Chapter Twenty-Four

Bitsy

The woman standing at the counter of the post office that also served as the headquarters for the newspaper when I walked in was angry enough that I nearly turned around and left. But I needed to talk to Coy and get the responses from the stories, so I ended up kind of hovering near the door, pretending not to listen in that way that left me looking around the sparse lobby as if engrossed with what I was seeing around me.

Well, would you look at that…stamps. Oh, damn…envelopes. Holy hell…newspapers.

As hard as I was trying to not be a part of everything that was happening, though, I couldn’t help but pick up on what was going down at the counter. It had taken me a few seconds, but now I recognized that it was Rue, a girl who had been a few years ahead of me in school and had left the Hollow years before. I had heard that she returned a few months before surrounded by a bit of scandal, but frankly I was far too invested in my own scandal to really get into the gossip about her. This was the first time that I had actually seen her and it seemed that this was not the best of reunions.

“Someone told me today that my engagement was featured in the newspaper?” Rue said, her voice rising higher with the last word.

“Well, yes,” Coy said, his voice much calmer and slower as he looked at her like he couldn’t understand why she was storming into his office so angrily. “One of our reporters was there for the happy occasion and snapped a picture.”

“Without my consent?”

There was that shrill inflection again.

“Freedom of the press, Rue,” Coy said, some of the unaffected calm replaced by a touch of a very special blend of pride and indignation. “Freedom…of…the…press.”

“I didn’t even know that the Holler was still being printed. An issue hadn’t been released in years when I left.”

“Well, that was a longtime ago, wasn’t it?”

Ooo, Hollow burn.

I knew that I had left Whiskey Hollow, too, but I hadn’t been gone nearly as long as she had before I crept my way back, and I had been living back here for more than a year, so on the scandal hierarchy, I was doing a bit better than her, which meant that as long as I wasn’t too enthusiastic about it, I got to enjoy at least a little bit of the public scrutiny and disdain. I felt bad about it, remembering what my first few months back were like, especially when people started to notice my belly swelling and the questions about the daddy started coming. But I was relying on these people to help me prove to Granddaddy that the farm was worth keeping, so if that meant that I needed to bear witness to a little bit of shade being thrown, I was just going to have to bring a flashlight and go with it.

“Wait, if the newspaper is suddenly going again –”

“It’s been going again for more than six years,” Coy pointed out.

“Wow.” Rue shook her head as if trying to get herself back into focus. “But that just underscores my point. If it’s going again, why haven’t I been receiving them? I haven’t gotten a single issue. I haven’t gotten any mail at all since I’ve been back.”

“Of course, you haven’t.”

“What do you mean of course I haven’t?”

“Your father put a hold on his mail.”

There was a pause.

“My father put a hold on the mail?” she asked. “I haven’t gotten any newspapers or mail since I moved back to Whiskey Hollow because my daddy put a hold on it?”

Coy nodded sharply.

“Yes. And you won’t be getting any of it until he requests the hold be taken off.”

Her voice had been slow and measured, but I held my breath as I waited for her response. There was a slight issue with Coy’s logic in this situation.

“My daddy has been dead for over a year!”

Yep.

Coy seemed unfazed by Rue’s explosion and continued to stare back at her from under the plastic visor that he always wore. The plastic cast a green haze over his skin and I had the sudden flash of the bank goblins from the movie that I had gone to see at the drive-in next town over years and years ago. Of course, none of those goblins had been green. They were all more of a Silly Putty kind of color.

Was I being prejudiced? Was that goblin-ist of me? Species-ist? Oh, dear lord, it was starting to happen to me. All of these rules were making life real hard these days.

“He put the hold on the mail, and he’s the only one who can take it off,” Coy told her.

“He’s dead,” Rue almost growled, leaning across the counter toward Coy.

“There’s a hold,” Coy growled back, leaning toward her.

The two stared at each other, locked in some kind of postal stalemate, and I worried that she might fling herself across the counter at him. Considering she had just had a baby and Coy was almost as old as the Hollow itself, this would have been a fairly messy turn of events. Fortunately, Rue finally pushed back from the counter. She glared at Coy as she walked backwards toward the door, shaking her finger at him.

“I’m going to get my mail,” she said like some sort of strangely coded threat.

“Just as soon as your daddy takes the hold off.”

I had to step out of the way to make sure that Rue didn’t steamroll me as she continued to make her way out of the office backwards, and I turned to watch her stomp out, the jingling of the ancient bells that hung from the door seeming far more ominous than when I had walked inside. She took a few steps out into the street and let out an exasperated scream, stomping her feet and flailing in a way that was just slightly less than dignified. Once that was out of her system, Rue smoothed her hair and started toward her car where it was parked somewhat haphazardly to one side of the building.

Coy had gone back to sorting the mail when I approached the counter. I stood there for a few seconds, giving him time to process through the stack of letters that he was meticulously distributing into piles. I figured he had been through enough in the last couple minutes. He deserved a few moments of peace.

When he finally looked up at me, I flashed him a wide smile. He smiled back and we stayed that way for just a few seconds longer than was comfortable.

Or sane.

When I came to the conclusion that he wasn’t going to be the one who was going to say anything first, I peeled myself back from my smile and spoke.

“She sure was upset, wasn’t she?”

Coy’s smile faltered and he glared at me.

“It’s the rules,” he said.

The rules go again making things difficult.

“I totally understand,” I said, nodding solemnly. “If we don’t have rules, what do we have?”

Coy looked at me sternly, his old face grey and serious. I imagined if I could see his eyes beneath the combination of the green visor light and the million wrinkles that were slowly reclaiming them like weeds taking over an abandoned parking lot that they would hold the tumbling storm of many distant memories.

“Anarchy,” he whispered.

We nodded in silent solidarity for a few seconds until I felt like an appropriate amount of time had passed, then I leaned onto the counter casually.

“So…did anyone respond to the stories?” I asked.

Coy’s attention seemed to snap back to me from those distant memories.

“Respond?” he asked. “Oh. Respond. To the stories.”

“Yes.”

He looked around on his counter for a few seconds.

“As a matter of fact, yes. You did get a few responses.”

My heart sank.

“Just a few?”

I had actually been right. Nobody was going to give two flipping-fucking shits about a new haunt in an old tired pumpkin patch and cornfield-gone-hit-and-run-victim.

“I think that your stories were a little bit shocking to some of our more conservative neighbors, and I heard rumblings that some people were upset that you asked that they not put their name on their responses. It made them feel like there was something to be ashamed of. Of course, there were also some of them that I dare say preferred to not have to put their name on their answer because that way no one could judge them for what they were thinking.”

“I guess I can understand that.”

“Give me just a minute.”

Coy walked through the door that led to the small back room of the post office portion of the building and came back with a box. He handed it to me and I peeked inside at the assortment of letters and postcards piled inside. I noticed that a few of the postcards were drawn onto index cards and most of the envelopes didn’t have any postage on them, telling me that the majority of people who decided to respond didn’t actually mail in their responses but just walked them into the office.

So much for anonymity.

I picked up one of the postcards and noticed a large black bar across the front in what appeared to be marker. I held it up to show Coy.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“Oh. Like I said, a couple people had strong opinions about not putting their name on their response, and a few others just had strong opinions all together. I didn’t open any of the envelopes or anything, but I tried to sift through some of the responses and do a little bit of editing for you. I might not have caught everything, but you won’t be seeing any names.”

He smiled at me proudly and I managed a smile back.

“Did you respond?” I asked.

“I did,” he said. “But you’ll never know which one of them is mine.”

“Rules,” I said.

He gave me a single nod of acknowledgement and agreement.

“Rules.”

Tucking the box on my hip, I headed out of the building and started back toward my car. I tossed the box into the backseat and rushed back into the post office where I grabbed hold of what very well might be the last pay phone still living in the wild. Dialing Roman, I held the phone between my ear and my shoulder as I filled out one of the feedback cards that Coy kept on the counter. It was something I did fairly regularly. I might have been the only one who actually filled them in, but at least there was something there when he opened the box at the end of the day.

I seriously need a new phone.

“I have the responses,” I told him when he answered, still sounding groggy. I was never going to get used to his late sleeping, and it aggravated me even more after the debacle with the stories. “I’ll be back at the house in a few minutes.”

“I’ll make some coffee,” he said.

I didn’t mention that I had already had three cups that morning, not to mention the chores I’d finished, the shower I’d taken, and the errands I’d run. There wasn’t any real point in it. It wasn’t going to get through his mind that his lifestyle wasn’t fitting in here and it was really starting to irk everyone. When I ended the call with Roman, I immediately called Granddaddy. He answered sounding about three hours more awake than Roman, but there was still that hint of tiredness in his voice that had been bothering me since I first got back home. It had lessened somewhat as Lorelei brightened his days and seemed to give him energy, but there was still a faint sadness about him, like he felt like he was fading. I could only hope that I was wrong about this haunt idea and that soon business would be booming again and Granddaddy would wake back up.

“Is the baby still sleeping?” I asked.

“No. She woke up a little bit ago so I fed her some breakfast and now she’s in her office putting in a hard morning of work.”

I smiled, knowing that meant that my daughter was in her playpen, probably grasping onto the side with her chubby little hands, making her way around the perimeter over and over again. Those first steps that she had taken seemed to have sparked her interest in the whole walking thing and now she was fully invested in getting her legs and the rest of her body to cooperate with each other so that she could make it a regular thing.

“Good. Thanks for watching her this morning.”

“No problem, Ladybug. Did you get the mail you were going after?”

“I did,” I told him, still feeling that hint of guilt that I was hiding the plan from him. “I’ll be home in just a minute and Roman should be getting there soon to go over it with me.”

“So, he’s actually awake during the morning hours?”

“Yes, he is,” I said, a bit more indignantly than might have been necessary. “As a matter of fact, he’s going to make us coffee when he gets there.”

Because I woke his sorry ass up and he won’t be functional for another three hours if he doesn’t get an IV drip of caffeine going within the first 20 minutes of having his eyes open.

Why am I defending this man?

We hadn’t spoken except briefly over the phone since our argument in my mother’s house and I was feeling awkward about seeing him. I at once felt guilty for screaming at him the way I did and making those horrible accusations, and still infuriated over him going behind my back to do these things and the stories that he had chosen. It was a tense, uncomfortable position to be in, but there was little I could do about it. At this point I was already fully invested in the idea of the haunt and its potential for saving the farm, which meant that I was going to need to accept Roman’s help. He needed to be there to read through the responses with me, and that was just going to have to mean that I swallow my anger and put myself on my best behavior.

When I got home, I hauled the box of responses inside. As soon as I opened the door I could hear Lorelei’s happy little gurgles coming from the living room and I went in to give her a kiss. She looked up at me with her round, bright eyes and I felt the same tightness of emotion in my throat that I always did when I looked at her. She was truly amazing. I never could have imagined loving something as much as I loved her, especially something that had come to me completely unexpectedly and in circumstances that I never would have planned. One little hand reached up to me, the other clinging to the side of the playpen with all its strength, and I swept her up into my arms. Both little palms flattened on my cheeks so she could hold my face as she gave me a big wet baby kiss.

“I love you,” I murmured to her.

“Love Mama.”

My heart melted a little and I cuddled her close to my chest. I wanted so much for her. I wished so hard for her. The life that she deserved seemed so outside of the realm of my potential right then, but I knew that there was absolutely nothing that could keep me from giving her anything and everything that I could. Right now, she was too little to have any awareness of our situation or to want for anything but me, and by the time that she was old enough to really understand what was going on, I was going to make sure that she had no struggles, no difficulties to worry about.

I had to make this work.

I heard a knock on the front door and I lowered Lorelei back into her playpen. She slipped down to her little diapered bottom and blinked, seemingly surprised by the sudden development. I expected her to whine, but she didn’t. Instead, she pressed against the mesh side of the playpen, tucked her little legs under her, and clawed her way up until she was standing again, promptly starting her scooting process around the edge.

Exactly, baby. Exactly.

I patted Granddaddy on the shoulder as I walked past him in his recliner, realizing that I hadn’t even acknowledged him when I got home in my haste to get my first morning cuddles with the baby. He rested his hand on mine and gave it a tight squeeze. Filled with a renewed dedication to the haunt concept, I opened the front door and gave Roman a smile that I hoped would come across as optimistically as I wanted it to, though I knew he could probably still see my uncertainty. That didn’t matter. No matter what I thought about this plan, it was really all we had right then, so I had to go for it with everything in me.

“Good morning,” I said.

Roman grunted at me. There could have been words in there, but I couldn’t really decipher any of them. I stepped back and gestured for him to come inside. He stepped past me and I got a strong whiff of his expensive cologne. I had to give it to the man for his meticulous self-grooming habits. He was barely conscious, but his hair was perfect and he smelled like the inside of Scrooge McDuck’s jacket pocket. I closed the door and turned around, finding him standing only a few feet from me. When I looked into his face, my breath caught slightly in my throat. For the first time I realized just how much Lorelei looked like him, her huge, beautiful eyes sweet feminine reflections of his own.

“I’m sorry,” I suddenly said, surprising myself with the words. As I got over the shock, though, I realized that they were exactly what I needed to say. “I’m sorry for everything that went on the other day and all those things I said.”

“I’m sorry, too,” Roman said, seemingly finding his ability to use decipherable communication.

I stared into his eyes again, remembering how they looked through my mask, and felt my stomach clench slightly.

“Are you OK?” he asked.

I nodded, snapping out of my thoughts and putting the smile back on my lips.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m fine. Um. Let’s go make that coffee and get started. I have a lot that I need to get done today.”

That was a big fucking lie. I had literally nothing to do that day other than go through the responses. But I couldn’t keep looking at him. I couldn’t let the flicker of emotion that I had felt starting in my chest become anything more. I just couldn’t.

Roman followed me into the kitchen and opened the cabinet, taking down the container of coffee. He stared at the coffee maker like they were facing off across a battlefield. Finally, it seemed that they had come to an understanding and he approached it, going through the process of making a pot of midnight-colored coffee like I had taught him.