“Because of those photos I found today, and because Sarah Anne’s back in town. She came to Mae’s funeral. A part of me felt like I was being reunited with my best friend, but a bigger part of me felt like she’s a stranger. Funny thing is, I keep finding photos of her, like breadcrumbs.”
“You should see her,” Callum suggested. “It’d be good for you to get out with some friends. I know Mae kept a tight leash on you, but you can make choices for yourself now.”
Hannah missed the easy intimacy of her friendship with Sarah Anne. Her life, and her body, was changing day by day. She’d grown used to Mae’s good advice, and now that the woman was gone, she had no one but herself to rely on. “As much as I miss Sarah Anne, I feel like that night will always be between us.”
“I’m sure she doesn’t blame you. You were just kids.”
So was Jacob. Hannah didn’t voice her thought. Instead, she whispered, mostly to herself, “They said later that the fire started upstairs.”
“You think he started it?”
“I don’t know what to think. Never mind my rambling.” She swatted at another mosquito.
“Hey, you’re almost due for another check-up. Should I give Dr. Merrick a call?” He avoided her eyes.
He knew how she hated doctors, how frightened she was of the prescribed tests, although he didn’t understand why, and she couldn’t explain it to him without sounding crazy. What would she say? I feel like I’m cursed. I feel like my very genes are barbed and deviant. Crazy, she thought.
“Everything feels fine with the baby. I’m getting fat right on schedule, no more or less than expected,” she said. “Soon I’ll be wearing a muumuu, and then in a short few weeks I’ll need you to cut a neck hole in a tent for me.”
“You’re beautiful,” he said. “Truly. Now more than ever.”
She shook her head, dismissing his words. She was growing rustic in her pregnancy. With the near-permanent blush on her cheeks and her newly broad hips and chest, she’d pass for a milkmaid.
“Hannah,” he started, and exhaled. She could feel him fidgeting. He scanned the clearing and when he looked at her again, his eyes harbored fear. “I love you.”
Hannah took an involuntary step back. The buzzing of the mosquitoes filled her ears, making the silence seem longer. She’d yearned to hear those words from him, but now that she had what she’d wanted, she felt only dread. The most terrifying thing about love was losing it. The thought that it could crust and harden like honey in a jar.
She didn’t know what she’d done to earn it, and so had no idea how to keep it.
Hannah tugged him by his belt loops, wanting to be transported away from the hungry mosquitoes and her aching body. She wanted suddenly to be back in those first, uncomplicated moments between them. To be able to make the choice to accept his love and love him back without being bound by pregnancy.
Callum cocked his head. “Hannah?”
He was waiting for a response, and she found that she had none. He looked down at her as if she were some perplexing stain he’d just noticed. As if he didn’t know her.
“Let’s head back,” he said, disengaging.
“Sure.” She sounded eager and false to her own ears. “It’s too hot, and I want to shower before tonight.”
“I didn’t realize you were coming.” He was staring at the ground, lost in thought.
“I haven’t seen you play in such a long time.”
“I’d love it if you came.” Callum tripped over the words, as if hearing the echo of his earlier words. “I’m just surprised.”
He turned around, his palm a visor over his eyes, then walked past her.
The bar was dim and loud, and Callum seemed fitful beside her. He rubbed his hands together like a fly.
“They’re late,” Callum said for the third time. Beside the stage, the bar owner waved at them, then gestured to his wrist. “Fuck. This is why I need an actual band. Nobody’s ever going to take me seriously if I’m playing with amateurs who can’t even manage to be on time for a gig.”
Hannah stalled one of his hands in her own, and made an empty shushing sound. Leah paced in front of them, kohl-lined eyes shining. Her dark hair hung halfway down her back. She was taller than Hannah remembered, in a dark crochet dress that showed a black bra.
“They’ll be here,” Hannah said, tickling his palm with her finger.
He squeezed her hand then let go, downing the shot glass of tequila that Leah handed him. “They might not,” he sighed and slunk away toward the stage.
Leah watched him go, then took his seat. “This has been happening lately. He hasn’t been playing as much, so people are forgetting his name.” So close, Hannah could see the girl’s pretty lipsticked pout. “He’s been busy with other things, I guess.”
“Where’s Tom?”
Leah’s eyebrows rose. “Cal didn’t tell you?” There was a note of delight in her voice. “Tom’s on to Florida now. He thinks he might be interested in surfing. Writing about it, or something. It happens often around here. People come down, then pass through.”
“You’re sticking around.” Hannah meant it as a question, but it came out flat.
Leah smiled. “I’m more serious than most.” She glanced at Hannah’s belly, the hint of a curve beneath her green dress. “You’re getting far along, aren’t you?”
“Day by day.”
Callum appeared through a break in the crowd, his hair beginning to stand up from having been fingered so much. He motioned them over. Leah sprung up like a mouse trap and followed him with a whispered, “I’ll take care of it.”
Hannah settled back into the booth, trying to quiet a wave of unease. The smoke in the club stuck to her arms and neck, which were coated in bug spray. She stank of chemicals. Earlier she’d watched, unbelieving, as a fat mosquito had stalked gingerly up the sheen of her freshly sprayed arm, and feasted.
For a while, she was happy to try to make out the music coming through the speakers. John Lee Hooker, she thought, surprised to recognize the tune. One of Callum’s favorites. She closed her eyes and hummed along, half-listening to snippets of conversations and the salvo of laughter.
A short-haired girl in a man’s striped shirt tapped on the table and asked if the other seats were taken.
“Yes. Wait, maybe not,” Hannah said, realizing Callum and Leah had been gone for a long time. “You can take the whole booth.”
“Thanks.” The girl smiled sweetly and waved to a group of teenagers behind her, their piercings glinting, as Hannah stood and surrendered the table.
Hannah circled the club twice. A young girl two-stepped with a white-haired man, her head bowed to follow his complicated steps. He chucked her under the chin. “Don’t look at my feet,” the old man chastised.
Hannah stood by the bar on her tiptoes, and a familiar grin shone at her like a beacon.
“You’re Callum’s girl,” the man said with perpetual good humor. “I’ve been drumming with him for a while. I’ve seen you at some of our shows. Name’s Stuart.”
“Right. I’m Hannah,” she said and took his offered hand. His wrist was thick with a garland of veins. “How’s it going?”
“I was slated to be in the band tonight, but I just got the call from the rest of the crew and they’re pulling out.”
Hannah’s heart fell. Callum needed this. More than money, more than the joy of playing onstage, he fed on adulation. The energy of the crowd satisfied a need that was separate from what she could give him. “That’s awful.” She sighed. “I’ll go find him.”
“Hey,” the drummer pulled her back gingerly by the arm. “I know it’s not my place, but Callum hasn’t been looking too good.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s looking skinny, you know? Like he’s on edge. Is he into drugs again? I only ask ’cause I caught the tail end of it last tim
e, and he had a hell of a time pulling himself out.”
Hannah flinched. “How long ago?”
“A couple years. He had the same hungry look he’s got now.”
Hannah took a deep breath, trying to rein in her suddenly galloping heartbeat. “What drugs?”
The drummer fidgeted with his drumsticks, tapping them on his thighs. “I’m sorry, but it’s not really my place to say. You should ask him.”
She searched the man’s face, but it was guileless. “Thanks for the concern,” she murmured, as the owner of the club came to stand beside them, nodding briefly at Hannah.
“The rest of your band never came. It really fucked us,” he growled to the drummer. “Look, Cal’s a good kid, plays a good solo, but y’all need to work out your schedules. I had to take back the advance. We’ve already had complaints.”
Stuart sighed. “It’s not his fault. This gig meant a lot to him. It’s these young kids …”
“Don’t matter to me. You’re here, you get paid. You’re not, fuck you, too.”
“We could do a real stripped-down set? Just vocals, guitar, and my drums?”
“Something tells me Cal’s not in any shape to carry a set right now.” The man grimaced. “He’s getting shit-faced with that girl out back. Ask me, she’s bad news.” Stuart cleared his throat, his eyes darting toward Hannah, but the club owner kept speaking. “She wanted to buy a bottle of tequila. That dumb bartender I hired last week saw a bra strap and handed it over. Now I have to fire him and that’s another thing Cal’s cost me. Last I saw they were taking turns sucking the last few drops from it.”
Hannah moved through the graffiti-speckled hallway, past the kitchen, loud with Spanish curses and thick with grease smoke, and stopped at the open door to the back alley. She had to crane her neck to see them fully, lit by a car’s headlights against the brick wall.
It hit her like boiling water, searing down her chest and pooling in her stomach. She felt it sloshing there. Callum’s hands lost in the nest of Leah’s hair, their tongues fighting, an image that would never fade.
She said his name. Rap music rang out from a car in the parking lot and the sound of chatter squeezed out past her. But he heard her. He turned around and his mouth, moist from Leah’s, quivered like a sound wave.
Hannah retreated wordlessly. She knew he would follow, even if Leah pawed pleadingly at his chest. She knew he would follow and she couldn’t bear to look at him.
Their boat ride home was silent. Each time he tried to touch her, she struck him with a force that surprised them both. The moment the boat docked, she rushed off, almost tripping in the dark. She slammed the back door behind her and raced up the stairs into their bedroom, where she allowed herself to keen for several seconds. Even having seen it, she couldn’t quite believe it. The image of them together seemed like a half-remembered scene from a nightmare. When she heard his steps outside the bedroom door, she rushed into bed.
He lay down beside her and she kept her gaze fixed beyond his shoulder, on the moon outside Mae’s bedroom window. Months later and the room still felt borrowed. Some mornings, she still woke to the feeling that her feet had been warmed between old hands.
“It’s not what you think,” Callum said in a low voice and wormed his body closer. His hand clutched hers.
“You wouldn’t know what I think,” she answered.
“I can guess. Can you let me guess? She really is nothing,” he began. “No, that came out wrong. Maybe there were feelings once, but they were never real. They don’t even come close to touching what we have here. This,” he said, tightening his grip on her hand, “is real, this is what I want. That was a mistake that will never happen again. All you saw was a moment of weakness and too much tequila.”
“Is that all I saw?”
She waited through his silence. He was fitting together words in his mind, casting off the rotten ones, those that had been proven wrong. There were too many words, but still too few to balm the ache inside her.
“Yes, definitely. Say something,” he urged.
Hannah shook her head in the darkness. She couldn’t parse through all of her feelings. “Are you on drugs again?”
His hand released hers, then quickly squeezed it again. “How do you know about that?”
Anger throbbed through her, so strong that she felt it like an injury. Warm to the touch and red, across her breastbone. Anger that he would do this, anger that he would do this after having put a child in her. As she thought this, the anger became almost indistinguishable from fear as she touched her belly. It was the fear that kept her in the bed, even as she shrank back from his damp touch.
“Well, I certainly didn’t hear it from you.” Hannah turned her body into the mattress.
He gave chase, lifting up her slip, and pressing his thigh against hers. “Because there was nothing to tell. It was a rough time, but it’s long over. It has nothing to do with this, with us.”
They were two furnaces, drawing from each other. She felt mosquitoes crawling sluggishly along her skin, poisoned by the layers of bug spray but determined.
She swatted his leg away.
“You’ve been so distant,” he began, and she stiffened. She heard him hesitating, cutting off words at the roots. “Sometimes I think you don’t want this. Me, I guess.”
“Because I didn’t say it back? That I love you? So tonight was, what, payback?”
“You don’t even want to marry me,” he insisted, propping himself up on his elbow.
“I do,” she hissed. “On both counts, I do. Just don’t rush me. Can’t you be patient?”
“Yeah, but don’t write me off and don’t shut me out. I’m sorry.” His voice broke. “I’m so sorry. It was a mistake.”
She turned her head and his mouth was waiting, a warm salve for her chapped lips. “There’s something good here,” and their lips were so fastened that although Callum spoke, the words seemed to come from both of them.
She pulled away from his mouth, and saw his wide, frightened eyes. “I don’t know,” she said, very quietly, and immediately knew it to be true. After several minutes of silence, he began to snore but she remained awake.
She felt with a sudden ferocity that she’d never really deserved this love to begin with, but still she was angry at having been fooled. And below the anger, shame. At her own dumb hope that her happiness might last. Happiness was meant for saints. Jacob’s face, smiling and complacent, appeared before her eyes, a piercing condemnation.
“Come over and meet my friend, little bear.” Sarah Anne had called from the foyer of her house. “He likes to hide.” Sarah Anne closed the heavy wood door, inlaid with stained glass, behind them, then took Hannah’s hand.
“It’s okay.” Nerves danced along Hannah’s shoulders. “Let’s not bother him.”
“It won’t.”
“Sarah?” A blonde boy wearing faded denim and a long-sleeved tee appeared in the hallway. Hannah sucked in air. He was beautiful, otherworldly. His eyebrows and eyelashes were pale, which brought out the teal of his eyes.
“Jacob, this is Hannah.”
Sarah Anne’s brother, several years older and towering over them both, brushed a lock of blonde hair from his forehead. “Hannah,” he intoned, by way of greeting. His arms, thick with fisted muscles, should have been hoisting Southern cheerleaders over his head. His arms were the sort that made old men revise their own histories, retrieve false memories of hunting and wrestling in the rain.
“Hi Jacob,” Hannah said. Something flickered in the boy’s face, as if he were a turtle at the bottom of a deep well, roused by a pebble.
Sarah Anne moved fluidly to her brother’s side. “What have you been up to?” she asked him.
He moved away, and with a shrug, Sarah Anne followed him into the backyard.
The backyard smelled of freshly cut grass. A green and white
striped patio set was planted in the middle and Sarah Anne plopped down on the chaise, kicking off her shoes. Wildflowers were scattered along the fence.
“This is his favorite thing,” Sarah Anne called back. “He’s pretty good at it, don’t you think?”
Jacob’s work sat in the shade by the back fence, neatly ordered rows upon rows of carefully constructed birdhouses and birds’ nests. “Wow,” Hannah breathed.
Jacob sat down cross-legged in front of a large wicker dome. Rocking back and forth, he resumed building.
Hannah moved through the rows, resisting the urge to touch the structures. They were impeccable. Birds’ nests more perfect than those that any bird, imprinted with the knowledge from birth, could ever make. Speckled eggs sunned themselves in some, and a squawk startled her. A starling unfurled its flinty, polka-dot plumes from a bed of straw. Three pale turquoise eggs sat beneath it.
“This is amazing,” Hannah said.
Jacob squinted up at her, and chortled. The bird turned to him and chirped in response.
“Yup,” Sarah Anne said, sounding bored. “We have a whole menagerie. Our parents are so thrilled.” She clasped her hands behind her head.
Hannah leaned in close to the starling, holding out a finger. It opened its beak, and a daddy longlegs struggled to escape. She spun around slowly, seeing beaks open all around her like the vulgar lips of lilies.
“We’re like a foster home for them,” Sarah Anne said, knocking her knees from side to side. “We feed them, give them nests, and then they fly away. My mom calls it practice for when Jacob and I fly the coop.”
Hannah stretched out a finger, dangling it over the starling. Black eyes reared back in its head suspiciously as she touched its wings. They were soft and smooth, slightly moist. She shivered.
“How long have you had these?”
Sarah Anne yawned. “He’s been doing it since we got here. My father’s sort of impressed by it. I think he’s got visions of architecture dancing in his head. My mother hates it.”
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