The Sounds of Secrets

by Whitney Barbetti

  I could remember the story of the constellation—something to do with a harp.

  Okay, so maybe I couldn’t remember it too clearly. But the dots were so distinct that I stared at that cluster of marks on her skin until it came to me.

  “Lyra,” I said, intending to say it under my breath. But the way multiple heads turned my way made me realize I’d said it out loud.

  “What’s that?” Ames asked.

  “Nothing.” I shook my head. “Something for a painting I’m doing.” Not entirely a fib.

  “Oh, right.” He turned his attention back to Asher and I turned mine away from the Lyra constellation of freckles on Lotte’s arm.

  “So where are you staying?”

  Lotte turned her attention to my mum. “Well, mostly hotels and cabins. I’ll be doing some camping here and there as well, so I’ve got a tent and a pack.”

  Ames laughed lightly. “I can’t imagine you camping, tent in tow, building a fire.”

  Lotte turned her attention to him. “I’ve been camping before.”

  “The caravan doesn’t count, Lots,” Asher butted in. “That had a bathroom. A door.”

  Lotte shrugged. “I’m not going to know what it’s like until I do it, right?”

  “In campgrounds?” I asked.

  Lotte paused, but didn’t turn her gaze to me. “Yes. And maybe other places.”

  I didn’t like this plan. For some unnamed reason, it just didn’t sit well with me. And it had nothing to do with the fact that Lotte would be in the company of another man—a stranger. Well, maybe it wasn’t all due to that. She was so slight in built. So … delicate. I could hardly imagine her commanding a dance floor—which I knew she did often—but commanding the wilderness was another beast entirely.

  “I just don’t understand why you’d go on holiday … to a place where there isn’t even plumbing.” Bianca put a hand on Lotte’s shoulder that seemed like she intended to comfort her, but her tone wasn’t comforting in the slightest.

  “America has plumbing,” Lotte said. “It’s just some of the campgrounds don’t. It’s not a big deal.”

  “It sounds wretched,” Bianca said, slicing her French toast into slivers. “Bugs. I hear they have huge bugs over there.”

  “They’re just bugs.” Despite the coolness of Lotte’s reply, I could tell Bianca was rattling her a little. “We have snakes here.”

  “But you’re going to rattlesnake territory. Aren’t they deadly, Sam?”

  I shot my head to Bianca. Why was she roping me into this conversation? And how much did I want to contribute, really, when it was obvious that Lotte was supremely uncomfortable as it was? “I couldn’t tell you, I don’t often keep the company of snakes.” Unless they were named Della, I thought.

  “I hear they’re deadly. You’re going to be staying in a thin plastic tent in the land of bears and wolves and mountain lions and snakes. I don’t get the appeal.”

  Seconds before she erupted, I watched Lotte’s hands tighten on her silverware. “Well, I guess it’s a good thing you’re not going then, isn’t it?” she lightly snapped.

  All the chatter around the table silenced and Bianca looked at Lotte like Lotte had physically slapped her.

  She opened and closed her mouth several times, like a fish, before she finally said, “I guess you’re right,” and swallowed the rest of her drink. “I hate to run, but I am dead on my feet from working all night.” She made a groaning noise, and paused before standing. I’d been in her company enough to know that she was waiting for someone to ask her how things were going, so she could regale us for the next hour with tales of all the celebrities she’d rubbed shoulders with.

  But either everyone else was as uninterested as I was, or they weren’t paying attention because Bianca left moments later, after a quick and awkward hug with Lotte.

  As brunch winded down, Lotte grew more fidgety. She was playing with her hair, with her silverware, but everyone else was engrossed in conversation.

  Her fingers were long, but still delicate. She spread them wide on the table and then curled the tips under, as if she was in search of something. When her nail grazed against an imperfection in the wood, she stopped her movements and explored it. I didn’t know why this intrigued me so much, but it did.

  Her head lifted, our gazes colliding for a brief moment, before she turned those bright blue eyes away.

  “I should get going,” she said softly. “I want to get there plenty early. Just in case.”

  “Right,” Ames said, standing up and stretching. “Don’t suppose I could talk you into helping me with the dishes, huh? One last time before the road?”

  “Oh, Ames,” Mila said with a playful slap on his arm. “She’s not your employee anymore.” She looped an arm through his and laid her head on his shoulder. “I can’t believe you’re actually leaving.”

  A small smile curved Lotte’s lips. “Me neither.” Her gaze traveled across the group of us, pausing a little bit longer on me before she kept looking around. “This is it.”

  “Let me get your bags and we’ll load up a taxi,” Ames said and disappeared.

  My mum turned and gave Lotte the hug that her own mother couldn’t. She rocked her gently, back and forth, and something about the two of them, embracing in a way that said ‘family’ caused me to grip the back of my chair a little too tightly.

  Lotte’s dad took his turn next, putting the necklace he’d picked for her around her neck, and then holding the sides of her head as he said a prayer over her.

  It was too intimate for me to witness. I turned around, bringing dishes to the kitchen. I needed a distraction, a reason not to keep staring at her with this overwhelming feeling of … something I couldn’t name. Some intrusive feeling, that made me feel like I was letting something—someone—slip out of my grasp.

  It was particularly frustrating because I knew I had no right to feel like that.

  She wasn’t mine to lose, I reminded myself.

  Ames hit the bottom of the steps and pushed a suitcase toward me. “Help me bring these to the taxi?”

  I wrapped my fingers around the handle of the suitcase and stared at it. In seconds, I’d be putting this in the back of a taxi and saying goodbye to Lotte. The girl who’d always been here, in this pub, hiding behind her sister or her brother-in-law, the girl who wasn’t a girl anymore. She was a woman.

  Lotte was in Mila’s arms when we entered the pub from the kitchen, giving Ames pause.

  “You got a good one,” I told him as Mila wiped moisture from her cheeks. “She loves your family as much as you do.

  “I know.” Ames was quiet, but there was a smile on his lips. Mila was the second woman he’d fallen in love with, and after being widowed while young, I wondered what it was like to love someone as completely as he had loved Mal—Lotte’s sister. And then, to love again. He was braver than I.

  The night Mal had died seemed like a million years ago, but I remembered sitting in the hospital with Ames for hours, staring at Lotte in the corner of the room, tears silently streaming down her face, eschewing comfort from everyone. Seeing those tears on her face now, again, but with Mila holding her like she was as close as a sister as she could be, made me feel like she’d come full circle in a way.

  But that didn’t make me feel any more comfortable with the sight of Lotte’s eyes swimming with tears. She turned over her shoulder, capturing me with those red-rimmed eyes, and I felt it deep then. The hurt she was feeling. I didn’t understand it, but just looking at her … I felt it.

  Ames was steps ahead of me, pulling her in his arms. “I’ve called a taxi. Should be here any minute and then we’ll go.”

  Lotte shook her head. “I think … I mean, I’d like to go to the airport alone.”

  Ames pulled back, surprise on his face. “But you’ve never even flown.”

  She wiped at the tears that slid over her cheeks. “I’ve never done a lot of things, but I’m going to do them.” She looked down at the ground and
took a deep breath. “I don’t want to cry at the airport too,” she said with a watery laugh.

  “Oh, and I don’t blame you.” Mila still had a protective arm around Lotte, and she tipped her head until they connected. “I’m gonna miss you, Lots.”

  “See?” Lotte said on another laugh, sniffling as she brushed away the tears. “I don’t want to cry anymore. I want to get it out here.” She braced a hand on the table, her fingers splayed out. “I’m going to miss this place,” she said wistfully.

  “It’ll be here.” Ames pulled her into his arms, and though they looked nothing alike—him with his olive skin against her pale skin and hair—you could practically feel the roots of family connecting all of us together. “No small thanks to you.” He pulled away, holding her face in his hands. “Have fun, but be safe, okay?”

  She nodded, the tears overflowing for her now.

  “The taxi is here,” Lotte’s dad said, looking out the window.

  We all turned, and Ames and I began carrying the suitcases out of the pub.

  This was it. She was seconds away from leaving.

  Ames opened the back door and shoved the suitcases in as Lotte approached. He gave her one long hug and then Lotte was in front of me, waiting.

  It was on my tongue to tell her I was sorry again. But before I could, she stepped against me, her face against my sweater for one long moment. My hand found hers and I held it as I leaned against the taxi. Her heart was beating fast, I could feel the pulse from where my fingers pressed into her wrist.

  “You don’t have to go,” I told her, quietly so only she could hear. “If you don’t want to, you don’t have to.” I didn’t know why I felt the call to say that, there was no reason for me to say it. I didn’t want her to leave. But, at the same time I did.

  “If I don’t go,” she said, her eyes the clearest I’d ever seen them, “I’ll never know that I don’t want more.”

  “More.” I swallowed the word down. More was bigger than the pub, than the flat, than me. She deserved more. I wanted more, but not the same kind of more.

  I wanted to say so many things, give her the things I couldn’t give, the things she deserved. And, as if she knew I’d been just a couple breaths from saying it, she waited patiently. I wonder how long she’d waited for things like this, patient, eyes and heart open.

  Too many times, I’d decided. “You’re going to miss your flight.” It sounded hollow, but hollow was better than anything else I could think to say.

  She pulled away, looked at me with eyes too full of everything that was unsaid between us, and then climbed into the taxi. I didn’t let go of her hand until she pulled away.

  Ames shut the door and the taxi started down the road, Lotte’s white blonde head the only thing we could see until it disappeared around the corner.

  “I can’t believe she’s actually gone,” Ames said, clapping me on the back. “Our little Lotte.”

  “She’s family.” Because she was. She was the sister of my best mate’s late wife—there was no word for that. Family was what Lotte was. And now she was gone. And I’d have to tell Ames what happened before his fiancée did.

  “I’m worried about her,” Ames admitted as we stood on the street, long after the taxi had disappeared.

  “I know. But she’s strong.”

  “She is,” he agreed. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  I turned to him. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “No,” he said on a laugh. “I’m glad you’re here, because I need help with the dishes.”

  As I followed Ames into the pub, I took a brief second to take stock of the moment, of what her goodbye had meant for me. It felt like I’d lost something that wasn’t mine to begin with. Something good, something precious. And not for the first time, I felt like a total bloody bastard.

  Chapter Ten

  “You’re the Brit,” a man said as he approached me in the Denver baggage claim. “I’m Teddy, Mila’s friend.”

  He was tall and blond, with a crooked smile and a strong jaw. “Hi,” I said, hesitating. “How’d you guess?”

  “Mila said you were pale and probably tired—you fit the bill.”

  “Oh.” I stooped over, grabbed the bag I’d pulled off the carousel. And looked back once more at the way I’d come, briefly debating turning around and going back home. It was silly, I knew that. But it was honest. “I suppose I probably do look a bit knackered.”

  Teddy laughed, taking the bag from my hand. “You’re British all right. C’mon, I’ve got the car at the curb, running. The cops will probably ticket me if we don’t get out there.”

  He was speaking so fast that I had to stop for a few moments, not even breathe, so I could understand what he was saying. We’d had tourists in and out of the pub, including Mila who had just decided to stay, but this guy spoke like his mouth was in a marathon.

  The mere thought of the word ‘marathon’ seared through me like it was Samson himself saying it to me. I shoved that aside as I followed Teddy outside into the dark sky. “What time is it?”

  “Just after eight.” He popped open the back of his small SUV and tossed my luggage in like it weighed nothing. “Want to put that stuff back here too?” He motioned to my backpack, carry-on, and purse.

  I shook my head, wrapping my fingers around the straps of my backpack like it was my security blanket. “I’m okay, thank you.”

  “That’s fine. We got about a thirty-minute drive to your hotel, and then,” he paused, waggling his eyebrows as he opened my door, “we’re going to a party.”

  I felt like I hadn’t caught my breath yet. Teddy rounded the car and hopped in so fast that I thought, for a moment, that he might drive off with my luggage and forget me. As quickly and gracefully as I could, I climbed into the waiting seat. Before I could snap my seatbelt in place, Teddy had revved up the engine and was pulling away from the curb.

  “So…” he said, fingers jabbing buttons on his dusty center console, “how was the flight? Or was it flights? Multiple?”

  “Oh … they were fine. Long.” I tucked my hair behind my ear, wished I could see my reflection. I didn’t think I was party ready, especially not at three in the morning my time.

  But I didn’t come all the way to the States for sleep, I reminded myself as Teddy pulled into traffic. A song came on the radio and Teddy made a noise of excitement before rapidly beating his hands across the steering wheel. He was so much energy that I felt completely awkward in his presence, like a total fish out of water. Where he was vivacious, I was quiet. Where he was messy—given his disheveled appearance and dusty car, I was uptight. Wearing multiple layers like I’d just landed in Antarctica and not Denver.

  There were so many lights, so many cars zipping in and out of lanes. Teddy, to his credit, didn’t appear to have a single road rage bone in his body. He took people cutting him off in stride, zipping around them and whistling along to the beat of the music. “You like this band?” he asked, peering over at me briefly as he checked his blind spot.

  “I don’t know this song,” I confessed. Something alternative, with a bit of bongo drums played on the radio.

  “Do you guys listen to our music over there?” he asked, leaning in a bit toward me, his fingers playing on his chin. “I’ve always wondered, you know? We get imports, like your One Direction, Ed Sheeran, Adele.”

  “I suppose we get your music over there too,” I replied, but I felt so discombobulated that I couldn’t name a single band off the top of my head. My fingers itched to pull on my hair, but I folded my hands tightly in my lap.

  “Do you have a boyfriend?” he asked, leaning in again. Though he was encroaching on my space, I didn’t think he was asking me the question for himself. It just seemed to be who he was, someone whose personality took up so much space that they had to lean into others. I didn’t mean that observation to sound as cold-hearted as it did in my head, but that was the best way I could think to describe him.

  “No, no boyfriend.”

 
“Okay.” He nodded, and then added, “A girlfriend?”

  I laughed a little. “No. No one.” If it sounded sad to Teddy, he made no move to show it.

  “I’m single too. Probably forever.” He gave me that crooked smile again. “Oh, shit, I need this exit. Hold on.”

  He wasn’t kidding with his request for me to hold on. The car veered violently to the right, to what, in my mind’s eye, was oncoming traffic. But this was America, and oncoming traffic was safely on the other side of the road.

  “Whoo!” Teddy said as his car decelerated on the off ramp. “Almost missed it. Would’ve had to double-back. What was I saying?”

  I blinked a few times, grateful we hadn’t died in the process of traveling across five lanes of traffic. “That you’re going to be single for probably forever.”

  “Oh, right. I’ve gathered that I’m a lot for most girls to handle. But that’s all right with me, I like being around myself the best anyway.”

  I didn’t doubt he did.

  After I checked into the hotel, it was on the tip of my tongue to tell Teddy I’d just see him the next day, when he was going to go camping and let me tag along with his group. Part of me wanted to curl up, message everyone back home that I missed them. But as I stared at my big white bed, the thought of falling into it and not sleeping because I was too keyed up wasn’t tempting enough.

  I checked my phone, not surprised that there wasn’t anything from Bianca. When I’d said goodbye to her at the pub, it’d felt like the end of our friendship. And while I mourned that, I was at peace with it, too.

  I quickly brushed through my hair, dabbed some concealer under my eyes, and then met Teddy out in the parking lot, where he was having the most incredible air guitar solo I’d ever witnessed.

  “I’m ready for this party.”