Chapter Twenty

Duckers wasn't home, which was crushing since she already felt ridiculous seeking solace from a twenty-one-year-old who had his own heartbreak to deal with. She couldn't go home, obviously. She couldn't go to Wade's house, because Hope was at Wade's house. She couldn't wait to get out of Frank's house. Where did that leave her? She had plenty of friends in Eternity, but not the sort who were privy to her innermost secrets. The only person she talked to about her innermost secrets was Frank, and that was clearly not going to work at the moment. Or ever again.

With that depressing thought in her mind and a white paper bag containing three doughnuts in her hand, she walked to All Gods Temple on Main Street. The New Gods surely wouldn't turn her away.

Inside, a lowering sky cast a dim gray gloom through the skylight of the Unknown God. Most people went to temple on Allgodsday, so the place was relatively empty on a Saltsday morning, save for a few elderly folks—mostly women—sitting in various alcoves.

Twyla drifted down the center aisle, trying to decide to which god she should offer up her doughnuts, the doughnuts Frank had gone out to buy for breakfast that morning. A new statue of the Briar Thief had been installed on a small table outside the alcove of the Salt Sea, and already, the hero had begun to collect offerings. It was unusual for heroes to be honored alongside gods, but the Briar Thief's popularity had been in ascendance for some time. The statue was more grotesque than the image in her deck of cards. Now she could stare at the man's agony in three dimensions as he dangled from the briar with the Thorn of Eternal Life piercing his heart. Apt as a barb through the chest might be in this situation, Twyla did not believe in honoring men alongside gods. She moved on.

She thought about taking a seat with Grandfather Bones this morning for the peace and acceptance he brought to his supplicants. She also thought about paying the Warden a visit. As the god of introspection and change, the Warden might have given her insight as to how she had managed to bungle her relationships with the people who mattered most, and how she might move forward from here. But in the end, she made her way to the alcove of Grandmother Wisdom, because if there was one thing Twyla seemed to be lacking in spades, it was basic good sense. She offered up the doughnuts on the god's altar and took a seat.

Closing her eyes and breathing deeply, Twyla thought over everything that had brought her to this crossroads in her life, the events not only of the past twenty-four hours, but of the past twenty-four days and the past twenty-four years, all the experiences and choices that had made her the person she was now, the mother who had discouraged her daughter from getting married, the woman who had sauntered into her best friend's bedroom without truly contemplating how much it might cost them both.

She tried not to cry, but it was useless. And here she was with no purse and no tissues and no Frank to give her a clean handkerchief without having to be asked. The thought of Frank and his handkerchiefs and all the thoughtful kindness those handkerchiefs stood for made Twyla cry harder, and once again, she was having to dry her nose on the shoulder of her shirt.

The next thing she knew, a clean, embroidered hankie appeared beneath her nose, smelling faintly of violets. An older woman had taken the seat beside Twyla and was now patting her back. "There now, sweetie, you blow your nose."

"Don't mind me," said Twyla, even as she took the proffered handkerchief and put it to use.

"If I had a copper for every time I heard a woman say, Don't mind me, I'd build my own coin fountain and swim in a pool of my riches. Let's face it, honey, if people minded you more often, you probably wouldn't be in here crying on some old lady's altar. Now, is this a man problem or a kid problem? Because in my experience, it's usually one or the other."

"Both."

"Oh, we'll need snacks for that." The woman opened up her flamboyantly orange handbag and produced a bag of chocolate-covered malt balls, which she offered to Twyla. Of all the things to have hanging out in her enormous grandma bag, what were the odds this woman would be carrying around Twyla's favorite candy? With her life in shambles, Twyla took several. She popped the first in her mouth, savoring the way the chocolate coating melted on her tongue, followed by the sweet tang of the malt underneath it.

"I love these," she said in a watery voice.

"You have as many as you want, honey." The woman set the bag in Twyla's lap. "Now why don't you tell me what's got you crying your eyes out in Grandmother Wisdom's alcove on a Saltsday morning."

Twyla regarded her. With her short spiky gray hair and her cobalt-blue loungewear, the stranger had a robust, ageless quality about her. She might have been anywhere in her sixties or seventies. Twyla had never seen her before, but the woman reminded her of her grandma Eloise, a self-proclaimed "tough old broad," who used to say things like "Watching your children sleep is the Three Mothers' reward to you for not killing them while they were awake."

Perhaps it was the fact that Twyla had no clue who this woman was, and would probably never see her again, or perhaps it was her Grandma Eloise–ness that put her at ease—but whatever the reason, she decided to open up. She told her about marrying young and her parents' disapproval, especially her mother's, and how much she hated it that her mother had been prophetic. She told her about years of stress and resentment, trying to hold her family together, trying to make ends meet, trying to be a good mother when she felt threadbare. She told her about Hope's getting married and the terrible argument they had had. She told her about Frank and their friendship and their career in the Tanrian Marshals. She told her about going to Frank's bedroom the night before. (She even let the word vibrator cross her lips, right there in temple.) She told her about how Frank retired and didn't tell her. All of it came pouring out of Twyla like glittery spit out of a pissed-off dragon, dragons being the only thing Twyla did not spill (since their existence was classified information).

"Let's get one thing out of the way," said the woman when Twyla had finally finished. "You are a good person, a good person who is dealing with the complicated things life throws at you from time to time."

Twyla popped another malt ball. "How could you know I'm a good person? I could be heinous and awful."

"I have a good sense for these things. You're a good person, so you don't need to berate yourself. That accomplishes nothing anyway. What you need to do is figure out what you want. What do you want, Twyla?"

Twyla's brain went blank. If someone had peered inside her ears, they would've seen nothing but a white space where thoughts should be.

"What do I want?" she floundered.

"That's right. What do you want?" The nice old lady in leisure wear chucked a malt ball into her own mouth and chewed thoughtfully on it. Her pencil-thin eyebrows shot up. "Well, hot dang, these things are fantastic! Mind if I have a few more?"

Twyla thought it a bit odd that a woman who carried chocolate malt balls in her oversized grandma purse would be surprised that they were delicious, but who was she to judge? "They're yours. Go to town."

"Let's start with Hope," the woman said through a mouthful of candy. "You warned her against marriage because you want something else for her. What is it?"

"I guess that I want Hope to be happy. No, I want her to be satisfied. I want her to be fulfilled. I want her to be able to live life on her own terms."

"That's what you should tell her, those words exactly."

Twyla considered this over another malt ball. "I suppose that it would go over better than Don't get married."

"Of course it would. Of course it will. Think about how annoyed you were with your mother for pooh-poohing your marital bliss. You can have your opinion, but at the end of the day, it's Hope's life, and she's the one who needs to figure out how to be satisfied and fulfilled on her own terms."

"But marriage is one of those things where you don't know what you're getting into until you've already gotten into it."

"That applies to every choice you make in life. Should you get the sweet potato fries or the onion rings with your tuna melt? You might be delighted by the outcome or disappointed or something in between."

"Are you comparing marriage to the menu at the Salt and Key?"

"Am I wrong?" She dug a tube of hot pink lipstick from her bag, glossed it on, and smacked her lips. "Let me ask you this: If you had your life to do over again—not hypothetically, but in reality—knowing what you know now, what would you do? Would you tell Doug no when he asked you to marry him? Would you walk away and live a different life?"

Twyla forced herself to sit with the question. She tried to imagine how her life might have played out if she hadn't gotten married. What had she wanted when she was nineteen years old, beyond loving and being loved? Not much. The wants and dreams and desires, the different paths she might have taken—they had come after she got married. Maybe she would never have known what she was missing if she hadn't spent so many years of her life putting off what was best for her to make sure everyone else got what was best for them. And if she had never married Doug, she would never have had DJ or Wade or Hope, all of whom were as necessary as air as far as she was concerned. If she hadn't married Doug, she would never have moved to Eternity. She would never have met Frank, much less become friends with him. She would never have joined the marshals. She would never have been to Tanria.

As for Doug himself, there had been good times with him, birthdays and New Year's parties and laughter and even the occasional holding of one another in the dark of night. He had loved his family, and he had loved her, even if he had loved himself more.

"No," said Twyla. "If I had it all to do over again, I'd marry Doug. There's not a doubt in my mind."

Her new friend put her hand over Twyla's, her touch warm and solid. "Spoken like a wise woman. You brought Hope into this world, but her life is hers to live. She'll have her triumphs and her disappointments, same as everyone else. The only thing she needs from you is your support. Does she have that?"

"Yes, of course. Always."

"Then that's settled, which brings us to Frank." She took her hand away to pick up another malt ball from the bag. "What do you want from Frank?"

"His friendship. His companionship."

"How about his love? Do you want that?"

"No! Of course not!"

It was the knee-jerk reaction trained into Twyla from years of people assuming that she and Frank were an item, and both of them having to rush in with the We're just friends line.

The Giver of Malt Balls tsk-tsked, pulled an embroidery hoop out of her bag, and got to work, her robust hands working a delicate floral pattern into the weave of the linen. "Not to be rude, sweetie, but I'm not buying it."

"I don't want to want his love."

"The problem is that you might already have it. What do you think? Is Frank in love with you?" The woman poked her in the arm with the wooden hoop.

"I don't know," said Twyla. But then she remembered how shaken Frank had been when he thought she had been hurt and the gentle way he'd cared for her in the infirmary.

"Maybe?" she amended. But then she remembered the photograph he kept in the drawer of his bedside table with her birth key attached to it, as if it were something he needed to keep private and hidden.

From her.

The truth left her gobsmacked as it sank in. "Yes. Yes, I think he might be in love with me, now that you mention it."

"Do you love him?"

Twyla didn't have to sit with the question. She didn't have to think about it. She knew the answer. Tears went spilling down her cheeks all over again, and she sopped them up from her face with the old-fashioned hankie.

"So that's a yes?"

"But I don't want to be in love with Frank! I don't want to be in love with anybody!"

"Pretty sure that ship has sailed. Chocolate malt ball?" The woman held out the bag.

"No, thank you."

"Whew, you are in a bad way if you're turning these down." She helped herself to another. "Need a hug?"

Twyla nodded.

The woman set her embroidery hoop on the pew beside her and wrapped Twyla in her arms, the sort of high-quality hug that only a busty old lady who smelled like chocolate and lipstick could give. Twyla wished she had thought to ask her name. It would be awkward to ask now, after a hug and an in-depth discussion of her life that had featured the word vibrator.

"What am I going to do?" she cried in the woman's arms. "He took off to gods know where, and who knows if he'll ever talk to me again? How did I mess up so badly?"

"I wouldn't say you've messed up, no more than anyone else. Sometimes you have to really fuck something up before you can fully appreciate it."

Twyla laughed and pulled herself together, giving her cheeks one more pass with the handkerchief before she blew her nose.

The woman picked up her embroidery and got down to brass tacks. "So, let's review the bidding. You're in love with Frank, and you think there's a good chance that Frank is in love with you. But you're friends, and falling in love threatens the friendship, and obviously that's something neither of you wants."

"Yes! That's it exactly!"

"I get it. And there's something to be said for not risking your friendship. But, Twyla." Here, the woman set the hoop in her lap to look Twyla in the eye. "When you're lying on your deathbed someday, are you going to think to yourself, Good thing I never told Frank how I felt? Or are you going to regret all the years you spent loving him and not doing a thing about it?"

Twyla leaned back in the pew and said nothing, because she didn't need to.

The woman nodded and picked up her embroidery. "There's your answer."

They sat side by side, one tying off a thread and neatly snipping the loose end with a handy pair of scissors, the other finally seeing her path forward. Frank might be out of the picture for the moment, but Twyla knew where to find Hope. It was a start.

"Thank you," she said, an understatement considering the magnitude of the advice she had received.

"What's a grandma for?"

"Are you from around here? I don't think we've ever met."

"I'm just visiting. Speaking of which." The woman stuffed the embroidery hoop into her bag and got to her feet. "I'd better be off. Someone always needs me. You know how it is."

"I sure do."

The woman smiled at Twyla, her beady blue eyes full of warmth and affection. "Everything will work out in the end, honey. You'll see."

"Goodbye. Thanks again."

Twyla watched her leave, the thick rubber soles of the woman's practical shoes making fart sounds as she made her way down the center aisle and disappeared out of the main entry doors.

Full of lightness and resolution, Twyla considered all that had passed in the handful of minutes in the alcove. She had come here for wisdom, and wisdom had been given in droves, alongside a hankie, a hug, and a bag of chocolate malt balls. She realized that the woman had left her the embroidered handkerchief and the candy, and Twyla hadn't even bothered to learn her name. She gazed at the mosaic of Grandmother Wisdom stretching floor to ceiling behind the altar, where the doughnuts remained, a feeble offering for an incredible gift.

"Thank you," Twyla told the god.

And to the day she sailed the Salt Sea, she would swear on her key and boat that the portrait of Grandmother Wisdom winked at her.

All the air whooshed out of Twyla's lungs. The alcove seemed to spin around her, as if she were drunk. Surely, she had imagined it.

Hadn't she?

She hustled out of the alcove and searched all over the temple until she found Votary Asebedo cleaning up the offerings on the Bride of Fortune's altar.

"Hi, Twyla. We don't usually see you on a Saltsday."

Twyla waved a quick hello and asked, in a rush, "Do you know who that lady was? She said she was visiting family."

"What lady?"

"That woman who was in Grandmother Wisdom's alcove with me."

"You're the only person I've seen at Grandmother Wisdom's altar this morning." The votary shrugged in apology and went about her work as a shaft of sunlight burst through the skylight of the Unknown God, dispersing the gray clouds overhead.

Twyla's entire body started to shake. Her knees gave out, and she dropped onto a pew in the Bride of Fortune's alcove. It was a long time before she trusted herself to walk out of the temple on her own two feet.