33. Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Three
ELLA
Girls’ night convenes at the firepit at eight, by order of Rose, who declared it over the group chat with the phrase attendance is not optional, tell the boyfriend he’s banned.
So, here we are. Daddy’s fire built and abandoned to us. Blankets on the benches. Two pizzas from town going lukewarm, plus a bottle of wine Rose brought from the bar that she describes, pouring, as “drinkable, which is a technical term.”
Faith’s on the end of my bench with a root beer and a blanket up to her chin, eighteen, thrilled to be included, pretending she isn’t.
Cassie’s got a lamb-free flannel on for once.
The fireflies are up out of the long grass, and the mountains have gone to black paper cutouts against a sky still holding one last line of orange.
I get through half a slice before the tribunal begins.
“So.” Rose settles opposite me with her glass, backlit by fire, and everyone goes quiet in a way that has clearly been rehearsed. “Dorothy’s. The window table. Hand-holding on Main Street at six forty in the evening.”
“It was a nice dinner.”
“Earl Fisk tipped his hat. I heard it from three people before you’d ordered.”
“It’s a friendly town.”
“You shared the brownie sundae.”
“Who told you that?”
“Dorothy,” says the entire bench at once.
I put my face in my hands while the firepit dissolves into cackling. Faith produces her phone and reads aloud, in a courtroom voice, selected highlights of Friday’s group chat, including Cassie’s congratulations to statistics, until I threaten to revoke root beer privileges.
“In our defense,” Cassie says, “we’ve watched this developing since June. It’s been like watching two people assemble furniture with no instructions. We had months invested.”
“Years,” Rose says, “in emotional terms.”
“He fixed the gate,” Faith says, dreamy, to the fire. “Nobody even asked him.”
“For the record,” Rose says, “I gave him the talk at the bar last time he was in. The full talk. Told him if he makes my sister cry, I know plenty of ways to lose a body in these mountains, and I pour drinks for two sheriff’s deputies who owe me.”
“You did not.”
“I did. You know what he said?” Rose pauses for the room because she’s never once wasted material.
“He thought about it, all serious, and said, ‘that’s a deal I can handle.’ Then he fixed the ice machine on his way out.
” She shakes her head into her wine. “I can’t even threaten the man. He maintenance-called my threat.”
The teasing rolls on and I let it, because this is the toll and honestly I’d pay double. Then headlights swing into the yard, and Beth’s truck rattles down to the barn, forty minutes late. My sister comes across the dark meadow into the firelight, still in her arena clothes.
Wearing a man’s jacket.
Canvas, quilted lining, big in the shoulders. She drops onto the bench, takes a slice, and starts in about her run times like nothing whatsoever is draped over her entire body.
“Two flat,” she says through pizza. “Twice. Sam says if I hold that at Gatlinburg I’m in the money, and his good mare threw a shoe so we ran late resetting, which is why I’m…”
She stops. The firepit has gone very quiet. Four faces are looking at the jacket.
“It got cold,” Beth says.
“It’s July,” says Cassie.
“Arenas are drafty.”
“Whose is it?” Faith asks with the deadly innocence of the youngest.
“It’s…” Beth looks down at herself like she’s discovering the jacket in real time. “It has pockets.”
Rose leans back, wine in hand, and delivers her verdict. “She smells like horse and she’s smiling like a billboard. Nobody say anything. You’ll spook her.”
“I’m not smiling.”
She is. She’s been smiling since she got here.
She tucks her chin into the collar of that canvas jacket, just slightly, the way you’d check a thing is still there.
Her phone buzzes in the jacket pocket. She doesn’t reach for it.
She puts her hand flat over the pocket instead, casual as anything, like quieting a bird, and goes back to her pizza.
I catch Rose catching it. And Rose, for once in her life, lets it lie. Subtle as a heifer in a kitchen, my family, except when it matters.
The talk drifts on. Naomi’s wedding, Faith’s new trail route, whether Cassie’s vet school exams mean she’ll miss the fall. The fire settles into its orange middle age. And somewhere in there, Cassie, thoughtful over her glass, says the thing.
“You know what’s funny? If that wedding in June had gone off like it was supposed to, none of this exists.
” She gestures with the glass, easy, meaning all of it.
“The venue would’ve had its one disaster-free event and Carla’s follower count, and Ben would be gone, married to that woman.
Instead, the whole thing blew up on the launch pad, and now look.
Naomi’s booked, the beds are in flower, you’re happy.
Genuinely happy, El, we’ve all said it when you’re not in the room.
” She raises the glass an inch. “Best catastrophe that ever happened to this family.”
“To the catastrophe,” Rose says, and four glasses and a root beer lift against the firelight.
I lift mine with them, smile, and drink.
The wine goes down cold.
Because they toast it like an act of God, a lightning strike we all got lucky by, and only I know it wasn’t lightning.
In June, I chose silence. I watched him walk to that altar with three days’ warning in my chest. My family thinks fate cleared the road for me.
I know who saw the wreck coming and let it run.
Somewhere under all this firelight, pizza, and happiness, there’s a version of this story where Ben finds that out, and I don’t know if the happiness survives the telling.
“El?” Faith’s watching me. “You went somewhere.”
“Long week.” I find the smile again. It’s easier than it should be, which is its own small shame. “Somebody give me the drinkable wine.”
It’s near eleven when the yard gate creaks.
We all turn. And there, at the edge of the firelight, is absolutely nobody, because he’s already gone.
What’s left, sitting on the flat rock, Evelyn’s rock, is a tray.
Five mugs of hot chocolate, made proper, on the stove, still steaming.
Marshmallows in four. Extra marshmallows heaped in the fifth like a cairn, and a torn corner of feed-sack paper propped against it with block capitals: FAITH’S.
Faith is up off the bench like a shot.
“He made hot chocolate.”
“He was banned,” Rose says, delighted. “He was banned, and he catered anyway. From a distance. That’s the most Ben thing that has ever happened.”
“He didn’t even stay to get credit,” Cassie says, taking her mug. “Who raised him?”
“He did,” I say, before I think. My sisters look at me, and something goes around the fire that isn’t teasing at all.
Rose lifts her mug of hot chocolate over the flames.
“To the boyfriend,” she says. “Banned from girls’ night. Welcome in the family.”
We drink to him in the dark. The chocolate is exactly sweet enough, because he’ll have tested it. Somewhere down that hill is a man who heard there was a fire tonight, counted five people around it, and couldn’t help himself.
The talk starts up again. Beth’s still wearing the jacket. Faith’s building a marshmallow situation. And I wrap both hands around my mug and smile down into it, steam on my face, thinking about him.
He’d have carried the tray down through the dark and back up again without a flashlight. He knows this land by boot-feel now. He’ll be at the cabin, or on his porch step, close enough to hear us laughing.
I raise my mug in a silent toast to Ben Callahan, ignoring the guilt lodged in my throat.