Thistle! Sorry to hear about your dad. Hope he’s okay. And sorry to hear you’re lonely. Kind of glad (sorry) to hear even a badass famous author can get down sometimes, too, like the rest of us normal humans. Want to meet us at four at Grumpy Lou’s on Pine?—O
I tell him, yes, four o’clock would be great, even though it’s the weekend and I’m breaking my own rules to work on book stuff.
After three outfit changes, I decide on old black jeans and a chunky black sweater. It looks socially acceptable for a coffee non-date, I think, far more appropriate than the two tour dresses I tried on first. Except Oliver will no doubt be wearing black on black, too, and I don’t want other people at the café to think we’re some sort of twinning Goth couple. I throw on a blue scarf for a pop of color, which improves the situation.
I pass Dad’s room that is technically Mia’s, and I think about the red metal box for the first time since that night. Pictures and letters, scraps of my mom that still exist. Dad’s not there to guard it now. I wouldn’t want Mia to catch me invading her space, but next time she’s out of the house…
I put on my jacket and yell that I’m going for coffee and a walk. I don’t bother waiting for a response. When I get to the front stoop, I pivot in the direction opposite of Liam’s house.
Mrs. Rizzo is outside in her usual housecoat checking the mailbox, and as I pass I prepare for a lecture. But instead she says, “How’s your father?”
“Good,” I lie. I look down at my boots. “Not that good, actually. He’s in pretty bad shape. It’s going to be a rough few months.”
“But you have someone helping? I saw a woman smoking in the backyard. Disgusting, really. You should tell her that’s not acceptable, especially with a recovering patient in her care!” She shakes her gnarled fist and squints at me with beady brown eyes, magnified to alarming proportions through her thick glasses. “You better not ever think about smoking, young lady. I’ll see you if you do, and I’ll be sure to go right up and knock on your door to tell your father.”
“I won’t,” I say, almost smiling now. “Promise.”
“Hmph. All right.” She pauses, running a hand along her tightly cropped hair, bright moon white against her deep brown skin. I nod my good-bye, assuming she’s done with me.
But then: “You come knock if you need anything. Okay? I’ll make some cookies for your father tomorrow. Rainbow sugar, extra-special.”
I smile for the rest of my walk. Smiling, because of Mrs. Rizzo! And not sarcastically! I never would have expected this day to come. I won’t ever joke about her delicious fowl cookies again.
I look around when I step into the café, soft bells ringing from the door. The only other customer is a college-age-looking guy wearing bright purple Beats, fervently staring at his iPad.
No potential Marigold fans here. Wonderful. I order a mocha cappuccino and am taking my first frothy sip when Oliver steps inside. I put my mug down and wave, waiting for Emma to come in after him. The door bangs shut. No Emma.
A knot of panic pulls in my stomach, that delicious cappuccino foam instantly curdling. Emma was the vital element making this get-together feel perfectly okay. Necessary, really, because she is a vast treasure trove of Lemonade Skies insights. This was a work excursion. It was not a one-on-one hangout with Oliver.
“Where’s Emma?” I ask quickly as Oliver gets to the table. And then I remember to say, “Hello! Good to see you.”
“I wanted her to be here, too, but she started feeling sick this afternoon. I hope it’s okay I came alone.” He shakes his head and sits down, gazing intently into the swirls of my cappuccino. “It just sucks, seeing her fight through this. Makes me feel guilty for being so healthy sometimes.”
“I’m sure she doesn’t see it that way,” I say quietly.
“I know. But it still sucks. She used to be the healthiest kid. She could eat anything and everything. Soda, pizza, burgers, birthday cake. I can hardly remember what’s okay and what’s not okay for her diet anymore. Feels like the list of not okay is growing every week.”
We sit in silence for a moment. I want to say something comforting, but anything that comes to mind feels too blasé and artificial.
“Sorry,” he says finally, attempting a smile. “That was a lot to hit you with. I don’t think I even said hello, come to think of it. So—hey, Thistle! It’s nice to see you again. Even if you won’t accept a bribe.”
“I was actually going to give you guys a teaser if you bought my cappuccino, but I beat you here, so no deal.”
He cocks an eyebrow at me and grins before jumping up from his chair, heading toward the counter. I pretend to be watching something interesting out the window to keep myself from staring at him.
As anticipated, he’s in all black today. Faded tight black jeans, scruffy hoodie, and a T-shirt with what looks like some sort of demonic silver octopus on the front. Instead of making him look serious or somber or death-obsessed, the black somehow makes the rest of him glow even brighter. That skin that looks like it would burn in five minutes of direct sunlight, the big green eyes and flashy white teeth—slightly crooked, I see now, as he catches me glancing toward the counter and grins. He walks back to the table then and hands me a chocolate-dipped chocolate chip cookie that’s roughly the size of my head.
“How about this in exchange for that teaser? Not to be tacky or anything, but it cost twenty-five cents more than your cappuccino. Which means I’m giving you an extra quarter. Just saying. Quarters are like gold now that I can drive and have to worry about parking meters.”
“Having a car in the city is so overrated. We haven’t had one since I was really young.” I pause, redirect. “This cookie looks completely awesome, by the way. And I say that as a great connoisseur of anything that involves chocolate and cookies.”
“I’m glad you approve,” Oliver says, settling into his chair. “So you wanted to brainstorm about the ending?”
“Yeah. But it doesn’t feel right if Emma’s not here.”
“Okay, fair enough, but I do have a question for you. Is the Afterworld supposed to be heaven? Because I don’t really see it that way. There’s no sense of a god, for one. No greater being. There are some shady creeps, too, that probably would have ended up in flaming fire pits, if that was a thing. And it doesn’t seem all that ideal or paradise-like.” He pauses, his freckled brow furrowing. “Am I reading that right?”
I break off a chunk of cookie and dip it in my mug. “It’s whatever you want it to be.”
He folds his arms across his chest, squinting at me. “That feels like a half-assed response for some lame blog interview. I want the real info. The behind the scenes.”
I swallow the cookie and take another sip of cappuccino. “To be honest…” I start. To be honest. Right. Because that’s exactly what I am. Honest. I try again, my eyes glued to my cookie as I talk. “I don’t have a neat answer for you. I was never raised to believe in a god, to believe in anything besides what we have right here and now. But not having my mom around…I guess I want to believe in something, you know? I want to believe there’s a piece of her still existing, that she isn’t totally gone. Though the idea of ghosts has always freaked me out.”
“I hear you. Ghosts are terrifying. Not because they could hurt you or possess you or anything like that. But because of what it must be like, to haunt the same place forever. Never being able to move on. I’d take being gone for good if I had to choose between the two.”
“Same.” I look back up at him, meeting that sharp gaze of his. “So I tried to create a place that was removed enough from our world, but still not totally out of reach. And I liked the idea of my mom out there somewhere, making friends, building a whole new life.” That’s why I’d written my story for Dad—that’s why this whole thing had started. Because I was desperate to pretend it wasn’t really over for Mom.
“I bet your mom’s tota
lly out there right now, playing pinochle with my nan and talking about how she hopes she’s got a good seventy years before you come knocking.”
I smile at that. It’s a nice image, even if I don’t think it’s possible. Wanting to believe and actually believing are two very different things.
“It’s wild how many fan letters I get, asking me if everything in the books is true,” I say, changing the subject. “If I somehow stumbled across a secret path to another dimension, called it fiction to keep the truth safe.”
“I bet I’d have to buy you a lot more than a cookie to get that kind of truth out of you.”
I laugh and say, “Listen, if I discovered that kind of secret, no bribery would get me to share it. The world would be too messed up if everyone could come and go from some kind of afterworld. No thank you.”
“Point taken,” he says, reaching forward and grabbing a big hunk of cookie. “How’s your dad, by the way? You said there’d been an accident?”
I tell Oliver about the ladder, the hospital, the recovery. I explain about the deadline extension, and how it’s impossible to write anything decent right now—and that’s why I was hoping he and Emma could help.
At five o’clock the barista comes over to tell us the café is closing, kicking us out.
“You didn’t give me a single teaser!” Oliver says, turning on me as we move to the sidewalk. “Spit that cookie out!”
“You need to be patient,” I say, smiling in a playful way that doesn’t feel familiar. “I’ll send you what I’ve written so far. The ultimate teaser. And then maybe I can see you and Emma tomorrow for a brainstorming session?”
Oliver smiles back. “Sounds like a deal.”
eleven
Fifteen-year-old Marigold Maybee had never celebrated anyone’s birthday at a cemetery before.
It was Jonah’s idea to visit Colton’s grave that day. The twins should be together to ring in sixteen, after all. Even if it was far from sweet.
“I asked my mom to come,” Jonah said, “but she burst into tears. So then I was going to ask you to try and take me with you to the Afterworld, to see Colt, but if something went wrong, my mom, she—”
“I’ll go with you to visit Colton’s grave,” Marigold said.
It was a crisp, sunny fall day and Marigold followed close behind Jonah as they walked through the cemetery—the historic monuments, the views of the city skyline almost letting her forget where they were. But then Jonah stopped, and she saw the gravestone with the dates and: Colton Jones. Beloved son and brother.
I kissed you, Marigold thought. I kissed you.
She wanted to throw up, or scream, or claw through the six feet of dirt with her bare hands, discover an empty coffin and know that Colton was alive. But then she felt Jonah’s hand on hers, his warm fingers against her wrist.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” he whispered.
—EXCERPT FROM LEMONADE SKIES, BOOK 2: BETWEEN TWO WORLDS
The next day I walk over to the Flynns’ house, which is about thirty minutes away. Emma and Oliver haven’t had a chance to read much of the manuscript yet, but none of us seem to mind that it’s mostly a social call.
Their house is a messy but charming disaster zone because their mom, Siobhan, is a painter and has easels set up across the entire first floor with canvases in various stages of completion, and palettes, brushes, and stained drop cloths scattered around. When I meet her, she is busy mixing different shades of blues and greens, a line of white paint smeared across her cheek. Oliver leaves the room to take a call and Emma disappears into the bathroom, and I am suddenly left alone with Siobhan. She asks if I am really happy being a professional author—a professional anything—at seventeen. “Just blows my mind! I love my kids and think they’re smarties, don’t get me wrong, but I’m happy when they come home with a B on a big test. That’s fine enough for me. You’re kids still. You have the rest of your lives to overachieve.” She smiles at me warmly, though, and I confess to her that I’m not as happy as one would expect, and then somehow end up talking about what it is like not having a mom for every bit of life I can remember.
Mr. Flynn—freckled and pale and red-haired, future Oliver in grown adult form—is there, too, and after my talk with Siobhan he makes us all some hot chocolate with homemade whipped cream.
Oliver is busy with a study group on Monday, but I go over again on Tuesday when he gets home from school. Emma’s home, too—she hasn’t been feeling well enough to go to school this week, though she’s more than happy to hang out with us and talk Marigold. They’d both finished reading the manuscript Monday night, and most of our time is eaten up by their raving about all the things they love in it: Marigold’s many happy, tearful conversations with her mom, her immersion in her mom’s new life in the Afterworld; Marigold’s growing feelings for Jonah, her failed attempts to tell Colton the truth about her and his brother, the simmering romantic tension beneath her time in both worlds; the discovery that the old house is to be torn down and the portal destroyed, the high stakes, the looming decisions.
They take my shame to be humility, luckily.
I’ve been actively avoiding the rest of my life—Liam got home too late for a visit on Sunday, and I told him I was sick the last two nights when he called asking to see me. Luckily he’s had water polo games that have kept him too preoccupied to be more persistent. The lie slipped out before I could stop it. But I needed more time to wrap my head around how I’m feeling about us. I’ve barely spoken two words to my dad either. He’s been eating his meals in his room and I even skipped good night yesterday, after he lit into me for stomping into his room too loudly on Monday. I’d been wearing my fuzziest slippers.
On Wednesday, Emma and Oliver and I retreat down to the basement, the only paint fume–free zone in the house. It’s a space that is visibly claimed in equal parts by both of them, walls covered alternatingly in cluttered, toppling shelves of books and band posters, dark and vintage and completely alien to me. There’s a desk covered with even more books, an entertainment center with a massive TV that looks to be about as old as I am—also covered in leaning piles of books—and a battered drum set in the opposite corner. And in the middle of the chaos, a beautiful deep green velvet couch and matching love seat that look like something from another century, overflowing with satiny pillows and crocheted throws.
I’m perched on the couch, bare feet kicked up on their coffee table, a mug of steaming tea in my hand. The basement is warm and toasty, with an old radiator hissing and clinking behind me. Emma and Oliver are debating an episode of Game of Thrones they watched last night—illicitly down here in their private lair, since Siobhan still deems Emma way too young and pure of heart for the show. I’m tuning them out, a happy humming in my ears, because I don’t watch it and never intend to. Way too much gore.
Marigold. Now that they’re up to speed, I should be asking them to help me outline the last few chapters. But it’s easier not to, to give myself more time in this new world of make-believe—this alternate universe where I can almost pretend I’m the Thistle Tate I would have been if Marigold Maybee had never existed. If I had never lied. Not once, but over and over again. Though if there were no Marigold, I wouldn’t be here right now. I wouldn’t know Emma or Oliver.
I stare at my feet, at the chipped and ragged remnants of the orange polish I’d gotten for the tour. It should be weird to be sitting here, my naked toes wiggling around on the furniture of semi-strangers. Oliver is lounging just a few feet away from me, leaning against the opposite arm of the sofa, and Emma’s across from us on the love seat. It doesn’t feel weird, though. None of it. That’s the weirdest bit of all. The Flynns’ house has become my new happy place and if anyone else wonders why I’ve become an instant fixture—wonders why in the world I have nothing else to be doing, no one else to see—they’re courteous enough not to say it.
“Emma, no way,�
� Oliver says, looking up from his copy of War and Peace that he’s flipping through for school—or maybe just for pleasure, knowing his tastes. “There’s no way that Ned Stark is Jon Snow’s father. No freaking way. It’s too easy! That’s what they want you to think! Don’t be so gullible, baby sister.”
“You’re so wrong,” Emma says, her voice suddenly much louder. She drags herself out of the nest she’s built on the love seat. She looks paler today, even thinner if that’s possible overnight. “I bet you six months’ worth of washing the dishes that even if it’s not Ned, it’s not Rhaegar and Lyanna either. And you better not be cheating reading spoilers online since this is old news to the rest of the world. I’ve worked so hard to avoid them.”
I feel my phone vibrating in my pocket. I don’t look. I don’t have to. It’s either Susan—or Elliot, at this point—calling to ask about the book, or Liam asking to see me, and I don’t want to pick up while I’m here.
“Need to get that?” Oliver asks.
“It’s probably my agent—she’s been calling a lot about the last chapters.” I take a sip of tea, studying the rim of my mug very closely.
“Did she tell you what she thought of the rest of the manuscript?”
“Oh, yeah. Loved it. Best yet.”
“But”—he looks up, all attention on me now—“you don’t sound remotely excited? Because that’s not amazing or anything?”
I shrug. “It’d be amazing if I had the end written. Seeing as it’s due for real in nine days.”
“Then let’s get cracking,” Emma says, grinning at me.
“Okay.” I smile back.
“I’ve been thinking about it a lot,” Emma says, “and I love most of what you’ve written, though I guess I’m kind of surprised with the direction you’re going in, in the last chapters. I know Marigold wonders if she can take Mom and Colton back with her, right? Even if she can’t know for sure until she tries. But I don’t feel like Marigold’s mom or Colton should decide to stay put out of fear—because they don’t know what will happen to them if they try. I think it should be that Marigold decides she won’t take them. It’s never a question. It doesn’t matter if they can or can’t.”
The Undoing of Thistle Tate Page 11