Snowspell

Chapter 2: Judge Maxx-1

Chapter 2: Judge Maxx

Twenty minutes later, Avery showered, shaved, and stared at himself in the bathroom mirror: tiny wrinkles around his hazel eyes, thick black hair with just the slightest sprouts of gray at his temples, more red than pink lips, pointed ears he hated because they made him look like an elf, straight teeth because he’d had braces at fourteen, and broad shoulders. He should have been a football player for the Templeton Knights instead of being in the drama club and band.

Breakfast consisted of a banana and apple, which were in a basket down in the store. And if his brother had listened to him, which most likely Evan didn’t and never would, at least not in this lifetime, Avery could wash the fruit down with a cup or two of coffee. His stomach grumbled for the banana, which he ignored. The store waited for his tending and was more important right now than food for his belly. After slipping into a pair of boots and his winter jacket filled with duck feathers, he walked down the flight of steps, exited outside, and crossed over the seven feet of sidewalk to his store’s glass front door.

In just that short period, he felt frozen inside, not that he minded, since he loved the winter cold. Shivers worked up and down his spine, and his cheeks immediately turned to ice. Perhaps Katy Davidson was wrong about the temperature yet again because it felt like negative three outside. He recalled that the Davidson children always got things wrong, ever since they were in grade school with Avery. Nothing had ever turned out right for them. The oldest Davidson boy went to jail for murder. The youngest girl ended up in Bekley, a mental institution located south of Templeton. Both the Davidson parents drowned in the Templeton River four years ago during a spring rainstorm. Last but not least, the baby of the family, Carly Davidson, turned into a porn queen at age nineteen, taking on ten college football players in her first adult movie called Ramming Team.

Fortunately, the Gauge family had been doing much better than the Davidsons throughout the years. Evan owned and operated his own law firm, and their parents were retired and healthy in the bayou, falling in love again. Avery’s thrift store wasn’t doing half bad, even since the weather turned cold a month before. As Evan had always said: No harm. No foul. His words to live by, and words that Avery agreed with, wholly.