Wife for Hire (12 page)

Hank stared coolly at his father. “Rumor has it, you're the reason people are breaking in. I heard you offered Fred McDonough a million dollars if he'd steal Maggie's diary for you.”

Harry's first reaction was disbelief. His second was a smile that creased his face and produced a chuckle deep in his chest. “You aren't serious.”

“I am serious.”

Harry looked at him. The smile faded. “You
are
serious.”

“The way I hear it, everyone in town is working nights, trying to make that million dollars.”

Helen gave Maggie a cup of coffee and took a seat at the table. “Harry, did you do that?”

“Of course not,” Harry said. “Where would I get a million dollars?”

“You're the president of the bank,” Hank told him.

Harry looked appalled. “They think I'd embezzle a million dollars?”

Hank shook his head. “No. They think you're rich.”

Helen reached across and patted Maggie's hand. “The people in this town are very nice,”
she said, “but you couldn't accuse them of being smart.”

Fred McDonough knocked at the back door.

Bubba had been right, Maggie thought. Fred McDonough was definitely hung over. His eyes were heavily bagged and only half-open. He had the beginnings of a beard and under the beard his face was ashen.

Helen Mallone opened the door and gently curled McDonough's hand around a mug of hot coffee.

“I wish I were dead,” McDonough said.

Helen clucked sympathetically. “You shouldn't drink so much.”

McDonough looked at her like she was from the moon.

“We're trying to straighten out this stealing business,” Hank said. “Did my father offer you a million dollars to steal Maggie's diary?”

McDonough took a gulp of scalding coffee and never blinked an eye. “Yep. He said he'd give a million dollars jest to get his hands on that diary. That was his exact words. I tried, too, but your damn dog liked to tear my pants' leg off.”

Harry Mallone smacked his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Now I remember. That
was a figure of speech, you idiot! I didn't mean I wanted someone to steal the blasted thing, I meant I was wondering about its contents!”

Maggie laid her hand flat on the table to steady herself, as relief washed over her in a dizzying wave. It had been a misunderstanding! She'd been sure someone had been after the diary to save face. She'd thought it might have been a misguided relative, hoping to protect Aunt Kitty. Or perhaps a former client worrying about his reputation. She'd even thought it might have been one of the local upstanding citizens, as preposterous as that might seem.

She took a steadying breath and sipped her coffee before questioning Harry Mallone. “Why didn't you ask to borrow it?”

Harry shrugged. “It was one of those things you say in a conversation. I don't really have the time or interest to read about the internal workings of a bordello.”

Maggie felt herself stiffen at the insult. “Too bad,” she said. “It's pretty interesting.”

Harry gave her a severe look. “I bet.”

“So, let me get this straight,” McDonough said. “You never meant for me to steal the diary?”

Harry removed his glasses, folded them, and
placed them in the case on the table. “That's right.”

McDonough stared off into space, clearly grappling with this new information.

Helen Mallone looked at her husband, her lips pressed tight together. “Harry Mallone,” she said. “You've caused a lot of trouble. I don't usually interfere with the relationship between you and your son, but this is too much. You owe him and Maggie an apology, at the very least.”

“It was an honest communication problem,” Harry said.

“No,” Helen told him. “There's more involved than that. You haven't had an open mind about him and his wife. Just look, he even gets up early now and eats breakfast.”

Harry didn't look especially impressed.

“I think you should give him the loan,” Helen said.

Color instantly rose to Harry's cheeks.

Helen sat with her hands folded together on the table, her eyes and mouth locked in unyielding determination. “I think it's the least you could do to set things straight.”

Harry drummed his fingers on the arms of his captain's chair, assessing his wife's anger.
“He doesn't have the appropriate collateral.”

“Baloney,” Helen Mallone said, continuing to glare at her husband.

Harry rolled his eyes heavenward and threw his hands into the air.

By anyone's standards his mother was a flexible person, Hank thought, but when she truly set her mind to something, she was a woman to be reckoned with. Hank knew the only time his father ever threw his hands into the air in a gesture of futility was when he was forced to capitulate to his wife's obstinacy. Hank could count the times on one hand. The time his mother had insisted they drive to Ohio to spend Christmas with her sister. The time his mother decided to have the kitchen remodeled. The time Aunt Tootie had a hysterectomy and his mother had invited her and her dog, Snuffy, to recuperate in the guest room.

 

Maggie was in the middle of packing when Hank returned home from cleaning the grange hall.

“What's this?” he asked. “Why are you putting your clothes in these boxes?”

“I'm leaving. Your father agreed to give you the loan, so there's no reason for me to stay.”

His thick black eyebrows drew together. “What do you mean, there's no reason for you to stay? I asked you to marry me.”

“I don't want to marry you.”

“You don't love me?”

“I didn't say that.” Maggie stuffed a stack of T-shirts into her suitcase. “I said I don't want to marry you. I've spent too many years of my life in uncomfortable environments. I love my mother, but I can't live with her. And I can't live with you either.”

“What's wrong with me?”

“Nothing's wrong with you. It's everything around you that's all wrong. Your father totally disapproves of me. Your best friend resents me. And your dog is mean to my cat.”

“Is that all?”

“No, that's not all. I'm going nuts sitting in this room day in and day out staring at apple trees. I don't think I'm cut out for farm life. If I don't get to a shopping mall soon, I'm going to go into withdrawal. I want to talk to someone who doesn't say ‘yup.' I miss the air pollution. I have a craving to stand in line and curse out someone. I miss being on the road and having other drivers make rude gestures to me.”

Hank put his hand to her forehead. “You running a fever?”

“This town is filled with weirdos.”

“Yeah, but most of them are pretty nice. You'd get used to Skogen if you just gave it a chance.”

“Never!” Maggie said. “I will never get used to Skogen. I'm going back to Riverside, and I'm going to take a job at Greasy Jake's, and I'm going to finish my book. And then I'm moving to Tibet.”

“Tibet isn't the paradise it used to be,” Hank said. “I hear Tibet has problems too.”

Maggie stuffed another stack of clothes into her suitcase. “Uh! No one ever takes me seriously.”

“That's not true. I've always taken you seriously…until now. Now I'm not taking you seriously.”

Hank picked the suitcase up and dumped Maggie's clothes out onto the bed. “We made a deal. The deal was that you would be my wife for six months. I expect you to honor that.”

Maggie felt tears burning behind her eyes and angrily blinked them away. Why was he making this so difficult? It wasn't as if she really wanted to leave. She loved him. But some of the
things she'd said were true. She thought she would be miserable in Skogen in the long term sense of things. And eventually Hank would be miserable too. And then they'd have a miserable marriage. And maybe by that time they'd have miserable children.

No, she thought, she didn't want to prolong the inevitable. She wanted to leave immediately and start to forget him. Didn't he understand that every moment in his presence was an agony for her?

“There's no reason for me to stay. You're just making things more difficult.”

He set his chin at a stubborn angle. “We made a deal.”

Her eyes were glittery with renewed obstinance.

“Okay,” he said. “I live out in the barn for the next five months. Those are my terms.”

She took on a defiant posture. “Fine. I'll stay. But don't expect me to like it. And don't expect me to cave in again. I intend to devote my energies to finishing my book. I'll perform what ever social duties you require, but don't impose your personal needs on me. Is that clear?”

“Perfectly.”

Maggie hung up the phone and sat back in her chair, staring sightlessly out her study window. It was early afternoon but the sunlight was weak, the world gray and obscure behind a curtain of falling snow. The orchard had been reduced to white mounds where snow had drifted from the last storm. The trees endured the cold in silence, reduced to skeletons beyond the sound of the muted footfalls and slamming doors that signaled life in the farm house.

It was the sort of snow people said would continue for a long time. Small, dry flakes that sifted straight down. Maggie knew a lot about snow now. Wet snow, dry snow, windblown snow, snow that was good for skiing, snow that was good for sledding, snow that was good for building snowmen. At happier times she would have been thrilled by it because she was usually
a woman with an adventuresome spirit. But these weren't happy times.

Maggie was lonely in a house filled with people. She'd imposed it upon herself. She saw no other way. For five months she'd kept to her room, working day and night on Kitty's book. Hank had respected her isolation; Elsie had groused about it.

Now her tenure was coming to an end. Her six months would be complete in January. She'd accomplished her goal. She'd written the book. She'd even managed to sell it. Just minutes ago she'd spoken to her agent and learned she was a rich woman. Apparently she wasn't the only one who found the information in Kitty's diary to be interesting.

But the victory was flat. She was miserable. Cutting Hank out of her life had only produced heartache so strong that at times it left her breathless. Thank goodness the book had demanded her attention throughout most of her waking hours. Now that it was finished she was bereft.

She had to start a new project, she told herself, but nothing appealed to her. She looked down at herself and knew she'd lost weight.

“Pathetic,” she said to Fluffy, curled in a ball on the corner of the desk.

Elsie knocked on the door and walked in. “Pathetic,” she said. “Everyone's downstairs trimming the tree, and you're up here looking like death warmed over.”

Maggie smiled. She could always count on Elsie to jolt her out of self-pity. Elsie was brutal but effective. And there'd been a lot of times in the past months when Elsie had kept her going with scoldings and hugs and hot soup.

“To night's the Christmas party,” Elsie said. “Does your dress need pressing?”

Maggie shook her head. Her dress was fine. It was a little big on her, but the style allowed for that. She wasn't sure she cared anyway.

Laughter carried up the stairs with the smell of pine and spicy cider. Hank's parents, his Aunt Tootie, Slick, Ox, Ed, Vern, Bubba, and their wives and girlfriends were downstairs, helping with the tree.

If she were a good wife, she'd be down there too. She'd used the same tired excuse of working on her book to steal away to her room. No one knew the book was done, much less sold.

Lord, what had become of her? She was a
coward, she thought. She wasn't able to face other people's happiness. Especially now that it was the Christmas season. This was a time for family. A time for love—and Maggie was loveless. Tears trickled down her throat. Hormones, she told herself, swallowing hard.

Elsie shook her head and sighed. “You're so hard on yourself,” she said. “Why don't you let yourself have some fun?”

Because if she gave in just a tiny bit, her resolve to leave would crumble like a house of cards, Maggie thought. Skogen wasn't going to change. Hank's father wasn't going to change. Bubba wasn't going to change. Just as her mother and Aunt Marvina weren't going to change. And the most painful truth was that Maggie wasn't going to change.

She didn't belong in Riverside and she didn't belong in Skogen. If she wanted happiness, she was going to have to go searching for it. Surely there was a place where she would be accepted and feel comfortable. Surely there was a town out there that offered a compromise between dumpsters and apple trees.

“I'll have fun to night,” Maggie lied. “I'll just work a little bit more, and then I'll quit for the day.”

“Everyone misses you,” Elsie insisted.

They didn't miss her. Maggie knew that for a fact. She could hear the laughter. She could hear the conversation that bubbled between old friends and family and never included her. For months now life had gone on in the farm house, and she hadn't been a part of it. Hank had gone from the baseball team to the football team to the hockey team. The cider press had been delivered and was operating, and the pie factory was close to becoming a reality.

“No one misses me,” Maggie said. “They're having a perfectly wonderful time without me.”

“Hank misses you,” Elsie said. “He looks almost as bad as you do. He laughs, but his eyes don't mean it. You'd see it too if you weren't so stuck on your own misery.”

Maggie wondered if what Elsie said was true. She knew part of her wanted it to be so. She knew that there was a scrap of hope she hadn't been able to completely smother. Her love for Hank smoldered deep inside her. She couldn't extinguish it no matter how hard she tried. It burned constantly and painfully. Every day she faced the unpleasant realities of her predicament and exerted every ounce of
discipline she possessed to do what she felt was best for herself and for Hank, but the dream remained.

Deep in her heart she knew she hadn't held to the agreed-upon six months through any sense of honor. It had been that damn dream that had kept her in Vermont.

 

For weeks she'd been dreading the Christmas party at the grange hall. It was the one social event she couldn't possibly avoid. Now that it was at hand she felt numb and exhausted even before the ordeal began.

She sat on the edge of her bed with her bathrobe wrapped tightly around her. Her hair was still damp from the shower; her toes were pink from the hot water. A depressing lethargy had taken hold of her. At least she wasn't in one of her emotional moods, she thought. Lately she'd been succumbing to crying jags. No one knew. She cried quietly with her face stuffed into her pillow. She cried late at night when everyone else was asleep.

There was a soft rap on her closed door. “Maggie, can I come in?”

It was Hank. Probably wondering why she was so late. She should have been dressed half
an hour ago, but she couldn't seem to finish the task. “The door's unlocked.”

He wore a dark suit with a white shirt and red tie, and the corner of a red silk handkerchief peeked rakishly from his breast pocket. The sight of him made her heart feel like lead in her chest.

Hank Mallone would never want for female companionship, she thought. Once she was out of the scene, women would be flocking to his doorstep. He was sinfully handsome and in a few years he would be wealthy. The contracts for his pies and cider were pouring in. After the first of the year when the pie factory opened, Skogen would be at a hundred-percent employment thanks to Hank.

He sat beside her on the bed and placed a small paper-wrapped box in her hand.

“It's customary in my family to give a gift on the night of the Christmas party. When I was a little boy, my parents always gave me a special present just before we left. It would be something I could take with me. A pocketknife, or a pair of red socks, or Christmas suspenders. And my dad would always give my mom jewelry. I know this is hard to believe, but in his own way, my dad is actually quite romantic.”

She hadn't expected this. Wasn't prepared for it. In the last two months they'd barely spoken, and she harbored a secret fear that he finally wanted her to leave. He'd stopped trying to make conversation, stopped finding excuses to touch her, stopped trying to coax her from her room.

And now he'd given her a gift. She didn't know what to make of it. She held it in her lap to keep her hands from shaking, but she wasn't entirely successful. Emotions too long held in check were tumbling to the surface, making it difficult to think, making it difficult not to smile.

For months now she'd treated him badly. And how had he responded to that? He'd bought her a gift!

He sat quietly watching, seeing the confusion in her face, seeing the pain mingling with a sudden infusion of unexpected joy. He'd been waiting for this moment for months, knowing that even if her book wasn't finished, even if all feelings for him were gone, she'd have to give him this evening.

He drew a shaky breath while she stared at the box. He hadn't been sure she'd accept it. He wasn't even sure she'd open it. Now that he saw
the range of emotions play across her face, he knew things would work out.

He pulled her onto his lap and cuddled her close to him.

“I haven't wanted to bother you these past months. I know how hard you've been working on your book.”

She thought she owed him an honest reply. “My book is done. It's been done for a little over a month now.”

He understood her reasons for not telling him. She'd been using the book as an excuse to remain aloof. He'd suspected as much. He hadn't heard any computer noises lately. The slight hurt, but he struggled not to let it show.

“Can you tell me about it? Is it good?”

Maggie laughed softly. It was an odd question. It was like asking a mother if her firstborn daughter was ugly.

“I'm not sure if it's good, but it's sold. I've kept my promise. Aunt Kitty's diary will be published in book form.”

He gave her a squeeze. “I always knew you could do it.”

She liked the sound of pride in his voice, and it triggered a surge of pride in herself, bringing the first rush of excitement over her success.

“I wasn't that sure,” she said. “I still can't believe it.”

She was smiling. First with her mouth, then with her eyes, then every vestige of sorrow vanished. It was as if the sun had suddenly come out in all its blinding glory. Maggie Toone wasn't a woman who took easily to unhappiness.

She remembered the package, and her fingers fumbled with the wrapping paper. “I love presents!” she said. “I love surprises!” She opened the box to find a pair of diamond stud earrings. “Oh!”

He pushed a curl behind her ear so he could see her face more clearly. “Do you like them?”

“Yes! Of course I like them. They're beautiful. But…”

“But what?”

She slouched against him, some of the old tiredness returning.

“I can't accept these. This isn't the sort of present you give to a…” She searched her mind for the appropriate word, but couldn't find one that defined their relationship. “Friend,” she finally said. “This isn't the sort of present you give to a friend.”

“It's the sort of present I give to my
best
friend.”

“I thought Bubba was your best friend.”

“Bubba is my second best friend.”

She thought he'd given up, but he'd only been lying low. She had to give him something for tenacity. And she had to admit—she was pleased. The dream was dancing around inside of her. She couldn't control it.

“It isn't going to work,” she said. “Skogen hasn't changed.”

He looked confident. “It'll work. It was never necessary for Skogen to change. You just haven't seen it yet. You haven't figured it out.”

“I don't know what you mean.”

“I was just like you. I had to get away. Trouble was that for a while my problems kept following me. That's because you can't run away from your problems. You only end up with the same problems in a new location.

“Then one day I was sitting in a crummy hotel room in Baltimore, and I realized I'd grown up. Somewhere along the line I'd sorted things out. My identity wasn't dependent upon the people around me. I didn't need my parents' attention or approval. I didn't need to be the class clown or the macho stud or the star quarterback. I just needed to do things I found personally satisfying. Like studying
about agriculture, and improving my granny's apple orchard.

“I think you're a little like that. I think you needed to get away and write your book. And I think you needed some time alone to get in touch with Maggie Toone.”

She shook her head. “I don't know if it's that simple. I don't know if I can stand the isolation of living on a farm.”

“You've imposed your own isolation. We brought your little red car up here, but you haven't used it. You just need to get yourself out on the road. You need to cuss out a few old ladies, give a few rude hand signals. You need to hit those shopping malls once in a while.”

“Vermont has shopping malls?”

“Mostly we have towns,” he admitted. “But they're just as good as a mall. Burlington even has a pedestrian street. Doesn't that get your adrenaline going?”

Not nearly as much as sitting on his lap, Maggie thought. Still, it might be worth an investigation.

“And if you want to get out of the house on a regular basis, you could go back to teaching.”

“No. I don't think so,” Maggie said. “I think I want to write another book.”

“Have you got an idea?”

She shook her head. “My creative energy hasn't exactly been at an all-time high.”

“My Uncle Wilbur ran the county newspaper for forty years. He retired in 1901. We have crates and crates of papers in the basement of this house. I went down to check on them the other day. They're fragile, but they're still readable. Maybe you could find a new story in one of them.”

Maggie's heart beat a little faster. Forty years' worth of old newspapers in her very own basement! It might be worth marrying Hank just for the newspapers alone!

Wait a minute. Hold the phone. She was getting carried away. Okay, so the Gap had come to Vermont and there was a book lurking somewhere in Hank's cellar. What about all those weird Skogenians who didn't like her? What about Bubba? What about Vern? What about Mrs. Farnsworth and her quilts?