The California Dashwoods

by Lisa Henry

  Elliott wasn’t sure it had been a choice at all, but he nodded.

  It was good to see Abby smiling again.

  “Marianne looks like I did when I met your father,” Abby said. “You can see it lighting her up from the inside.” She sighed wistfully. “I can remember exactly what it felt like. Just a single touch, or a glance, and suddenly my skin was tingling all over.” She laughed. “Like I’d swallowed a bath bomb!”

  “Gross,” Greta said from the table without looking up.

  “It’s quick,” Elliott said softly.

  Abby clapped a hand over Elliott’s knee and jiggled his leg. “You worry too much, Elliott!”

  Elliott didn’t know if Abby was referring to the Marianne-and-Jack situation specifically, or if it was just a general observation.

  He gave a low hum in response that Abby might take as agreement, and then got up and headed into the kitchen.

  He poured himself a glass of water from the jug in the refrigerator, and drank it leaning up against the counter. His gaze was caught by something sitting by a stack of paperwork, half-hidden under the loaf of bread. He moved over to extricate it.

  The cracked worry stone from the shop.

  He picked it up and carried it back into the living room. “What’s this doing up here?” he asked.

  “Oh.” Abby blinked at the stone. “John was going to toss it out, and Marianne said you liked it. Nobody’s going to buy a broken worry stone.”

  Elliott rubbed his thumb over the crack, soothing himself with its familiar flaw. “I guess I’ll keep it then.”

  ***

  Elliott woke up late that night in time to hear the front door snicking closed. He climbed out of bed, dragging his comforter with him, and opened the door. Marianne was sitting on the back steps in her pajamas, face illuminated in the glow of the small flame as she lit a joint. Elliott wasn’t sure where she’d gotten it, but he suspected John was involved.

  Abby and Henry had always been liberal when it came to pot, and Elliott was no stranger to getting high.

  He wrapped his comforter around his shoulders and sat down on the steps beside Marianne. She tugged a corner of the comforter around herself and passed him the joint.

  They sat in silence for a while, handing it back and forth and getting pleasantly buzzed.

  “Did you ever want to be a different person?” Marianne asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” It would have been better, he sometimes thought, to be as fearless as Marianne, as hungry for new experiences, but that wasn’t the way he was wired. “Why? Who would you want to be if you could be someone else?”

  Marianne gave him the side-eye.

  “What?”

  She laughed. “You know what every teacher I ever had used to tell me?” She pulled her mouth into a grimace. “Oh, a Dashwood. You must be Elliott’s sister. I expect great things from you, Miss Dashwood!”

  Elliott snorted.

  Marianne took the joint back and inhaled. She held the smoke in her lungs for as long as she could. When she spoke again, her voice was strained. “You were a hard act to follow.”

  “Every time they made us do art in school, I used to get the teacher hanging over my shoulder, like they were waiting for me to do something amazing.”

  “You should call Ned,” Marianne said, and then, in response to his blank look: “Ned Ferrars.”

  “I know which Ned. It’s not like I’m drowning in Neds. How many do you think I know?”

  “I don’t know.” Marianne knocked their shoulders together. “Maybe you’ve got an entire Grindr profile set up where you only hook up with guys called Ned. You might have a Ned kink.”

  “I don’t have a Ned kink.” Elliott rolled his eyes. “Anyway, I don’t need to call him.”

  “You don’t need to,” Marianne agreed, “but you should.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because!” Marianne exclaimed, her eyes bright. “Because it’s so incredible to be in love! And we could be in love together! Like, at the same time, not with each other, because ew. That’s some Game of Thrones Lannister bullshit right there.”

  “I don’t need to be in love, Mar,” Elliott said.

  “But you’re sad,” Marianne said. “And I wish you weren’t. I want you to be happy too. I mean, it hasn’t been long since Dad died, but it’s okay to be happy now, right? Isn’t it?” She looked suddenly worried.

  “It’s okay,” Elliott said. “And I am happy. I’m happy that you’re happy.”

  “That’s a bullshit answer, Elliott. No offense, but that’s bullshit.”

  “It’s not bullshit.” Elliott adjusted the comforter. “And you don’t have to feel guilty about being happy. Dad would want you to be happy.”

  “He’d want you to be happy too.”

  “Yeah, but we’re different people, Mar.” He gazed down into the soft darkness of the backyard. “You throw your whole heart into everything. You always have, and I think that’s amazing, but that’s not who I am. I can’t just pick up the phone and call Ned.”

  “What’s the worst thing that could happen if you did?”

  Elliott laughed. “Um, he might answer!”

  God. Elliott could just imagine the six million ways that could go horribly wrong.

  Hey, Ned. This is Elliott. Elliott Dashwood. Remember? We last saw each other when we had each other’s dicks in our hands and your sister screamed that I was a gold-digging whore. So, how are things?

  And as ludicrous as that was, he knew that if she were in his shoes, Marianne would have made a call like that without any shame. Marianne had this knack of taking the most embarrassing things she’d ever done and laughing at them. When other people laughed too, she was already laughing with them. Elliott had never gotten the hang of that. Elliott was the sort of person who lay awake at night, still feeling the sting of humiliation from being six years old and accidentally calling his teacher Mom.

  And maybe it was more than the way he was wired.

  Maybe Elliott was working hard enough at dealing with his grief that he didn’t need anything else to wrestle with right now. He was happy that Marianne was happy, but he couldn’t juggle a bunch of different emotions at once. He just couldn’t. He needed to concentrate on practicalities right now, and on coming to terms with the loss of his dad before he even thought about something as new and terrifying as love.

  Marianne would tell him it didn’t work like that. She’d tell him that love didn’t come when it was convenient. Love was a force of nature, a hurricane, not a bus you waited for, your timetable in hand. You battened down in a storm, though. You waited it out in the cellar until it passed. You didn’t open up the windows and let it in.

  Whatever Elliott’s feelings were for Ned Ferrars, he was waiting them out. That was the only safe thing to do.

  “We should get some fairy lights,” Marianne said at last. “It would be so pretty out here with fairy lights.”

  Elliott took the joint off her, glad for the change in subject. “Yeah, maybe.”

  “Can we afford fairy lights?” she asked. “How poor are we?”

  “We are poor enough that we shouldn’t be spending money on fairy lights.”

  Marianne tilted her head. “We should get John to buy us fairy lights. Brother John, not cousin John.”

  “I don’t think we should bother him for a while.”

  Marianne huffed. “Oh, please. He’s got a gazillion dollars. He can buy us some fucking fairy lights.”

  “Or maybe we should play nice until we have to hit him up for things that actually matter,” Elliott countered.

  “This is your problem right here.” She knocked him with her shoulder. “You think fairy lights don’t matter.”

  “Yeah.” Elliott snorted. “That’s my problem.”

  “I bet Jack will buy me some fairy lights.” Marianne leaned against him. “I love him so much.”

  “Yeah. He’s pretty great.”

  Marianne smiled. “I bet he’d b
uy me all the fairy lights in the world, and then everything would be beautiful forever.”

  Elliott put his arm around her. He didn’t think for a second that Marianne needed fairy lights to make the world seem beautiful forever. She just needed to keep looking at it the way she always had. And maybe, when he was ready to face a hurricane, he could borrow some of that incredible optimism that lit her up from the inside.

  Sunlight glittered on the surface of the lake. Elliott leaned on the railing of the verandah at the Boathouse and watched Jack’s tiny sailboat dart across the water. The white sail shone brightly in the sun. Elliott had stood on the shore with Marianne half an hour ago as she’d waited for Jack to arrive from the other side of the lake and collect her. He wondered how long they’d be out on the water. Time probably passed differently for them in their bubble.

  In the two weeks since Marianne had sprained her ankle, Jack had been a constant presence at her side. Elliott hadn’t heard her laugh much since their dad’s death; it was good to hear it again now. And while two weeks was barely the blink of an eye to Elliott, to Marianne it must have felt like a lifetime. She and Jack were both equally besotted with one another.

  Elliott squinted into the sunlight and wondered what they were talking about out there. He tried to imagine himself sitting in a boat with someone—with Ned, because why not?—and what they might talk about. He and Ned had never really talked though, had they?

  John appeared beside him and leaned on the railing. “It looks beautiful out there today.”

  Elliott nodded.

  “Thinking of someone you’d like to take out on the water?” John asked, and spoke again before Elliott could think of a response. “Or worrying Marianne’s getting in over her head?”

  Elliott smiled wryly. “Maybe a bit of the second one.”

  “She’s just like Abby was at that age,” John said, staring out at the lake and past the last two decades. “And I think that turned out okay, didn’t it?”

  It was a hard thing to consider, because the memories of his father were still too painful, but Elliott knew John was right. Henry and Abby got a little over twenty years of happiness. That was more that some people got in a lifetime. Henry might have been taken from them too soon—God, way too soon—but John was right.

  “Yeah,” he said at last. “I think it did.”

  John smiled.

  “Jack seems like a good guy,” Elliott said.

  John nodded. “He’s spent most of his summers here since he was a kid. Not that his aunt associates with us common townies. Stick the size of the Sears Tower up her ass, that one. But Jack has always been friendly.”

  Elliott watched the small boat cutting through the glittering water.

  “Now,” John said, nudging Elliott with his elbow, “help me get the grill fired up, and I’ll make you the best tofu burger you’ve ever had.”

  “That bar is set pretty low, John.”

  John’s laughter was booming.

  ***

  Marianne and Jack spent the following weekend at a hotel. The tiny apartment felt strangely spacious without her. Greta took advantage of not having to share a bedroom; Elliott woke up on Sunday morning to the tinny strains of Greta’s music coming from behind her door. Elliott showered and dressed. The music was louder when he left the bathroom. Greta’s door was open, and Elliott looked inside. Greta was rooting around in a suitcase, flinging clothes behind her onto the floor.

  “What are you doing?”

  Greta twisted around, scowling. “Looking for my shirt!”

  “Which one?”

  “My ‘Dostoevsky is my brostoevsky’ shirt.”

  “Greta, did you bring it?”

  Greta huffed. “What?”

  “I haven’t seen you wear it since we moved.” Elliott met her worried gaze. “Are you sure you didn’t forget it?”

  “No!” Greta shook her head. “It’s one of my favorite shirts. I wouldn’t—” Her face fell. “Oh.”

  “What?”

  Greta slammed the suitcase shut. “It was in the laundry basket. That’s the last place I saw it. I left it in Massachusetts, Elliott.” Her lower lip trembled.

  “We’ll get you another one.”

  Greta dropped her gaze to the floor. “It’s just a dumb shirt.”

  “Yeah, well guess who got a paycheck last night? Go online and find the shirt.”

  “Elliott . . .” Greta met his gaze. She sniffed. “That’s dumb. That’s a dumb thing to spend your paycheck on.”

  “Order the shirt, Greta,” Elliott said. “You can pay me back by helping out in the store this morning, since Marianne’s decided to take the weekend off.”

  “You’re just jealous some hot guy isn’t sexing you up in a hotel room,” Greta shot back.

  “Please don’t ever say ‘sexing you up’ about anyone. Ever again. And I’m not jealous.”

  Mostly.

  “Right.” Greta huffed. “You’re not jealous at all. I don’t know what’s stopping you. You’re cute. You could get laid.”

  “And I am not having this conversation with my thirteen-year-old sister,” Elliott announced, and turned and headed for the kitchen. “Do you want French toast?”

  “Yes!” Greta called after him. “With extra cinnamon!”

  “I know!”

  Elliott got to work in the kitchen. By the time Greta was showered and dressed, Abby had emerged from her room. The three of them ate together, crowded around the tiny table, and then Greta followed Elliott down the interior stairs into the store.

  “Does John really make a living selling all this weird stuff?” Greta asked, poking around at a display of essential oils in pretty little bottles.

  “I think Paula makes all the money in their relationship.”

  Greta hummed. “She’s really keen about selling that land. Like, she wants someone to build a resort on it or something. If you had the choice between, like, here and the Ritz-Carlton at Half Moon Bay or something, would you really come here?”

  “It’s nice here.” Elliott turned on the register.

  “Is it Ritz-Carlton nice though?” Greta asked, waggling her eyebrows.

  “Since when are you pro-Ritz-Carlton?”

  “Paula has one of their brochures in her office. I read it when Mom and I visited. She wants to build something like that here. She’s the one making the comparison, not me. If it was me, I’d knock down all the fancy houses on the north side of the lake and build an eco-resort.”

  “You don’t even know what an eco-resort is.”

  “It’s like a regular resort, but there’s no golf course.” Greta shrugged. “Probably. And it would have yoga classes and everything would smell of patchouli. I don’t know. I bet John could run the gift shop though.”

  “I bet he could.”

  Greta lifted up a little box of worry dolls and inspected them. “Do these really work?”

  Elliott raised his eyebrows. “Are you asking me that for real?”

  “No.” Greta set the bright little box back down on the shelf. “I guess if they did, people would make mattresses out of them. How creepy would that be?” She poked at a crystal wolf. “So, what do you and Marianne actually do when you’re ‘working’?” she asked, complete with air quotes.

  “Well, sometimes we unlock the front door so actual customers can come in and buy things.” Elliott dug into the basket of worry stones on the counter, unconsciously searching for the one with the cracked surface until he realized what he was doing and remembered it was upstairs.

  Greta snorted, but moved forward to unlock the door and flip the sign to Open. “And now what?”

  “And now we stand around and wait in case someone actually shows up. And we play snap with the display pack of tarot cards. We’re working on a system of playing poker as well, but we keep confusing ourselves with the Major Arcana. At some point we should get some actual playing cards instead.”

  “Cool,” Greta said. “I’m down to play snap with Death and t
he Hanged Man.”

  The morning passed easily. They played snap, served the few customers who made their way into the store, and swapped out the meditation CD for a Led Zeppelin one they found in a drawer behind the counter. Greta amused herself by rearranging all the little crystal animals to make it look like they were fleeing from one of the wizards. Elliott left her in charge when he went upstairs to make sandwiches for lunch. When he got back, she was slumped on the stool behind the counter, playing a game on her phone.

  Just after one, the bells on the door jangled, and Colonel Brandon stepped inside. She walked stiffly up to the counter.

  “Hi,” Elliott said.

  “I, um, I need to reorder this DVD,” she said, and set the case down on the counter.

  “Oh,” Elliott said. “Is there a problem?”

  Her mouth turned down at the corners, and she snapped the case open. The shattered remains of the DVD slithered out onto the counter.

  “Apparently I didn’t find it as relaxing as it promised I would.”

  Greta’s eyes grew wide with delight.

  “And you want to reorder that one?” Elliott asked. “Or do you want to try a different one?”

  Colonel Brandon glanced at the wire display rack of DVDs and then back to Elliott. “I don’t know. I was hoping your sister would be here to give me some advice?”

  “Marianne’s not working today, sorry.” Elliott looked down at the pieces of shattered DVD again. “I don’t really know that much about yoga.”

  “Oh.” Colonel Brandon cleared her throat. “Will she be working tomorrow?”

  “She’s supposed to be,” Elliott said.

  “She can be a flake,” Greta added.

  Colonel Brandon looked at Greta in surprise, as though noticing her for the first time.

  “I’m Greta,” Greta said, and stuck out her hand. “The other sister.”

  Colonel Brandon shook her hand, her expression softening for the first time since she’d entered the store. “My name is Deanna. It’s nice to meet you, Greta.”