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“Thank you, but I was making a point. Or maybe it was an observation. For fifty-three years and change, I was Maybelle of Lennox-and-Maybelle. I was half of a whole. In the blink of an eye, I wasn’t that anymore.” She poured milk into her own glass. “Now I’m someone else. And trust me when I say I don’t like her half as much as I liked the old me.”

As Maybelle stood, she paused, half-bent over the table, her face a brief mask of pain. On a deep breath and without explanation, she stood and walked over to the wide sliding window above the kitchen sink. She stared out at the mountain. “But. The old me is still in there, maybe just pushed to the side a bit.” She ran the water and washed her hands. “Those scars on half your face? They’re like a manifestation of how I feel sometimes. Like Lennox was attached to me, and something ripped him away, leaving this wound.”

She composed herself and continued, “About a week after I buried him, I was sitting in our bedroom looking through old photo albums, and I finally understood what drove Venable, my father, up that mountain. Getting lost in that grief is the easy choice. God, it’s easy. When you lose someone you love, grief is as natural as rain, especially at my age. Venable was only fifty when Annabeth died. Our father wasted half his life mourning.”

She returned to the table and took her seat.

“So, I decided then and there, sitting in our bedroom crying over pictures from our trip to The Florida Keys, that I may not be the old me anymore, but the new me was not going to be what Venable became. If I’m coming home every night to just me, I damn sure better like the company.”

Finn stood and moved to the spot she had just occupied, rinsed his plate, and set it in the sink.

“You sound very enlightened.” He opened the back door. “See you tomorrow.”


Tags: Debbie Baldwin Bishop Security Mystery