Charles Baxter hadn’t been into the New Winslow General Store in days, which was completely unlike him. So Tara Stevenson was actually fairly relieved to see him when he walked in the front door mid-afternoon. He’d looked stressed and sick for months now, but she truly wasn’t sure she’d ever seen him look as bad as he did right now.

“Charles,” she greeted him as he came near the counter where she was refilling the impulse buy stands. “Are you alright?”

He waved her off, and she tried not to be offended by the impatience in the movement. “I just need coffee,” he said, moving toward the carafes.

Well, if he was going to be like that, maybe he should just make his own coffee at home. Tara went back to her boxes as he filled his coffee behind her. But instead of walking toward the register to pay, he went deeper into the shop to where she saw Nancy, who had been on the phone with her sister Sal for the past hour. Tara tried to get along with Sal, she really did. But Sal might have been even worse than Nancy.

“Call you back,” she heard Nancy say as Charles came closer to her. 

Whatever they were talking about was none of Tara’s business, she knew that. And she couldn’t actually hear what they were saying, just the sounds of low, urgent voices. But everything about this felt wrong and Tara couldn’t help trying to catch what they were saying. 

She didn’t want to think that this had anything to do with the fire at the Limerick building, but Nancy had been spreading that story of faulty wiring and poor maintenance like her life depended on it. And making all those implications about poor Noah Kelly, like he didn’t have enough problems. 

Tara had meant it when she told Olivia she didn’t believe the stories going around. Not only would Noah never do a thing like that, but she didn’t believe that Olivia would be willing to cut corners in any business she ran. She’d been the only reason that Keegan’s Pub stayed open as long as it had (and it had shut down unceremoniously yesterday afternoon, which was both a relief and a disappointment). There was no way that she would ever agree to anything short of a professional electrician doing the work. 

Which made the actions of Nancy and her cohort – which ran the gamut throughout the town, Nancy’s family, like Charles’s, had their fingers in everything in the region – seem so much more sinister than the standard small town gossip. Little implications about careless business practices and rumors about legal issues scattered throughout otherwise straightforward stories about the new coffee shop in town burning down. And Tara was deeply unsettled by all of this. 

“I don’t care!” Charles snapped, his voice carrying as Tara tried not to react. Then he lowered it, but not enough. “There has to be a way around it.”

That didn’t sound promising, but there was nothing solid enough to grasp onto. Still, Tara knew whatever they were saying had to be about what was happening in town lately. And based on what she was hearing, it seemed like things weren’t over yet.

————

Cleo’s phone rang as she was getting ready for work. When she saw her mother’s name on the display, her heart dropped. She hadn’t been back since that visit a couple days ago, when her mother had thrown the orange. But they had talked a little the day before. She’d been out of sorts, but coherent.

“Hello?”

“Hi sweetheart.”

She sounded lucid, but tired. “Mom, hi,” Cleo said. “How are you?”

“I’m… I’m alright.”

There was a long beat while Cleo waited for her to continue, or to ask after Cleo, or do whatever the conversation needed next. “Is everything okay?” she prompted after the silence stretched on a little too long.

Her mother was silent another second, just long enough for Cleo to worry. “I miss being alone,” she said finally.

“Oh, Mom…”

“I like it here. But there’s too many people.”

“I know,” Cleo said. “If you want, I can talk to them about kind of streamlining staff coming in and out of your suite. Do you think that would help?”

“Yes,” her mother said. “But…”

She trailed off and Cleo realized this wasn’t so much her dementia as it was her trying to avoid hurting Cleo’s feelings. “You don’t want me there,” she finally finished for her.

She waited for her mom to deny it, but instead she just started crying. “Mom,” Cleo said gently. “Mom, it’s alright.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re so good to me and I’m just…”

“I understand,” said Cleo. “That’s how it was for like ten years, right? You’re not throwing me out or anything. I know that’s how you prefer it.”

“Your dad too.”

Great, was Cleo going to have to call her dad with that news? But her mom was doing well on the phone, so she was going to finish this conversation before dealing with calling her dad and the Oakmont staff. “I called him already,” her mom finished. “I just want to be alone.”

“I’ll stay in touch,” Cleo promised. “I’m not leaving you.” 

“Cleo, you don’t-”

“Mom,” she interrupted. “I’ll be here, okay? Tell you what? I’ll call you every day.”

“Every day?”

She sounded exhausted at the thought and Cleo laughed, then was relieved to hear a weak laugh in return. “Fine,” she said. “Three times a week. But I have to let the staff there know, alright? So we can all make sure you’re safe.”

“Okay.”

She was silent on the other end of the line and Cleo searched for her missing name tag as she waited for her mom to speak.

“I love you, Cleo,” she said finally.

“I love you too, Mom.”

——-

Cleo didn’t truly need the job at Brighton Convenience right now, not with the licensing money she’d gotten from the last deal she and Jude had negotiated. Her half of the rent was paid up through the next six months and the convenience store paid as little as possible. So having this job wasn’t life or death.

But when she got to work a little while later, she saw what was coming immediately. The owner was as kind as he could possibly be while firing her and she had a feeling the place was on its last legs, anyway. But he pulled her into the tiny back office, explained that they needed to cut down the staff and she had the least availability, then paid her for the remaining two days she was scheduled.

So it wasn’t her worst firing, not by a long shot. But it had been a steady job when her income was anything but steady, and now it was gone. And the idea of going back to driving food delivery made her want to cry. So as she left work only an hour into her planned shift, Cleo was about one more piece of bad news away from crying for real. 

So of course her phone rang as she was walking down the street toward her apartment.

“Hi Cleo, it’s Jude,” he said as she answered, as though his name hadn’t shown up on her phone’s display.

“Oh, hi. What’s up?”

“Just wanted to go over some of the details of the contract you sent over on Tuesday. Is now a bad time?”

“No, actually,” Cleo said as she passed a woman with a baby stroller on the narrow sidewalk. She stepped off the sidewalk to pass them, just as a bike whipped past her. Swallowing a curse, she stepped back up onto the crumbling curb. “No, I just got fired so now is an excellent frigging time.”

“Oh no, I’m so sorry.”

“Nah, don’t be,” she said. “It paid like shit, but it was steady. But I’m free all afternoon now, so please, talk to me about money.”

Jude laughed. He had a nice laugh, like it surprised him every time. After working together this long, Cleo was beginning to consider him an actual friend, not just a friend of a friend doing her an enormous, ongoing favor. And if she’d met him because he had spent several months having lots of sex with one of her best friends, well, it wasn’t the first time she’d made a friend that way.

Jude launched into his update as she walked up the stairs to her apartment, waving hi to Davi as she went. She got up to the front door and walked in, fully expecting the place to be empty.

So of course Edie was sitting in the living room as she came inside. “Hello?” Edie called from the living room.

“Just me,” Cleo said quickly before turning back to her conversation with Jude.

The deal Jude was talking about seemed a little more intricate than she’d ever considered before. But she’d literally just been fired from her minimum wage job and even with the security of the upfront rent payments she’d made, she wasn’t in a position to dismiss an opportunity. So she did her best to listen carefully as she kicked off her shoes and sat down at the kitchen table.

“I think it’s worth negotiating,” Jude said as he wrapped up a dizzying discussion of rights and numbers that she had half-managed to write down as he spoke. “So tell you what, how about I take the meeting with them?”

“What, you mean like in person? Do you even have time to go there? Where are they?”

“Or online?” Jude teased. “In the twenty-first century?”

Right, he didn’t live in New Winslow where there was only terrible satellite Wi-Fi. “I appreciate it,” she said. “If you think it’s worth it.”

“I do,” he said. “I know you’re making a little money on social media-”

“-wait, what?”

“Hire a goddamn manager already,” Jude said with another laugh. “It’s nothing life-changing, those records were just part of the paperwork you sent over.”

If they were small enough that she hadn’t noticed, then they definitely weren’t life-changing. “I’m going back to New Winslow tonight,” Cleo said, deciding this as she said it. “So I’ll be local if anything comes up.”

“Excellent,” he said. “I’ll keep you updated. Give Noah my love while you’re there.”

They said goodbye, then she hung up, turning to see Edie in the kitchen doorway. “You’re leaving?” they asked.

“Yeah,” Cleo said. “Things have really picked up over there. Plus, I just got fired, so it’s not like there’s anything holding me here.”

There was a flicker of something across Edie’s face, but Cleo didn’t feel too bad, even if she hadn’t thought of the potential insult as she’d said it. “I paid my half of the rent upfront for the next six months, so don’t worry about me pulling my weight,” she explained.

“I wasn’t…” Edie shook their head. “That hadn’t even occurred to me. I would never say you weren’t pulling your weight.”

“Right.”

Was it because they’d accidentally kissed each other, then said nothing beyond perfunctory greetings since then? Was that why Cleo was acting like this? 

“Are you coming home tomorrow?”

“Maybe.”

God, she was being so unfair. But now that Edie was back, she was back to feeling uncomfortable in the house. “It depends,” she elaborated, just barely.

“Cleo-”

“On if anything changes,” she finished.

“Oh, right.”

“I’m going to go pack up.”

She should probably let Liv know she was coming before just showing up on her doorstep. Even if Liv and Noah both had repeatedly told her that wasn’t necessary, she still didn’t feel right just inviting herself for an extended stay. Which might be what she was doing right now, but she wasn’t going to think of the messiness of this until she was safely out of the messiness that was filling this entire space between her and Edie right now. 

Edie looked like they wanted to say something, but didn’t know what it was. And Cleo was never going to be able to answer, regardless. So she just stood up and walked back toward her own bedroom to get ready. She should probably pack an actual suitcase’s worth of clothes so she didn’t have to raid Noah’s dresser again. And make sure her toothbrush and guitar both came with her.

————————

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CONTINUE TO EPISODE 25

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