to stop doing that shit,” Agnes says, sticking her head around Marge again like an annoying bird.
“Yeah. She turned up at my apartment and said they’d been together for five years,” I say.
“She came to your apartment?” Agnes asks, clutching the bow at the top of her cardigan. “When?”
“A couple of days after he left to go back to the rigs. She was trying to track him down.”
“Oooo! Lordy,” Marge says.
“Anyway”—Agnes leans in with a loud whisper—“after he helped her get the apartment, she told him she was pregnant, and that they had to make the whole thing official. He went ballistic, said it was all a load of bullshit.”
“What? She was pregnant?” This is getting worse and worse. And I don’t think Agnes should be watching so many crime shows; her language is really deteriorating.
“I know!” Agnes says, nodding and leaning right back like this is the biggest scandal she’s come across in a long time.
“Where did you ladies hear all this?”
“Sadie’s cleaner. She also cleans for Edna, who’s a friend of June’s.”
Honest to God, the gossip network. And Sadie can afford a cleaner?
“But get this,” Marge says. “He asked her to marry him, and they got engaged.”
Oh, boy. “What happened to the baby?” I say.
“There was no baby!” Marge hisses.
“What?”
“A load of whoppers,” Agnes adds. “She made it all up. Sadie thought she had ’im.”
“How on earth did Sadie’s cleaner find all this out?”
“Apparently, she overheard Sadie on the phone telling some friend of hers the whole story.”
“Come on, ladies, let’s start washing your hair while we talk. I’m supposed to be going to June after you two, and I can’t do that if I spend all day gossiping with you.”
“She’s bossy, isn’t she?” Agnes says.
“All the best ones are,” Marge replies. “June’ll fill you in,” she adds, tapping her nose.
I learned all my good bossy tricks from them, I don’t say. Christ, Sadie tried to trap him? No wonder he said it was his biggest regret. He also said she was always doing something stupid. How did she think he wouldn’t find out?
I’m an idiot for not asking him about Sadie, but God, I get why he’s so relationship-shy now.
I hope he doesn’t think that I’d ever do anything like that.
Christ, I’m so down on myself that I let her get into my head.
I blow out a long breath. But he wasn’t exactly forthcoming about the whole story, was he? Why didn’t he tell me about this?