Fireflies in the Field

by Elizabeth Bromke

  “You said you want to stay in Birch Harbor. And Sarah does, too. So, that’s what we do, then,” he answered.

  The presentation of it smacked her in the face. Was she positive Sarah wanted to stay? Should Megan be the one to decide this? It was better for their daughter to finish at her old high school. There was no getting around that. So, then, what were the benefits that outweighed traditionally good judgment?

  Having a place to live.

  “But,” she began, her voice a whine that she couldn’t turn off. “We don’t really have a place here.” The truth had been buried deep. Deep beneath the fact that they didn’t have a place in their old neighborhood, either. They didn’t have a place in Brian’s townhome. Or anywhere. They just didn’t have a place.

  “Well,” Brian answered, smooth and easy and reliable and assured, “what if, since I’m going to work from home, what if I come to Birch Harbor? What if we get something there? It’s where your sisters are. It’s become Sarah’s second home. I think we just need to pick a place and do it, Megs.”

  We. Her heart throbbed against her chest wall. We. We. We.

  “Okay.” Her whine broke. “Okay.” Options shuffled through her mind. Not the Inn, of course. Or the cottage or the lighthouse. They could take up Clara’s old two-bedroom in The Bungalows. It sat empty, awaiting its next tenant. No, no. If she wasn’t going to live in a two-bedroom townhome on the outskirts of Detroit, then she’d be a hypocrite to move into one in Birch Harbor, even if it was rent-free. Even if it was her family’s. They were back to square one. They had no place. Her question was the exact same as it had been since they caved to financial duress and put their house on the market. “But where will we live?”

  “What about the land Nora left you?”

  “It’s just land.” Sarah’s voice crept into her head. What was the point of empty land? “And we don’t have any income,” she added, angry with him and herself for giving into the pull of pessimism.

  “You just told me to take a leap of faith like two minutes ago,” he reasoned. “What about that apartment complex where Clara lived? Amelia’s running it, right? Are there any vacancies?”

  She shrugged to herself. “I don’t want to live there forever, Brian. And, besides, why would you want to come cram in with us? You could just stay in your townhouse.” Doubt pooled along her heart, drowning any hope and turning into a belligerent monster.

  “You said you wanted a plan, Megan. And if there’s any question about what we should do, then we can at least remove the question of where. For all of us. For you, and for me.”

  The question of where. The question of what. The question of who. It could be a dream come true. Her fantasy of a reunion. But in a two-bedroom in The Bungalows?

  “Maybe you’re right. Maybe this is crazy. Maybe we should wait a year. In the meantime, you and Sarah can stay at the Inn or wherever,” Brian said, his voice hollow now. “Or move back to the old house. Stay there and keep her there. Like things were. We have the savings. I can use that for your rent and just keep looking for a job somewhere.” He could have sighed loudly or tsked or tutted or added a thick coat of sarcasm to everything he said. But he didn’t. He just said. He just gave her the alternative. The plain, realistic alternative.

  And it was exactly what she needed. “No. Let’s do it. We can live in The Bungalows. We’ll figure it out. Sarah can stay in the lighthouse if she wants. It can be her semester abroad.”

  Brian’s laugh fell across the line, warm and familiar. “Let’s ask her first.”

  “Okay, we’ll ask her. And if she says yes?” Megan asked, flirtation spilling across her question.

  “Then it’ll be just us,” he answered, the depth returning to his voice, the word heavy with innuendo.

  Megan smiled. “Just us.”

  8

  Clara

  Tired of holing up in her cottage, Clara had finally agreed to come help at the Inn.

  The sisters’ plans for a summer gala took on a new angle, though. Amelia admitted that opening the lighthouse and doing it right would have to wait. She and Michael were still knee deep in figuring out how, exactly, to run a museum, after all. And they kept growing distracted with any discovery, no matter how small. When she found a button in a windowsill, the day was shot in favor of a silly quest down a long, dead-end road that culminated with an email to the producers of Antiques Roadshow. Another time, when they were scraping old paint from the interior of the tower, she thought she detected a love note carved into the metal stairs. No amount of Michael’s convincing that it was errant graffiti could refocus Amelia.

  And while they had the basics well underway, nothing she alighted upon seemed relevant and very little really was left behind from the Actons. Anything that was became immediate fodder for speculation surrounding Wendell or, conversely, an item that might lend itself to curation.

  Clara wished for her sister to have some closure, but it seemed that wherever Wendell went, he intended for no clues to fall into his wake. She even suggested they’d have better luck digging through Nora’s room at the cottage, but Amelia had swatted that idea swiftly away like an irksome gnat. Clara just shrugged it off, pleased to keep everyone out of her home.

  Kate, for her part, agreed that the summer gala idea might be better planned as a smaller scale event, like a backyard tea party for guests or a rate drop for Labor Day Weekend, rather than a full-blown party. After all, the Inn could only host so many at once, and to have to turn away droves of guests may do more harm than good. Still, she bemoaned the fact that they’d miss the chance to have a blow-out summer bash, something, apparently, Kate had longed for since returning to town. Clara privately suspected it was the remnants of Kate’s youth knocking at the door. That, paired with Kate and Matt’s budding reunion, likely massaged a good dose of nostalgia into them. Summer love was a real disease.

  Anyway, with the decision to move forward with a Labor Day Inn-Warming Party, as Kate started calling it, they still had work to do, some of it unrelated to the Inn or the lighthouse as locales at all. For Amelia’s habit of stumbling across small, seemingly meaningful trinkets was catching. Soon enough, reminiscences took over every clean-out session.

  It was with that limited momentum, all four sisters (and the added help of the occasional man friend and Sarah) worked on clearing the attic at the Inn. On days they needed a break from the Inn, they turned their focus to cracking into boxes Amelia had found in the bowels of the lighthouse. The end goal? Progress. Progress toward settling back home and progress toward learning more about Wendell, if possible.

  Things were going as well as they could. Clara’s feelings toward Kate were softening each day. Small glances, little smiles, and a light touch on the arm here or there started to resume its old meaning. Sisterhood. Now, though, with something a little deeper. Something maternal. Something Clara, to be sure, had missed out on under her tutelage with Nora.

  But the relationship, if you could even call it that, with her newfound father still sat icy, like a heap of ice cubes frozen together in a misshapen lump, impossible to crack apart without the added benefit of warmth and time—both of which Clara and Kate and Matt had, in abundance. But still…

  Each time Matt came around to drill a hole here or patch a section of drywall there, Clara excused herself.

  She wasn’t ready. Not to reconnect with her dad. Especially when the dad she thought was hers for the past three decades had still dominated the greater part of their group’s conversations.

  Spending the summer with Kate, Amelia, and Megan had been Clara’s dream for so long, and now that it was here, she realized that a reunion wasn’t all butterflies and tulips. It was hard work to get to know people you thought you knew. At least, for someone like Clara, who’d never been very good at making or keeping friends.

  Bonding with Sarah was equally treacherous. Teenage girls, it turned out (in their daily lives, at least) were just as bad as the bullying reports that drifted on rumors through the tea
cher’s lounge and across the front office, curling like wisps of gossip, never quite believable or grave to those adults who were so disconnected from their own traumatic youth. Coming face to face with one such perpetrator changed Clara’s opinion on a dime.

  She learned quickly that Sarah was not a bully, necessarily, but her mood swings rivaled Nora’s. Part of the conflict was the cruel little flippant remark Sarah had left at the cottage just days before.

  Miss Havisham.

  On the one hand, it could be construed as a compliment. Miss Havisham was an elusive, enigmatic enchantress in Great Expectations. In some readings, that was.

  On the other, Sarah’s comparison landed as a slight. Something derogatory and demeaning. Or, could it be that Clara was being sensitive? Did her cousin even know what she was saying? Probably not. In all likelihood, Sarah had enjoyed Miss Havisham as much as Clara had as a high schooler. And how could Sarah know just how close to home the accusation hit? That Clara was just like old Miss Havisham, wrapped in lace at the top of a hill, out-of-reach and cruel.

  She couldn’t. She couldn’t know that Clara held a grudge against her mother or resented her so-called sisters or floundered in the summertime when she secretly, so secretly, longed for a laughing group of girlfriends to walk the beach with. Or a hot summer date to treat her to a dripping ice cream cone, which she needed help to shape up with a few flirty licks.

  Sarah knew none of that.

  And she never would have to know any of it, either. Because Clara was making a change.

  They broke for lunch, having spent all morning pulling weeds. Normally, Clara might stay for the food part and leave for the lingering part. The part that happened after they ate, when her sisters stretched back in their bistro chairs and churned new topics into the conversation like they were folding salt into a heap of dough.

  It was just the five of them, there, at an outside table of Fiorillo’s. Clara strategically positioned herself so that she faced the marina with all its midsummer bustling. After all, her plan had less to do with her sisters and lingering on the far side of their conversation and more to do with, well, really putting herself out there.

  Together they sat and sipped iced teas. Amelia asked Kate how things were going with Matt. Kate politely kept mum, for Clara’s benefit, no doubt. Megan asked Amelia how things were going with Michael. Amelia launched into a TMI monologue, elaborating on everything from how weird it was to date someone with a mortgage and a bookshelf all the way to their kissing adventures.

  “What in the hell are kissing adventures?” Megan asked, her eyes wild. “Wait a minute, don’t answer that,” she added quickly, gripping her daughter’s arm protectively. “Impressionable minds.”

  The others laughed, and Clara did too as she scanned the marina office. No sign of him.

  “What about you two?” Kate questioned Megan.

  Running her fingers through her dark hair, Megan raked her salad with the other hand. “Sarah and me?”

  “I mean Brian and you,” Kate replied. Clara glanced at Sarah, sympathetically. She understood the bizarre dynamic of parents whose romantic life was, well, complicated, if not totally non-existent.

  Megan’s gaze fell to her salad, but a small smile curled her lips, her famous cheekbones lifting above her mouth. Cheekbones were one of those things that you only really appreciated north of thirty. Did Clara have them? She pressed a hand to either side of her face then shook the thought away and again glanced toward the dock. A new throng of tourists deboarded Harbor Queen, a small day cruise ship that toured Lake Huron. White bodies glowed beneath broad hats. Beach bags and flip-flops shuffled with confusion up toward the Village.

  “Well?” Amelia pressed Megan.

  Sarah cleared her throat and asked to be excused.

  “Where are you going?” Megan snapped to attention, forgetting for the moment the question at hand. Or, perhaps, conveniently pushing it aside. Clara couldn’t quite read her older, brooding sister. Especially when the brooding was overshadowed by… what was this new emotion playing out on Megan? Joy?

  Sarah pointed a finger to the marina office, and Clara followed it, studying the object of her niece-cousin’s focus. Amidst the chaos of the encroaching sightseers bobbed an under-clothed circle of teenage girls. One of the faces was familiar to Clara.

  No, two.

  Vivi, Matt’s daughter. Tall, thin, and impossibly blonde. She was Clara if someone strung Clara in a stretching machine and soaked her hair in peroxide. Maybe that was wishful thinking.

  The other girl, Mercy Hennings.

  Clara narrowed her eyes on the girls. Two others joined them at the back of the office. Beach towels wedged beneath their arms. Their hands gripping chunky beach bags. Mercy’s dad was nowhere to be seen, but why else would the group congregate at the office?

  “Are you friends with them?” Clara asked Sarah, knowing the answer already. It was more judgment than curiosity.

  Sarah ignored Clara’s question and directed her question-in-the-form-of-a-sentence at her mother. “Mom, I was going to meet them later, anyway. I’m just going to go now. Okay?”

  Megan hesitated, shielding her eyes from the sun. “Why don’t you invite them up here, Sar?”

  “What.” Again, Sarah didn’t quite ask. Her flat tone cut across the table.

  It was Amelia who shook loose the tension, rising from her chair and holding her hands to her mouth before calling across the cobblestone walk over the hundred-or-so yards of expanse between their position on Fiorillo’s patio and the marina office. “Viv! Girls! Over here!” She waved enthusiastically, and Sarah sank in her chair.

  Maybe, Clara thought snidely, it did make sense that Sarah befriended younger girls. Her maturity was such that she might as well be entering her freshman year of high school rather than her senior year.

  But when the girls neared, Clara saw that the two less-familiar faces were, in fact, her former students. From years back. One had to be a junior. The other, a senior, at least, if not a recent grad.

  The chattering girls flip-flopped their way up the uneven path to the other side of the short brick wall that separated the patio from the flow of traffic inland.

  With Amelia’s confidence setting the tone, Sarah sat back up and flashed a cool smile at her friends.

  As they neared, Mercy, who lagged behind the group, peered around them, locking eyes with Clara.

  It was peculiar that Clara’s most asocial student was now tucked among this flamboyant bunch of would-be beach babes.

  Still, Clara smiled at Mercy and was about to greet her especially until a louder, valley-girl voice broke across their closing distance. “Oh my gosh, Miss Hannigan!” one of the older two squealed.

  Clara’s eyes flashed to her. “Paige!” she returned, putting on her teacher cheer. “And Chloe! Girls, how are you?”

  In many cities across America, Clara knew from memes and social media, crossing a teacher in public was an awkward, uncomfortable experience. In small towns, though, it was a common occurrence. Except, not for Clara, who basically did not have public outings very regularly. When she did, however, her students fawned over her like a sweet dumpling. Especially her female students who’d moved on to greener pastures, like high school, for example.

  She felt Sarah’s eyes on her as the other girls bantered away, commenting on Clara’s sunglasses and overalls—so hip!

  “We were doing yard work,” Clara answered lamely, feeling all of ten-years-old under their scrutiny.

  “So, Miss Hannigan, you know this one,” Chloe hooked a finger at Sarah.

  Clara and her niece-cousin exchanged uncomfortable glances. “Yep. Sarah is my…”

  “Niece,” Kate cut in severely. “Clara is her aunt.” She smiled at Clara, lifting her sunglasses so her eyes could fully pierce Clara straight down into her heart.

  “Girls,” Amelia cut in, her voice supplicant, ever the peace-maker, “So great to see you. Why don’t you steal Sarah away and go have fun on the s
hore? I could have sworn that I saw a pack of board shorts heading north.” She winked at Clara.

  “Okay, Sarah, call me before dinner so I know what your plans are,” Megan added as the lithe young woman rose and rounded the table, traipsing off with her new, bouncing hodge-podge of girlfriends.

  Clara watched them leave, and just before their feet hit the sand on the far side of the village, she saw Mercy’s head whip back toward the marina office.

  Darting her eyes back that way, Clara saw him.

  The object of her new focus. The man who might act as a sweet distraction during what felt like the unending tumult of her parentage.

  Jake Hennings. Birch Harbor Marina Manager and former biology researcher. Someone who knew the water better than locals. A handsome single dad. Clara’s favorite student’s dad, to be exact.

  Bolstering herself up, she took a long swig of tea and declared to her sisters, who’d begun needlessly gossiping about the younger set, “I’ll be right back.”

  “Clara, wait.”

  Clara looked down to see Kate’s hand on her arm. “What?”

  “The whole thing about you being Sarah’s aunt or cousin or whatever…” Pain streaked across her face, and Kate flashed her eyes at the other two.

  It was a stillborn conversation. Each time they were all together and alone from others, the idea of whether to make some small-town pronouncement butted its way into the conversation. And each time, they’d agreed that for the time being, it should sit. After all, in a small-town, reputation was more fragile than a brittle seashell. And since Kate was back, sliding beneath Nora’s crown, she clearly thought she still had something to lose.

  “What if Matt already told Vivi?” Clara protested, glancing toward the office, she saw that Jake had disappeared amongst the crowd.

  She looked back at Kate, sulking now.

  “I asked him not to. And he’s discrete, so I think it’ll be fine,” Kate answered, lowering her sunglasses onto her nose. “It’ll be just fine. One day, we can sort of, come out. If you want, that is.”