Unleaving

by Melissa Ostrom

  “I don’t blame you.” Ran twisted the ponytail into a tight coil. “You shouldn’t feel like you have to.”

  “If you don’t want to,” Julia said.

  “But if you ever do, you, like, totally can.” Ran stood suddenly and crossed to the window that overlooked the woods. “With us, I mean.”

  “We’re here for you,” Colleen added.

  Julia nodded. “You’re not alone.”

  Hope planted her hands on her knees. Fiercely, she said, “You are never alone.”

  “Thanks.” Maggie tried to smile.

  Ran folded her arms. She toed the floor in a little sweep and said briskly, “There’s this book coming out next month that’s supposed to be really good. It’s called The Bear and the Nightingale. I think we should read it.”

  “What’s it about?” Maggie asked, grateful for the change of subject.

  “Magic and fairy tales. It takes place on the edge of the Russian wilderness. This winter demon lurks…”

  Ran told them about the book, and the conversation stayed on the safe subject of fantasy novels. They didn’t talk for long. After a few minutes, Ran checked her phone and said, “We’d better get going.”

  “Julia has to babysit her brothers,” Colleen explained.

  The departure (a flurry of see-you-soons and tentative pats and little waves) was awkward—but not as awkward as the visit’s beginning had been.

  “Your friends are nice,” Linnie observed afterward.

  “They are. They’re really sweet.” Maggie felt a fluttery lightness in her chest. She’d made it through the post-Marge reunion. More than that, she didn’t have to be Marge anymore. She didn’t have to hide and pretend. “You should go with me the next time.”

  “To your book club?”

  Maggie nodded.

  “Okay.” Linnie smiled. “I like books.” She drew out her phone, absently glanced at it, then yelped, “Shit! I’ve got to pick up Kate.” She scrambled out of bed. “Hurry up. You’re coming, too.”

  “I am?” She grimaced. Kate wasn’t going to be happy to see her. The kid never was. On the other hand, going with Linnie gave Maggie something to do, and doing something with someone suddenly seemed smarter—and healthier—than not doing anything all by herself.

  Maybe Linnie suspected the same, because she said, “Yes, you are.”

  24

  THE SAAB WAS sitting outside the cabin.

  “Still driving Kyle’s car?” Maggie asked, surprised.

  “Where he is right now, well … let’s just say he won’t have any use for a car.”

  “Ooooh.” Yikes.

  She smiled. “Buckle up, Margaret.”

  At the elementary school, Linnie swiftly parked and jogged up to the building. She reappeared a minute later, smiling down at her daughter and holding her hand.

  Kate looked annoyed when she spied Maggie in the front seat, but she didn’t make any cutting remarks, just delivered a kick to the back of Maggie’s seat as they drove away from the school.

  Instead of driving north, in the direction of Wren’s cabin, Linnie headed south.

  “Where are we going?” Maggie asked, then turned around to scowl at Kate when the girl kicked her seat again.

  “Allenport.” Linnie stared straight ahead. “I have to stop by Caleb’s.”

  When they got there, despite the wet, cold weather, they found him outside, leaning against a post on the porch. He was talking to Sam.

  As soon as Linnie parked on the side of the road, Kate peeled out of the car, holding a spiral notebook. It flapped like a wing. She raced up to her dad.

  He caught her and gave her a jostling hug. “Now this is a nice surprise.”

  “Surprise!” Kate shouted, and giggled when he carried her down from the porch, hugely bouncing her with each step.

  Caleb followed and gave Maggie a cheerful nod. “How’s it going?”

  “Good.” Tolerable. She smiled wanly. “How about you?”

  “Great.”

  Sam snorted. “Caleb’s always great.” He set his daughter back on her feet and held her against his side, palming the dark head. “What’s up?” he asked Linnie.

  She shrugged and shoved her hands into her coat pockets, then she sat heavily on a middle step, exhaling a sound like a high-pitched phoof. “I’m beat,” she said to no one in particular.

  “So am I,” Sam said. Kate wiggled out from under his palm. For a second, he didn’t seem to know what to do with his hand. Then he closed it into a fist and held it against his heart. “It’s been a long week.” His frown flickered over his daughter.

  With the spiral notebook tucked under her arm, Kate jogged up the stairs past her mother. On the landing, she spun around and ordered Caleb to catch her. As soon as he did, she laughed. “Put me down!” Then she trotted back up the stairs and said, “Catch me again, Caleb!”

  The notebook slipped away from her on the second leap.

  Maggie collected it and wiped off the old snow streaking its cover. “Want me to hold this for you?”

  “No.” As if Maggie were planning a confiscation, Kate pounced and grabbed the notebook. “This is my book of secrets.”

  “Oh.” Another book by Kate Blake. Exciting. “Okay.” She turned back to Linnie.

  Kate sidled between them and pressed the notebook against her chest. “Want to know what today’s secret is?”

  “Sure. What’s today’s secret?”

  “Duh. I can’t tell you. It’s a secret.”

  The others found this funny. Maggie smiled. It was kind of funny. But mostly it was annoying.

  Linnie stood. “I’m getting cold. Let’s go in.”

  When Caleb got to the door, he bent to pick up a bag and explained, “Leftovers. Sam and I went to Mythos for lunch. Hungry?”

  Maggie thought about it. “Actually, yes. Starving.”

  “Me too,” Linnie said.

  He beamed. “We’d better feed you, then.” And he waved them all in.

  One of Caleb’s housemates lounged in the living room. It was Jack, the weight lifter Maggie had met the first time she’d visited the place.

  A mostly empty bowl of popcorn rested on his stomach. “How’s it going?” he asked, turning off the television. He passed Sam the remote and tossed popcorn to Fluffster. When Kate got on the floor and opened her mouth, he laughed and attempted a few dunk shots on her as well. The dog sniffed around and cleaned up the misses. Yawning, Jack rose. “Naptime. See you guys.” He trudged out of the room, just as Caleb returned from the kitchen, carrying a plate and two forks.

  Kate threw herself on a dingy couch and stretched, hands reaching toward one end, toes pointing toward the other. “All mine. You guys have to share those two little couches.”

  While Sam and Caleb got into a conversation about a professor, Maggie and Linnie shared the plate of Greek food. Afterward, Linnie stood and wandered around, stopped by the coffee table to flip open an abandoned physics textbook, then picked up some playing cards spread there. She absently turned them all in the same direction, tapped them into a tight pack, cut the deck, and neatly wove the cards in a way that made them look zippered. She added a flourish at the end by springing the cards together. “The faro shuffle.” She smiled. “A trick.” She left the deck on the table and fell back, sprawling next to Maggie.

  Kate, still hogging a couch, patted the cushion. “Up. Up, Fluffster!”

  The dog ran out of the room.

  With a screech of his name, Kate shot off the couch and pounded after him.

  “Stay downstairs, Kate!” Sam called.

  Maggie heard Kate’s feet on the stairs and waited for Sam or Linnie to order her back down. They didn’t. She sighed.

  Linnie looked distracted. She got to her feet again and went to the window just as the sun found a crack in the clouds. The light appeared to rush down to meet her. Fingerprints and grime smeared the panes, but the shine sifted through the smudges, and licked Linnie’s hair into a radiance, like threads
of precious metal. She lightly touched the glass, then, almost violently, whirled around. “Okay.” She slapped her hands on her hips. “Where is it?”

  Sam stopped talking midsentence and stared at her blankly.

  “I’m not talking to you,” she told him impatiently.

  “It?” Caleb asked, confused. But then his eyes widened, and his lips began to curl into a smile.

  “Oh!” Sam grinned. “It.”

  “Yes. It.” Glaring outside again, she folded her arms and added witheringly, “I know you still have that thing, Caleb. You probably planned to save it until my dying day. God forbid you give up hope.” She flicked him a pitying glance, but there was a grudging affection in her voice when she added, “Forever hopeful Caleb.”

  He winked at Maggie. “It’s in my room.”

  Linnie swatted the air. “Go get it.” As Caleb made for the stairs, she turned her glare on Sam. “And I’ll read it in my own time, when I’m good and ready, without an audience, thank you very much.”

  “What?” Sam held up his hands. “I didn’t even say anything.”

  She sniffed and went back to scowling at the sun-silvered clouds.

  Sam surreptitiously turned to Maggie and mouthed, Yay!

  * * *

  After Linnie dropped her off at the cabin, Maggie went in search of Wren.

  Linnie’s willingness to read the letter and face its news, no matter how potentially grim, made Maggie feel optimistic. She wanted to talk to Wren about it.

  But the aunt wasn’t in the studio, and her bedroom door was closed. Maggie wasn’t surprised. Wren had been feeling wiped out lately, juggling all the media inquiries about the exhibition. She was probably resting.

  Maggie trudged up to the loft. She tried to read but couldn’t concentrate. She tried to nap but couldn’t fall asleep. After a while, she wandered back to the kitchen and fell into a chair at the table. It was suppertime, but she was still full from the leftover spanakopitas.

  She checked her phone. Her father had texted, so she wrote back to let him know she was fine. She hesitated, then texted her mother as well, just to say she missed her. Her email was still crammed with the new and unread. She had to get rid of some of them. She tapped the icon and discovered, right at the tippy-top, a message from Jane Cannon.

  Maggie was dumbfounded.

  With a shake of her head, she opened the message.

  I’ll go back if you go back.

  That’s it. That was all it said.

  Maggie sat in the chair for the longest time, mentally replaying the handful of words and automatically rejecting them, her refusal repeating like a refrain, I can’t go back, I can’t go back. She might have done this for the rest of the evening if the door hadn’t suddenly flown open, ushering in a thin scattering of snowflakes.

  Linnie stood there, the night behind her. Her expression was unfamiliar, un-Linnie-like, an exercise in Os, rounded mouth and eyes.

  Crap. Maggie set the phone on the table. “Bad news?”

  “Just … weird.” Linnie blindly closed the door behind her. “Margaret, I—I have a sister.”

  “A sister?”

  “Half sister, from my dad’s side.”

  “Your dad?”

  “And not even a younger sister.”

  “Not even younger?”

  Linnie smiled, her old self again. “You sound like a parrot.”

  Maggie, still discombobulated from Jane’s email, struggled to process Linnie’s news. “Wow,” she finally managed. “Tell me about her.”

  “I didn’t know she existed. A sister.” She strode to the table, sat on the edge of a chair, then immediately stood again. “The letter was from her. She gave it to my old neighbor, hoping that Mary would be able to get in touch with me and pass it along.”

  “Did she say anything about herself?”

  “You won’t believe it.”

  * * *

  Maggie slept poorly. She couldn’t stop thinking about Jane’s email—Jane’s challenge. In the morning, she hauled herself out of bed, searched for her cardigan in the tangle of clothes on the floor, and focused on Linnie’s happier news about her half sister.

  Danielle Pinsky was thirteen years older than Linnie. She’d been adopted at birth to become the only child of Adam and Rael Pinsky of Syracuse and was now a surgeon at Syracuse Hillside Hospital. Her research into her origins had led her to Linnie’s old neighborhood, the last place her birth father had lived. There, thanks to Mary Tate, she’d learned about Linnie. She hoped to meet her and gave her email address and phone number, so Linnie could contact her.

  “Do you want to meet her?” Maggie had asked.

  “I—I think I do,” Linnie had stammered. “But not by myself.”

  “I’ll go with you,” she’d offered, hearing in her own words an unintentional echo of Jane’s I’ll go back if you go back.

  Now, giving up on finding her cardigan, she grabbed her hoodie instead.

  On her way downstairs for a cup of coffee, she heard a commotion: the rev of an engine, Wren shouting a greeting from the porch, the thud of a closed door, and voices in the driveway. Maggie reached the kitchen at the same time the back door opened. “Mom?”

  “Honey.” Wild-haired, red-eyed, her mother hurried across the room and pulled Maggie into a choking embrace.

  Maggie drew back. “What’s going on? You look … upset.” She looked like hell.

  Mom self-consciously smoothed her hair.

  Maggie checked her pocket and found a hairband. “Here.”

  “Thanks.” She drew the disaster into a ponytail. Then her hands collapsed at her sides, and she sighed, so heavily her body seemed to shrink a little from the exhalation.

  Wren passed her a cup of coffee.

  Without meeting her sister’s eyes, Mom accepted it with another murmured thanks.

  It clearly wasn’t reconciliation with Wren that had brought Mom here so early. Maggie glanced at the time on the microwave. Ten o’clock. Jesus. “You must have left home in the middle of the night.”

  “I wasn’t sleeping anyway. I texted Janice to let her know I didn’t feel well enough to go to work, which is true”—she paused to glare, as if daring anyone to suggest otherwise—“then I left.”

  A fear seized Maggie. “Is Dad okay?”

  Mom brushed a hand across her eyes. “He’s fine.”

  The kitchen door opened. “Morning.” Linnie kicked off her sneakers without bothering to untie them. “Sam here?”

  “In the studio,” Wren said. “He came over extra early—after driving Kate to school.”

  “Making up for taking off yesterday afternoon?”

  “Yep.”

  “Ah.”

  No one seemed to have anything else to say.

  Linnie gave Maggie a what’s-going-on look.

  She shrugged.

  Linnie turned to Mom. “So how’s it going, Mrs. Arioli?”

  She answered with a distracted shake of her head. Which wasn’t much of an answer.

  “What about you?” Maggie asked apologetically. Linnie had shown up, probably hoping to talk more about her half sister, and here she was receiving a cool reception. “How are you doing?” Her voice sounded loud in the quiet kitchen.

  Linnie’s smile slipped. “Fine.” She retreated toward the door. “I just stopped by to chat,” she explained to Wren, “but I can always come back later, if you have things you need to take care of.”

  “Don’t go,” Maggie said hastily, sitting at the table. Don’t leave me to face the sisters’ awkwardness alone. “Join us.”

  “Please do.” Mom set down her brimming mug and dropped into a chair. “You might be able to help. After all, I believe you were there.”

  “Where?” Linnie sat.

  “Timberline Tavern.”

  Understanding dawned. “Oh,” Maggie said. “There.”

  Frowning, Wren poured two cups of coffee. “Timberline Tavern?”

  Mom surged forward and slapped the table.
“The local sports bar that refused to serve my daughter a stinkin’ Pepsi.”

  Wren looked sharply at Maggie. “What?”

  She sighed. “Just the bartender.”

  The aunt put a mug in front of Linnie and one in front of Maggie and then sat where her own cup was waiting for her. “Why wouldn’t he wait on you, Margaret?”

  Mom slapped the table again. “Because Carlton’s a shitty dump filled with assholes and fucking morons who care more about football than kindness and justice and common decency.”

  Maggie’s mouth fell open. Did Mom just drop the f-bomb? On all of Carlton?

  “You told me you went to Dilly’s,” Mom continued accusingly.

  “We did. Afterward.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything about what happened before?”

  “Guess I didn’t see any point in upsetting you. No one got hurt. How did you find out?”

  “Tammy McDaniel.” At Maggie’s blank look, Mom clarified, “Brown hair? Glasses?” She waved a hand: immaterial. “Tammy and her mother visit the library once a week.” Her hand landed on her forehead. “That I ended up hearing about this atrocity from an acquaintance and not my own daughter…” Tears filled her eyes. “That astonishes me.”

  Linnie smoothed the tabletop with her fingertips. “But your daughter handled it. Much better than I would have.”

  Maggie smiled vaguely. “Thanks, Linnie.” She was thinking about the bespectacled girl. She remembered her. She remembered her sympathy.

  “Well.” Mom fell back in her chair. “That’s it for me. I’m done.”

  Maggie frowned. “Done?”

  “With the tavern?” Wren asked.

  “With Carlton.”

  “The college?” Linnie asked.

  “Not just the damn college. Carlton cliques, Carlton Tigers, Carlton fans, the endless parade of Carlton creeps. I hate Carlton.”

  “That’s not true. You’ve got great friends there. And colleagues.” Maggie shook her head. “You can’t lump the whole town together over one incident.”

  Wren raised her mug. “It’s tempting, though.” She took a long sip.

  “If only it were the one incident. But it’s been months and months of bullshit.” Mom rubbed her eyes with her fists, a curiously childish gesture.