I finish my beer and set the glass down harder than needed. "I'm going home."
"Tell your dad I said hi."
"Yeah." I pull my jacket off the back of the booth. Ramsey's still sitting there, relaxed, legs stretched out, looking like a man with no problems in the world. Must be nice.
"And Cal?"
I stop halfway out of the booth.
"Maybe don't go to the grocery store for a while."
I don't dignify that with a response. Ramsey's laughing before I hit the door.
Dad's in the workshop when I get home. Door cracked, radio on. I can hear him before I see him, the low murmur of his voice under the sound of sandpaper on wood.
"... turned out nice, didn't it? The grain on this one. You'd like it. You always liked the maple."
I stand in the hallway and listen. Dad does this very often, talks to her while he works. Tells her about his day, the wood, whatever he's seen or heard or thought. Eleven years of one-sided conversations with a woman who died in her sleep from an aneurysm nobody saw coming.
They were high school sweethearts. Twenty-something years together before she was gone. He's spent eleven years since in this workshop, sanding furniture and talking to her ghost.
I love my father more than I know how to say. He's a good man. The best man I know, probably. Patient and gentle with things as well as people. Remembers everything, asks about your day, actually listens. He raised me alone after she died, though I was eighteen by then. Never complained, never fell apart where I could see it.
Though he did where I couldn't. He just got quieter, pulled the world smaller. The house, the workshop, the wood. That and talking to a woman who can't hear him.
I used to think it was sad, and now I don't know what it is. Devotion, maybe. Love and grief braided so tight you couldn't pull them apart without losing both. I never want to understand that from the inside.
I go to bed and stare at the ceiling. I don't think about freckles or brown hair or how she owns my name by now.
I don't think about her arguing with a cantaloupe in a mini skirt in February either. That one especially, I think about the least.
Six months of nothing, she undid it in a week.
3
LILY
Iabsolutely, one hundred percent made the right decision to spend my year off in Harbor Hill. Every morning I wake up in my little apartment with the big windows and I think: yes. This. This is where I'm supposed to be.
Harbor Hill is just what I needed, a place where people know your name before you've introduced yourself, where the barista remembers your order and the guy at the hardware store asks about your brother. It feels like being held.
Mornings belong to the shop. Every day I am here before Erin, apron already tied, hands busy with whatever she needs. Stems to trim. Ribbons to cut. Orders to wrap in brown paper and twine. The work is simple and repetitive and exactly what my brain needed after four years of academic chaos.
I do my makeup every day and every day life is returning to my face little by little. My nails are done, and I take my chance to enjoy them while I can. The current set is a milkypink chrome set and I can't stop staring at them as soon as the gloves come off.
Ruth delivers coffee around nine. The walk across from the diner gives her an excuse to stay forty-five minutes. There's an unspoken agreement that Ruth brings caffeine and gossip and we provide an audience. Everyone wins.
Afternoons are open. Some days I explore town, wandering streets I've already memorized just to feel the cold on my face. Every day I make sure to see Rome and if I get lost in my head and my worry about the future, he gets worried and seeks me out. Either way, I am where I want to be, close to my family.
Some days I curl up on my couch with a book or just look out my window at the people moving about until my eyes get heavy.
And every day, without fail, I spend at least an hour on my coursework. Keeping up with the reading, staying sharp for when I go back next year.
I am resting. Productively. Rome would hate that distinction, but it's my distinction, and I'm keeping it.
The door swings open and Ruth barrels in like a woman on a mission. She sets our coffee and blueberry muffins no one asked for on the counter, puts both hands flat on the surface like she's about to deliver a medical diagnosis, and pins me with a look that could pin a butterfly to a board.
"Okay." Her voice is serious, too serious. "I need to ask you something and I need you to be honest with me."
