Maggie Dove by Susan Breen Read Free Book Online Page A

rumor had it, though Maggie figured she wouldn’t pass on that tidbit. She’d like to think she had a little honor left.
    “She’s not happy. Her roots are unhealthy. I can tell.”
    Iphigenia then turned her attention back to Maggie’s hair, which she cut and fluffed until Maggie thought she looked a little like Julius Caesar.
    “Very young,” Iphigenia said. “Very beautiful.”
    It will grow out, Maggie thought.
    “Is it true you haven’t been to the doctor in ten years?” Maggie asked.
    “I wouldn’t want to go through chemo. I’d rather die.”
    “Do you think something’s wrong?”
    Automatically Iphigenia put her hand to her breast.
    “If you’re worried, it’s better to find out early. It’s not a death sentence, you know, but you’re better off finding out. You’re probably making yourself sick worrying about it.”
    “No.”
    “I’ll take you. Make an appointment with Doc Steinberg and I’ll go with you and then we’ll have lunch. Why don’t you make it for Monday?”
    “We’ll see,” Iphigenia said, and then she nodded over at the pharmacy and they both looked at Noelle Bender, who was walking out the door of the pharmacy, carrying a white bag. Lice? Maggie wondered. Or something else? What else came in a box? A home pregnancy test? Good grief, Maggie thought. Living in a small town turns us all into spies, but before she could shift focus, Noelle looked straight at her.
    Maggie blushed, and turned away.
    After she left Iphigenia’s, her thoughts went back to Peter. Was it possible he had some sort of beef with Bender? Of course it was possible. Peter argued with everyone. But how bad was it? Probably he hadn’t told Maggie about it because he didn’t want to upset her. But she knew who he would tell. She knew who would know.

Chapter 9
    Maggie drove over to Winifred’s nursing home, and there she found her friend, as she so often did, staring at the pictures of her four husbands. Winifred liked to define herself as a serial marrier. Although she’d hit a bit of a rough patch in the last few years, having developed Parkinson’s, that didn’t stop her from looking for husband number five. She’d divorced the four previous ones, being of the view that there was no point in staying in a bad situation, so it was something of an irony that Winifred had wound up in the ultimate bad situation, semi-paralyzed and in a nursing home. Yet she took it with a surprising amount of grace.
    She didn’t complain, although she had enough justification. Maggie had noticed that often the people with the most to complain about did it the least, possibly because they didn’t need the attention. In any event, Winifred looked awful when Maggie walked into her room, dyed brown hair teased too high, right arm swollen, head craned perilously to the side. Blue eyes sparkling. Those eyes had been looking for trouble for more than sixty years.
    “Here she is,” Winifred said. “I was just telling young Arthur here about your adventures last night.” Young Arthur grinned genially, a soft young man with large spongy hands. He was massaging Winifred’s arm, trying to build up her muscles. Winifred was determined to beat the disease and had done a lot of research on the Internet, trying to find alternative cures, or any cures, and one thing she was passionate about was exercise.
    “Not much of an adventure,” Maggie said. “More of a nightmare really.”
    She sank down onto Winifred’s new couch. Unlike every other person at the Castle, Winifred had elected not to bring her furniture from home. Instead she’d gone to Bloomingdale’s and selected a jewel-blue couch and an antiqued, white bookshelf. She’d had Arthur spend the afternoon moving everything around to get it just right, which had not made the Castle happy because the administrators were of the view that Arthur was there to work for more than one person. But Winifred didn’t care and neither did Arthur. The whole thing was quite nice