Chapter 30
Madison and I share a silent understanding, a bond forged in the crucible of shared trauma. We are survivors, two sisters who found strength in each other when the world outside our isolation seemed like a distant fantasy.
—Ghost Lake by Ava Howell Brooks
“Okay. What’s up? This is the first chance we’ve had to hang out together in weeks and you’ve hardly said two words all evening. If I didn’t know better, I would think I’m boring you. You haven’t even asked me about Austin.”
Madi looked up from the red-and-white container of Chinese takeout Nicole had brought home after her shift at the ER.
“I’m sorry.” She set down her chopsticks, her appetite gone. “You’re not boring me at all. I’m just...lousy company. It’s been a really strange day.”
“Why is that? Last I heard, you said you would be busy all day at the farmers market with an animal-adoption event. I can’t imagine that part was too unusual. You’ve done them before.”
“That part was fine. Good, actually. We found homes for all the puppies and kittens as well as a couple of our older animals.”
“Terrific. That means the shelter might be relatively quiet for all of five minutes.”
“Maybe.”
“So what made your day strange?”
She felt like a lousy friend, focusing only on herself. “Tell me about Austin first.”
Nicole made a face. “I broke up with him last night. Hence the need for Chinese food and girl talk.”
“What happened? I thought you liked him.”
“I did at first, but he was becoming way too clingy. He was talking about moving here and finding a job for the winter, finishing his master’s degree online. He even talked about us finding a condo together or something. After a month of dating!”
“Oh wow. That’s fast.”
“Right. And he suddenly became super possessive. Last night, I agreed to dance with a tourist from Virginia, a guy named Zach who is in the coast guard, and you would have thought I had made out with the guy right there on the dance floor. No thank you. Zach is in town for a week, so we’re going to a concert in Sun Valley on Tuesday. Some bluegrass band. I don’t know them but Zach says they’re good.”
“Sounds fun,” she said.
“He might have a friend, if you want to come along. Or I know Ryan is still interested in you. I’ve seen him a few times at the Burning Tree and he always asks about you.”
Her friend’s dating life suddenly seemed exhausting, moving from new guy to new guy.
How could Madi say anything, though, when her love life had mirrored Nicki’s exactly for the past few years?
Had she really been interested in any of those guys or had she only been going along with her friend?
Or had she only been waiting, biding her time until Luke was ready to move on after Johanna’s death? Hoping on some subconscious level that when he was ready, he would finally turn to her?
“Tell me about your day,” Nicki said. “What happened at the farmers market that left you so distracted?”
I was ambushed by a reporter pressing me to talk about things I would rather forget. I kissed your brother. Again. Your niece caught us and wasn’t happy about it. I yelled at my sister. Is that enough?
She said none of those things, of course. “A hundred different things. Nothing specific. It was only one of those days where everything seemed twice as hard as it needed to be.”
“I hate those kind of days. The other night in the ER, we got hit with one thing after another and absolutely anything that could go wrong did. In spades.”
“I’m sorry my schedule has been so frenetic the past few weeks that you haven’t even been able to come home and tell me all about it.”
“Don’t worry. I’m keeping a file of all the weirdest cases. Without any names or identifying factors, of course. I would never abuse my patients’ privacy. Still, I figured one winter night, I can spill them all and totally gross you out.”
She smiled, grateful beyond words for Nicole, who had been her dearest friend since they were fourteen years old.
“I spent seven years as a vet tech. My gross stories will beat your gross stories any day.”
“We should have a contest.”
“I can’t wait,” she said.
Nicki grinned and set down her chopsticks. “Hey, I know we talked about heading out tonight and finding some live music somewhere. I’ll be honest, I’m not really in the mood.”
“I get it. You might run into Austin.”
“There’s that. But I was thinking how nice it would be to stay in. We could get in our jammies, pop some popcorn and stream a good movie.”
Madi felt so much relief, she wanted to hug Nicki. The idea of hitting the bar scene seemed pointless and exhausting, especially when she knew she would have zero interest in dancing with anyone except Luke.
“That is the best idea I’ve heard all week,” she declared, already heading for her bedroom.
She had just slipped into a loose T-shirt and her favorite sleep pants, pink with little black doggy paw prints all over them, when the doorbell rang.
Mo and Mabel both barked and hurried to stand sentry beside the door. Nicki, who had been busy putting away the leftover Chinese food and had yet to change into her pajamas, reached the door first.
Since she had already taken off her bra, Madi had no intention of going out in her pajamas until she heard Nicki’s greeting to their visitor.
“Ava. Hi. This is a surprise. We were about to watch a movie. Why don’t you stay and join us?”
Madi winced, all her good feelings toward her friend disappearing in a rush.
Why did Nicki have to go and say that? What if Ava took her up on the invitation and decided to stay?
That would be the last thing Madi would find relaxing at the end of the day, forced to spend even more time with her sister right now.
In fairness to her roommate, Madi knew why Nicole had issued the invitation. Since Madi and her sister had gone up into the mountains together a few weeks earlier, they had been getting along, if on a superficial level. Nicki must have assumed everything was cool between them after Ava started working at the animal rescue with her.
It was Madi’s own fault for not telling her friend about the fight she and her sister had that day at the market.
She held her breath and was deeply relieved when she heard Ava refuse the invitation.
“No. Thank you. I just... I need to speak with my sister, then I’ll get out of your way so you can watch your movie.”
“Sure. No problem. Come in. Can I get you something to drink?”
Nicki didn’t know Ava was pregnant, Madi remembered, as her sister was keeping the information under wraps for now.
“I could use a glass of ice water,” Ava said as Madi walked into the living room.
Ava looked upset by something. Madi wasn’t sure what gave her that impression. Maybe something in her pallor or the way she was kneading her hands together.
“I can get you some water,” Madi said. She headed into the kitchen and filled a glass with ice and water, then returned with it to the living room.
“Here you go,” she said, handing over the glass. She heard the coolness in her voice, the tightness.
“Thank you,” Ava murmured. She grasped it, sipping it gratefully as if Madi had handed her a healing elixer.
“Please. Sit,” Nicki offered.
After a pause, Ava perched on the front edge of the soft easy chair that was usually the dogs’ favorite as it gave them a good vantage point out the window.
Predictably, Mabel jumped up beside her and snuggled in and Ava reached down automatically to pet the dog.
“I’ll get out of your way,” Nicki offered.
“You don’t have to,” Madi said quickly. “Stay.”
Something told her that both she and Ava needed a buffer between them right now.
After a pause, Nicki slid onto the sofa beside Madi.
Ava curled her fingers into Mabel’s fur and seemed content to pet the dog and sip at her water.
She obviously had a good reason to come and Madi wanted to tell her to get on with it, but she forced herself to wait patiently until Ava was ready to speak.
“I don’t know where to start. I...didn’t want to have this conversation at all but Grandma persuaded me it would be better if I am...up front with you.”
Madi was aware of an odd sense of foreboding she couldn’t have explained. “About what?”
Ava looked miserable. “About the reason I agreed to a contract to publish Ghost Lake. I didn’t really want to. I know you don’t believe me, but I never intended to go public with the story at all. I wrote it as part of my...my therapy and then decided to use it as my master’s thesis.”
She hadn’t realized that part, or that Ava had felt she needed therapy. Madi had gone through counseling as part of her rehabilitation but Ava always insisted she was fine.
“I never submitted it to a publisher.”
“Who did?” Nicki asked, looking intrigued. “Your husband?”
Nicki didn’t know Ava and Cullen were estranged, as Madi hadn’t breached her sister’s confidence by sharing that. Ava shook her head. “No. My faculty advisor did, in kind of a roundabout way. A friend of a friend of hers was an editor at a New York publishing house. My faculty advisor was moved by it and sent it to the editor, who liked it enough to offer me a book contract. It really came out of the blue. They...made it very difficult to refuse but I did.”
“You refused?” Nicki asked.
Ava nodded. “I wasn’t ready. I didn’t feel I could publish the book without talking to your mom and Luke. Or to Madi.”
That was when Ava had first told her she had written her memoir for her master’s thesis, Madi remembered. She had asked Madi if she would mind if she published it.
Madi had foolishly assumed it would only be seen by a few academic types. It was also around the same time she had learned Eugene Pruitt was donating his farm to the Emerald Creek Animal Rescue Foundation and she had been desperately trying to obtain grants to cover operating expenses.
“Through a couple of other contacts of my advisor, I ended up obtaining an agent. In a very short period of time, a matter of weeks, the book went to auction. The original editor won the bid. Their terms were so favorable I...I couldn’t say no.”
“It’s not that hard,” Madi said. “It’s only one little syllable.”
Ava sighed. “I’ll admit, I had some selfish reasons for signing a contract. Cullen and I had been talking about buying a house one day before we started a family. We were saving for it, but he’s an associate professor of paleontology and I teach middle school English. Portland is a really expensive place to live and we’re not exactly rolling in dough. The contract would provide a nice down payment on a really nice starter home in a good neighborhood.”
“Not a big house in a fancy neighborhood?” Madi asked. “I thought you said it was a good deal.”
“It was.” Ava pursed her lips. “But I only saved a third of the advance for a down payment. The rest I...chose to donate to a good cause.”
Nicki whistled from her spot on the sofa. “Wow. That was generous of you.”
Madi stared at her sister, the words tumbling around in her head.
Donate.
Good cause.
Grandma persuaded me...up front.
She saw Ava twisting her hands together in her lap and all the separate puzzle pieces seemed to float through the ether to gel together in one stunning picture.
“You’re our angel d-donor.”
Ava gazed at her, jaw slack, but she didn’t bother to deny it.
The gift had been so thrilling, as generous as it had been unexpected. Delivered by an attorney for a person who wished to remain anonymous, the donation had given the foundation enough operating funds to keep going for at least two years. With the other grants and from selling off part of the land Eugene Pruitt had left, they could push that to three years.
It had been enough for her to quit her job, to put the finishing touches on the facilities, to expand their outreach efforts.
All because of Ava.
She didn’t know what to think, what to feel.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I made an anonymous donation because I wanted to stay anonymous. I didn’t want you to know. If Grandma hadn’t insisted that keeping it secret was a mistake, I’m not sure I would have told you at all. I am telling you only because I am afraid that if you find out on your own at some future point, it might damage our relationship more.”
Madi wasn’t sure it was possible for their relationship to feel any more fractured.
Emotions seemed to wash over her in waves. She thought of her bitter anger toward her sister since the book came out, the harsh words she had thrown at Ava about being greedy and self-serving. How was she supposed to respond now, knowing that Ava had ultimately agreed to publish the book so that Madi could start the animal rescue?
She had acted like a petulant brat when she should have been grateful at the enormity of the gift from her sister.
“You should have talked to me first,” she muttered, not knowing what else to say.
“Would you have taken the money from me if you had known where it came from?”
She didn’t have a clear answer to that. Madi wanted to think she could stand on her own and eventually fund the rescue through grants and fundraising. But she couldn’t deny that Ava’s generosity had pushed up their timeline to open by at least a year.
They were helping animals in need, something they wouldn’t have been able to do without Ava. That day alone they had found new homes for more than a dozen animals. They had provided a home to others, like Barnabas and Sabra, who likely would have been put down otherwise.
Because of the donation, she had been able to build the barn, to hire her full-time assistant to handle the office work and even give herself enough of a salary to enable her to leave the vet clinic.
None of that would have been possible without Ava’s gift.
She was deeply grateful. Of course she was grateful. So why did some part of her still simmer with indignation?
“We can’t know whether or not I would have taken the money from you, can we? You didn’t give me a choice.”
“I’m sorry you see it that way,” Ava said, her tone stiff. “I thought it would be easier this way, if I simply donated anonymously. No strings attached.”
“Nothing comes without strings.”
Because she now knew the truth, she felt suffocated by obligatory gratitude. It would take time for her to figure out how to process the enormity of her sister’s gift.
“Why did you do this?”
“I knew how important the creation of an animal sanctuary is to you. You’ve talked about it for years. You used to talk about it even when we were girls. Do you remember?”
Yes. She remembered. Through all those dark days at the camp, they would talk about their hopes and their dreams. Those dreams had sustained them. She had wanted to be a veterinarian who rescued animals.
Ava, bookish and quiet, had wanted to be a writer. She dreamed of using her words to change the world somehow.
“I wish you had told me.”
“I’m telling you now. You can be angry with me, resentful, whatever you want, but it’s done. I can’t take it back and I wouldn’t if I could. I love seeing what you’re doing with the animal rescue. You’re making a difference to these animals. Mom would have been so proud of you.”
She paused and rose, her features pale and her hands trembling slightly. “I’m proud of you. I love you, Madi. Whatever you think about what I’ve done, please don’t ever doubt that. I love you and I’m proud to be your sister.”
Madi struggled for a response but the words didn’t come. She only felt hollow, carved out by shock and shame at how she had treated her sister when Ava didn’t deserve it.
“Good night,” Ava said. She made it as far as the door when she suddenly cried out, clutching at her abdomen, then collapsed to the floor.