Captive Hearts

by Harper Bliss

  “I can handle Wendell Jones just fine,” I reply, perhaps a bit too sternly.

  “Okay.” Patty moved from Texas to Oregon a long time ago, but she still has that southern drawl to her voice. “I know you can, Ella. I was just sayin’.” She glares at me with those big green eyes of hers. “Do you want to talk about it?” she asks then, her voice much softer than before.

  Do I? During the three years I’ve been back in the town I grew up in, I have run into many old acquaintances, and have gotten to know the handful of people Kay calls her friends, but I haven’t really gone out of my way to make my own. Patty is, perhaps, the closest I have to a friend. Someone closer to me than to Kay, to whom I’m not related by blood. I could talk to my sister Nina, of course, but I already know what she’s going to say: Don’t do it, Ellie. Don’t let a primitive, ludicrous institution like marriage ruin your relationship. If I want confirmation that my gut instinct was correct this morning, then I would speak to Nina. But maybe it’s an outsider’s opinion I need.

  “Kay asked me to marry her,” I blurt out. Mister Pierce, who sits in the furthest corner of the room reading The Northville Gazette, looks up.

  I guess I did really want to talk about it, otherwise those words would not have fallen from my mouth like that in front of a colleague I’m not at all close to.

  “Oh my god,” Patty shrieks. “But—but that’s wonderful news.”

  “Can we go to your office?” I ask, because it’s as though I can actually see how Pierce’s ears have perked up.

  “Of course. Yes. And after school, we must go out to celebrate.” I should have remembered how happily married Patty is to her husband Steve, the electrician who fixes anything that Kay can’t manage herself at West Waters.

  I get up and make my way out of the break room. Patty’s office is just down the hall and I hurry, afraid I might burst into the most inappropriate tears before I reach its safety.

  “You’re acting as if this is bad news, Ella,” Patty says, worry crossing her face. “What’s wrong?”

  “I didn’t say yes. I couldn’t.” Uninvited, I crash down into a chair. What would Dr. Hakim have to say about this, I suddenly wonder. My former therapist in Boston would have the right words, and would steer me, ever so gently, in the right direction, but I no longer live in Boston. I live in Northville now.

  “Oh, goodness, Ella.” Patty sits down next to me. “Why?”

  I can’t possibly begin to explain this to Patty. I would need to tell her a few things I’d much rather prefer to keep to myself. Additionally, my next class starts in five minutes and I need to pull myself together for it somehow.

  “Because… I’m not the marrying kind.” I have to give her something. “I never thought Kay was either, but it turns out that she is.” I take a deep breath. “And now I’ve hurt her and I don’t know what to do.”

  “I’m sure she, er, understands.” Patty shifts her weight uneasily in her chair. This was not the conversation she intended on having with me. Maybe I should go see Cindy, the school’s guidance counsellor.

  “We’ll figure it out,” I say, but I’m sure this doesn’t convince Patty, and I’m not exactly convinced either. If Kay wants this, and she must really want it otherwise she would never have asked, there’s only one way for this to turn out. I’ll somehow have to find the strength, the courage, or the plain stupidity, to say yes.

  The bell rings, and I shoot up out of my chair.

  “Let’s go for that drink later, anyway?” Patty asks.

  “I’ll let you know.” With that, I hurry to the door and make my way to class.

  Kay

  I’m not one to give in to sentimentality too much, but today of all days, I wish one of my parents were still alive so I could talk to them about this. The water of the lake is cold as I swim to the Goodman cabin, the one where it all began. The cabin is empty now, most of them are. Another summer is behind us, the days are getting shorter and shorter, and as I ignore the cold sting of the water on my skin, and take a breather at the jetty leading to Ella’s parents’ cabin, I wonder if I have made a terrible mistake.

  Ella will always be Ella, I know that. I don’t expect her to change, not for me or for anyone, but I believed our love would have been enough to make her say yes. I genuinely believed that Ella Goodman would have wanted to marry me, despite her parents’ screwed-up relationship. I believed that three years with me was enough to have healed most of her wounds. I was wrong.

  I block out my thoughts and duck back under water. Ella wouldn’t be caught dead in the lake now. Once October rolls around, she just wants to curl up by the fire, and pretend it’s winter already. But I need the freshness of it, the way it makes me feel and clears the cobwebs from my brain. In my heart of hearts, while I shift water beneath me and propel myself forward, I know that I didn’t make a mistake. I know because I know Ella. Through-and-through, warts and all. I’m the only person on this planet who knows her darkest secrets and her most desperate thoughts. That’s how I know she’s afraid. And Ella does not do well with fear.

  I hoist myself out of the water, wrap myself in the towel I left by the water’s edge and hurry inside. Nina will be here soon for our weekly Wednesday lunchtime rendezvous. It’s her turn to bring food, so all I have to do is change and wait for her. I take my time to towel off and slip into a warm set of clothes because I don’t want too much time to just sit around and think. I’m always happy to see Nina, who works part-time as an administrative assistant at her father’s old company while she gets a degree in IT.

  “I never thought my sister would become the person with the most boring profession in the world,” Ella said when she first heard of her sister’s plans.

  “Don’t be so harsh on Nina,” I replied. “You do know why she’s staying here instead of going back to New Zealand, don’t you?”

  “Yes, that would be for Kaden Briars, a boy much younger than her, who she really shouldn’t be staying for.”

  I’d looked at her the way I sometimes do when I don’t want to say anything with words. Until Ella threw up her hands in defeat and admitted, “Okay, I know she’s staying for me. I just always thought that when she finally settled down, she would choose a more exciting career.”

  “This is Northville, Ella. People don’t move here for exciting careers.”

  “At the very least, I thought she would have taken the job you offered her at The Attic, instead of the one Dad arranged for her at his old company.”

  “Working in a bar isn’t very compatible with taking evening classes. And I, for one, could use a family member with IT skills.”

  Ella had chuckled then, and I’d been happy because Ella laughing, that stern face of hers breaking out into a more radiant version of itself, is one of the most beautiful things on the planet.

  “Hello, Brody,” Nina says when she arrives with a couple of salads from the deli in town. Somehow she has never gotten into the habit of calling me Kay. “What’s shaking?”

  I inhale deeply, unsure if I should say anything to Nina, but I’m not one to hold something to myself for too long, especially not something of this magnitude. The only thing that worries me is Ella getting upset because I told her sister before she even had the chance. But Nina and I have become excellent friends, and Ella knows she’s the most recurring topic of conversation when Nina and I get together—which we do every week without fail. I’ve come to appreciate this different perspective on the Goodman family. Because, while Ella and Nina are sisters, and they do share a few physical traits, personality-wise, they might as well be total strangers.

  “I asked Ella to marry me.”

  “Oh fuck,” Nina says. “Tell me you didn’t.”

  “I just told you I did.”

  “I bet that went down well.” She stares at her salad for a few seconds, as though she just realized she ordered the wrong one. “I know my little sister, Brody. She does not want to get married. You may be the most wonderful, exciting, sexy woman on the pla
net, but you can’t just put a ring on Ella Goodman. She has suffered too much for that.”

  It feels as though instead of only having to convince one Goodman sister, I have to persuade two of them that this is a good idea. “I know Ella blames John and Dee’s marriage for a lot that went wrong in her life, and I’m well aware of all the facts, but, contrary to popular Goodman sister belief, such a thing as a good marriage does exist.”

  Nina sighs, as though I’m missing the point. “Maybe in your eyes, but not for us. If Kaden ever had the audacity to ask for my hand in marriage I’d run a mile, and then another.”

  “Don’t you remember my parents?” I ask. It seems as though everyone but me has forgotten how ridiculously happy they were, despite all the odds against them.

  “I do,” Nina says, “but that was a long time ago.” She falls into a musing silence, and I can only hope she’s reminiscing about the summers she spent here as a child, and the times she ran into Patrick and Mabel Brody and their obvious happiness. But I guess it’s too much to ask Nina to remember any of that. Although I do think it’s a fair enough request for her sister who has been my partner for the past three years. Today of all days. Seven years since my father passed away and he made me promise that I would always be open to love and the possibilities and beauty it brings. I made that promise to him, and it took me years and years to find the right person. But ever since that first time with Ella, that first time she allowed herself to let me in, I knew she was the one. No matter her stance on marriage, I was always going to ask her. If only in memory of my mother and my father.

  “I think it might very well be a genetics thing for us Goodmans,” Nina says. “Some people are just not meant to get married.”

  “With all due respect, dear Nina, I think that’s a load of bullshit. Sure, this may apply to your parents, or you may feel it applies to you because you think it will save you from a great deal of unhappiness in your life, but it does not apply to Ella. I know that much.”

  Nina just shrugs. Unlike Ella, she has thick skin, and I can say just about anything to her without offending her. “Why is it so important for you to get married?” she asks. Neither one of us has touched the food.

  “Because, to me,” I’m quick to reply, because I have thought about this, and I have questioned my motives over and over again, and considered them important enough to indulge, “it would be like walking in Mom and Dad’s footsteps. They believed in love more than in anything else, and their marriage was the absolute best thing that happened to them. They told me over and over again. And I want that for myself as well.”

  “But you have Ella already. She worships you. She’d kiss the ground you walk on. Why the need to formalize?”

  “It’s what I want. I want to stand up and tell the world. I want the piece of paper. I want Ella Goodman to be my wife. I’m not saying I’m not happy now, because I am, but nothing would make me happier. And if that makes me a sentimental, overly romantic fool, that’s fine. That only means I take after my father, which is a thought I greatly cherish.”

  “Well, good luck convincing my sister, Brody. God knows she’s probably the most stubborn Goodman—and that’s saying something. She’d do a lot for you, but I don’t see her caving on this one. You know our family history.”

  “That’s what it is, though. History.” I stand by my point.

  Nina huffs out a breath. “That may be very true, but Ella is going to do anything she can to not let history repeat itself, including refusing your marriage proposal. You know what my sister is capable of, Kay.” The fact that she addresses me by my first name leads me to believe she’s referring to Ella’s suicide attempt four years ago, which is a bit of a low blow, and has absolutely nothing to do with this. On the contrary.

  “Why don’t we eat?” I say, because I will defend my position as long as I have to, but Nina is not the one I have to convince. It’s Ella I need to talk to.

  “Hell, yes.” Nina seems to have snapped out of her solemn moment. “I’m starving.”

  I’m careful to steer the subsequent topics of our lunchtime conversation away from marriage and relationships, though Nina does mention her boyfriend—and the bane of Ella’s existence—Kaden a few times. While it’s true that he is fifteen years her junior, he’s hardly a schoolboy, and I’ve witnessed first-hand how crazy he is about Nina.

  “When it works, it works,” I told Ella not long after Nina had officially introduced us to Kaden.

  “He’s barely old enough to drink,” Ella said, in typical exaggerated fashion.

  “Just let them be happy and stop judging,” I replied. “There’s nothing wrong with what they’re doing.”

  “She’s not your sister,” Ella had said, a snide tone to her voice—one I had heard before but only when her mother spoke, although I would never dream of saying that out loud.

  “Nina might as well be my sister.” Perhaps I’d had the first inkling of wanting to marry into the broken Goodman family then. That was more than a year ago.

  “Do you want me to talk to her?” Nina asks, once she’s finished her lunch. “Not that she’ll listen to me, but I can speak on your behalf.”

  “Oh really? And what would you say on my behalf when you’re totally opposed to everything I’ve just said.”

  “Nu-uh.” She waggles her index finger left and right. “You must have misunderstood me, Brody. I can feel your passion. I’m not opposed to it, I was just trying to explain Ella’s position. Maybe if we both work on her, we can get her to sway.”

  If we both work on her. It sounds ridiculous, and not at all how it was meant to go. “I’ll talk to her myself first.”

  “Suit yourself.” Nina rises. “I have a post-lunch date with the hottest man in town, so please excuse me.”

  “You are excused.” I watch Nina walk off and shake my head at the stubbornness of the Goodman sisters. I have my work cut out for me if I ever want to see my name on a marriage certificate next to Ella’s.

  Ella

  “You said no?” When Nina calls me as soon as the last period bell rings, at first I think something has happened to one of our parents. But if it were really an emergency, she would have had Principal Davenport notify me during class.

  “Excuse me?” News really does travel at lightning speed in a small town like this. Who else knows? Mom? Dad? Then I remember Nina’s weekly lunch date with Kay. They must have talked.

  “You said no to the best thing that has ever happened to you?” Nina asks. I was not expecting this from my own sister.

  “Nina, please.” I’m still in the classroom. I just switched my phone back on. My head is still full of the class I just taught and the kids who just left the room. “Give me a break.”

  “I’m outside the school. Meet me.”

  “Jesus.” I hiss into my phone. “What’s gotten into you?”

  “I think we should talk about this sister-to-sister,” she says.

  “Are you sure you want to give me relationship advice, big sis?” A bit below the belt, but I know Nina can take it.

  “This isn’t about your relationship, Ellie. It’s about making the woman you love’s dreams come true.”

  “Oh christ, there we go already with the emotional blackmail.”

  “Meet me at The Attic?”

  “What? No. I’m supposed to go for a drink with Patty. And you know Dad might very well be there. No, Nina.”

  “Patty? She should join us, then. And you know Dad doesn’t go on Wednesdays anymore now that he’s a diabetic.”

  “Look, Nina, I’d really rather not talk about this. I’ve barely talked about it with Kay. It’s hardly fair on her—”

  “If you’re going to play the fair card, Ellie, then you should definitely meet me, because I have a thing or two to say about that.” Nina always has a dozen things to say about everything.

  “Hey.” Patty appears in the doorframe. “Ready to—” She stops talking when she notices I’m on the phone.

  “It’s
my sister,” I whisper, which is ridiculous because Nina can hear me just fine whether I whisper or not.

  “Is that Patty?” Nina asks. “Have you told her?”

  “Yes, but Nina, I’m not sure—”

  “Let’s all meet at The Attic in five, okay?” As is so typical of my sister, she doesn’t wait for my reply and hangs up before I have the chance to say anything.

  I sigh and drop my phone back in my bag. “Nina’s joining us for drinks then, I guess.”

  “Oh,” Patty says. “That should be fun. I haven’t seen her in a while.”

  That’s because she spends most of her free time canoodling with a thirty-year-old man child, I think, but don’t say out loud.

  * * *

  On the way over, each one of us in our own car, I consider calling Kay, but yesterday—before she popped the question—she said something about meeting the new tenants of one of her properties, and I don’t want to disturb her. I also don’t really feel like talking to her.

  I’m relieved my dad is not sitting in his usual spot when I enter the bar. One less thing to deal with, at least. I’m the last to arrive and Nina and Patty have already slipped into a booth. I want to admonish Nina, but, of course, she knows full well I won’t do that in front of my boss.

  “First of all, Ellie,” she says as she makes room for me on the bench, “don’t tell Kay about this. I told her I wouldn’t mention it to you. She wanted to talk to you in private first.”

  “For crying out loud.” It’s futile to say anything further about this to Nina, and I know for a fact that Kay didn’t really expect my sister to keep her big trap shut, because she simply never does. She’s incapable of keeping the smallest of secrets. “Let’s have a drink.” I wave at Joe behind the bar, who has his eye on us already. He comes over and we order our drinks.