Chapter One - Maggie
The flame melted the plastic and Maggie bent it into shape,
careful not to cause damage with the heat. She only wanted to recreate, not
destroy.
When the plastic was in the right shape, she turned off the
burner and studied the piece of plastic between her pliers, holding it up to
the light as it cooled.
“I think you’ll do,” she said. She turned toward her
sculpture, humming along to the tunes that drifted out of the radio.
“I don’t know about you,” she sang softly. “But that’s what
I would do, too, hm-mm-mm.” She studied her sculpture with a tilted head and
found the perfect space to attach the plastic.
“Yeah, you’ll do perfectly,” she mumbled, focusing as she
used a soldering iron to attach the plastic to her latest piece of art.
The art piece was a large, abstract sculpture that captured
both the chaos and harmony of nature. Maggie wanted it to reflect a deep
connection with the environment, but the modern world couldn’t be ignored. It
was everywhere, creeping through nature, taking over, blending to become a part
of what was until it created something new.
A car pulled up and Maggie glanced through the open glass
doors that let in the late afternoon sun.
“Hello?” someone called.
“In here!” Maggie called out, and a moment later, Sarah and
Jason stepped into Maggie’s workshop.
“Hey, kiddos,” Maggie said warmly as Sarah kissed her on the
cheek and Jason squeezed her shoulders. “Off work early?”
“Yeah, we thought an afternoon off would be good,” Jason
said and sat down in an old office chair nearby, spinning around and around.
The chair would be broken down and used for recycled pieces in one of her future
projects, but for now, it was still a chair.
Sarah and Jason were Maggie’s best friend’s kids and her
godchildren. They’d practically grown up in her studio, playing around Maggie
as she created art. Maggie had helped them with crafts and projects since they
were knee-high to a grasshopper.
Now, with Sarah just having turned twenty-eight, and Jason twenty-five,
it was hard to imagine they were all grown up.
They still came to the studio a lot to see Maggie, and that
was all that mattered. Maggie had never had any children of her own—she’d never
gotten married—but Sarah, with her dark hair and hazel eyes, and Jason with his
light brown hair and green eyes, resembled both their parents in unique ways.
They felt like Maggie’s own kids sometimes.
“This is really coming along, Mags,” Sarah said, putting her
hands on her hips and studying the piece. “You’re spending a lot of time on it.
Who’s it for?”
“I don’t know yet,” Maggie said, looking at her artwork,
too. “I want it to end up in a communal garden somewhere, or a space where it
would make sense. It has to be in a place where the meaning comes through.”
“What does it mean?” Jason asked.
Maggie’s mouth tugged into a mischievous smile. “You can’t
tell?”
Jason studied the art piece, still draped over the chair,
sitting on it like only a young adult could.
“Reduce, reuse, recycle?” he asked.
Maggie laughed. “Not quite, but you’re on the right track.”
She looked back at the six-foot-tall creation, composed of a series of
interlocking spirals and waves that suggested movement and fluidity. The
structure was designed to mimic the flow of water, with elements that resembled
ripples and eddies.
“I think it should be somewhere outside, too,” Sarah said.
She tucked her dark hair behind her ears.
“Yeah?”
“Sure,” she said. “You’ve used a whole bunch of colored
glass. Can you imagine when it’s in the sunlight?”
“That’s exactly what I imagined when I used it,” Maggie said
with a smile, pleased that her art was bringing across the right message. Art,
as always, was open to interpretation, but it was also something Maggie used to
convey a message, a thought, that hopefully the viewer would find.
Maggie had used sourced metal from old appliances and cars
and cut it into graceful curves with sharp, angular pieces that shimmered.
Sam’s auto repair shop often produced pieces she could use, and she visited him
every now and then to see if he had new scraps for her.
Sam never failed to deliver.
The colored glass came from broken windows and discarded
bottles, and Maggie had embedded them in the copper and aluminum.
The plastics she’d been melting down were from community
clean-up events, and she was in the process of weaving them through the
sculpture. The organic shapes contrasted with the rigidity of the metals, and
Maggie had tinted them with natural dyes.
She’d also included fabric, twisted around some parts in the
right place, and she’d added driftwood, too.
The sculpture had something of everything in it to represent
the diversity of the world and how much it was changing. Rather than fighting
progress, the idea Maggie wanted to bring across was that nature could be
beautiful alongside the forward momentum of modern technology. It didn’t have to
be one or the other, the way so many people believed.
“It’s really stunning, Maggie,” Sarah said, and she smiled
at Maggie.
“Thank you. I’ve been working hard on it, but it’s coming
out the way I envisioned it. I love working with different materials, making
them work together in one sculpture.”
Maggie loved being an artist. She’d always wanted to create
art to move people with what they saw and not just what they heard. It was so
easy to say the right words to evoke emotion but doing it through visual aids,
bringing across messages without saying a word—that was the real trick, and it
was exactly what Maggie loved about doing her art.
“I think I’m just about done for the day,” Maggie announced.
“I’ll pack up, and then we can head into the house. Your mom is coming over for
supper so we can make it a family reunion.”
Maggie put away her tools above the workbench that had been
stained with years of paints and dyes. She put away the materials she would
still use, stacking them in the trunks next to her office, and then she took
off her apron and hung it on the hook in her reading nook.
The old garage had been converted into a sanctuary for
creativity. Her car could be left outside under cover. She needed a nice studio
much more than she needed a garage.
Maggie switched off the track lights that allowed her to
work at night and switched off the radio.
“Let’s get to the kitchen,” Maggie said. Sarah and Jason
stepped out through the glass doors that had replaced the garage door, and Maggie
locked up.
Together, they walked to the cottage-like house she’d lived
in since she’d moved to Maplewood Grove, and Maggie flicked on the lights in
her second favorite space—her kitchen.
The kitchen was spacious and somewhat rustic, with open
shelving that displayed an array of pottery and glassware. A lot of it was
handmade by Maggie herself. It was a warm, inviting space where Maggie loved to
use ingredients from her garden or the local farms and host anyone who was
willing to join her for a treat or a meal.
Maggie loved anything that was creative, and she liked
cooking just as much as she liked welding and melting and cutting in her
studio.
“What can I help with?” Sarah asked, washing her hands.
“You can start on collard greens, if you don’t mind,” Maggie
said. “I’m making chicken and dumplings to go with that.”
There was something about southern food that warmed the
heart.
Jason opened the fridge without being told and took out a
pitcher of sweet iced tea. He poured them each a glass and put Maggie’s and
Sarah’s glasses in front of them just as someone knocked on the door.
“Come on in!” Maggie called out.
Martha stepped into the kitchen a moment later.
“You can’t just call for anyone to come in if you don’t know
who they are,” Martha said. Her auburn hair had been cut a little shorter than
the bob she usually wore, and she had on one of her sweaters and faded jeans.
“I knew it would be you,” Maggie said and hugged Martha
before returning to her dumplings.
“And if it wasn’t?”
“I guess then we would have to hope that whoever it was liked
chicken and dumplings,” Maggie said.
Martha laughed and greeted her two children.
“It’s a nice surprise to see you two here,” she said. “I
thought you were still working.”
“We took the afternoon off,” Sarah said and kissed her
mother’s cheek. “And Jason is just lazy.”
“Hey,” he mock-complained, but he was laughing.
“I brought cornbread,” Martha said, holding up the tin.
“The idea was that I do the cooking, since you’re on
your feet in the diner all day,” Maggie said.
“We made too many today so I brought one home. It wasn’t
hard work.”
Maggie nodded, satisfied that her friend would get the time
off she deserved, too. Martha worked hard. Her husband had died a few years ago,
and Martha had inherited an old, abandoned diner she didn’t even know was in
the family. She’d patched it up, created a menu, and found some staff who were
willing to take on this new life with her. Since then, her diner had become one
of the most popular places in town.
Martha and Gordon had always been vying for attention, but
they offered such different things that they weren’t ever pitted against each
other.
“Did you hear about the development?” Martha asked, sitting
down. Jason pushed a glass of iced tea toward her. Everyone shook their heads,
so Martha continued. “They finally approved it.”
“Oh, wow. I didn’t think Hammond was going to pull it off
with the resistance he’s been getting over the years.”
“There’s something to be said for never giving up,” Martha
said, sipping her iced tea. “And he’s done the legwork, finding all the reasons
why it was a good idea, slowly convincing the council.”
“It could be that… but Hammond has a silver tongue.”
“Like no other,” Maggie agreed. “I have some news, too.”
They all looked at her eagerly.
“The place next door sold.”
“Oh!” Martha cried. “To whom? Do you know?”
“No.” Maggie shook her head. “Just that it’s off the market
now. He moved in already, but that’s all I know.”
“That’s exciting,” Martha said. “Someone new in town.
There’s a lot of excitement to be had. Newcomers and that development…”
“He?” Sarah asked.
“What?”
“You said he already moved in. So it’s a guy? Alone?”
“I don’t know… alone as far as I could tell.” Maggie felt
her cheeks color a little. “But I don’t make a habit of spying on my neighbors,
you know. At least, not so that they know I want to know what’s going
on.”
Martha laughed, and Sarah shook her head with a grin.
“In this town, gossip is a currency, Mags,” Sarah said.
Maggie shrugged. It was true that she was known to want to
figure out what the latest news was if she could. Especially when it affected
the town. Like when Cleo moved in next door after she and York got engaged. Or
when that writer James Turner moved into town and no one thought he would be
much until it turned out he was a star.
“Maybe he’s single,” Sarah mused.
“And looking for someone,” Jason added.
They both looked at Maggie until she squirmed under their
gaze.
“Well, he’s not going to find someone here,” she said
quickly. “I’m happy with the way things are.”
“Alone in this house?” Sarah asked.
Maggie sighed and checked on the chicken.
“Alone in this house,” she confirmed. “I can do what I want,
when I want. I can put anything anywhere, or get rid of it if I want. I don’t
have to ask permission or make allowances for anyone, and that works for me.
There’s no reason to change something if it works.”
Sarah and Martha passed a glance Maggie didn’t miss, but she
decided to ignore it. They’d been trying to sniff out a partner for Maggie for
years, but it never worked. It wasn’t what Maggie wanted.
She liked things the way they were. She liked not being dependent
on anyone. She’d tried that once, a long time ago, and it hadn’t worked out. It
had been exactly what she’d been afraid of her whole life—a prison.
She’d broken free of that and would never make the same
mistake again.
So what if she was a little lonely sometimes? She had people
like Martha and the kids to keep her company. And the community in town was so
tightly knit, it was like they were a family anyway.
Except they weren’t. Not really.
But being alone, single, and unattached—independent and doing
whatever she wanted—was much better than the life she’d nearly had once upon a
time; the life her parents had lived, dulling each other’s sparks until there
was nothing left.
