“What am I doing?” Bess asked aloud.
The room hummed.
Bess ambled into the kitchen to make coffee. The coffee was in a canister on the top shelf of the refrigerator. Someone had once told her coffee stayed fresher if you refrigerated it, and while Bess no longer knew who’d told her that or had any idea if it were true, she still did it out of habit. So much of her home life had become just that: habit. When she moved in, there were coat hooks on the wall next to the front door—so that was where she hung her coat.
With half a pot brewing, she padded into the garage and grabbed her notebook. She sat at a small dining room table outside the kitchen and flipped open the notebook, the sounds of percolation filling the room with warm inhabited noises.
She read back over the SOS message and lingered over the phrases that stood out to her. The coffee pot beeped and she poured a cup and carried it to the table.
Intel here
Margaret, Margaret
Since feast day
Feast day. Last night she hadn’t paid any attention to the words, but in the light of day they suddenly struck her as important. Who had said them? Was it the man who was yelling “Margaret,” or the woman who called herself Amelia? She couldn’t remember and cursed herself for not taking better notes. The wheels in her mind were turning almost too fast for her to keep up. Then something clicked.
Bess stood abruptly and strode to her computer, tucked snug on a tiny desk against the half wall that served as a bridge between her kitchen and living room. She jiggled the mouse until the screen brightened and she could bring up a search engine.
Margaret Feast Day
ENTER
Bess studied her search results.
St. Margaret of Scotland—Saints & Angels—Catholic Online
St. Margaret of Antioch—Saints & Angels—Catholic Online
St. Margaret Mary Alacoque—Saints & Angels—Catholic Online
St. Margaret of Antioch. If any of this meant anything—and it might not—her instincts were telling her to follow the connections. She clicked on the link for St. Margaret of Antioch. X-ing out of a pop-up box asking her if she wanted to subscribe to a Catholic newsletter, Bess quickly scanned the page.
At the top, in a grey box labeled “Facts,” she saw Margaret’s Feast Day was July 20th and she was the patron saint of childbirth, pregnant women, dying people, kidney disease, peasants, exiles, and the falsely accused. Margaret served a diverse crowd. She was, like so many of the old saints, a martyr.
“‘Margaret is one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, and she spoke to St. Joan of Arc.’ Impressive. I don’t know what a Holy Helper is, but still… impressive.”
A sudden noise made Bess shriek. Her head whipped in the direction of the front door. It was the doorbell. She waited a moment to see if they would knock or ring the bell again. The room was silent. While she wasn’t expecting anyone, it wasn’t necessarily a call for alarm just because someone stopped by. And yet Bess’s heart was racing and she found herself praying whoever it was would go away. Company wasn’t something she was accustomed to, not since she started living alone, and something about unexpected guests felt menacing.
Bess crept over to the door and tentatively opened it a crack. No one was there. Breathing a sigh of relief, Bess opened the door wider and stepped out onto her front stoop. She scanned the street for a UPS truck or neighbor but saw neither.
“Kids…” she said absently, although it was the middle of the day on a Thursday.
Bess closed the door and walked back to her desk where she grabbed a Post-It Note from the top drawer and jotted down the words, “July twenty.” That was over a month ago. Bess’s mind reached back, searching for anything of importance that might have happened a month ago, but came back empty. She herself had probably spent a sleepless night alone in front of her radio inventing a reason to still be awake. Briefly it crossed her mind that she was giving this too much thought because she needed it to be more exciting than it was. She needed something. But she pushed the thought away so quickly it was as if it had never occurred.
She retrieved the notebook and her coffee cup and brought them to the desk. Bess closed her eyes and thought about last night’s broadcast. She heard the man’s voice shouting in the distance and chills ran down her arms. She pictured Fred Noonan struggling to escape the sinking cockpit of his plane, shouting his wife’s name for comfort, for posterity, for rescue.
The transmission last night had said something about rising water. Or had it? No, that’s what Bess (wanted it to be) thought it was. All the message last night had said was, “it’s rising.” “It” could mean anything—water, smoke, Satan.
The phone cut into her thoughts. This was the most calls she’d received in ages.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Bess, it’s me, Carol.”
“Oh, hey.”
“Look, I feel a little bad about earlier. I shouldn’t have gotten so mad.”
“Are you joking? You had every right to be mad at me. I was stupid.”
“You were.” Carol paused and Bess heard her breathing into the phone. “I’m worried about you, Bess.”
“What? No, come on. I’m fine.”
“No, you clearly aren’t. You never go out—”
“I literally just went out last night.”
“What? With whom?”
“His name’s Greg.”
“Fantastic. Tell me about him. Something other than a name.”
Bess sighed and thought for a moment. “He was… polite. Taller than me, blonde hair.”
“So, a polite white man of average height?”
“I’d say that sums him up fairly well.”
“And how did it go?”
“Amazing. We’re getting married tomorrow.”
“Well, this is the first I’m hearing about it. You didn’t tell me you were going out with anyone.”
“That’s because it wasn’t any of your business.”
“Bess, I want you to listen to me,” Carol said. “I’m being serious right now. You stay inside all the time with that radio. You never sleep. You’re an old cat lady without any cats.”
“Are you saying I should get a cat?”
“At least then there’d be someone to eat you when you died.”
“At least.”
“I know I’m only your boss, and you can tell me to fuck off if you want, but I know you. I know you probably better than anyone—which, by the way, doesn’t say much for your social life. I want you to be okay.” Carol was silent and Bess knew this was the part where she was supposed to agree or cry or both. This was when she was expected to comply.
“I will be,” Bess said. She waited for Carol to say something else, but the line remained quiet. “Hey, do you want me to come in? I can close for you.”
“Actually, that would be nice. I could use a night off.”
“For sure. I’ll be there within the hour. Who else is working?”
Carol had already hung up.
Bess entered The Hole an hour later. Lucy was behind the bar, wiping the glossy countertop with a clean white rag.
“Somebody’s in trou-ble,” Lucy sing-songed, her eyes dancing with a gossip’s delight.
“Mind your business.” Bess glanced over to see who else was present. There were no patrons seated at the little six-stool bar and, for once, Bess was grateful. “Don’t you have something better to do than wait on zero customers?”