by Maisey Yates
She jumped up and went back into the kitchen, just in time for the smoke alarm to inform her that her chicken had been left in for too long. She let out a sharp curse and jerked the oven open while waving her hand in the direction of the smoke detector.
“Dammit,” she hissed as she grabbed a dish towel and an oven mitt. She cleared the smoke out of the air with the dish towel as she removed the chicken. It wasn’t bad. It was just that the skin was a little bit charred, and some of the juices had come out and burned in the bottom of the pan.
She was still staring down at the chicken when she heard footsteps behind her. She turned, and saw David standing there, holding a bouquet of flowers.
“I burned dinner.”
His expression shifted, and he took a step toward her, those blue eyes, so familiar, intent on hers, the flowers clutched tightly in his hand.
There was no point thinking about new views. She had this view. It was everything she needed.
8
I said no. I want to go to California. Where it’s sunny and warm. I want to go to Hollywood, where they make movies. I talked to a man who passed through town and he said they’re always looking for young women to be in films.
Ava Moore’s diary, August 1923
Hannah
When they all convened at The Dowell House a few days later, Avery turned a focused eye and lifted eyebrow to Hannah.
“I noticed, via the invoice on the counter, that you hired your ex to do the household improvements?”
“You did what?” Lark asked.
Hannah looked at her sisters, discomfort shifting inside her. She hadn’t intended to talk to them about this. For a few reasons. The first being that it shouldn’t matter. The second being...she hadn’t talked about Josh with them.
Not ever, really.
She sighed. “I didn’t know it was his handyman business when I hired him. But his bid was really reasonable, and there’s no reason to not hire him.”
“Sure there is,” Lark said, eyes round and earnest. “He’s your ex.”
“My high school ex,” she pointed out. “It’s not like he’s my ex-husband, or something. It was years ago. Many men have passed through my life since Josh Anderson, and I imagine he’s had a few women himself. No use making a monument out of teenage fondling.”
The only reason he was significant at all was that he was the first. That was unavoidable. Firsts tended to change you. They’d been new and tender at that great mystery between men and women.
She doubted he was new at it now.
Because he had been handsome in high school, then he had grown up to be something else altogether. And that had nothing to do with the conversation at all.
Avery was literally standing on a counter, dusting the top of the cabinets and throwing random things down onto the floor. “Seriously,” she said from where she was standing. “I think there are old pieces of artwork up here that we gave Grandpa when we were kids. It’s ridiculous.”
There were so many unnecessary nooks and crannies in the house. It hid all kinds of things. Dirt. Memories.
She didn’t like it. She preferred the smooth edges and open spaces of her own apartment.
You couldn’t stash anything in there. It had to be neat and organized.
“Hey, you brought this up,” Hannah shouted up toward Avery. “You can’t muster any concern?”
“You said he wasn’t your ex-husband, like that meant it didn’t matter. Is it an actual dilemma?”
Avery dusted her hands on her jeans and hopped down from the counter. Then she winced.
“You know, you’re thirty-eight. Not eighteen,” Hannah pointed out, just being mean because she did not feel seen, and her sister was the one who’d brought it up in the first place and then wasn’t even indulging her. “You can’t go flinging yourself off of countertops.”
“I do yoga,” Avery said.
“And do you do cabinet cleaning pose in yoga?”
“I won’t jump next time,” she said. “And I am listening. And I’m sorry. About the awkwardness.”
“You don’t sound particularly sorry.”
“Hey. I live in the town we grew up in. I’ve run the gauntlet of high school ex-boyfriends routinely for quite some time. So I guess maybe I don’t understand the magnitude of it.”
Hannah stared at her sister balefully. “I literally have not seen him since I broke up with him.”
At this point it wasn’t about if it was awkward—because she’d decided it wouldn’t be—it was about forcing her sister to admit that it could be. Because Avery always did that thing. Where she acted like everything was just fine, completely manageable and lalala.
And maybe Hannah had just tried to do the same, but it was her situation so she was entitled to her pretense.
“Okay,” Avery relented. “Probably awkward.”
“You still don’t sound convinced.”
“It’s been a long time.”
“I get it,” Lark said. “You don’t feel awkward about things that you did nineteen years ago?”
Avery frowned. “I don’t know. Not particularly.”
The response was classic Avery.
She just wasn’t the kind of person who second-guessed. Which could make her sort of obnoxious sometimes.
“Well, were you in love with any of your high school boyfriends?” Lark asked Avery.
“I don’t know. I guess I must’ve felt like I was at one point,” she said.
“I mean, I should be over it,” Hannah said, trying to sound sage. “It’s just that I’m not.”
The words fell flat in the air, and her lungs felt flat right along with them. She didn’t want to admit that to herself, let alone her sisters. But now she’d said it.
“Did he hurt you that badly?” Lark asked.
She sighed. She didn’t know how she’d managed to get into this conversation but she was in it now. The only way was through. “No. I hurt him that badly. And that... That really was terrible. The worst thing. Awful.”
It was. And she bet Avery had no idea how that felt. She could be sanguine about her nice high school relationships. Hannah’s hadn’t been nice.
“I don’t think I’ve ever broken anyone’s heart,” Lark said.
“Well, I haven’t since. I don’t recommend it as an experience. Anyway. Things are fine,” she said. “Now that we’ve established I have a right to have a feeling.”
“You’re just usually very pragmatic,” Avery said.
“I’m being pragmatic,” Hannah said. “I hired the man.”
“Do you still think he’s hot?” Lark asked.
It was Lark’s turn to receive her most evil glare. “That doesn’t have anything to do with anything.”
“So you do,” Lark said, her tone obnoxiously knowing and not wrong, sadly.
She gritted her teeth and refused to show her sister that she’d irritated her.
“There are worse things,” Avery said, “than enjoying the look of the man you hired to work on your house.”
“Sure,” Hannah said, glaring at her sister. “Maybe I’ll hire one of your exes too.”
“What does the yard look like?” Avery asked, abruptly changing the subject, and Hannah had to wonder if her sister was being kind to her, or not wanting the conversation to rebound.
And without waiting for anyone to respond, Avery charged out of the kitchen and into the little add-on sitting room. Hannah followed after her, taking in the layout of the room. The purple velvet couch and the bright rug. Definitely furniture her grandmother had had brought in. She hadn’t spent very much time sitting in the house since coming back.
“I wonder what Gram was planning on doing with this place,” she said.
“I don’t know. I never got the impression she wanted to live here again, did you?” Avery asked.
“Not really. I suspect there were memories she didn’t necessarily want.”
“That’s what I always thought.”
Avery pushed through the double French doors, and out onto the deck. There were some chairs, with no cushions on them, but the green lawn was looking nice if a bit overgrown. At the edge of the lawn was a trellis with grape vines that grew over the top of it and cascaded down the side. Another fort.
A smile touched Avery’s face, and she made her way down the porch and onto the grass, Lark following after her.
Hannah stood for a moment on the porch and felt another strange pull backward. Like when she’d seen Josh the other day.
Her sisters running around the backyard like they were kids reminded her of being with their grandparents—either here or with their grandmother at The Miner’s House. The only time they’d gotten along. Without friends or violins or Mom likes you best between them.
Avery disappeared beneath the vines, only her feet visible in the gap between the twisting greenery in the ground.
“Did you find any badgers in there?” Lark called.
“No badgers,” she said. “I can confirm no small mammals of any kind.”
“Thank God.”
Hannah relented and walked down the porch steps, stepping lightly on the grass because parts of it were spongey and she didn’t want her boots sinking into the mud. Then she stooped down and went beneath the vines, a strange, tightening sensation in her stomach. It was because they had been talking about Josh. And that brought old memories up, twisting around her heart like grape vines.
Lark entered the canopy behind her. “I used to love playing in here,” she said.
“I lost my virginity in here,” Avery said.
Hannah nearly snapped her neck turning to look at her sister, and saw that Lark had done the same.
“You. You lost your virginity in here?”
Avery shrugged. “Yes.”
“What? When? When you got back from college?”
“No. When I was sixteen. I...okay, so I was thinking about the yard because you brought up my exes. I don’t know that I loved him. But man, Danny Highmore was hot.”
That shocked Hannah down to her core. She’d sort of assumed Avery had waited for her one true love. Like maybe she’d been a vestal virgin when she’d married David.
“No way,” Lark said. “I didn’t know you ever did anything sneaky.”
“Because I’m very, very sneaky,” Avery said, tossing her blond hair, and tragically for her, still looking every inch the suburban mom that she was in her skintight black hoodie and black leggings.
“This really bums me out,” Hannah said, looking around.
“Why? It was a long time ago. It’s not like you’re going to catch anything standing here.”
“Yeah. But I went to third base in here with Josh.” She frowned. “It just feels wrong.”
She was hoping the easy admission of the fact she and Josh had gotten up to no good here might do something to ease the mystique of it all.
“Why am I standing here?” Lark asked, sounding distressed.
“Are you emotionally scarred?” Avery asked.
“Yes,” Lark said. “I used to have tea parties in here.”
“Right. So you were pure as the driven snow when you were a teenager?” Hannah asked.
“I did exactly what was asked of me, thank you.”
“Lark,” Hannah said, shocked. “Were you a virgin in high school?”
“I was! I was under the impression we all listened when Mom gave awkward talks about knowing when to say no and respecting ourselves and speaking softly, but carrying a can of mace.”
Hannah shot Lark a hard glare. “Did you really think I was that well behaved?”
They stood there, underneath the vines, the sunlight barely filtering through the green, casting them in a golden glow.
“I thought you were mostly in a serious relationship with your violin. I guess if I thought about it—and I didn’t—I would have figured you and Josh did it.”
Hannah snorted. “Did it? Are we in high school now?”
“Well, we’ve never really talked about this sort of thing!”
It was true, they hadn’t.
Though, Hannah had to admit she hadn’t exactly taken a keen interest in Lark’s personal life as a teenager. Her own had been too consuming.
“But it really never occurred to me that you would do anything like that, Avery. I thought only Hannah snuck,” Lark said.
“Hey!” Hannah said.
“Well,” Lark said. “You were sneaky. But I thought it was just cigarettes more than boys.”
“There was one boy,” Hannah said.
Not sure why she was being defensive since there had been many since, and she wasn’t insecure about it. Maybe because Josh hadn’t felt like sneaking around to her. He’d felt dangerous and thrilling. Wonderful and terrible.
Even now, what she’d shared with him wasn’t like anything else ever had been.
And it killed her to admit that to herself.
“I didn’t want to get caught,” Avery said. “Mom would have killed me. But I wanted him. I...wanted things.” Avery frowned, then shook her head. “Might as well have been another life.”
“I mean, I didn’t consider myself rebellious,” Hannah said. “Not at the time, anyway.”
She had just felt so much. That had been her problem back then.
The need to leave, the need to stay. The clawing desperation to do whatever it took to get to her preferred school. She had been consumed with it. And in the end it had burned her to ash. But the bonus of being ash was that it was much harder to set her ablaze now.
That utter destruction had been beneficial in some ways.
Like going from lava to obsidian. She was hard now. And if she ever regretted the loss of that bright burning girl that she’d been... Well, she let herself have a moment, and then she moved on. She also let herself remember that that girl had hurt. All the time. It was better to be the person she was now. Sleek and shiny with no vulnerable surfaces.
There were no loose ends here, not for her. There was only her life back in Boston. This was...funny. Interesting in a way. A chance to be home without really being home. This was just a stopover for her.
“You really loved Josh, didn’t you?” Lark asked, an open sweetness in her voice, a sentimentality that scraped Hannah raw.
“Yeah. I did. Which was a good thing because I learned something valuable. Love sucks, and you don’t need it.”
“Seriously?” Avery asked. “That’s a bit cynical, even for you.”
“Okay, how about this. I’ve had love. And through that discovered it wasn’t for me.”
“Don’t you miss...men?” Lark asked.
Hannah laughed. “Um. No. When I want one, I invite him home. Add that to the list of things I’ve learned. You can have sex without being in love.”
“Sure,” Lark said. “But...companionship with sex is nice.”
“No,” Hannah said, crossing her arms like it might block out any feelings her sisters were trying to project onto her. “I don’t want companionship, I want an orgasm. And then I want whatever dude I brought home out the door.”
“You don’t wonder what you’re missing?” Avery asked.
“I’ve been in love,” Hannah said. “I haven’t been the principal violinist for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, though. So, that’s next on the list. And anyone in my life has to go beneath that as a priority. I don’t know very many people willing to do that. Do you?”
“A job is just a job,” Avery said. “Love is... It’s important. You build a life with somebody and... And it matters. It means something. It becomes part of who you are.”
Avery had a way of making her choices sound superior even when
she was trying to be nice.
“You say that like I don’t know,” Hannah said. “I just don’t want it. I know that’s hard for you to understand, but I like the person that I am. I don’t want to change for anybody.”
“I just think that’s sad.”
“Because you can’t see that somebody could be happy with a different life than you have. Just be happy with your situation and don’t worry about mine.”
“Okay, Goody Two-shoes,” Avery said, turning to Lark. “Why weren’t you sneaking off with boys?”
Lark looked like she’d swallowed a rock. “I don’t know,” she said, lifting her shoulder in a way that made Hannah almost certain she knew exactly why. “I couldn’t have... It would have destroyed me. Like, can you imagine? I would have imploded. It was way better to only have romances in my head. I had to go...grow up.”
It was easy to look at Lark and see a boundless optimist, but Hannah had to wonder if it was...just the opposite to what she did. If Lark used a sort of untouchable facade of joy to keep people from digging deep, the way Hannah used barbs and prickles to keep people at a distance.
Lark seemed to let things roll off now, to an almost maddening degree. Had gone from screaming over every insult to waving a hand and smiling.
And Hannah had missed the transition between those two versions of her sister.
“Are you happy with your life?” Hannah asked, directing the question at Lark. “I mean, since you’re lecturing me about my happiness and all.”
“No,” Lark said. “I wouldn’t have uprooted everything if I was happy.”
“Why aren’t you happy?” It seemed only fair that Lark should have to share, since Hannah had been forced into talking about Josh.
Maybe this was...building bonds, though Hannah hadn’t imagined it could be so uncomfortable.
“I don’t know. That’s the crazy thing. I don’t feel like I found my place. So, I’m in awe of the two of you and the fact that you’re so certain of yours.”
“I think you have to decide to know where your place is,” Hannah said. “It would have been easy for me to decide to stay here. I loved Josh and all. But I knew logically that it wouldn’t do anything for me, so I decided to break up with him. I had to choose, and I did. There’s no drifting into the place I’m at, Lark.”
