by Alie Garnett
“You practically raised Violet so that Mom could work,” Buzz pointed out.
“But Violet was her baby, not mine. Sera always came home at the end of the day.”
“But she didn’t need to. In fact, she sometimes didn’t. She had you. Maybe I should keep you, and you can raise this one.” She tapped her belly.
“You can’t afford me.” Agatha laughed
“I have access to a sexy, rich man’s checkbook. I can afford anything.” Buzz grinned, most likely thinking about her sexy man since his checkbook had never mattered to her. No matter how often she complained, she never updated anything. In fact, she had on a sweatshirt that had belonged to Mabel during her college days.
“I have to focus of raising Poppy right now.” Agatha watched the baby pull herself up to stand by the couch.
“Did you tell the dad about her?”
“I don’t know who the daddy is,” Agatha lied.
Buzz’s laugh scared Poppy, and she fell onto her butt, crying. Buzz stopped laughing and pulled the baby up to sit with her. “Your mommy is such a kidder. She thinks Aunty Buzz is stupid. Aunty Buzz was there too.”
“You were not; I was covering for you,” Agatha stated, then slammed her hand over her mouth.
“Suddenly, you remember.” Buzz grinned at her. “And you can thank me with cash or babysitting. I might want babysitting more than cash.”
“I am not talking about it.”
“You don’t have to. I have an imagination. Just one question, though. Was it in a public location?” Buzz asked, playing pattycake with Poppy.
“It was not!” she hissed at her sister, then remembered it wasn’t that far from a public location.
“Is Mommy blushing, Poppy?” Buzz asked. “Must be a pretty hot memory.”
“Let your imagination go wild, Buzz. It’s the best you’ll get.”
“Oh, don’t worry, I am. But on a more serious note, Ag, this kid is adorable. I mean from you and him to this? Crazy. Maybe you carry more of my genes than I ever thought.”
“Thank you, Buzz. I think she’s pretty cute myself,” Agatha said and left her sister with the baby. It had been a long few days, and she hadn’t had much time without her daughter. Buzz could watch Poppy so that Agatha could take a nap or dwell on her lonely future. Whichever happened.
Alone in her room, she crawled into bed fully clothed and curled into a ball. Buzz was right; everyone in the family supported her in any way possible. So they never said the words out loud, but they believed in her. From finding her jobs that wouldn’t interfere with her drawing time to making sure she had food when they knew she wouldn’t put forth effort or time to make it. They never teased her about something that could have just been a hobby. It was with that silent support that she had been able to finish not one but six of her books before they even all moved out of the house.
If she had been brave enough to tell them about Poppy when she was pregnant, they would have given her the same support. Not one would have told her that she couldn’t or shouldn’t raise her daughter. They would have been there for every appointment and late-night feeding she allowed them to be at. In fact, seeing them rally around Buzz and Lucy when they each were pregnant and alone, she knew they would have done the same for her.
Now she had to learn how to lean on them more than she had in the past. They want her to lean on them. They always had.
Chapter Thirty-One
Agatha had been gone for days, and Chris knew it was stupid to sit on his step waiting for her to come out at 3 p.m., but he did it anyway. Violet’s mom was on maternity leave, so she wasn’t coming down here anyway. But just like he had every day this week, he sat and waited.
There was nothing else he could do. She didn’t answer her phone. Sera wouldn’t give her his messages; in fact, she wouldn’t even talk to him. He had no idea where any of her sisters lived. His only connection to her was her house, which she had abandoned.
By 3:30 p.m., he knew she wasn’t coming out, but he still hadn’t given up the hope that she would. Just then, a SUV stopped in front of the house. A blonde woman jumped out of the driver’s seat and hurried to the front door, quickly unlocked it, and went inside.
The blonde was not Agatha’s mom; it was her sister. Maybe she would talk to him. With speed he hadn’t needed for over a year, he rushed to the house. The door wasn’t locked, so he went inside. It looked exactly same as the last time he had been inside, only it felt different, empty.
“Hello, anyone home?” He knew she was there, but he didn’t need her calling the cops on him.
“Fuck! You gave me a heart attack,” Harper said from the doorway of the kitchen, a hand pressed to her chest.
“Sorry to scare you. I’m trying to find Agatha.”
“She’s not here.” She huffed and turned and went back into the kitchen.
“But you know where she is.” It was not a question.
“Yes, I do, but you don’t need to know that information.” Chris followed to find her digging in the pantry.
“Please, Harper. I just need to talk to her again. Just for a minute, please,” Chris pleaded. At this point, he wasn’t beyond begging, but he knew better than to get too close to the woman.
“So you remember me then? Must just be my sister you can’t remember,” Harper stated, slamming a pile of paper plates onto the counter.
“I’m sorry I didn’t recognize her. She’s changed over the last few years,” Chris said, not wanting to go into it with this woman. All he wanted to do was explain it to Agatha.
“Some of us like those changes.” She tossed some plastic cups on the island that her mom and sisters sat at on Saturday mornings, just not this last Saturday. Nobody had been here on Saturday morning. He had been watching.
“I don’t know what to say to you, Harper.” He ran his fingers through his hair. He didn’t know how to get the woman he loved back. Frustration and defeat were all he felt, and he knew that neither were going to get her to come back to him.
“I don’t know either, Chris. Agatha is special; she always has been. She doesn’t let many into her world. She may put out this image of being emotionless, but she isn’t. Her hurts run deep.” Harper slammed a container of plastic forks on the counter next.
“When did she start going by Agatha?” he asked. It was a small detail, but he wanted to know everything about her.
“Birth!”
“She went by Christie in school,” he reminded her.
“Because some little shithead in kindergarten made fun of her name. She couldn’t pronounce it right, and he made fun of her a lot.” She stopped digging in the cabinet as she spoke, her anger visible. “After that, she went by Christie in school, but at home, she was always Agatha.”
“The men in your family don’t call her Ag. Why?” If she was willing to talk to him, he wanted to get more answers.
“Because she doesn’t let them. Buzz is the same way. She is Bea to the world, but at home, she goes by Buzz. You have to be special to call her Buzz,” Harper said, going back to digging in the cabinet.
“I want to see her,” he pushed, trying again.
“That’s not up to me. She has to come back when she’s ready.” Harper gathered up all the paper products and headed for the door. He could tell she was done talking to him, and he wasn’t going to get anything from her. Not today.
“Can you just tell her that I want to see her?” he asked, following her through the living room, still strewn with Poppy’s things. Agatha hadn’t taken much when she had walked out and hadn’t been back for any of it. The book she had thrown was still on the floor, just where it had landed.
“I can, but she’s hiding,” Harper said, letting him open the front door for her.
“From me?” He knew he shouldn’t ask, because he already knew the answer.
“From everyone,” Harper stated, not looking at him. Her answer told him that her family might know where she was, but she was hiding from them also. Hiding right i
n front of them.
After locking the door, he helped Harper into her SUV. As he watched her drive away, he wondered if she would tell her sister he wanted to talk to her. At this point, he had no clue.
All he knew was that he wasn’t going to find Agatha. She would stay away as long as he was around, leaving him no way to see her or speak to her. She wouldn’t let him explain anything to her. He wanted to tell her he had changed from that dumb kid she had known before. He had realized now what was important in life. It was her. It had always been her.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The house was coming together quickly with the contractor and his team doing all the work and Chris staying out of the way. They had the kitchen nearly finished, and the hardwoods had been laid on the entire second floor. But Chris’s heart wasn’t in the remodel anymore; his entire focus was on the empty house across the street, waiting to see if a certain sister showed up. If anyone showed up.
His talk with Harper the day before had cleared up some, but not all, of the questions he had about Agatha. He wondered if he was the boy who had made fun of her name, but he couldn’t remember. It did sound like something I would’ve done, he thought in shame.
In an attempt to find out, he had decided to visit his mom, who couldn’t remember anything about his elementary school years and didn’t want to. But he grabbed a box that contained his yearbooks and some other mementos and took them to his house.
As he looked through the box, he glanced out the window at Agatha’s dark house. She must be missing her studio. It had been days since she had been there. He wondered if Poppy could walk yet. He was missing her more than he expected to, but he figured that she was a small part of the woman he loved, so naturally, he loved her as well.
In the box he found his kindergarten yearbook, their pictures side by side. Agatha had a toothy grin that was already a little sassy, yet Chris was missing most of his teeth and had barely smiled for the picture. Even now, he could remember how he had thought she was cute back then. It also made him realize how much Poppy looked like her mom.
As he paged through other yearbooks, he watched her change and grow up, himself always alongside her. In the fourth grade, she had cut her hair into a short style much like her current one. He noticed that she’d grown it out again so that she had long hair in her senior picture. He remembered that by the end of the year, it was short again.
He recalled that she had said her dad left when she was in junior high, but he saw no evidence that his leaving had affected her, other than the fact that her clothes went from brightly colored T-shirts to black. Or maybe that was how it affected her; his leaving took her love of color with him.
Putting the yearbooks aside, he took out articles and clippings from his football career. Those held no interest for him at all once he caught sight of something he thought had been tossed out years before: a valentine with a hand-drawn bunny on it with the words “Somebunny Loves You” written in cursive and Christie’s name at the bottom. He wondered now if she had drawn it especially for him or if she had just given him one she had drawn, not carrying what it said.
After repacking the box, he set it in the corner, leaving the card out. Whichever of Agatha’s sisters he saw next, he would send the card with her to give to Agatha. Maybe then Agatha would talk to him.
With no other idea what to do, Chris returned to sitting on his front step, knowing she wasn’t coming out today. She was still hiding.
But he sat and stared anyway; there was nothing else to do. His contractor no longer let him help. It seemed that even under supervision, he couldn’t get anything done right. This included him having to have a toilet replaced three times.
As cars passed and kids yelled from somewhere, Chris looked at the house he wanted to be in with Agatha and Poppy as a family.
“Boy, are you depressing to look at,” someone said from the sidewalk.
Looking over at a brown-haired guy in a suit and blue tie, he sat up. He had no idea who the guy was, but he was happy someone wanted to talk to him. Without Agatha and Poppy around, he was bored.
“Thanks, just letting my mind wander.”
“Toward some Lovely lady, I assume. They dig their claws into you, and you can’t shake them. Even when they disappear.” The man sat down near him and looked at the house as well.
“What are you talking about?” Chris asked in confusion. The man was talking in riddles.
“You missing Agatha,” the man stated.
“Do you know her?” Chris turned to the guy, excited. Maybe he could tell him where to find Agatha.
“You have no memory at all!” The man laughed. “Or maybe you weren’t paying attention to anyone but Agatha that night. I’m married to the lovely Maby Lovely. My name’s Cliff.”
“Chris Lowell.” Chris shook the man’s hand, but still didn’t remember him from the dinner at Agatha’s mom’s house. Cliff was right; his eyes had been on Agatha that night, and her daughter.
“That I know. I should beat you up for sleeping in my woman’s bed, but I can account for her movements that night, so I’m okay.” Cliff chuckled.
Chris shrugged. “Thanks for letting me off so easy.”
“Any time. But do not, I repeat, do not touch my woman,” Cliff warned, not that Chris was a threat on that front. If she hadn’t looked exactly like her twin sister, Chris wouldn’t even remember her, but identical twins tended to be memorable.
Chris raised his hands in the air. “I will leave her be.”
“Good, now show me your house. What are you doing with it?” Cliff got to his feet.
“Selling it once it’s done. I really like how it is turning out,” Chris admitted, though he was not really responsible for its appearance.
After showing Cliff around the house and telling him everything that had been done and everything that was going to be done, Chris was surprised with how many questions Cliff had. But it made the morning go quickly.
“So when are you going to be done?” Cliff asked as they made their way back outside.
“Two weeks, I think. Two weeks,” he repeated, looking back at Agatha’s house.
Cliff patted him on the shoulder. “She won’t come back until you’re gone, no matter how long it takes.”
“I know. I just miss her,” he admitted to this virtual stranger.
“It’s the claws; they dig in deep. But it doesn’t hurt as bad when they’re around,” Cliff said.
Both their eyes followed a white Jeep that pulled to a stop in front of Agatha’s house. Both watched with interest as a brunette climbed from the driver’s seat and waved at them.
“Your wife?” Chris asked, because it was either her or her twin.
“Nope, that’s Lucy,” he replied, walking toward the woman.
Cliff gave Lucy a hug when they reached her. “Did you bring the babies or kids?”
“Nope, Leo’s home with the boys, and the girls are all with their mothers,” Lucy explained as she opened the back end of the Jeep.
“And you?” Cliff asked.
“I’m making desserts for tomorrow night. My kitchen—for now—only has one oven. This one has two. Harper is coming to help.” She started handing the men things to carry into the house.
“Just like old times,” Cliff said as his arms were filled with baking supplies.
“Except no one’s here.” Lucy rushed to open the door for them, her arms empty.
“I know, it’s creepy. It’s never this empty. I remember one morning waking up in your room, and everyone had someone over. Well, not my Maby, but everyone else did. It was a fucking madhouse.” Cliff set his load on the counter, and Chris followed suit.
“I know, and now it’s empty. Agatha and the baby will be back one day,” she said, looking right at Chris with a glare. “What are you doing in the neighborhood, Clifton?”
“I am going to buy my lady love a house.” Cliff grinned at her.
“You’ve already bought her a house,” Lucy pointed out, ignori
ng Chris.
“She doesn’t really like it, so I’m going to buy Chris’s. She’ll love living next to Agatha and having Mom Lovely right down the street. And I know she loves older houses rather than new ones.”
Chris stared at Cliff. He had said nothing about wanting to buy the house, just that he wanted to see it. His heart sank. He had a buyer, but he still wanted to live there so that he knew when Agatha came home.
“You didn’t say anything about buying it,” Chris stated.
“Soon, I will buy it. You should get one on this street too,” Cliff said to Lucy.
“No way, this house is tiny compared to Leo’s. With six kids, we need all the room we can get. Maybe when the two big ones are gone, but maybe not then either. I kind of like where we’re at,” Lucy said.
“Your loss, Luce,” Cliff said. “I have to get to work before my lady love realizes I’m not there.”
With a hug to his sister-in-law, he was off, leaving the room in a vacuum of silence between Chris and Lucy.
“Have you seen Agatha?”
“Not today.”
“You have the twins?” he asked, even though he knew she did. There were two car seats in the back of her vehicle. He just wanted to make conversation.
“Yes, that’s me.” She didn’t elaborate.
“I love Agatha. Everything about her.” He decided to lay it out there for her sister.
For days he has just wanted to talk to Agatha, but if he had to go through her sister, he would. If pouring his heart out to this woman would get his Agatha to come back, he would do it.
“Did you tell her?” Lucy asked, her attention fully on him now.
“Yes, but it was too late. She was already mad at me for reading to Poppy.”
“Her books, Chris. Her own family had only known she had published them for just a few weeks. She doesn’t share easily.”
He sat down on a stool. “I know. She hid that she was an artist from me until after we had slept together.”
“You and your friends made fun of her for being an artist. I don’t even think anyone at the school knew she had gotten into art school.” Lucy started pulling out ingredients.