As we stand over my mother’s grave, listening to the Rocksaw Community Church’s pastor give a sermon for a woman he never knew, it’s hard to explain how I feel. Mom and I never had a perfect relationship. Even in the Good Year, we’d been two people trying to play a part. Me, the good, sweet, obedient daughter. Her, the repentant, loving mother trying to make a new life. Maybe we both failed. Even with all the blueberry pie I’ve eaten in the last few days, the pain is sharp and fierce when I stand here in front of her grave. I know she’s dead. And even though I want to wish it so, she’s not in the Good Year. She’s not going to show up again, her face full and her hair thick and shiny as she shows me around her new apartment.
And yet there’s also a sense of release. A release from waiting for her to get better. A release from waiting for her to come back for me. A release from wondering if I’d done something differently, or been better somehow, if she could have forgiven me. It’s slippery, that feeling of release, because it also comes with a haze of gut-sickening shame for feeling it.
Mia puts a hand on my shoulder, interrupting my thoughts, as the pastor finishes his sermon. Afterward, we stand in a row: Mia, me, Ember, and Auntie, receiving the condolences of what must be the entire town of Rocksaw. I don’t know why they all showed up. Maybe it’s because the McCabe Bakery & Tea Shoppe has been closed for the last two days and they’re all dying for a pastry fix at the reception.
The townspeople come in a long line, one after the other, hands that squeeze mine, arms that hold me as they murmur words that get lost in the noise of the crowd. Only the bravest citizens hug Ember or take her hand, but she turns no one away, as if trying to show me that we’re in this grief together. I shake my head at her, no, but she only reaches over and quickly squeezes my hand twice in hers, as if to say, it’s my choice.
My teachers are here, and the principal who agreed to take Ardent Apple pies in exchange for my school fees. Tobias Jensen from the office supply store. The knitting club that sits in the back booth every day after school at the shop. Grayson and Linc. Ramani and Adalyn. Mrs. Stuart and Vera’s mother and other people I suppose are probably parents.
The Yangs, Mrs. Yang’s eyes red and wet, the familiar feeling of her hand stroking over my hair, the quick squeeze from Wendy, who brings me a small gift that she presses into my hand. Mr. Yang, who solemnly pats my shoulder and tells me he is proud of me for being strong. Jack’s bashful hug.
I open my hand to see what Wendy pushed into my palm. It’s a Scrabble tile, a T, strung on a silver chain. And I remember the Good Year again, with Mom and the Yangs. The most perfect year of my life.
Maybe, someday, I will have another Good Year.
Ms. Troy. She embraces me, sniffling, her nose red. She looks heavier. I guess I didn’t notice when she appeared a few days ago with the news. I’d been too shocked, too hollow to really notice not just the roundness of her face, but the thickness of her waist. “I’m so sorry, Trix. You know I always hoped for the best for you and your mom.”
I nod, because I don’t know what to say, how to form the words to properly express the tangle of emotions this day brings to me. Ms. Troy hugs Ember and Mia next, but when she gets to Auntie, the hug she throws around her nearly knocks the old woman over. Auntie grunts.
“You were right. Thank you so much.” Ms. Troy reaches down and puts a hand on her stomach. “I’ll be twenty weeks tomorrow. I was so worried that I would miscarry again.”
“Of course I was right,” Auntie says, looking almost offended. “I have a gift, you know. I’m a McCabe woman.”
And then there is Jasper. His face is sober, no smile, real or fake, tugging on his scar. He takes both my hands in his, and they’re a little rough, just like I remember them from the first night we spent on Cedar Mountain. I wonder if it was hard for him to come here barely a year after he buried his brother. I wonder if he will visit Jesse’s grave on his way out of the cemetery. I wonder if anything has changed since he confessed those things to me on Cedar Mountain, his breath reeking of watermelon wine and hurt.
I remember when we first met, and I thought he was a golden boy. He’s still golden, but there are darker parts to him, too. We both have our own dark chapters. And it’s that same small-town phenomenon, how everyone here shares little bits of your story, but never the whole thing. The pastor spoke of my mother as a woman who was taken too soon, who had so much left to give. Jasper knows the part of her story when she walked out to get a pack of cigarettes and never came back. Mia knows the scars on my arm are from Mom and that she could never forgive herself afterward. I feel a little lighter knowing I don’t carry all those dark pages by myself.
I look over at Ember as Jasper releases my hands and moves on to clasp hers. Yes, I have gotten what I always wanted. My deepest secrets. Not a perfect family, after all. But a constellation of women, connected by pie and fortunes and roses. And love.
Later, the four of us sit around the table eating Bracing Blueberry together. It was a difficult day for everyone. Auntie’s eyebrows shoot up suddenly when I reach up to brush the hair out of my face, and she swallows a mouthful of pie. “Give me your hand,” she says to me.
“What?” I ask, putting down my fork.
“Has something changed?” Ember asks, her interest piqued.
Auntie nods and reaches for my hand. I give it to her, and she uncurls my fingers, traces her knotted ones over my palm. “Look at that,” she says. “Look at that.”
The rest of us hold our breath, waiting for her to continue.
“Your life line’s changed. Look at those new shoots coming up. Your roots aren’t all about survival, anymore, Trix. You’ve got new gifts unfurling, tiny leaves waiting for sunlight to let them grow.”
“What does that mean?” I ask, wondering if I’m losing my quick, quiet hands.
“Just wait,” Auntie says. “Wait and see what blooms for you. Everything evolves, Trix. Even DNA.”
Twenty-Six
I’M SITTING ON TOP OF Cedar Mountain, my boots crossed at my ankles as I watch the sun set. Mia gave me the rest of the week off. I’m supposed to be at home, catching up on homework I missed and somehow sewing shut the gaping hole in my heart left by my mother’s death. But it’s not really like a gaping hole can be filled. I don’t know how to explain this to the new counselor Mia makes me go see, how to put it into words, what exactly my mother is to me now that she’s really gone.
Mia is the beaming sun that the McCabe household orbits around.
My mother was not the sun. She was a storm, thunder and lightning that swelled and ebbed, destructive and beautiful. She is a gentle ache of promise, and of what might have been, that comes and goes. She is the smell of cigarette smoke, the spicy tang of ginger. She is the Good Year and the Starlite and the dark shadows among the roses that I sketch in the margins of my notebook paper.
And I am Trix McCabe. One of the Rocksaw McCabes. Once abandoned. Former drifter, thief. Presently high school junior and waitress.
The quickness in my hands seems to be fading, and I wonder if Auntie is right, that I am changing, and there are new things on the horizon for me.
In my sketchbook, I draw the small town below, the angles and planes of the tiny shops and broad streets testing my skill in perspective. My sketchbook is almost full. Time to take my paycheck down to Jensen’s Office Supply and get a new book to fill. My mind buzzes with other images I want to capture in the blank pages of my new book. Auntie making tea. The knitting club in one of the back booths at the shop. Mia kneading dough. The way Linc looks at Ramani, like her smile is full of stars, even though she’s still dreaming of another. Moments in time that make up Rocksaw.
I hear his boots in the dirt before I see him.
Jasper climbs up the well-worn path, his black curls damp and shining from a shower after football practice. He smiles when he sees me, the movement tugging on his scar.
“Hey,” he says, standing almost awkwardly in front of me. “Is it okay if I sit do
wn?”
I gesture at the lawn chair next to me. We haven’t actually spoken since the last time we were here. He’d dropped by the farmhouse twice since the funeral, and both times I told Mia to tell him I was out. I’m not angry with him. I’m not even hurt anymore. But reaching out again only means that I could get pushed away, and I have to decide that I’m okay with that. “It’s a free country,” I say blandly.
He sits down in the lawn chair, tilting his head so that his curls fall back. “Nice night,” Jasper says, making small talk that reveals his discomfort. “Warm for the end of October.”
I nod, still sketching. “I guess so.”
“Your drawing is nice.”
“Thanks.”
“We’ve missed you at school.”
“I come back next week.”
“After homecoming?”
Our entire conversation is stilted, and I don’t care. These aren’t any of the things that we need to say. So I shrug. “I guess so.”
“It’s good if you wait till you’re ready. Don’t rush it.”
“Yep.”
“I only took a couple days after Jesse died. I went back to school too soon. I was a mess.”
There’s a twinge in my chest. “That’s too bad.”
A few quiet moments pass before Jasper speaks again. “We talked. My parents and me.”
I continue sketching, waiting for him to finish his story.
“After I told you to leave, that last time up here? I thought about what you said. I was angry, and stupid. But you were right. So I told my dad about my depression, and the medicine I’m taking for it.” He taps his hands on the arms of the lawn chair. “He was angry and shouted a lot, and then Mom told him to shut the hell up, that she wasn’t going to lose another boy like she lost Jesse.” He pauses, swallows. “Dad was devastated. I think he suspected that Jesse had taken his own life, but to hear her say it out loud . . .” Jasper’s voice trails off.
I stop sketching.
“I just wanted you to know. That even though I was angry that night, I listened. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry I yelled at you. Sorry I told you to leave. I was scared that I couldn’t do what you said. I couldn’t stand up to my dad, tell him that I was doing what I wanted even if it meant losing the farm.” He pauses, and there are a few even breaths between us in the silence. “He’s not speaking to me. Or to my mom. But I’ll give him time. Maybe he’ll come around.”
I take his hand.
He squeezes my fingers, and we watch the sun sink down until Rocksaw is bathed in darkness, stars flickering into existence above us.
Ember’s father’s arrival on the evening of homecoming is preceded by a flurry of cleaning. Mia dusts the entire farmhouse, sending Bacon yowling to the top of the kitchen cabinets to escape her feather duster. Since Mia is always baking, the kitchen is still spotless, and the only room in the house she hasn’t been scrubbing for the last forty-eight hours.
“I don’t know why you’re cleaning for Jordan,” Auntie grumbles. “He walked out on you, not the other way around. His ass can sit on a dusty chair for all I care.”
Mia continues to dust the mantel, adjusting the newly framed pictures of me and Mom, and the other of Wendy, Jack, and me playing poker.
“You don’t need to repeat history to me. I know. I was there, remember?”
“Well, I won’t be bending over backward for him, so don’t get any funny ideas about that.”
“I won’t, Auntie.”
Ember comes downstairs after putting her backpack away. She watches them both warily, her eyes darting every so often to the windows. The football game starts in an hour, and she’s wearing a long-sleeved shirt under Grayson’s white visiting jersey, which is far too big on her, so she’s knotted it artistically to one side and paired it with bright-orange leggings and little suede boots.
“Nice shirt,” I tease her from the couch, where I watch the proceedings from an afghan cocoon. I have no intention of going to the homecoming game or the dance following. I could hear the band from the parade on Main Street all the way here, and I saw a plane fly over town at some poignant moment, trailing a banner that said, “Go Tigers.” That was enough for me. “You should pair it with cat ears for the full effect, though.”
Ember was a little disappointed when I reassured her again last night that I wanted to stay home. “I’m not ready to go and pretend that I’m happy yet,” I told her. “Next week. Next week I can get through all the sympathy hugs and the ‘I’m-so-sorrys.’”
So instead she got out the blueberry pie and we ate it sitting on the floor of her room next to her dressmaker’s dummy, admiring the dress she’d made for me that I wasn’t going to wear.
Now, looking down the football jersey, Ember blushes. “Grayson gave it to me to wear at the game tonight. I didn’t want to be rude.”
“It’s cute. You look very sporty.”
Auntie snorts. “She looks like she could wear it as a nightgown.”
Mia sighs. “I wore Jordan’s jersey to the homecoming games, you know.”
Auntie rolls her eyes. “And we all know how that turned out.”
Mia’s green eyes shoot daggers at Auntie.
There’s a rumble of a truck coming up the drive. “It’s Daddy,” Ember hisses at her mom and Auntie, as if it will make them play nice over him for once.
Auntie sighs dramatically and flops down next to me on the couch.
There’s a knock on the front door, and Ember lets her father in. Mia stands next to the fireplace, crossing and uncrossing her arms like she’s not quite sure how to pose for her ex-husband’s arrival.
“Hello, darling girl,” Jordan says, scooping Ember into a big hug and spinning her around like she’s still a child.
Despite how nervous she’s looked about his visit, Ember beams in his arms. “Hi, Daddy,” she says when he sets her down.
“Look at you,” he says, standing back and holding her at arm’s length. “You get prettier every time I see you.” He looks over at Mia. “Just like your mama, huh?”
Mia smiles, and he holds out a bouquet of red roses for her. “I knew yours would be done out here, so I brought you these.”
“Thank you,” Mia says, blushing. “That was thoughtful of you. I’ll go put these—”
“I’ll do it,” I interrupt, pulling myself out of my afghan cocoon. Mia had wanted me to meet Jordan as a big surprise since Connor was his best friend, but somehow watching them all together makes me feel awkward and intrusive. I’m happy for Ember, but I don’t feel like I belong in this scene. Taking care of the flowers gives me an easy out.
Instead of letting me flee, Mia seizes me around the shoulders. “Jordan, this is Trix. My niece.”
“Nice to meet you,” Jordan says, giving me a nod and a smile, even though he’s clearly confused.
“Do you see the resemblance?” Mia asks, nearly bursting.
“To who?” Jordan asks.
Mia waits a few moments, but it’s clear that Jordan has no idea who I am. So she nearly shouts in excitement, “To Connor. Trix is Connor’s daughter.” Mia uses her hand to sweep the hair back from my face, as if that’s going to bring my dead father to life before his eyes.
Jordan tilts his head at her, frowning, as if this is some joke that he’s not quite falling for. “Connor didn’t have any kids.”
“He did. With Allison Fiorello. Trix’s mom.”
“Allison Fiorello?” Jordan says, looking over at me uncomfortably. “Maybe we should talk about this outside.”
He doesn’t say it outright, but I know from his tone that he thinks my mom was a big, fat liar. Mia darts a glance back at me before following Jordan out onto the porch.
Maybe there’s a reason Mom never looked for my dad, never told him I existed. Maybe she just put his name on my birth certificate so that I’d have one on it. Maybe he was just a name on a line and not my father at all. Maybe I’m not even a McCabe. Maybe I’ve spent all this time trying to become a member of t
his family just to have it stolen away from me at the last moment.
I look around the farmhouse, wondering if I’m an imposter here.
“Come on,” Auntie says sharply, jerking me out of my head. “We can listen from the kitchen.”
Ember and I follow her to the kitchen, where she cracks open the window so that we can hear their voices carrying from the porch.
“Look, I just think you might have been taken in, Mia. You’ve always been looking for ways to connect to Connor, even though he’s gone. And I get that. He was a great guy. My best friend.”
“Social services contacted me. Connor McCabe is listed as the father on Trix’s birth certificate.” I can’t see Mia, but I can hear the hurt in her voice. She wanted to surprise him, believing that finding the daughter of his long-lost best friend and her beloved brother would have been some kind of wonderful gift for them to share.
“You didn’t know Allison. I did. She and Connor were together very briefly back when he was in college. They weren’t even exclusive.”
“I don’t care how brief it was, Jordan. Connor is her father. Just look at her. Look at her eyes. Those are Connor’s eyes.”
“And I’m going to tell you what I told Allison when she showed up at our apartment while Connor was studying abroad—that baby could have been anybody’s. Her parents disowned her after they found out she was pregnant. Even they knew she was bad news.”
“Are you serious?” Mia sounds shocked.
I wish I could say I blamed her, but I can’t. It all makes sense now why Connor was never in my life.
He wasn’t my father.
I back away from the window, wishing that I hadn’t eavesdropped after all.
Ember looks struck by the news as well, and she hurries out of the kitchen for the front porch, as if to avoid having Jordan come back in the house again.
I retreat upstairs, letting Bacon follow me.
My room seems stifling, and I wish that Jordan wasn’t out on the front porch so that I could be sitting on the stoop right now, smelling the sweet, heavy scent of the roses. But then I remember that there’s nothing out there but thorns and wilted leaves.
A Constellation of Roses Page 25