Maggie shook her head. “No, thanks.”
“I’ll come out, then. Just give me a sec?”
Maggie took a ragged breath and nodded, backing away from the door.
Jane followed Sara to her room, where she found her cousin on the bed watching MTV, ashing her cigarette into the plastic top of her coffee cup. Her room was already a complete mess, clothes strewn everywhere, magazines spread out on the bed, smoke drifting toward the ceiling. Jane raised both windows, watching the smoke make a hasty escape into the cool morning air. She opened the drawer of the bedside table, grabbing four different lip balms, and depositing them in front of her cousin without a word. She took the empty glass tumbler next to Sara’s bed and switched it out for the plastic cap, which she carefully threw in the garbage.
“Franco won’t like it that you were smoking,” she said.
“Shut up, Jane. I’ll shower before he gets here.”
“He’ll smell it.”
“What about the words ‘shut up’ wasn’t clear?”
“Do you need anything else?”
“Do you need anything else?” Sara mimicked. “No. Get out.”
Jane’s new backbone considered telling her cousin to go screw herself, but she thought of Maggie waiting outside and wasn’t anxious for another showdown with Sara in earshot of her new friend. She backed out of the room, closing the door behind her.
Returning to the living room, she shrugged into her jacket and found Maggie outside, leaning against the hood of her car, the other three coffees sitting next to her.
“Are you okay?” Maggie looked at Jane, her eyes wide with concern.
“Oh, yeah.” Jane nodded, wrapping her arms, crossed, around her chest. “She’s just—”
“A roarin’, flamin’ slag.”
“Um…yeah. She is.” Jane giggled. “You’ve got a way with words, Maggie.”
Maggie’s accent thickened appreciably with disdain. “I wouldn’a believed it if I hadn’a seen it with me own eyes, Jane. So bonnie, but what a gob! Is she always like that?”
Jane shrugged. “Sometimes worse. Sometimes better. She doesn’t like the cottage. She doesn’t like waking up early. She doesn’t like me.”
“How do you handle it? That—that abuse?”
“It pays the bills.”
“It’s disgraceful.”
“I’m used to it.”
“Well, that’s a bloody shame, Jane.”
“It is what it is. I don’t have—I mean, Sara and her folks are all the family I’ve got. When my uncle asked me to help her in high school, I wrote a few essays for her. When he asked me to help with her career, I signed on as her assistant. I couldn’t say no to him.”
It felt good to unburden herself to Maggie, but in truth, she’d done a lot more than write a few essays. She’d essentially handled her homework and Sara’s, and when Sara got special permission to take her final exams at home so that schoolwork wouldn’t interfere with her modeling commitments, Jane had helped with those too.
Jane always acquiesced whenever her uncle asked for help on Sara’s behalf. It was impossible for Jane to say no to him. When she looked into the beleaguered eyes of her dead father in her uncle’s beloved face, she’d say yes to just about anything.
Maggie cleared her throat and Jane looked up at her.
“It’s none o‘ my business, Jane. But, I think it’s time to start sayin’ no.” Maggie picked up the tray of coffee. “Didn’t know what you liked. Cappuccino’s there. Black coffee here. With milk and sweet there.”
Jane picked up the black coffee and sipped, savoring the rich, bitter warmth.
“Thanks, Maggie.”
Maggie checked her watch, then grimaced. “I’ve got somewhere to be, but I have a few minutes. Have time for a story? About how I ended up here?”
Jane nodded, closing her eyes, enjoying the morning sun on her face, the cool, fresh air, the soft burr in Maggie’s voice, hopeful that MTV would prove compelling for at least another ten minutes, or until Franco arrived.
“My aunt Lily bought the Prairie Dawn, years and years ago. She was me mum’s eldest sister, and she trail blazed here to Montana in the 70s, after readin’ about Yellowstone in a magazine. Left her family and went on a grand adventure. Married a month later to a man she barely knew but loved with all her heart. Opened a tea room the month after that and decorated it with books when the library in Big Sky closed down. Within a year, her new husband died of exposure durin’ a winter hike, and she was left alone. And for twenty-some-odd years she ran the Prairie Dawn. Everyone knew her, everyone loved her, and this town became her family, her life.
“Five years ago, she wrote to me mum. She was sick and she knew she was dyin’, but she was too far gone to go back to Scotland. She asked if my mum would come and take over the café, but mum didn’t want to leave Scotland. But I did. So, I came here to do for her until the end and inherited the cafe. This is my home now.
“I left my family, Jane. Left them all behind, and it doesn’t mean I don’t love them…it means I had to make me own way, just like Lily did. I won’t tell you it wasn’t scary. It was, at times. There are—” Maggie paused, biting her lower lip for a moment before finishing. “There are still times it scares me that I could lose what I’ve built here because I love it so much. But it didn’t fall into my lap. At some points—at many points—I had to choose it. I chose the life I wanted.”
“You’re saying I should quit my job and find a new life?”
“I asked how you handle that kind of abuse. You gave me some song and dance about family. That’s not family, Jane, how that she-devil just spoke to you. I dinna know what it is, but it’s not family.” She took a deep breath and let it go slowly. “You dinna seem happy, Jane. And if you’re not happy, then aye, it’s time for a change. It’s time to choose the life you want, not just tolerate the one you have.”
Maggie was several years older than Jane, and Jane had a sudden fantasy of what it would have been like to have a cousin like Maggie instead of a cousin like Sara. Older, wiser, kinder. Maggie wouldn’t have been threatened by ten-year-old Jane because she would have been in college; she would have come home on her breaks and told Jane about her boyfriends and professors and—
“You’re daydreamin’ now. Hopefully of a life that doesn’t include that piece ‘o work.” Her sour expression gentled and she smiled at Jane, tilting her head to the side. “How’re things with Lars?”
Jane winced, lifting her cup to her lips and sipping slowly.
“Paul said he saw you two nippin’ at the park on Monday night before the fireworks.”
“It wouldn’t have worked out.” Jane said softly, looking meaningfully at the cottage before taking a bitter sip of coffee. “I broke it off. I told him I needed time, but it was really just letting him go, saving him the trouble of having to break things off with me once he met her and—”
“Wait a bleedin’ moment. You’re not sayin’—I mean, Lars doesn’t—Jane, does Lars have an eye for that…that…” Maggie’s face was getting flushed and indignant.