Page 80 of A Future To Remember

“Are we disturbing you?”

More blinking led to her opening her bony arms wide, and something of a smile formed at her mouth. “Oh, my boy! You’ve come to visit me, at last!”

Levi bent forward to hug her, and I could see the gentle care he took with her, which moved me. I waited to be introduced, allowing them their moment.

When at last Levi stood tall again, Miss Maydole let her hand fall to his, where she clasped it tightly, as if she needed him to pull her from a rough sea.

“Well, don’t just stand there. Come in! And bring your lady friend with you.”

She turned and led Levi into the house, which smelled both musty and medicinal. The place was in a similar disarray to the outside, with open tin cans, dirty Tupperware containers, discarded tissues, and prescription drug bottles littering nearly every surface.

“I wish I’d known you were comin’,” she said, her voice raspy but with a hint of excitement. “I woulda cleaned up a bit.”

“You don’t need to worry about that,” Levi told her gently, moving with her to a well-worn recliner parked mere feet from the TV. He helped her get settled, then looked toward me as if he’d suddenly remembered I was there. “Miss Maydole, this is Maddy. She’s trying to help the sheriff figure out what happened to his dad. She read about your brother, Mr. Maydole, in the old police file, and she wanted to ask you a few questions. Would that be okay?”

A shadow seemed to come over the old woman’s face while her eyes quickly darted to me and then back to Levi. She took a moment to reply to him, hesitating as those startled eyes moved from Levi to the six prescription pill bottles on the side of the table.

And then she sighed and her shoulders drooped slightly. “I guess it don’t matter anymore, does it?”

“What don’t matter?” Levi asked.

She lifted her gaze to him, determination settling in over her expression. “Levi, back when I had to turn you out, I wasn’t honest with you.”

He crouched down. “About what, ma’am?”

Her lips pressed together, as if the words she was about to speak were bitter on her tongue. “I told you that how you were went against God, but that was just to get you away from here. I don’t believe that, Levi. I believe you’re a good boy. A good man. That God loves you, just as you are. And I’m so very sorry.”

It was so quiet after she spoke that I could hear a clock ticking from another room. Levi seemed to take in what she’d confessed to him, and then I watched him forgive her in real time. “It don’t matter why you needed me gone, Miss Maydole. This is your house. You let me stay here through two bad winters, and I woulda died without a warm place to sleep. You saved my life. You don’t need to be sorry.”

A tear trickled down the old woman’s cheek. She wiped it away almost impatiently. For a moment, it seemed like she was mad that he was so forgiving. “Levi, you don’t understand. They wouldn’t fill my prescriptions. I was starting to get so sick. That was before the doctors knew I had the cancer, and I needed my pills just to stay alive. So, I had to turn you out. I wish I had told them to go to hell because it didn’t make a damn bit a’ difference anyway. I’m still dying, and the time those pills bought me wasn’t really worth livin’.”

“Who wouldn’t fill your prescriptions?” I asked. That couldn’t be legal, could it?

Levi looked up at me. “The Bishops own the grocery store and the pharmacy.”

I stared at him in disbelief for a full twenty seconds. Miss Maydole was clearly ill. Like deathly ill. In fact, when I looked at her, the end of May floated around in my mind’s eye, like I knew she’d barely make it another month. And to think someone would deny this feeble old woman her medication, simply because she was giving safe harbor to a young man kicked out of his parents’ home—it was unconscionable. All of it. Just unconscionable.

Levi, however, merely stared back at me with an expression of resignation. It was how this small town operated. No one was allowed to step outside the lines. There were grave consequences for those who did, and it was so unsettling, that realization. I’d felt a measure of safety since being given room and board at Wanda’s. I’d believed it to be a foundation from which to build. I could work, save up some money, and begin to build a life for myself.

But now I realized how easily that could be taken away. And all anyone had to do was figure out that Levi was staying with me up in the loft above the diner.

A cold chill prickled the hairs on the back of my neck. I finally understood why he’d been so nervous to accept my help, without which I had no doubt he would’ve certainly perished from the cold. And I’d been so cavalier about the risk, thinking he was exaggerating. One look at Miss Maydole told me I’d been a fool not to listen to him.

And then I began to wonder about all his clothes and the gym equipment I’d insisted he bring back to the loft from the church. Would the clerk who’d taken his money and insisted we carry it out to the parking lot so that she could lock up go home say something? Would she get suspicious and tell someone to find out where Levi was currently holed up?

I suppressed a shudder as my mind began to spiral, and my heart began to beat a little faster. “Shit,” I said.

Levi grimaced, but there was almost a hint of humor to his expression, and Miss Maydole chuckled and flickered her finger at me. “Levi, who’d you say this gal is again?”

“That’s Maddy. She’s new in town.”

Miss Maydole squinted at me. “She’s too old for you, boy.”

I laughed and so did Levi. “It ain’t like that, Miss Maydole,” he assured her.

She continued to appraise me. “Well then, is she lookin’ after you?”

“She is. And, like I already said, she’s lookin’ into the murder of Sheriff Penton. Cash’s dad.”