The Bargaining (9 page)

“Sorry, kid,” I tell the wall. “Looks like we're all in it together now.”

As I leave the room, I hear the paper flutter in my wake.

6

A
PRIL AND
I
STARE INTO
our respective coffees in Ripp's Caffeinator. Her hand is frozen, pen limp in the crook of her fingers between scribbles and stops, never taking her eyes from the steaming mug in front of her. I assume she's waiting for it to tell her what else to add to her list of renovation items to be purchased at Scoot's General once they open.

“Duct tape,” she says. “Everything can be fixed with duct tape.”

I stare at my own latte, its foam pool undecorated, a departure from so many Seattle coffee houses. Not that I need a reminder that we're in another world now that we're in Point Finney.

“And I need to ask if they know who can install a ­garbage
disposal,” she says. “Buyers might be charmed by the oven, but they won't be charmed by having to scrape everything into the trash, especially if this becomes the bed-and-­breakfast I think it will. All those rooms on the top floor. It's practically screaming to be a B and B. Except for the bathroom situation . . .”

“Mhmm.”

“Oh, that reminds me. Hand soap. I forgot to pack any.”

I cover my eyes with my palm, which is warm from cupping my mug of coffee.

“Penny.”

I mentally replay the list of items she's put forth, unable to fully block her out. Duct tape. Garbage disposal. Hand soap. Penny.

“Penny?” she says.

“What?”

“Do you have a headache?”

I open my eyes. Jagged worry lines groove her forehead.

“I'm fine.”

She gives me a look that speaks an entire novella about all the ways I'm not fine, which makes it a little easier to dislike her. She has no place deciding that. Except I can't help thinking about what she said last night, about how she's the only one trying.

About how she's right.

“I mean, yeah. Headache. I have one,” I say.

She nods. “Tylenol. I'll add that to the list. Oh, window cleaner,” she says. “I can't tell if the windows are really that old, or if they're just neglected. That whole house is neglected,” she tsks. I think of the awkward little handprint on the window upstairs.

April's purse chimes from beside her on the table, and she pulls her phone out, her face beaming in a way my mom's never has.

“Your dad says hi. He misses us.”

I nod, unable to say the same. I try to remember the last time I missed him. I could describe every last detail of his appearance to anyone who asked. The way he smells like aftershave and spearmint, which should be gross but somehow just smells clean. The way he seems to growl instead of laugh, even when he knows something is really funny.

But it's been more years than I can count since I've felt the pull of him.

I stop looking at April's phone with all its ambiguity and pull my eyes back to the list in her hand. Ink on paper is so much easier to decipher.

“Add a new door bolt to the list,” I say, remembering the jimmied lock and the probable squatters.

The caffeine begins to do its job, and I pace the floor of Ripp's, the soft wood bending and straining in places where weather and time have warped it.

The wall is lined with vintage signs ranging from the early 1900s to the mid-sixties, from the looks of the fashion and women's hairstyles. Box frames interspersed between signs feature newspaper clippings, all mentioning something significant involving the building that eventually became Ripp's.

A clipping on the far wall boasts the headline
SMALL ­BUSINESS OWNER PROVES THE LITTLE GUY CAN WIN
. The picture under the headline captures
A
stocky guy in his forties standing behind the counter. I recognize him across the café, his crew cut making him look more like a drill sergeant than a local proprietor. The paper is folded to fit the frame at the corner, but one half of the headline to an adjacent story reads
ANOTHER LOCAL TEEN FOUND IN NOR—

“They wanted to open one of those god-awful chains,” says a voice over my shoulder. His breath smells like cinnamon.

I turn to find the man from the picture, though his face has sagged a little over the years, his eyes a little puffier, his cheeks more hollowed.

“I can't really take much credit,” he continues. “It was the townspeople who signed the petitions, picketed, all that. I just kept serving 'em coffee.”

His laugh is startling—too loud for this quiet space, but impossible not to love.

“It's good,” I say, nodding to my mug, which is still sitting across from an engrossed April. Her list has grown to three times its prior size.

I point to the only framed piece of art that isn't a vintage sign or newspaper clipping. It's a black-and-white, shaded drawing of a cloud passing over the faintest outline of a sun. The sun still wins out in the picture, somehow, despite the overbearing cloud and the picture's lack of color.

“That's beautiful,” I say, nodding to the drawing.

“Oh that,” he says, his face going pink. “That there is the scribbling of an untrained artist. Don't look too closely. I only framed it because my sister used to gush about her talented brother.”

I just smile. There's nothing really to say in response to such fierce modesty.

“Just passing through, or can I count on seeing you two more often?” he asks, expertly changing the subject.

“A little of both,” I tell him. “Here for the summer. Or at least the first part.”

Apparently hearing her cue, April looks up from her list. “I'm fixing up one of your originals. I think it was one of the first houses ever built in Point Finney, actually. Maybe before it was even Point Finney!”

“Oh yeah? Up on First Street? One of those old Victorians?” the owner asks.

“No,” April laughs. “Not quite in my price point. The Carver House, that beautiful old farmhouse in the North Woods.”

The man stops smiling. His skin burns red and splotchy for a moment before losing its color altogether. “Are you now?”

I look at April, and she looks at the man, who looks at her with the same expression that girl had before I smacked her friend's face in the girls' bathroom. Like he knows there will be pain, but he's powerless to stop it.

“Indeed we are,” April says, watching the man's face closely. “We're actually just waiting for the general store to open so we can pick up some supplies.”

“Uh huh,” the man says, his hands looking for a place to go. They start with his pockets, then fiddle with his apron. They finally settle on the chair in front of him.

“Any idea when they open?” April keeps trying, but I think she's doing more than that. She's leaning on him, trying to see what he'll say if she pushes hard enough. It's that stubbornness again. But the whole interaction is getting a little too uncomfortable for me.

“Nope. Not a clue,” he says, a lie that only seems to inflame April.

“Really. You have no idea when the business across the street from you opens. That's . . . shocking,” she says, boring a hole through him.

“I'm Penny,” I say, extending my hand. He stares at it for a second like he's trying to figure out what a hand is, then puts his in mine, though he doesn't grasp it. He just lets it sit in my palm.

“Ripp,” he says, which I should have guessed but didn't want to assume.

“That's April,” I say, and April sits up a little straighter.

“Your . . . sister?” Ripp asks.

“Stepmom,” April says before I can come up with a better response.

“So, you've sort of cornered the market on small town hospitality.” April leans in harder. Ripp's hand, still in mine, suddenly squeezes, and I have to pull mine away before April can see that it's starting to hurt.

“Yes, ma'am,” he says, holding April's gaze, ready to challenge her now that he's apparently gotten over his momentary shock. I officially want to leave as soon as possible. This guy looks like he's about to . . . actually, I can't figure out what he's about to do. Scream or call the cops or grab an ax from the back room and chop us to pieces. In any case, I want to leave.

“I think they're open,” I say after catching the slightest movement in my periphery. The blinds to the general store just parted.

April lifts her coffee to her mouth and, in three gulps, drains the giant mug of its contents. She sets our cups slowly on the counter, her eyes on Ripp the whole time. Ripp watches her with the same intensity, and I wait until we get outside to say anything.

“What the hell, April?”

“What? You're blaming me? That guy was clearly off his nut. And language.”

“Yeah, but why did you have to push him?”

“I wanted to see what he'd do.”

“I'm pretty sure of what he'll do
now
,” I say. “I hope there's another place to get coffee around here because I think you've managed to have us banned from the only café in Point Finney.”

Scoot's General is one of those places with a bell above the door. Not an electronic bell that simulates ringing, but an actual brass bell that tinkles when the door hits it.

“Help you find something?”

I can't tell where the voice is coming from, but if I didn't know better, I'd say from the bottom of a hole. He sounds far away, his question still echoing from wherever it originated.

“Yes, many somethings,” April replies, also looking for the source of the voice. It all feels a little Great and Powerful Oz-ish.

“Oh, and coffee filters,” April says to me, inspiration clearly striking in the midst of our café encounter. She scrawls that on her list, too.

“Sorry, we don't carry that,” the voice echoes back, though it sounds like maybe it's getting closer now. “Ripp's across the street. He'll probably sell you a stack if you ask.”

“Not likely,” I mutter.

“Scoot's. Ripp's. Wonder if they're related or something,” April mutters.

“Brothers. Well, brothers-in-law,” the voice says, and I finally see where it's coming from. A hole, in fact, in the floor. A basement just inside a doorway leading to a back room.

“Well, what'd'ya know?” I say.

“I know that they were brothers-in-law,” the voice repeats, teasing, and now I finally see the person attached to it.

He's not particularly tall, but definitely taller than me. His hair is that kind of red that looks brown in most lights. Only he's not standing in most lights. He's standing in the gray haze streaming through the window beside him, and somehow that makes it look burnt. He's older than me, but not by all that much.

Green eyes. Deep, like the evergreens that are so close to the buildings in this town, they act like they want to be walls.

I've seen a version of this person before. A younger version, depicted in paint strokes on a wall behind ugly paper. If not him, then someone who looks a hell of a lot like him.

He takes the list from April, who is compulsively wiping droplets from her fleece like they're lint.

“My dad was Scoot. Ripp's my uncle. He sort of looks after me ever since my parents died. And now you know a strangely personal thing about me.”

That and your younger doppelganger is painted on the wall in our new house.

As though he hears my thoughts, his hand gropes the back of his neck, and he seems to remember suddenly that he emerged from the basement with something, and focuses intently on that—a case of beer under one arm.

April takes the list back from him. “I'll just start wandering,” she says, apparently finding the limits of local hospitality.

“I'm here against my will,” I say as soon as April's out of earshot. I have no idea why I say it, or why it feels like I can say it to him. But he just confessed to me, and besides, it feels like we've already met, and it feels like I haven't talked for months. Which is, in some ways, true.

He looks at me like I might have just emerged from a hole
too. Like he's not exactly sure what he's looking at. I'm positive I am the most awkward human being to stumble into Scoot's.

I look around for April and spot her head bobbing purposefully in the back of the store, examining the various electrical and packing tapes.

“Okay, so I guess I'll go with paper towels,” I say.

“What?”

“Since you don't have coffee filters,” I say.

“Oh, right. Because paper towels are a good substitute for filters?”

Now it's my turn to wonder about him. He's making fun of me. I know that much. But not in a superior way. Not like he's trying to embarrass me. Like maybe he's trying to get me to talk back.

So I do. Because I can't seem to stop now that I've started.

“Because it's next on the list. We're fixing up this
house. . . . ” I approach with caution. “It's, uh, a little neglected.”

I want to say what it really is: an inch away from collapsing. But now I'm wondering if this was his old house. He clearly has some connection to it. And he'll probably find out from his uncle where we're staying, and this is already off to a very strange start.

Somehow I followed the boy with the green eyes and burnt hair to a claustrophobic aisle stuffed with all kinds of paper products: toilet paper, paper towels, Kleenex, paper plates, napkins. I don't even remember getting here, but here we are, and here he is, handing me a package of paper towels and looking at me with those incredible evergreen eyes.

“I'm Miller. Dodson.”

The way he breaks it up, it almost sounds like two first names. Like I could call him either. But the last one is familiar, and then I remember that I've seen it written in black marker on the tag of a musty coat hanging in our house.

He waits. I know because he hasn't let go of the paper towels.