Crazy like a Fox

Book 2: Fox Crossing, Maine Novel

by Melinda Metz

Genres: Small Town & Rural

Synopsis

Return to the charming mountain town of Fox Crossing, Maine—where nature lovers are welcome, the locals are friendly, and a single glimpse of a legendary fox can change your life forever . . .



Most people think The Fox is just a folk tale, designed to lure tourists to their quiet little town on the Appalachian Trail. But kindergarten teacher Lillian Smith is hoping the stories of the white-eared, white-pawed vixen—who brings luck and love to those who see her—are all true. After a chance sighting of the fabled fox, Lillian hopes her hiker boyfriend Owen will finally propose. Instead, he publicly dumps her, claiming she's not adventurous enough. Lillian's determined to prove him wrong. But she sure could use some of that foxy magic to win him back . . .



Luckily, Lillian is not alone. She has her good friend Gavin, the local boot camp worker who agrees to help her reinvent herself—even though he thinks she's fine the way she is. Then there are the townsfolk who also claim to have caught glimpses of The Fox: an offbeat musician with a downbeat career, a not-so-fortunate couple who've forgotten just how lucky they are, and a playwright whose life needs a second act. But if the fox legend is true, things always have a way of working out—for those crazy enough to keep believing . . .

Release date: November 30, 2021

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 256

Sample

“You obviously don’t want me to come, so fine. I’m not coming.”

Gavin watched as Rebecca yanked her duffle out of the trunk, wincing as he heard the ping of metal hitting metal. The big buckle on her bag had hit his bumper, leaving a small scratch in the Copenhagen Blue paint of his Porsche 944. No big. He could polish it out. Probably wouldn’t take more than toothpaste.

Rebecca laughed, pulling Gavin out of his thoughts. “For a second, it actually seemed as if you were bothered that I’m not going with you. But you’re more bothered by that.” She pointed at the scratch. “And you can hardly even see it.” She grabbed the handle of the suitcase that matched the duffle, giving a grunt as she tried to heave it free from the trunk. Gavin took it away from her and lowered it safely to the ground. One of its wheels could have done some serious damage.

“So, that’s it. You’re just going to help me get my stuff out of your car, and bye-bye?”

What did she want from him? She’d already decided. Or else she was being dramatic. Rebecca was one of those women who thrived on drama. Look at her, eyes sparkling, cheeks flushed. Kinda unfair that she was extra hot when he wanted to be around her the least. “I never said I didn’t want you to come.”

“Of course, you didn’t. That’s not you. You never actually say anything. You just find little ways to push me away.” Rebecca slammed the trunk so hard the car jounced. “You’re Mr. Passive Aggressive.”

“Where does that come from?” It wasn’t the first time she’d thrown the accusation at him. It was one of her go-tos whenever they had a fight. And every time it sounded like made-up psychobabble crap.

Rebecca laughed again. Sometimes he hated the sound of her laugh. “Where? So many places. Like when my friend Sofia was in town. My oldest friend. I could tell you didn’t want to meet her, not that you said so. Of course, like always, you pretended everything was fine, then you showed up late and said you’d already eaten. You didn’t even order an appetizer, just sat there pouting.”

That was unfair on a multitude of levels. “That was more than two months ago, Rebecca.” It was like she kept a database of every wrong move he’d made. Everything she considered a wrong move. Most of them weren’t anything. Including this one. “And, like I explained at the time, my study group ran late, because Dom showed up without the notes. I couldn’t leave until we’d gone over all the material, or I wouldn’t have passed the final.”

He half expected her to jump on him for still being in school at twenty-seven, one of her usual fight moves. Even though, what did it matter? So he’d taken a few semesters off, changed his major a couple times. He was almost finished now, just a few more credits left. Since she didn’t start with the school stuff, he kept going. “And, like I told you, somebody got hungry, so we ordered pizza, which is why I was late and didn’t feel like eating. But I got there. Who cares if I ate or not? And it’s not like the two of you didn’t have plenty to talk about before I got there.” He’d already explained this to her easily twenty times, but it was like she didn’t even hear him. “If you’re being honest, I bet you were even glad to have some time without me around. I’m sure Sofia had stuff she wanted to say to you that she didn’t want to talk about in front of a stranger.”

“That’s not the point. The point is—passive aggressive. Like now. You don’t want me to come with you. But instead of saying so, you start doing all the things you know make me crazy, like playing your video game so late that I went to bed without you on Saturday, and then yesterday, I wanted to make us a nice dinner for our last night in the apartment, so I decided to make the marinara from scratch. And what do you do? You kept sneaking in red pepper flakes until it was so spicy, I knew if I ate it, we’d have to stop at every gas station between here and Maine. So I had to have Cheerios.”

“You eat lots of spicy food. You—”

She held up one hand like she was directing traffic and wanted him to stop. So, he stopped. Even though that hand was as bad as interrupting, and she always got on his case for interrupting her.

“I can eat some spicy food, just not spicy food that also has tomatoes, which I know that you know. And you’ve been acting like a jerk for weeks in all kinds of ways, just so I’d get mad enough to tell you to go by yourself. Well, it worked. Go by yourself. I’m done. We’re done.”

“Because I put in a few too many red pepper flakes?” Unbelievable.

“No. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying you’ve been pushing me away in all kinds of little ways, nothing too big, nothing you couldn’t dismiss as me being crazy.”

Gavin couldn’t stop a sigh. “You are being crazy, Bec. Why wouldn’t I want you to come? Are you PMSing or what?” He should have known that was the wrong thing to say. The expected explosion came fast and hard.

“See? And now you want to make it my fault. Because that’s you. You never accept the blame for anything.” She pulled out her phone. “If you had just been upfront and said you wanted to break up, I wouldn’t be standing here calling an Uber to go to my sister’s because I sublet our place, without your help, thank you very much, and I did it because . . . because I don’t know. I should have seen this coming a mile away. You’ve been acting like a jerk for the past month. You’ve probably been freaking out because I kept giving you more chances instead of kicking you to the curb.”

Her voice was getting that quaver, and he could tell she was moments away from crying, and he didn’t even know why. Nothing she’d said was any big thing. One night when he went to bed after her. Or maybe a few nights, because he’d had that tournament. And a few too many pepper flakes? And the thing with her friend? It wasn’t like he blew it off. He’d been a little late, yeah, and yeah, he hadn’t ordered anything, which made no difference whatsoever. He had been there, what did it matter if he ate or not? And it was freaking months ago. But he couldn’t say any of that, because now she was crying.

He pulled in a deep breath and gave it one more try. “Rebecca, we just moved in together a few months ago. Why would I have agreed to that if I didn’t want to be with you?”

“You agreed to it. You agreed to it,” she said again, her voice getting higher and more quavery. “Like you were doing me some kind of favor?”

“No. That’s not what—Do you have to analyze every word? I just talk, you know. I just . . . talk. What I meant was, we just moved in together. Why would we have moved in together if I didn’t want to be with you all the time?”

“I don’t know. Maybe that’s something you should do some thinking about. Although, what does it matter now? We’re over.”

Should he try to change her mind? She sounded absolutely definite. “Well, okay, this is good-bye then.” She didn’t look up, even though he was sure she’d finished putting the address in.

He got in the car. When he glanced in the rearview mirror as he pulled away from the curb, Rebecca’s head was still lowered toward her phone. Gavin got some Nick Cave going. Rebecca used to complain about the less-than-pure sound quality that came out of the Porsche’s stereo when he used the FM transmitter and his phone, but it made Cave sound even better, especially the old stuff. Gavin tilted the sunroof and cranked the music as loud as it would go, until he could feel it in his bones. With every mile down the I-95, he felt the Rebecca-induced stress sliding out of his body. He gave all his focus to the music and the feel of the car, the tightness of the hydraulic power steering, the sound of the exhaust and the occasional rattle, the precision of the shifter.

About three and a half hours out of Newark, he got himself a Hot Mess sub, emphasis on the hot, at Cowabunga, a place he’d discovered road-trippin’ it a few years before. Definitely not something Miss Rebecca would want to put in her delicate tum-tum. He took it down to the beach and kicked off his shoes so he could dig his toes in the sand while he ate. Warm sun. Good eats. Salt air. Life was good.

Back in the car he got some Limp Bizkit going, a move Rebecca would probably call passive-aggressive if she was with him. She always said it was angry music, and that he should have grown out of it. But, hell, his father hadn’t been a teenager when he and Gavin were listening together. It brought up great memories of hanging out with his dad, and it was perfect driving music, although it did feel kinda out of place once he was off the highway on a dirt road with pines rising up on either side, like green walls.

He cut the music, and, a few seconds later, he spotted a sign up ahead that read “Welcome to Fox Crossing, Maine. Founded 1805,” and smiled. This was what he needed. A real, old-school summer vacation. He deserved it. He’d busted his butt this semester and had worked almost full-time at his barista gig. And that was another thing Rebecca had disapproved of. His lack of a real job. But that’s why he was in school, to get the marketing degree to get a real job. And, anyway, the tip money was prime. So yeah. He deserved some vacay. He’d be working, yeah, but mostly outside as an instructor getting hikers prepped for hiking the Appalachian Trail. Not exactly hard labor. It would—

Gavin slammed on the brakes hard enough for the Porsche to fishtail. “Please, you go first,” he muttered as a fox trotted across the road in front of the car, taking her time, unfazed by the sound of him screeching to a stop to keep from mowing her down. Strange looking fox. The tip of the tail was black instead of white, and one sock was white instead of black.

Guess I should have taken that sign more literally, he thought as he watched the fox make her way under the Fox Crossing sign and disappear between a couple blueberry bushes. He did a quick check of both sides of the road to make sure there were no more critters headed his way, then put on the gas, eager to see the town again. He’d only spent a night there back when he had been hiking this end of the AT, so it would be mostly new. Gavin loved new. Maybe he’d meet someone. Have a nice, fun summer fling to go along with the summer vacation. Yeah, this summer in Fox Crossing was going to be exactly what he needed.

“A charm of foxes,” Lillian Smith murmured, her gaze traveling around the cozy shop, taking in the fox kites flying near the ceiling, the string of cute little copper fox bells tied to the doorknob, fox socks waving from the clothesline stretched across the bay window, the fox pillows on the window seat beneath, the fox—

“I almost called the shop that.” Lillian turned toward the voice and saw a petite woman, maybe in her seventies, with a pair of cloth fox ears perched on top of her head. “But I ended up going with Vixen’s. I own the place, and I thought the name suited me as well as the store. Not in the ill-tempered sense. I’m as sweet as Honey, which is my name or at least what everyone calls me. My actual name is Ruth Allis, and I’m a vixen, in the sexually attractive sense.” She winked at Lillian, and gave her skirt, a fifties-style poodle number, but with a fox where the poodle would usually be, a flirty swish-swish. “I’ve still got it.”

“I can see that.” But an endless number of coffee dates from a slew of dating apps had proven that she didn’t have even a smidge. Her mother said all Lillian had to do was get herself out there, so she’d gotten herself out there. Over and over and over again. It wasn’t that she didn’t have the, well, the assets, but she didn’t have the attitude. She couldn’t flirt. At all. It made her feel squirmy and embarrassed, so squirmy and embarrassed that most of the time all she’d wanted was to put in enough time that she could leave. Usually, it seemed like the guy, whatever guy, had felt the same way.

Her stomach tensed as the negative thoughts threatened to take her over. She pictured them as little rat-like things with dozens and dozens of pointy yellow teeth. You know how to deal with them, she told herself. She imagined herself holding a glittery wand with a star on top. She flicked her wand at the rats—zing!—turning them into beautiful dappled gray horses that then galloped away.

Why did she still let those thoughts get to her? She didn’t have to know how to flirt, not anymore. Not since Owen. Somehow, he’d had the patience to get through her squirmy and embarrassed, not to mention her awkward and shy, to see, well, what she thought of as the real her. And now, she was almost, pretty sure almost, about to be engaged to him. To be married to him. There had been a time when it had seemed there was no chance she’d be married before she was thirty, but then she had met Owen.

Honey chuckled. “I was just about to start telling you about how every single girl needs a little something foxy, but then I saw that smile come out. You’ve got the smile of a girl who’s already lucky in love. Just nod if I’m right.”

Lillian nodded once, then followed it up with five or six fast head bobs. “My boyfriend’s doing a section hike. Last year he did Springer to Harpers Ferry. This year, Katahdin to Harpers. We’re both teachers, me kindergarten, him sixth grade, and that’s how we’ll be spending this summer. I just dropped him off at Baxter State Park.” Wow. She was talking a lot. And fast. She was just nervous. Excited. Nervous-excited. “He had me make a reservation at the Quarryman Inn the night he plans to arrive in Fox Crossing. I think, maybe, he might, maybe . . .” Lillian couldn’t quite bring herself to say it. She might jinx it. That’s where all the nervous-excited was coming from.

“Might pop the question?” Honey finished for her.

Lillian managed to keep it to one nod this time, her cheeks warming. “We’re going to be able to spend the whole summer together. Well, in bits. Any time he gets to a town, I’ll be there. And he hinted that maybe we’d kick off the summer by getting engaged. He showed me some rings in a window and asked which one I liked.”

“It sounds like a done deal to me, then. A man doesn’t show a woman engagement rings unless he’s serious. But even though you don’t need any fox luck on that front, you have to see the panties we carry.” Honey winked. “I’m sure your man would like to see them—on you. There are some with little foxes all over, but my favorites are the ones with the fox face, just over the—Well, I’ll let you see for yourself.”

Lillian followed Honey deeper into the store, even though she liked her matching beige bra-and-panty sets. They worked with everything. Smooth lines, nothing to show through her clothes. Not that her clothes were see-through-able. She’d tried sexier lingerie a few times, but it gave her that same feeling trying to flirt did, just a squirmy sensation, and Owen seemed happy with her usual practical things.

“I have to know the story of your charm of foxes. There has to be a story, and I love stories,” Lillian said as she looked at the undies display. Not for her, but she definitely wanted to buy something, a keepsake to remember the cute little town, especially if Owen ended up proposing to her here.

“Of course, there’s a story, the story of how Fox Crossing came to be.” Honey straightened her fox ears, then fluffed her blond curls. “It started with a fox, of course, and my husband’s great-great-great-grandmother, Annabelle Hatherley. She’d recently been widowed, left with a little baby. The people of the settlement did what they could to help her, but they didn’t have much to give. The community was one bad winter away from annihilation, and that winter was closing in. And even with all her sorrow, wondering how she and her child would survive, when she saw a fox with her leg caught in a trap, Annabelle saved it. My theory is that she couldn’t stand the thought of even one more death, no matter how small. She took it home and some say—”

Honey leaned closer and lowered her voice. “Some say she nursed it with the same milk she used to feed her little boy, the milk from her own breast. The Fox survived, and so did the settlement. It wasn’t too long after that that one of the settlers, Celyn Hanmer, discovered slate on Annabelle Hatherley’s land, and that was the start of the Fox Crossing Mine Company. That company turned the settlement into a thriving town. Some say it never would have happened if Annabelle hadn’t saved The Fox, and the mine and the town and my store were named after the vixen.”

Honey adjusted the position of a ceramic fox on the shelf of a nearby curio cabinet. She was clearly waiting for Lillian to beg her to go on, and Lillian was happy to oblige. “I’m missing the connection. How did The Fox play a part in Celyn’s finding the slate?” The way Honey said “The Fox,” made it sound like it should be capitalized for extra importance, so that’s how Lillian saw it in her mind, and she gave it the same emphasis when she said the words.

Honey made a second adjustment to the ceramic fox, then continued. “It so happened that a fox, The Fox, Annabelle Hatherley’s fox, caused Celyn’s horse to shy and dump Celyn on his butt. He had to go after the animal, and, when he did, he saw something sparkling in a cliffside. He knew it was mica. He’d done mining back in Wales before he immigrated, so he knew that where there’s mica, there’s usually slate. He had the knowhow, and Annabelle had the land. They teamed up on the mine. Some say that fox is still with us and that whoever sees it shares its luck. I’m one of them. I know—”

The shop door opened with a bang, setting the fox bells tinkling, and a little girl, brown hair pulled back with easily a dozen multicolored barrettes, maybe about eight years old, raced over to Honey and flung her arms around her waist. Honey took a step back to absorb the impact, then hugged the girl tight. “This is Evie,” she told Lillian. “My great-niece,” she added in a whisper.

The girl let Honey go. “She doesn’t like the ‘great’ part. She thinks it makes her sound old. I’m staying here with Honey for the whole summer! Honey always comes to visit us, but, finally, I get to see Fox Crossing.” She pulled a business card cut into the shape of a magnifying glass out of the bright blue purse she carried and handed it to Lillian. It read:

“If you need my services, call the number. It’s my sister Kristina’s phone. My parents won’t let me have one, even though I’ve explained that it’s essential for my detective work and that if I got a special number that spelled out ‘Call Evie P.I.,’ I would earn more than enough money for a cell and the fees. I explained it would be a P.I., Priceless Investment, and they still said no. But Kristina will take a message if I’m not with her.”

Lillian carefully slid the card into her wallet. “I’ll only be here for about a week and a half, but you’ll be the first person I call if I come across a mystery.”

“Or it can just be if there’s something you want me to find out for you. My mother says no secret is safe from me. For example, I know that you work at a preschool, that you have a boyfriend, and that although most visitors to this town are hikers, you are not.”

“I was just telling Honey I’m a kindergarten teacher, so very, very close. But how did you know?”

“Your. . .