Recovering Maggie Read online

  Recovering Maggie

  KT Morrison

  Contents

  About the Author

  Also by KT Morrison

  Prologue One

  Prologue Two

  1. Splatter

  2. Costumes

  3. The Dean

  4. Black Forest

  5. Lacuna

  6. Lodgers

  7. Winning

  8. White Lies

  9. Black Truths

  10. Slate

  11. Fur Trader

  12. Claim

  13. Arctic Cat

  Epilogue One

  Epilogue Two

  Afterword

  Other Books by KT Morrison

  About the Author

  KT Morrison writes stories about women who fall in love with sexy men who aren’t their husband, and loving relationships that go too far—couples who open a mysterious door, then struggle to get it closed as trouble pushes through the threshold.

  Visit My Blog!

  sparrow3dx.blogspot.com

  Also by KT Morrison

  SERIES

  Maggie

  Obsessed

  The Cayman Proxy

  Landlord

  NOVELS

  Cherry Blossoms

  Learning Lessons

  Going A Little Too Far

  Pool Party

  SHORTS

  Watching Natalie Cheat

  Taken While He Watches: On Their Honeymoon

  Taken While He Watches: At The Combine

  Taken By His Best Friends: At The Hockey Rink

  Measured Next To Her Ex

  Size Curious Brat

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  Models on cover are meant for illustrative purposes only.

  Recovering Maggie

  A MAGGIE novel

  Maggie Series, Book 7 of 7

  61,000 words

  First Edition. March 5, 2018.

  Copyright © 2018 KT Morrison

  Written by KT Morrison

  Cover by KT Morrison

  Prologue One

  Six Years After The Twilight

  Outside the historic seaside church the country’s first president once attended stood a sign with a proclamation that staggered her heart. Though fully prepared for it—it was her wedding day, after all—somehow seeing the white letters of their two names arranged in union on a lined black field meant to affirm to their guests they’d arrived at the correct wedding made it all seem luminously real. In one hour she would no longer be Maggie Becker.

  It had been a long journey. A painful one at times, but one always with abounding love, even when moments were at their darkest. Love, yes, but for a long time rarely the truth. And though love could exist for a while without truth, surviving behind the shield of immaturity, it was insupportable. Lies were the ballast that curved love’s trajectory. They were all liars, horrible ones, but they’d been young, and the worst lies were the ones they told themselves.

  A group of older men regaled with sudden deep laughter behind her, standing in a loose bespoke clutch on the slope of the lawn. Martin, Westlake, and some other cronies from Oxbow all on the grass, her father leading them, looking good in his tailored tuxedo.They smoked cigars, handed out by Martin while they waited for the ceremony to begin, and congratulated him on the marriage of his only daughter. Beyond them, a crooked wrought iron line ran the perimeter of the old Trinity cemetery, marking off mossy hundreds-year-old tombstones.

  There was glad-handing amongst them now, a steward in black pants and a white dress shirt coming and taking away what remained of their expensive cigars, putting them in a black pail of sand he carried in one hand, the group breaking up. The men found their way inside the church to take their seats as her father made his way toward her, adjusting his cuff links and giving smiles and nodding to some who still lingered on the church’s steps, radiating his proud father-of-the-bride smile.

  She stepped ahead, following the officiant, her father catching up and putting a hand on the small of her back as they gathered with the wedding party in the nave of the old wooden church. Martin popped a piece of gum in his mouth but she told him: “You still smell like cigar,” reaching to his tie and straightening it.

  Though he looked at her sternly, he said, “You look beautiful today, Margaret. Your husband is a lucky man.”

  Eyes narrowed, raising her chin to him, she slowly let herself smile. “He is,” she agreed, and now her father smiled as well.

  The nervous banter amongst her bridesmaids and groomsmen thinned with quiet tension and she saw the officiant now making eye contact with them all. The room grew quiet. It was time to begin.

  In twos, bridesmaids and groomsmen filed out, arm in arm. Maid of Honor next, heading out with a knowing wink and then a wide open but silent joyous scream. The flower girl and ring bearer followed. Martin let her assume her posture, get comfortable, clutching her bouquet low on her belly, over the life only she knew grew inside her.

  Somewhere above them on the balcony that faced the altar, the processional began. The very traditional Wagner’s Bridal Chorus; Grace Cho—a girl she remembered from Tanglewood—on the massive pipe organ that bellowed through the church, resonating in all the old wood so she felt its vibrations in the floor and traveling up her legs, its power and volume and majesty making her shake.

  Father linked an arm through hers tightly, taller than her even in her heels, but letting her form a diamond between waist and elbow where he could fit his forearm. Shoulders back, smiling now, she let him escort her to the mouth of the aisle.

  Spring sunlight glowed off the chandeliers hanging slightly crooked down the center of the high cathedral ceiling, and her whole body tightened with excitement. Every face in the Trinity was turned to her, sequestered in their boxed pews, and she let her smile grow wider. On the beat, she took her first step to her new life walking the red carpet, eyes turned up to the pulpit, staggered diagonal lines of the bridal party leading up the steps to the pastor; Max and Cole there, waiting for her, both of them beaming …

  Prologue Two

  Twelve days After The Twilight

  The Becker’s lodge home on Schroon Lake was almost a two-and-a-half hour drive from the airport in Albany. Road conditions were terrible, whole sections whited-out once he’d entered the highlands of the Adirondacks. He’d seen the lodge in pictures before, but had never visited in person.

  One thing for sure: the Nissan Rogue looked out of place in the wide circular driveway of the massive log home. Smoke curled from the chimney and he would otherwise think she hadn’t arrived yet; no other vehicle parked, no tracks in the snow around the house.

  When he agreed to meet her, she offered him the flight, but his parents paid anyway. She’d arranged the car, a sturdy little AWD SUV to help him navigate the treacherous wintry roads; his Maggie eager to see him, hopefully as eager as he was to see her. This being their first-time face-to-face since he pulled his engagement ring from her finger in the Twilight Motel. As her countless texts to him pleaded forgiveness, he was ready to hear them in person, and he would genuflect before her, too, with his own boundless apologies.

  Out of the car and opening the hatch, he popped the collar of his peacoat to protect his neck. Though the temperature wasn’t frigid, a wind had picked up suddenly and howled at his back, accelerating under the peaked log awning that extended off the front doorway to cover the heavy stone steps and driveway. Above him, metal groaned; a massive iron outdoor chandelier swayed with the wind’s action. The thing was bigger than his rental SUV, metal arms shaped like antlers, woven through with boughs of evergreen, dotted with pale globes unlit at this time of day. If it collapsed
from its chains, it would demolish the Rogue.

  With his bag slung over his shoulder, he closed the vehicle and trotted up the granite steps. The front door stood ten feet tall, bifold with a Gothic arch like it once opened into a European church. He rapped the brass knocker and stepped back, bouncing on his toes, a sudden surge to his heart rate that at once made him lightheaded. He took deep breaths and clutched his hand inside the pocket of his khakis, felt the hardness of what he brought, felt its weight far heavier than its small size would predict.

  The heavy door opened and Maggie was there. Two weeks since he’d seen her beautiful face. A smile came to her, weak and cautious but the sight of it soared his heart and he would easily have gone to his knees before her if he hadn’t promised himself to be strong. Instead, he smiled too, cautious at first like her, then both of them widening simultaneously.

  She said, “Can you believe the weather?”

  “I know,” he said, pivoting and looking out beyond the huge log-supported awning. Fat flakes of snow whisked sideways.

  “You going to come in?” she said, her face mirthful but still hesitant.

  “I’d love to, Maggie,” he said.

  She stepped aside, looking sweet in a white baggy top and black tights, her feet bare in the warm house. The smile she held was swallowed now, but her expression still bright and buoyant like she wanted to bubble over; she bounced on her toes. He knew the feeling.

  He entered the grand lodge’s hallway, three stories high, another iron chandelier above them both. The floor was angular granite flagstones, and a staircase wound in a circuit, its bannister and railings in glossy wood with black metal moose antlers and branches. Maggie walked the door closed, and it sounded a doom, then the large space was eerily quiet in the absence of the wind’s high whistle. They stood face to face, those restrained smiles returning, his fiancée looking so goddamned adorable he couldn’t wait till this was over and he would sweep her up in his arms and make her laugh again.

  The sound of shuffling feet on stone made him turn. Coming from the depths of the huge home, Cole walked, eyes turned down to regard a bottle of Scotch he held in his hand.

  He was saying, “Is this the one?—because this is almost thirty years old and I can’t …”

  Air punched from Max like he’d been thumped in the belly. His mouth fell open. He said to Maggie, “What’s he doing here?”

  Cole stopped short, face darting up to see them both watching him from the front door. His features sagged, and he grew a look of pain. He said, “What’s he doing here?”

  1

  Splatter

  Friday, October 27th

  Dinner, Friday night, tired from the commute from Vermont to Rhode Island. Private chef-prepared salmon and arugula, served in the sunroom off the kitchen. Though mother had warning, she was still miffed at the change in dinner plans; Maggie coming alone. No Max. No Cole. Maybe forever.

  “You’re hardly eating,” Carol said.

  “I’m not hungry,” she said toward her plate.

  “You should eat properly while you can.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Too much junk food at school, Margaret. I can see it in your face. Inflammation.”

  “Oh,” she said, pushing salmon around. “Maybe.”

  “Your cheeks are fat.”

  Father’s errant fork scraped his plate with a screech while he ate and eyed his iPad.

  The thought right now of sitting in the front window at Altieri’s—under the arc of its gold stenciled letters, eating a white pizza, eating brownies with her Max—did her in. Her chin dimpled and her lower lip buttoned to the upper. The warmth in that image—the sparkling ardor it conjured dwarfed in scale by its absence, its potential impending perish; the thought of something so vital she had, took for granted, now extinguished—broke her heart all over again right at the dinner table. She moaned with grief and dropped her fork, clattering explosively against her plate.

  “Margaret, your manners, please,” Carol said.

  “Sorry,” she said, and pressed her fingertips below her eyes, desperate to pinch off her tear ducts, though, she was sure, mother thought she was checking for fatness.

  “What is wrong with you?”

  She was silent for a moment. The spot where that wonderful ring sat itched in the gold’s absence. A tickle would incessantly form and she would rub the inside of the lonely finger with the pad of her thumb until it became uncomfortable.

  “We … We postponed the wedding. Possibly.”

  Carol watched her without expression, set her fork and knife down and laced her fingers together, resting her forearms on the edge of the glass table. Her eyes darted to Martin, and he paused as well.

  “Why I came here alone,” she said, a swirling nausea low in her belly.

  “I imagined,” Carol said.

  “What?”

  “Your ring. You weren’t wearing it.”

  “Oh.” And there was her thumb again, looking to wear a hole where that symbol once circled. Her eyes darted between mother and father, neither one blessing her with even marginal compassion. She said, “We … Max said … Max said if I’m going to … going to go to law school … maybe we should, you know, maybe we should wait.”

  Martin’s tongue moved around inside his mouth as he considered it. Then he nodded, corners of his mouth turned down venerably. He said, “Very pragmatic, young Max.”

  Hearing positivity toward the boy she loved buoyed her, she continued to lie. “Perhaps. We’ll have to see. I can … I can do both. I know I can. But, he …” And then fantastically, her thoughts took a jag. “Or, you know, maybe he could come to Harvard as well.”

  Carol continued to stare at her expressionlessly, and it started a tremble in her fingers.

  Martin said, “For law?”

  “I don’t know,” she said quietly, that moment of weak evocative joy dissipating.

  Martin resumed eating.

  “Max would go to Harvard?” her mother chased her, and she felt cornered already.

  “He could.”

  Carol smiled. “The three of you, together again.”

  “Three?”

  “Your handsome friend, Margaret. Cole.”

  “Max’s friend,” she said inexplicably.

  “Yes, Margaret. I used the plural, collective ‘you.’”

  “Right.”

  “Max expressed plans for Harvard?”

  She shook her head no.

  “Margaret?”

  “No. No, he hasn’t. But … He’s incredibly smart. If he … He would benefit from postgrad.”

  Without looking up, Martin said, “He doesn’t need to.”

  Mother’s gaze on her was unwavering and she even smiled now.

  “What? …”

  Her mother said, “Max looks out for you.”

  “He does.”

  “It’s very noble what he’s done.”

  “I know. Maybe not, though … we could still …”

  “Yes, you may still. But Max will be at Oxbow,” Carol said, looking to Martin who nodded in agreement without raising his gaze, “and you have your collective friend to watch over you.”

  “Cole? …”

  “Isn’t that right?”

  “Yes.”

  Carol sat straighter but still regarded her. “Now, Max wanted to postpone until you are done law school?”

  “Right.”

  “He took his ring.”

  Red flames began to work up her neck, and she felt her cheeks catch fire as well, shame pounding in her eardrums.

  Martin said, “I’ll cancel Valerie on Monday.”

  Maggie said, “The wedding planner? Wait—”

  Carol said her name: “Margaret …”

  Maggie turned and said, “Can we just wait?”

  Carol said, “Margaret, take my hand.” She stretched her thin arm to her, palm side of her elegant hand turned up, Cartier bangles singing softly against the glass top.

  “
Why?” she said. Mother had never offered a hand before, and despite the gesture’s aberration, she reached across and mother and daughter curved hooked fingers together, feeling each other’s nails on the insides of their knuckles.

  Carol looked in her eyes and said, “Margaret, you’re doing the right thing and I am proud of you.”

  “What right thing?” she whined, and Carol’s nails dug a little deeper, like they hated the sound of her weakness.

  “School, Margaret. Don’t let your boys get in your way.”

  “My boys?”

  When she tried to retrieve her hand, she couldn’t. Carol held her tightly.

  “Max loves you and he would postpone the wedding if it would help you …”

  “I know …”

  “But he would never take his ring back …”

  The ‘unless …’ hung in the air, silent and enormous.

  Her jaw trembled, and she clacked her teeth shut. Carol still stared in her eyes and while she felt no warmth, she detected its distant cousin, support.

  With trembling voice, Maggie whispered, “I want Max …”

  Carol nodded, still smiling.

  Martin said, “You’re too young, anyway.”

  She said, “I’m not too young. Max was good … I want Max back …”

  Carol said, “There are countless men, Margaret, you’re—”

  “I want my Max, not other men.” She said it firmly, carefully returning the grip her mother held her with.

  Carol said, “You want Max because you hurt him, and in turn he hurt you—and you believe the hurt you feel will go away if you’re together again.”