The Summer of New Beginnings: A Magnolia Grove Novel Read online

  Next week’s Snip ’N’ Save was already at the printer; the following week’s issue was scheduled for release on Friday. The three ads that had come in were the last of what was booked. She clicked on the Adobe icon and opened InDesign, then slid each of the ads into place and closed the file.

  Long after Meghan powered off the computer, she remained in the office thinking about her daddy and wondering what he’d want her to do. Oddly enough, the answer she came up with wasn’t anything like what George would have wanted.

  Lila

  I didn’t just lose the love of my life; I lost my best friend. My heart feels like it’s broken into a million tiny little pieces. I think about how I’m going to move through life without George, and it seems like a task so far beyond me. Just the idea of it makes me feel like I’m suffocating. If I can’t even force my own breath in and out of my chest, how am I ever going to be able to care for my two girls?

  I look at Meghan and know the pain in her heart is as great as mine. She and her daddy were born of the same soul. They were alike in a thousand ways, ways that I don’t even understand. When her heart was broken, it was George, not me, who could comfort her. With him gone, what is she going to do? I hope she will turn to me, but the thing is, I’m not like George; I don’t have the way with words he had.

  I think back on that terrible summer when Clancy disappeared from our backyard and remember how George’s broad shoulders carried the agony of it.

  Clancy was Meghan’s dog, a gift from her daddy on her tenth birthday. George and I had argued about it, me saying she didn’t need a dog and him saying that was exactly what she needed. “Meghan keeps to herself too much,” he said. “Having a dog will help bring her out of her shell.” He was right. She loved that dog more than you’d imagine possible. When I heard the school bus rumbling down Baker Street, I knew seconds later she’d come barreling through the kitchen door and head for the backyard to check on Clancy.

  The day he went missing, I was busy making cookies for the church bake sale, and he was underfoot, so I opened the screen door and let him out. He was five at the time and knew to stay in the backyard.

  Meghan came in from school and headed for the backyard. When Clancy wasn’t there, she went through the house calling his name, checking the closets and looking under the beds. Once she realized he was nowhere to be found, she ran into the street calling his name. By then, huge tears were rolling down her cheeks.

  I panicked and called George to come home from work. That night he and Meghan scoured the neighborhood for miles in every direction. Long after dark, they continued, going from street to street, calling out Clancy’s name. It was almost midnight when they finally returned home empty-handed. According to George, they’d gone all the way around the lake and searched the wooded lot behind the ballpark.

  As he was telling me of all the places they’d looked, I kept thinking, I should have gone outside to check that the gate was closed.

  We went through months of heartache and anguish. Every evening Meghan and George went out at the same time they would have walked Clancy—only instead of walking the dog, they went up and down the streets calling his name. They looked like two sad shadows stuck together. Back then you could almost see the heavy cloud of sorrow hanging over our house. In the still of night, George and I would be lying side by side in the bed and we’d hear Meghan’s mournful sobs. That just about tore holes in my heart.

  Clancy was never found. It was as if he had simply disappeared from the face of the earth. I knew we’d never see that dog again, and I suspect George knew it also, but as long as Meghan held out hope, he was there for her. There’s no replacement for a daddy who will do things like that.

  I’m not nearly as worried about Tracy. Yes, I know she will miss her dad, but she’s a free spirit. She goes where the fun is. She’ll mourn for a while, then move on. Up until now I was that way myself, but now . . . I doubt such a thing is possible.

  Birth and death change a woman. Birth fills a woman with the joy of life, and death takes back all that was given.

  When Tracy was born, I went from being a young woman with few cares to being a mother—a woman responsible for another life.

  She was our firstborn, and she clung to me from the day we brought her home from the hospital, but with Meghan it was different. When she was colicky or teething, the only one who could soothe her was George. On nights when I could barely keep my eyes open, he’d take her in his arms and walk the floor until she finally quieted.

  There are times when I wonder if Meghan remembers those nights, if perhaps that was when she and George formed this unique bond they had.

  Last night I saw her sitting in George’s office. Hunched over in the chair as he used to do, she looked like a shadow he’d left behind. I stuck my head in the door and suggested maybe it was time for her to go to bed.

  She said, “I can’t, Mama. I’ve got to do this. The Snip ’N’ Save is the only part of Daddy I’ve got left.”

  I swear I could almost hear my heart cracking open when she said that. I wanted to say this wasn’t your daddy—he was a thousand other things, but not this. The thing is, I could tell by the look in her eyes that she wasn’t going to believe that any more than she believed I checked the back gate that day.

  Meghan doesn’t give her trust easily; you’ve got to earn it. George did, and now it’s up to me.

  I pray that I am up to the task, but the sad truth is I don’t know if I am. George would know, I tell myself. George would know, but George isn’t here. That thought comes back to me a thousand times a day, and each time it leaves another hole in my heart.

  Perhaps I’m feeling sorry for myself, and right now that’s a luxury I can’t afford. I’m a mother with two girls depending on me; I’ve got to stay strong for them. I’ll do whatever is necessary to keep our family together and give my girls a chance at the kind of happiness I’ve known.

  A Changing Life

  On the day of George’s funeral, the friends and neighbors Lila had known for twenty-five years were gathered together. They sat side by side in the pews of the Good Shepherd Church. One by one they came to her, hugged her, and promised to be there if she needed something.

  “Anything at all,” they’d say, then move on to make way for the next person.

  After Alice Watkins hugged Lila and promised to be there come what may, she took Meghan by her skinny little shoulders, held her close, and whispered how she had to be strong for her mama.

  “I will,” Meghan replied tearfully. “I know it’s what Daddy would have wanted.”

  At the cemetery, Tracy leaned heavily on her mama’s arm, but Meghan stood next to George’s sister, Phoebe, both of them with the same blonde hair and the same narrow Briggs nose. A gust of wind came by, and for a moment, Meghan fluttered like a leaf that was about to blow away.

  That night the three women gathered at the kitchen table, sipping cold cups of coffee and absently toying with food that remained untouched. The question circling the table was, “What now?” George had been the backbone of the family, and without him they were like a ship without a rudder.

  Lila’s first thought was to close down the Snip ’N’ Save and sell the house.

  “The Snip ’N’ Save makes money,” she said, “but not that much. If we close it down and sell the house, we could manage to get along on our savings and the money from your daddy’s insurance.”

  A look of astonishment swept over Meghan’s face. “Close the Snip ’N’ Save down? Completely?”

  “Yes, completely.”

  “I agree with Mama,” Tracy said. “It’s more work than it’s worth, and none of us want to take on the responsibility.”

  “Daddy put his heart and soul into building the Snip ’N’ Save,” Meghan countered. “Closing it down makes it feel like he never existed.”

  Lila gave a disheartened sigh. “It’s not what I want to do, but I don’t believe we have any other choice.”

  Tracy nodded. “I’
ve got my job at the bank, and Mama’s hopeless at the computer. She’s never even opened that design program.”

  “There are still six weeks before I leave for college. I could teach you how to—”

  Lila was already shaking her head. “I’ve got you girls to worry about. There’s no way I can take on that computer.”

  “I absolutely am not going to quit my job at the bank. Mr. Pelosi likes me. He hinted that I’m in line for a promotion to head teller.”

  Meghan sat there with her brows pinched into a knotted line. “I was thinking I could put InDesign on my laptop, do the layouts in my dorm, and send the finished magazine back for you and Mama to take it from there.”

  Now Tracy and Lila were both shaking their heads.

  “You’re the only one familiar with the business operation,” Tracy said, “and I don’t see any way you can handle the whole thing from Athens.”

  “Maybe Aunt Phoebe could help.”

  “Phoebe?” Lila gave an even more emphatic shake of her head. “Two years ago George asked if she’d like to go in on the business, and she said no. She told him she was retired and planned on staying retired.”

  “Oh.” Meghan’s face fell.

  The three of them sat there with no one saying anything for a long while, then Tracy offered a suggestion.

  “How about instead of closing the Snip ’N’ Save, we sell it? That way Dad’s business would still be intact, and we wouldn’t have to worry about running it.”

  Lila gave a broad smile and turned to Meghan. “That sounds good, don’t you think?”

  Meghan gave an almost imperceptible shrug. “We’d still want to keep it operational until we found a buyer.”

  She stayed quiet for a few minutes, thinking through everything. Finally, she came up with an answer.

  “I’ll wait a year before starting at Grady,” she said grimly. “That way I can keep the Snip ’N’ Save up and rolling until we find a buyer.”

  Lila hesitated a moment.

  “I guess that would work,” she finally said. “You wouldn’t actually be giving up school, just postponing it for a year.”

  Meghan didn’t say her heart was already there; it had been there for years. She’d filled seventy-six composition books with words. Now she yearned for the knowledge of how to rearrange them, of how to turn them from rambling thoughts into meaningful stories that people would read and then days later discover still lingering at the far edges of their brains.

  But her heart was also with her daddy, and Meghan knew the truth. She was the only one who understood the business, knew how to work the design program, understood scheduling, and was familiar with the customers. No one told her to give up her dreams; the thought was her own.

  “I could help out,” Lila offered. “Not on the computer but maybe typing letters or doing a bit of filing.”

  Meghan didn’t have the heart to tell her mama everything was done electronically. There was no filing or letters to be typed. Rather than explain, she gave a smile of appreciation.

  “Thanks, Mama. That would be really helpful.”

  Tracy’s face lit up. “See, there was nothing to worry about after all. Everything will work out perfectly.”

  Once it was decided, there was nothing more to be said.

  The next morning, Meghan sent an e-mail to the director of admissions at the journalism school. She apologized for having to drop out of the upcoming semester and assured him that it was a temporary thing. A year, perhaps, but certainly no more.

  That night she wrote about the decision in her journal. Although a single sentence could have told the story, she filled four pages, and every one of them was stained with droplets of tears. On the last page she wrote, “I believe this is what Daddy would want me to do,” and closed the book. Ignoring the blank pages in the back, she tied a slender ribbon around the notebook, then slid it into the storage box under her bed. It was the box that held all her other journals, but this was the only one left unfinished.

  The following day Meghan moved her few belongings in the office from the small desk with the laptop to the larger one with the desktop computer and monitor you could read from across the room. George’s chair was bigger than hers—too big, actually—but she pushed a cushion behind her back and settled into it. She signed on with his password and scrolled through his e-mail.

  Although you could see no physical change, she had in fact become her daddy.

  Meghan procrastinated for almost two weeks before she could bring herself to type up a description of the business and offer it for sale on Craigslist. It seemed that letting go of the Snip ’N’ Save was almost like letting go of her daddy. Even when she finally did get around to listing it, she didn’t use any of the words she’d once used to describe the magazine. In place of exciting new venture and unique opportunity, phrases like long hours and complex scheduling somehow seemed more appropriate.

  Not surprisingly, month after month went by, and there was not a single inquiry. No one even called to ask the price of such an offering. The few times “Unknown” did pop up on the caller ID, Meghan refused to answer the phone.

  Although nothing was resolved, the problem of what to do with the Snip ’N’ Save seemed to disappear. Lila never asked questions, and Tracy seemed not to care one way or the other, so when the listing expired, Meghan didn’t bother renewing it.

  As the weeks came and went, Meghan spent most of her time in the office. On occasion, and it was indeed an occasion, she would go into town and call on the customers who needed a slight nudge.

  “I know you’ll want to be in the Founder’s Day issue,” she’d say, sounding exactly like George.

  After a few months, the handful of customers who’d at first been skeptical of working with her came around and began placing ads. By then Meghan had comfortably settled into the job and no longer entertained any thoughts of selling the Snip ’N’ Save. It simply wasn’t the right time, she reasoned, knowing full well there would probably never be a right time.

  Meghan

  Tracy and Mama don’t see things the way Daddy did. Mama thinks I ought to be studying something more useful like nursing or teaching, and Tracy claims that college is a total waste of time. Why bother, she said, when you’re eventually going to get married and stay home anyway?

  Daddy understood how much going to Grady meant to me. He was the one who patted me on the back and said being a journalist was a profession to be proud of. He understood about the words stuck in my head and how I ache to put them on paper.

  I remember the day Daddy took me to visit Grady, and looking back I can honestly say that was the best day of my life. We rode together in the car, and when I talked about how I was planning to follow in the footsteps of Henry W. Grady himself, Daddy smiled and said he had no doubt that I could do it.

  “If you put your mind to something and stick with it, you’ll make it happen,” he said.

  That’s how Daddy was; he believed in me the same as I believed in him.

  Grady was my dream, but seeing the Snip ’N’ Save flourish was Daddy’s, and I’m not going to let it die along with him. He’d want me to keep it alive, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

  Not leaving for Grady was the hardest decision I’ve ever made. It felt like I was giving up on something I’d worked so hard to get, but I did it because I couldn’t let Mama sell the Snip ’N’ Save to some stranger. It’s the last piece of Daddy I have left.

  Somehow, someway, I’ll make this work. I have to, because it’s the only way I can hold on to that piece of Daddy. He’s part of the Snip ’N’ Save just as the Snip ’N’ Save was part of him.

  Mama and Tracy might not agree, but I know I’m doing the right thing. At night when I go into the office and sit in Daddy’s chair, I can almost feel him watching over me and smiling. Now if that’s not a sure sign, then I don’t know what is.

  The Wild Child

  Piece by piece, the Briggs family slid into what was rapidly becoming the ne
w normal. Every Tuesday Lila made a chicken noodle casserole, and Aunt Phoebe came to dinner. More often than not, Tracy failed to show up. She spent most of her evenings with Dominic and came home far later than she’d ever dared when their daddy was alive.

  On the first Tuesday of October, Phoebe came to dinner. Where she’d made light of Tracy not being there on previous occasions, this time it rankled her.

  “Does she not remember that I’m her daddy’s sister?” Phoebe asked pointedly.

  “Well, of course she remembers,” Lila said, “but she’s young and wants to be out having a good time.” Glancing at Meghan, she added, “Young people should be out kicking up their heels.”

  Phoebe’s dubious expression was reminiscent of her brother’s.

  “I’m all for having fun, but if a young person is running amok . . . ”

  She left the remainder of that thought hanging ominously in the air and reminded Lila that this was the fifth Tuesday in a row Tracy had missed dinner. Dismissing the thought with a flick of her fingers, Lila promised that Tracy would most certainly join them the following week. The tone of their conversation unnerved Meghan and set her to wondering what her daddy would have done.

  Long after Phoebe was gone and her mama sound asleep, Meghan lay awake waiting to hear the growl of Dominic’s car as he whizzed by to drop Tracy off. When she finally heard him rumbling down the street, she slipped out of her room and into her sister’s.

  Tracy tiptoed in carrying her shoes. She made her way up the staircase quietly, then crept inside her room, clicked the door shut, and snapped on the light. That’s when she saw Meghan standing there and gasped.

  “Good grief, you scared the life out of me!”

  Dropping her shoes onto the floor of her closet, she turned back. “What are you doing here?”

  “Waiting for you,” Meghan replied in a disapproving voice.