Carla Neggers - The Cabin

“Not a chance.”

“I live up the street.” She stared at the chili, spicy and hot on a very cold Boston night. But she wasn’t hungry. “If I pass out in a ditch, somebody will find me before I freeze to death.”

Jim refrained from answering. Davey Ahearn had come into the bar, easing onto his favorite stool just down from Susanna. Susanna could feel the cold still coming off him. He shook his head at her. “Pain in the ass you are, Suzie, I wouldn’t count on it. We all might leave you in the damn ditch, hope the cold’ll jump-start your brain and you’ll go back to Texas.”

“The cold weather doesn’t bother me.”

Of course, the cold wasn’t Davey’s point at all, and she knew it. He was a big man, a plumber with a huge handlebar mustache and at least two ex-wives. He was another of her father’s boyhood friends, godfather to Jim Haviland’s daughter, Tess, and a constant thorn in Susanna’s side. Tess said it was best not to encourage Davey Ahearn by trying to argue with him, but Susanna seldom could resist—and neither could Tess.

He ordered a beer and a bowl of chili with saltines, and Susanna made an exaggerated face. “Saltines and chili? That’s disgusting.”

“What’re you doing here, anyway?” Davey shivered, as if still shaking off the frigid temperatures. Boston had been in the grips of a bitter cold snap for days, and even the natives had had enough. “Go play mahjong with Iris and her pals. A million years old, and they know how to party.”

“You’re right,” Susanna said. “It’s not a good sign, me sitting in a Somerville bar drinking margaritas and eating chili with a cranky plumber.”

Davey grinned at her. “I eat chili with a fork.”

She bit back an unwilling laugh. “That’s really bad, Davey. I mean, really bad.”

“Made you smile.” His beer and nightly special arrived, and he unwrapped three packets of saltine crackers and crumbled them onto his chili, paying no attention to Susanna’s groan. “Jimmy, how long before we can stick a fork in this year?”

“Twenty-five minutes,” Jim said. “I thought you had a date.”

“I did. She got mad and went home.”

Although she wasn’t hungry, Susanna tried some of her chili. “Davey Ahearn annoying a woman? I can’t imagine.”

“Was that sarcasm, Mrs. Jack Galway?”

Jim intervened. “All right, you two. I’m opening a bottle of bubbly at midnight. It’s on the house. What do we have, a half-dozen people in here?”

He lined up the glasses on the bar. Susanna watched him work, the chili burning in her mouth, the two margaritas she’d consumed on an empty stomach making her a little woozy. “Do you think I had kids too young?” Susanna asked abruptly, without thinking. It had to be the margaritas. “I don’t. I think it was just what happened. I was twenty-two, and all of a sudden, I’m pregnant with twins.”

“I bet it wasn’t all of a sudden,” Davey said.

She pretended not to hear him. “And here I am with this man—this independent, hardheaded Texan who wants to be a Texas Ranger never mind that he went to Harvard. We met when he was a student—”

“We remember,” Jim said gently.

“They were cute babies, Maggie and Ellen. Adorable. They’re fraternal twins—they’re not identical.”

But Jim and Davey already knew that, too. Her chest hurt, and she fought a sudden urge to cry. What was wrong with her? Margaritas, New Year’s Eve, a cabin in the mountains. Not being with Jack.

Jim Haviland checked each champagne glass to make sure it was clean. “They were damn cute babies,” he concurred.

“That’s right, you’d see them when we were up visiting Gran. Her place was always my anchor as a kid—we moved around all the time. It’s no wonder I came here when push came to shove with Jack and me.”

She shut her eyes, willing herself to stop talking. When she opened them again, the room was spinning a little, and she cleared her throat. If she did pass out and hit her head, Jim Haviland and Davey Ahearn would seize the moment and call Jack. No question in her mind. Then Jack would tell them a concussion served her right.

Susanna’s heart raced. “This is only the second time Maggie and Ellen have flown alone.” She narrowed her eyes to help steady the room, imagining Jack there with one of his amused half smiles. She couldn’t remember when she’d had two margaritas in a row. He’d take credit. Say she was lonely. Missed him in bed. She gave herself a mental shake. “I was a nervous wreck the first time they flew alone.”

“Doesn’t look like you’re doing much better this time,” Davey said.

She had to admit that a third margarita would put her over the edge. She was hanging by her fingernails as it was. That was why Jim Haviland had glowered and chatted with her and served her up the chili—not just to give her a hard time, but to keep her from freefalling.

“What if Maggie and Ellen end up going to college in Texas?” She gulped for air, looking over at Davey. “What if I stay up here? My God, I’ll never see them. And Jack—”

Davey drank some of his beer, wiping the foam off his mustache. “Are there colleges in Texas?”

His wisecrack cut through her crazy mood. “That’s not funny. What if Texans came up here and made stupid assumptions about northerners?”

“What, like we’re all rude and talk too fast? Maggie and Ellen tell me that all the time. Some of us also eat saltines with our chili.” He winked at her, knowing he’d made his point. “And you’re a northerner, you know, Suzie-cue. I don’t care how many times you moved as a kid. Your dad grew up right here on this street. When Iris can’t keep up with her place anymore, he and your mom will move in with her. They’ll board up the gallery in Austin before you know it.”

“That’s the plan,” Susanna admitted.

“A plumber, a bartender and an artist.” Davey shook his head in amazement. “Who’d have thought it? Although Kevin always was good with the graffiti.”

Susanna smiled. Both her parents were artists, her mother also an expert in antique quilts. They’d surprised everyone seven years ago when they opened a successful gallery in Austin and started restoring a 1930s home, a project seemingly without end. But they still spent summers on the New York shore of Lake Champlain. When Susanna was growing up, they’d moved from place to place to teach, work, open and close galleries and otherwise indulge their wanderlust. They’d been a little shocked when Susanna had gone into financial planning and married a Texas Ranger, but she’d always gotten along well with her parents and had liked having them close by in Austin. They didn’t interfere with her relationship with Jack, but she knew Kevin and Eva Dunning didn’t understand why their daughter was living with Gran. Their response to both Susanna and Jack had been the same: they’d come to their senses soon enough.

Jim examined a frosty bottle of champagne and said idly, as if reading Susanna’s mind, “You’ve never explained what it was that made you come up here. Did you and Jack have a big fight, or did you just wake up one day and decide you needed to hear a Boston accent?”

“Maggie and Ellen had already planned to spend a semester up here—”

“Like it’s Paris or London,” Davey said. “Their semester abroad.”

“Their semester with Gran,” Susanna corrected.

“Yeah, now it’s a year,” Jim said, “and it doesn’t explain you.”

“There was a stalker.” The words were out before she could stop them. “I suppose technically he wasn’t a stalker—he turned up where I was a couple of times, but I can’t prove he followed me. I didn’t even know who he was until he showed up in my kitchen. He said things.”