Page 77 of Freak
Abigail nodded. She remembered those days, too. But what had happened this time was different. It wasn’t some terrible enemy of the Horde raining hellfire down on their town. This time it was the Horde itself, trouble within a family, and though such conflict in a family was dangerous and heartbreaking, to Abigail it seemed infinitely more fixable than anything that had happened in those terrible years—or the terrible years before that, when the world itself seemed to have put Signal Bend in its sights, destroying any way for the townspeople to prosper or even survive.
This was a family problem, one that had been quiet since that night. Abigail knew few details about why it had happened or how it had been settled, and she likely never would know more, but she did know that it was quiet, and the Horde—this charter at least—had cleaned up its mess the very next day, paid for the medical treatment of every resident who’d either gotten involved or been caught up accidentally in it, compensated vendors for the loss of sales for the two canceled days of the festival, and vowed never to try to combine a club event with a town event again.
George Sachs—Saxon—had been stabbed to death, and nothing would make that loss right for his family, of course. But the town had stepped up, keeping Marie’s open while his family mourned, and buried him, and while they worked their way to the path of their New Normal.
Kellen Frey had run off shortly after that night and not been heard from since. The gossips in town whispered that he might have (some saidmust have, others saiddefinitely had) caused the trouble that night, and his absence was seen as potent evidence supporting that claim. By putting together a few words that had slipped from Mel when he was distracted, Abigail had become fairly sure the gossips were right.
Mel had told her, straight out, that the Jalen and Knox Frey and a couple of their friends were the ones who’d ransacked her place. Just a few silly boys doing harm without grasping the impact of their actions. If they’d been taught better, they’d have known better. But they hadn’t been.
As far as Abigail was concerned, that case had been closed as soon as her property had been cleaned up. She was relieved to know there had been no real animus behind the act; she hadn’t accidentally forged an enemy who wanted to hurt her. Just silly children, old enough to think themselves grown and young enough to be very wrong about that.
She’d had to work to convince Mel that the situation was over. She didn’t want the boys hurt or scared—she doubted that would really work, anyway, and after the Harvest Festival debacle, there had been more than enough hurt and trouble for one season. Besides, the Frey family was dealing with their own trouble; Kellen hadn’t reached out to them, either, and they were frantic with worry.
Mel didn’t like it, he’d almost been angry with her, but he’d finally agreed to let the matter drop.
Now, three days from Thanksgiving, Signal Bend was back in its groove. Even the grapevine had moved on to other things—particularly the holidays and the grand opening of the Signal Bend Pavilion.
As Karlene cut the tape and opened the box, Abigail said, “That’s the last order, unless you have a new one. A dozen each of cinnamon apple, balsam berry, and pumpkin cookie candles and sachets. Honey butter, vanilla spice, and cinnamon apple soap and lotion—and I threw in some crocheted bags I had left over from a special order. I thought you might find a use for them.”
Karlene reached into the box and drew out a fistful of the lacy little bags, done in marled yarns in amber, dark green, or crimson tones. Abigail had started making them as a better, more useful alternative to the cheap organza bags a lot of indie artisans, especially jewelry makers, used. Hers were more expensive in both materials and time than those flimsy bags, but she enjoyed the time and had tons of scrap yarn, so she’d given it a go. She could whip up eight or ten bags in an evening, each one simply two lacy granny squares stitched together, with a ribbon slipped through the top as a drawstring.
A shop she consigned with in Sullivan had ordered a hundred for their holiday gift boxes. She’d taken a monetary payment—all 1s and 0s deposited into the credit union account in Rolla she kept for things that required money—and that one order had more than paid for her time and supplies for every bag she’d made.
“These are darling!” Karlene enthused. “I love them!”
“There’s twenty. I don’t know if that’s enough to be use—”
“It’s perfect. I was just telling Addy that I want to do little stocking stuffer sets, but I hate those dumb net things everybody uses, and baskets and boxes get expensive. These are better than any of that. These are special.”
Leaning her arms on the top of the box, Karlene sighed and continued, “I wish you’d make up some business cards.” She nodded at the little array of card holders in front of the register—a selection of Signal Bend businesses, including, of course, Me Day itself. “If you got the word out better, you’d be set for life, I think. All the good you do, all the pretty things you make?”
Abigail didn’t want a life where strangers could reach her to make demands any time they wanted. She loved people, especially the people she knew, but she liked to engage with them on her terms. It was different when someone had need, but they weren’t talking now about things people needed. In her experience, people were much less aware of boundaries when they chased their wants.
“My life is set just like it is, Karlene, but I appreciate the compliment, and I appreciate you.”
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~oOo~
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After delivering herorders, Abigail returned to her home. Mel wasn’t back from the hospital yet, but she hadn’t expected him so soon. It was about an hour’s drive each way, and he’d had to make three appointments—with his surgeon, his physical therapist, and his nutritionist—to get all their approvals to return to full activity. He’d be away most of the day. So she parked her truck and got busy with her chores. In addition to her regular daily work, she had a dozen pies to bake—six for the B&B, which had a full booking of a family reunion on Thanksgiving, and six for the Horde, where she would be sharing her first family Thanksgiving since Granny Kate died, and her first ever with such a large family.
It worked out well for her to have the house to herself for the first time in a while. She had a lot to get done, and as Mel had begun to feel better and stronger, he’d been quite the distraction. As soon as he’d been strong enough to move around freely, he’d followed her around most of the day, always wanting to be close—to touch, to kiss, to nuzzle, to hug. Abigail adored his romantic attention, but it did make focusing on her work rather difficult, even as he tried to be a helper.
They’d been fully physically intimate only once—the night before the Harvest Festival—and that night had unlocked something in Abigail, a part of her that had long been forgotten. For the first time in her now forty-three years, she felt like a sexual person. Though she’d been comfortable in her body most of her adult life, she’d achieved that mostly by not thinking about it, by seeing herself as meant to be alone. No worries about whether she was pretty because she wasn’t worried about anyone thinking of her that way.
She’d considered it a healthy, level-headed view of herself. Mel had shown her the cracks and warps in that mirror.
Through his eyes, through his palpable attraction to and now love for her, Abigail had a new angle on herself. She felt sexy, felt beautiful, even felt something like romantically adventurous—or no, probably notadventurous, but enthusiastic.
There was a line she remembered hearing in an old movie. The title of the movie had been lost in the haze of time, but the line had irritated her when she’d heard it, and the words had caught like a bur in the grooves of her brain. The line was three words:You complete me.
At the time, she remembered people thinking it was a romantic line, but she’d disliked it at once. What she’d heard was someone who didn’t feel fully themselves until someone else loved them, and that was the opposite of romantic. She’d been a young woman when she’d first seen the movie; it had already been around for years, so she’d probably seen it on television or maybe one of the drive-in nights the city council put on sometimes in the summers back then. What she remembered most keenly was finally arriving at the point where her solitary life was comfortable, felt complete. Looking back now, Abigail could understand why those three simple words had been almost offensive to her.
But also now, with Mel in her life, Abigail understood what it meant to be completed by another person, and it did not mean she was lacking any part of herself before. Romantic love had opened new parts in her, and in her life.
Mel filled those new spaces.
