Ms. Simon Says by Mary McBride Read Free Book Online

forgot what brand and scent to get, so typically there was an ongoing battle between citrus and pine and some god-awful garden fragrance. Pine, he decided while stepping over the threshold, was dominant today. Greetings from the cool north woods.
    Shelby followed him in, and to her credit, didn’t come out with an insincere “Oh, this is nice” or a sarcastic “Your cleaning lady must be on vacation.” Her expression remained impassive, and after she’d looked around a couple of seconds, she merely asked, “How long have you lived here?”
    “About two years.” He shrugged. “Give or take a few weeks.”
    Actually, there was no give or take about it. Mick knew the exact date he’d moved in here, three days after his wife’s funeral. He’d cleared his clothes and books and firearms out of their town house on Rush Street, and left everything else—the expensive leather couch, the antique dining-room pieces, the brand-new Thomasville bedroom suite, the oriental rugs, the good lamps, everything—to be dealt with, divvied up, or destroyed by Julie’s cousin, Nicole.
    “Even the pictures?” Nicole had asked him. “All the albums of you and Julie?”
    “Especially those.”
    “Aw, Mick.”
    Such were the last, sad words he heard Nicole say because he’d walked out then, for good, and hadn’t spoken to her or anyone in his late wife’s family since. Then he’d come here, to this dump, and spent the next two years furnishing it with selected Salvation Army pieces and curb-sale shit and the odd, discarded Dumpster find.
    It was the pits. But at least it was colorful.
    “Have a seat.” He gestured toward his couch with its slipcover of dinner-plate-size sunflowers on a dark blue background, then preceded her across the room in order to gather up magazines and newspapers to make room for her. “I’ll just throw some things together. It won’t take long.”
    Mick, his arms stuffed with three days’ worth of crumpled
Daily Mirrors
, assorted take-out menus, and the latest issue of
Playboy
, headed toward the bedroom, praying his guest wouldn’t ask to use his about-as-clean-as-a-gas-station bathroom.
    Shelby had heard the expression “shabby chic,” but this was the first time she’d ever encountered it in real life. Well, actually the place was a lot shabbier than chic.
    The sunflowery couch beneath her looked like Vincent van Gogh’s worst nightmare. Across from the couch, the green plaid La-Z-Boy sat half reclined while it spewed stuffing from its back and seat cushion and both arms. In between the couch and the chair was a table of unknown construction and height, covered as it was with precarious towers of magazines and paperbacks, an open pretzel bag, a box of Ritz crackers, one giant Slurpy cup, and empty, mismatched coffee mugs—three to be exact. No—four. One was hiding under
Newsweek.
    Several crushed beer cans were relegated to a battered end table, along with an open jar of dry roasted peanuts and the remote for the TV. There was a dead philodendron, too. Shelby didn’t think anyone could kill a philodendron.
    The only spot of relative order in the room was a homemade bookcase, fashioned of cement blocks and two-by-fours, on the wall opposite the couch. Shelby got up to inspect the titles. The majority of Callahan’s library was nonfiction, and most of those books were devoted to major conflicts, such as the American Revolution, the Civil War, both World Wars, and more. Although she found the collection really intriguing, it probably wasn’t all that surprising. Given his occupation, it made sense that the man relaxed with guns and gore.
    She heard his footsteps coming from the bedroom. “While you’re over there,” he said, “hand me that Ulysses Grant biography, will you? The one on the bottom left.”
    She plucked the big, heavy book from the shelf and turned to hand it to him, surprised that he’d not only packed in such a short time but changed clothes as well. This current