“‘member that day, when Dr. Kovacs’ office called?” Charlie still had his arms folded across his chest.
“What about it?” Maggie had walked over to the refrigerator, opened the door.
“When I looked on the calendar — ” Charlie pointed to a small calendar that Maggie had made him nail to the wall next to the refrigerator when she’d begun living at his trailer — “tuh see if anything wuz written on the date the doc’s office said I’d made an appoinment — I knew there wuz sumpin’ about that date, was unusual.”
Maggie closed the refrigerator door quickly. Holding a cold can of soda in her hand, she looked at Charlie in exasperation, her red hair seeming to wilt around her. “Oh gawd — you solve another mystery?”
Charlie slapped his hands on his thighs. “It was — ”
“A coincidence!” Maggie threw her soda can on the floor, the top opening slightly on impact, a thin hiss of carbonated liquid seeping. “I don’t care what it is you think you found, it was a damn coincidence, Charlie!”
“But — there’s been so many — ”
“There’s as many coincidences as your mind can imagine, Charlie!” She threw her hands over her head as she began hurriedly pacing on the tiled floor, like a patient’s spouse waiting for word from the operating room. “Things — happen to us, Charlie. Lots of things, we can’t control them. But we can control what we make of them, and how all these little things — ” she waved her hands above her head again — “connect to each other.”
“That’s right.” Charlie had resumed folding his arms across his chest. “And the connection I found — ”
“Made, Charlie.” She stopped in front of him, looked directly into his eyes, her own brimming with agitated tears. Her voice was a terse whisper. “Whatever it is, it’s a connection you’ve made, Charlie. And you had to make it — because it didn’t exist before that imagination of yours decided it was something it wanted to exist.”
The Diligent Dilettante 