Page 7 of Something Old

“T.M.I., Ronny,” she muttered.

Occupational hazard. I spent so much time with teenagers that I’ve lost all sense of decorum and etiquette. Kids will talk about anything these days. Anything.

“If you’re relying on psychic vibrations for fun, I’d say ‘etiquette’ is the least of your problems.”

Ronny chuckled again, and they were off, chatting about this, that, and the next thing. After a few minutes, Ronny said softly, You sound good today, Mads.

Madeline nodded. “Aside from the usual bouts of crushing nerves and general, well, you know . . . yeah, it’s been a great few days. I’m ready to open—I mean, like, the store isn’t just ready. I’m actually doing it. Opening in just over a week.”

You are? That’s fantastic. Go you!

Madeline smiled, teary again—as usual. At least, for this moment, it was a happy mist.

When she’d first dreamed up this plan and imagined her sister’s response, Ronny’s incessant nattering in her head had been . . . less than thrilled, to say the least. She’d thought Madeline was making a huge, grief-fueled mistake and a billion other life mistakes too. Her loud opinions—or the ones she would have held if she’d been alive to voice them—had followed Madeline around and consumed her thoughts, sentiments mostly along the vein of, Are you effing kidding me? You’re seriously going to head to some hick town that caught your eye during insomnia-induced internet browsing?

Madeline had shrugged the nagging away every time. There was something about Greenridge—most likely how removed it was in every way from her past existence—that appealed to her.

But it’s in the middle of nowhere, literally the end of the road, Ronny exclaimed more than once, her scathing disdain—or was that worry?—bouncing around Madeline’s brain.

Both parts of that comment were typical Ronny exaggerations. Yes, Greenridge, nestled along a remote stretch of Highway 16 West more than a fifteen-hour drive from Vancouver, was remote—but it had other small communities and villages nearby. Madeline hoped her customer-base would grow to include their residents, actually. Also, there was one even smaller town beyond it, Prince Rupert, built on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, where the road actually ended. Without fail, this line of thinking amused Madeline in a dark sort of way.

“Road or rope . . . apparently, I haven’t totally reached the end of either of mine yet,” she’d said a few times but knew her wit would’ve failed to equally amuse Ronny. Nor would her sister have been impressed by Madeline’s observation that the highway continued again, after an eight-hour ferry ride, on the Islands of Haida Gwaii.

And you’re really going to spend every dime you got from the sale of your house, which is to say, every dime you practically have, to open a junk shop?

“Not a junk shop—a high-end consignment, thrift, arts and novelty shop. But yes, the shop Lauren always dreamed about. Correct.”

Oh, Mads. The sorrow and sympathy Madeline felt sure Ronny was sending, wherever she was, made her squirm. Her concern was loud and clear in the silence that stretched now—and for a minute, Madeline wondered if they’d lost their connection.

Madeline had gone over it again and again, pretending she was trying to convince Ronny, even while knowing, deep down, that was a colossal joke. After all, she might be losing her mind, but she wasn’t delusional. The only person she needed to convince—because she was the only one left—was herself. “It’s kind of a matter of . . . if not now, when? I have nothing left to lose that I mind losing, and I’m worried about my sanity.” Understatement there. Massive, gut-wrenching understatement. “Starting something absolutely new, somewhere absolutely fresh, but in honor of Lauren, is the only thing I can think of to do. Like it might literally be a lifeline. If I fail, who cares? Then I’ll take a job somewhere and eke out a living until I can die.”

It was as if the room’s barometric pressure dropped with Ronny’s displeasure. Madeline sighed. “Or, retire or whatever. But if I do it the reverse, take a job somewhere now, try to anesthetize myself through my days . . . I’ll get too old. I’ll reach a stage where even if I suddenly really want to reinvent myself, create a new life, I won’t be able to.”

All the things Ronny didn’t say, couldn’t say, were as loud as if she’d yelled them.

“I know you hate hearing all this, and I’m sorry to worry you, but I won’t lie. This is the only thing I can think of to do that makes me not dread waking up in the morning. I need to be in a place where my memories are a part of me, not where I’m just a part of old memories. Does that make sense?”

No, Ronny said, it doesn’t. You should stick with your family, near me. Near Mom and Dad. Near Lyle. Near Lauren.

Madeline wanted to weep—and, of course, often did. In the quiet of the still shop, her whisper sounded like a scream. “Being near your graves is not the same as being near you.”

No comment from Ronny, but Madeline had known there wouldn’t be to this. Even her imagination and wishful thinking only stretched so far.

Sometimes life felt like one big, never-ending process of letting go. It had hurt her to leave their hometown. It had. But constantly facing old friends and acquaintances? It was too much. They all still had their people, their lives . . . Madeline didn’t and couldn’t, not there, not anymore.

To Ronny’s credit, and true to her old loyal and practical-to-a-fault nature, she piped down when it was clear Madeline was going through with it, no matter what. Though she still followed Madeline around in an intrusive way, her voice in Madeline’s head swung from do-everything-in-her-power-to-talk-Madeline-out-of-it mode to full support mode. Even knowing Madeline only had enough funds, after buying the shop and getting stock, to barely last a year on her own resources hadn’t quashed her cheerleading. And whenever Madeline expressed worries about how she might sink every dollar she had, only to lose everything, she always heard Ronny pooh-pooh her fears.

So, you better work hard and long and get Lauren’s dream off the ground then, eh? You can’t move in with me when you’re broke.

It was so exactly how Ronny would’ve told Madeline she believed in her—not just how Madeline imagined she would’ve—and so simultaneously true for the most awful reason that Madeline was as shaken as if the conversation had really taken place. Even now, recalling it, she was tempted to check herself for wounds. She felt like she was bleeding. “I still need you,” she whispered.

There was a second’s silence, and a soft breeze trickled through the shop’s slightly-ajar side window, rustling Madeline’s hair lightly and cooling her flushed face. It seemed their heart-to-heart was winding down, but then Ronny asked, Have you spoken with—

A loud knock at the door made Madeline jump, but she recovered quickly, ecstatic to have a legit reason to stave off that line of thought and questioning. She waved her hand to the air. “To be continued. I’ve got to run. There’s someone here.”

Madeline’s first impression of the stranger through her shop door’s window surprised her. She hadn’t noticed any man in such terms in years, but she couldn’t help registering that this one was good-looking. He was tall and lanky—like Lyle, come to think of it. His short, tousled hair might have once been red but was now shades of sand with touches of silver here and there. Even from a distance, through the window glass, his eyes stood out—a vivid, piercing blue. They were so bright she would’ve suspected contact lenses, but his clean-but-worn gray Henley shirt and work jeans made her think he wasn’t a colored contacts kind of guy. She didn’t even mind his scruffy beard—sort of a fad for men these days, it seemed.

She put on a warm smile, as she would for anyone, while she opened the door—then felt it waver. The man was suddenly scowling like he had some big personal issue with her.