Running Through the Words, 9

Nine.

Bas slides into the passenger seat of his own Jeep and fastens his seatbelt. “You remember Magnolia, right?” he asks Rex. “We’re gonna drive her out to the Brewhaha and drop her off so she can get wasted.”

“At nine in the morning?” the teenager asks. “Dang…”

Magnolia laughs from the backseat. “While it is true that Petey invited me to a tasting party with him and Juli,” she says, swatting at Sebastian and landing a solid hit on his bicep, “that won’t be happening until much later today. This morning, I wanna explore the farmhouse some more and maybe do a little writing.”

“I don’t understand why you wanna write at the Brewhaha,” Bas mumbles. “Wouldn’t there be fewer distractions if you stayed here and wrote? Lucy’s not home and neither am I, obviously.” He shakes his head in bewilderment and monitors Rex’s progress in the side mirror; he’s only been behind the wheel a handful of times and backing up is still pretty slow going. “Good job, buddy. Now cut the wheel to the right and… yep!”

“I’m not totally sure how to get to the Brewhaha,” Rex admits, slowly guiding the vehicle down Sycamore Drive. Lucy’s father is mowing the grass and waves as they drive by, recognizing Sebastian’s blue Jeep.

“We’ll get you there, bud. Don’t worry. Nol, here, could probably navigate the route with her eyes shut. She’s been out there nearly every day this week.”

Nol starts to protest that this is an exaggeration until she realizes it isn’t. With the exception of Sunday, she has managed to pop into the Brewhaha every single day. And when she’s there, what she does is write. Juli’s been around most days and always pops in to see how she’s doing, and Addy checks in on her every now and again, occasionally bringing along some sort of delightful treat from the kitchen, but the majority of her time spent in the farmhouse is spent there alone.

If she’s being honest, she’s not entirely sure what it even is that she’s writing. Only once before has a story seized control of her so thoroughly, and to this day, she believes that story was narrated to her by Amelia Porter.

Sebastian’s mother.

Nol had been twelve at the time… and Amelia had been dead for eighteen years.

There is a part of her that yearns to share with Sebastian the strange draw she feels to the Brewhaha—and she will, she suspects, in time try to put her feelings into words—but for now she’s content to keep the mystery of it to herself.

“You’re sure you don’t need a ride home?” Bas confirms as they bump along the gravel drive to the brewery. Green-to-yellow apples weigh down the trees in the orchard. “I don’t mind running back out here to pick you up after I check on B.”

“But what if Bert needs you to stay with him tonight?” she counters. “And besides, Petey’s wife already said she’d give each of us a ride home: Petey, Juli, and me. I’ll be fine.” She slips out of the Jeep, loops her messenger bag over a shoulder, and waves as she traipses across the shaggy lawn.

Nol climbs the steps to the front porch and is about to knock when a red blur barrels through the entryway, the screen door swinging wide and slamming all the way back against the wood siding of the old farmhouse. “Scarlett!” Juli bellows from somewhere deep inside the house.

Addy’s laugh, when it appears a second later, sounds much closer. “She’s outside!”

“Goddamnit!” Juli swears.

Just as Nol turns to follow the Irish Setter running laps in the yard, a second dog darts out of the house and nearly knocks her over. This one, wiry and primarily brown with a black saddleback, bounds off the porch and races after Scarlett, kicking up dirt with his big feet.

A moment later, Juli, too, barges out the door and manages at the last second to avoid a collision with Magnolia. “Shit!” he exclaims, placing a hand on each of her shoulders and steadying both himself and the newcomer. Then, smiling one of his lopsided grins, he adds more pleasantly, “Hi. Scarlett has my shoe.”

Nol glances down. Sure enough, a black Converse occupies his left foot and a lonesome sock occupies his right. “I had a stone in my shoe so I took it off. And then Rhett swiped it out of my hand because he’s an asshole. And then Scarlett stole it from Rhett because that’s what she does. And now…” He holds out both arms, thus indicating the dogs running circles in the grass, and sighs in frustration. “Yeah.”

“I’m sorry,” Nol sympathizes. “How’re you gonna get it back?”

“Well, I think I’m going to patiently sit here,” he says, taking a seat on the top step, “and wait for them to run out of steam.”

“How long will that take?”

“Oh, anywhere from three minutes to half an hour, I imagine.” He rolls his eyes. “Dogs.”

Magnolia sits down beside him and rests her elbows on her knees. “I’ve never had a dog,” she confides. “Only a cat, and he was technically Bas’s. Cooper McFadden. I liked him just fine; he was very in tune with people’s emotions. Are Rhett and Scarlett both yours?”

“They sure are,” Juli says with a definite lack of enthusiasm in his tone. “Most days I’m happy to claim ‘em… but not today.”

Nol watches the pups for a while longer before noting, “I wouldn’t’ve pegged you for a big fan of Gone With the Wind.”

“I’m not. Scarlett’s named for her coloring, but I’m not responsible for Rhett’s name. He came with that one. Pretty coincidental, huh? He was, uh… He belonged to Charley. When she passed away, I adopted him, and if I’m being honest? He’s a handful. I’m too old for a terrier, I think. That boy has all the energy.”

“You’re only forty. That’s not old.”

Juli turns to face her. “And you’re… what? Thirty?”

“I’ll be thirty-five in February,” she says, thinking a five-year age difference sounds better than six. It doesn’t occur to her that February is still nine months away and that her answer will sound rather foolish.

“So what you’re telling me,” Juli says with a bemused grin, “is that you’re thirty-four.”

The way he says it lets Nol know he continues to view her as that chatty child who talked his ear off each time her mother hired him to do work at the house. In the eyes of Juli Singer, she will probably always be twelve years old. Her cheeks warm as an embarrassed flush rosies their coloring. “I guess so, yeah,” she grudgingly acknowledges. “I suppose we’ll always be six years apart.”

“Funny how math works like that,” he muses, hoisting himself to his feet and traversing the porch steps. The dogs have finally tuckered themselves out and are now sprawled beneath the cherry tree, biting each other’s faces and no longer expressing interest in the abandoned sneaker that lies several yards away. “You should probably squeeze in some writing before Petey summons us for sampling. He mentioned something about a late lunch followed by beer. How ‘bout I come find you when he’s ready?”

“Sounds good,” Nol agrees, trying not to feel as though she’s just been dismissed. But, as Juli slips his foot into his Converse and then proceeds to walk farther away, heading toward the barn, she can’t deny that’s exactly how she feels.

🍁

Her initial thought is to set up camp in the office and utilize the beautiful mahogany desk that resides there, but as she weaves her way through the kitchen and down the hall to reach it, she notices a doorway she hadn’t before. The cramped room is located directly across from the study and contains little more than an oriental rug, a smallish round table, and three wooden chairs. The walls have been painted a deep eggplant and the only light is provided by the sun, spilling in through three narrow windows overlooking the vegetable garden. The middle window, sandwiched between two thick panes of clear glass, is anything but ordinary. It is a web of color, pieced together with intricately cut fragments of stained glass, the various hues cool and calming. The image depicted is that of a large, whiskered fish swimming amongst the reedy stems of cattails. Nol studies it for several minutes, captivated by the glistening blues and shimmery greens, and then she pulls out a chair and sets up camp at the table, unearthing her laptop and opening the Word document she’s been adding to all week.

The story will come if it’s meant to be told; it’s not as if she really has a say in the matter. Sometimes she’ll sit for hours, waiting for inspiration to present itself, and other times her fingers start dancing across the keys almost immediately.

Today is one of the latter experiences.

As soon as Nol opens her file entitled “519 Copper,” the house’s words spill out of her, detailing the story of a young man called Spencer Henry and how he came to make his home in the tiny Pennsylvania town known as Lake Caywood. It’s an interesting tale, and as she’s recording it, Nol’s vaguely aware of the fact that this is likely where her story begins. The house, despite its willingness to communicate with her, has little regard for chronology. It will be up to Magnolia to conduct further research and put her notes in order. It will be up to her to make sense of the story.

She is still typing away when Juli comes to fetch her a little after one o’clock. By this point, her focus is on rereading and editing silly typos and she’s more than ready to focus her eyes on something other than a computer screen. She glances up when he appears in the doorway, knocking lightly on the jamb. His eyes dart to the stained glass window, then to the intricately swirled rug on the floor. “Hey,” he says softly. “Are you at a good stopping point? Addy made us some grilled cheese sandwiches.”

Magnolia’s stomach growls at the mention of food. “Give me one minute,” she requests. “Let me finish tweaking this paragraph and then I’ll be ready.”

“Alright. Meet me in the barn, okay? Petey’s pouring the beer as we speak. The one he’s most excited about sounds pretty disgusting… some sort of strawberry-chocolate wheat concoction.” He makes a face and adds, “I’ll try it, but I doubt I’ll like it. Anyway, I’m responsible for bringing lunch and you, so don’t take too long.”

“I won’t.”

Nol’s eyes flit back to her screen, considering the last lines of her document—“I guess it weren’t ‘til after my death that folks start wonderin’ ‘bout the ol’ farmhouse. It weren’t ‘til I ain’t around to ask no more that folks start formulatin’ tricky questions.”—and then she closes her laptop and hurries after Juli.

🍁

They consume enough that Nol’s glad to have a designated driver, but she doesn’t feel sloppily drunk or at risk of a hangover. She just feels happy to have been included in the afternoon sampling session.

The chocolate-strawberry wheat beer hadn’t been horrible, but it was by no means Nol’s favorite. She found herself drawn to the IPAs and the lagers; one being crisp and bity, the other rich and smooth. The best one, in her opinion, was a session pale ale with a hint of raspberry. “I’m thinking about calling it ‘Jam Session’,” Petey had informed them, smiling in such a way as to create long dimples that seemed to hug his mouth like parentheses. Both Nol and Juli had laughed.

“So when will these new beers be available to the public?” Jenny Goode asks now. She’s behind the wheel of an old Subaru, having retrieved her husband and his friends as promised, and is currently carting them back to their homes. Magnolia is secretly hoping that Juli will be dropped off first. Never before has she wondered about where he might live, but now the mystery has presented itself to her and she’s dying to know the answer.

“In the next week or two, right, Petey?” Juli asks from the backseat. Scarlett and Rhett peek their snouts around the seat’s headrest at the sound of his voice, nuzzling their owner from where they’re riding.

“Definitely no longer than that. If something kicks tonight or tomorrow, Jam Session could actually go on. It’s ready.”

Nol giggles, appreciating how Petey has worded his sentence to make it sound as though the musically named beer is a musical act, but then her enthusiasm dwindles as she realizes that Jenny has veered off Main Street and is guiding her car into her almost-brother’s neighborhood with its streets named for trees. They travel down Oak, cut across Dogwood, and have just pulled onto Sassafras Way when it occurs to her that Jenny must be lost. “Bas and Lucy live over on Sycamore,” she says helpfully. “It’s back that way.”

“Oh, I know,” Jenny replies, smiling into the rearview mirror as she pulls up to a two-story brick home. Number eleven. It has black shutters, white trim, and an “Apartment for Rent” sign in the front window.

“This is my house,” Juli says. “Same neighborhood, different street. If you’re not opposed to walking home from here, you’re welcome to come in for another beer. I’ve got a few bottles of Orange You Glad tucked away.”

“Really?”

He shrugs. “Sure.”

So Nol thanks Jenny for the ride, thanks Petey for the samples, and follows Juli and the dogs as they stride toward the front door. As they step inside, entering first into a tiny foyer and then into a living room that definitely appears to have been decorated by a single man, Nol once again notes the “Apartment for Rent” sign and asks, “Are you looking for a tenant?”

Juli leads the way through the living room and into a small kitchen. It’s cluttered, but tidy. There are no dirty dishes in the sink or on the counter, but there is a toolbox and three bags from Honey-Do Hardware occupying space on the table. Juli tosses his keys down beside them and says, “I am, yeah, but I’m not in a big rush to find one. My buddy Asher used to rent the upstairs apartment, but he moved out a few months ago when he and his fiancé tied the knot. I actually thought about not finding another tenant—I can pay the bills without one—but it’s nice to have the extra money, you know?” He crosses the room, opens a side door, and ushers the dogs into the fenced-in backyard. Then he walks to the refrigerator and squats down, rummaging on the bottom shelf for the promised IPA. Finding two bottles, he uses a magnetic opener to pry off their caps and hands one of the chilled beverages to Nol. “Do you need a glass?”

“No thanks.”

“Should we drink ‘em in here, or take ‘em outside?”

“Either one,” she answers agreeably. “It’s not too hot. Let’s go outside.”

They each claim one of the stackable plastic Adirondack chairs that litter the concrete patio. Nol positions hers so she’s facing Juli at an angle; he drags over a tiny outdoor table to rest their drinks on.

“How long have you lived here?” she asks. “You didn’t grow up in this neighborhood, did you?”

“Nah. I bought this place when I was twenty-nine, I guess. So… eleven years ago? It was a fixer-upper. Still is, really.” He lets a crooked grin linger on his face for a moment and then he admits, “So… I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“Oh yeah?” Nol can’t imagine what he’s going to say, but she wants it to be about his feelings for her. She wants him to have feelings for her. As casually as possible, she asks, “What’s up?”

“You probably don’t remember this because you couldn’t’ve been more than twelve or thirteen at the time, but the first day I met you? When I stopped by to install that trapeze for your mom?”

Nol nods. “I remember. It was right before Bas moved home. I’d never met him before and he’d been in that horrible accident and his pelvis was broken. My mom wanted him to be able to lift himself in bed.”

“Right. But do you remember what you were doing when I first got there?”

Magnolia wracks her brain but ultimately comes up empty. She shakes her head.

“You were writing. It was some story about a princess and a knight and—”

“A minstrel,” she cuts in. “And a dragon, too. The dragon was a metaphor.”

Juli uses his tongue to push at his lip ring, causing the silver hoop to glint in the late-afternoon sun. “You said something that day and I’ve never forgotten it. I don’t think of it often, mind you, but it popped into my head today. You said that you wanted the princess and the minstrel to get together, but you weren’t sure if they would. And I was like, ‘Why don’t you have control? You’re the author.’ But you told me that wasn’t how it worked.”

“Because it wasn’t,” Nol says immediately, and then corrects herself, “It isn’t.”

“Why not, though? Why can’t you just write the story you want to write? And…” He cuts himself off, allowing himself a moment to think by taking a long swig of beer. When he’s capable of verbalizing his next question, he asks, “And this is gonna maybe sound crazy but… but is that what’s going on when you write at the farmhouse? Are you picking up on something that’s not exactly yours, but is sort of being shared with you? Because, I mean, you knew about Gramps and Noni. You knew that’s what Charley used to call them. How’d you know that?”

His intuitiveness is astounding to Nol. She hadn’t expected him to comprehend even a fraction of the information he’d just relayed, let alone the entire gist of the situation, and she too finds herself sipping beer in order to buy time and formulate her thoughts.

Juli mistakes her silence as reluctance to talk and he’s apologizing in no time. “I’m sorry. It’s none of my business. There’s probably some writer’s code that I’ve just completely disregarded by asking—”

“No,” Nol interrupts. “Not at all. If there’s a writer’s code, I don’t know about it. I’m just… I’m surprised, that’s all. I’m surprised you were able to observe all of that and, more importantly, believe it. Because when you explain it like that? It sounds pretty far-fetched.”

“No more far-fetched than what I’m about to tell you. But first… how did you know about Noni and Gramps? Did… did Charley tell you? Is she…” He glances at his lap and picks at the masking tape label on his beer, not meeting Magnolia’s eyes when he asks, “Is she there? Is Charley still there?”

Nol has no idea what sort of relationship existed between Juli and Charley when she was alive, but it’s obvious it was complicated. And it’s also obvious he’s still hurting from the loss. In the gentlest voice she can manage, she confides, “I don’t know. I just… I think it might be her? Some of the time, anyway. But there are other voices. There are so many voices, Juli, and sometimes they talk and sometimes they don’t and sometimes I don’t even know what I’m typing because the story’s presented that fast. And I know I sound crazy right now, I know that, but—”

“You don’t,” Juli assures her. “You don’t sound crazy. You aren’t crazy. And that room you were in today? The one with the stained glass window?”

“Yeah?”

“Nol, I’ve never seen that room before in my life. If you go back and try to find it tomorrow, it won’t be there. I guarantee it. So why did it show up today? And how many people are haunting that property? And… and is Charley okay?”

A shiver runs down the young woman’s spine. Nol wants to offer comfort and solace, but she can’t because she has just as many questions as Juli does. And none of them appear to have simple answers.