Chapter 36
Chapter Thirty-Six
Ezra
“Mom?” Autumn calls, peeking her head inside the Green’s two-story house. The paint is peeling on the wooden siding outside and one of the shutters has completely come off the building. The grass is overgrown and infested with weeds. Mr. Green would hate that. He’d have never let that happen.
“Maybe she isn’t home,” I say, following after Autumn and stepping into the quiet house.
“She’s here,” Autumn says, her tone droll.
I reach for her hand and she doesn’t pull away when I slip my fingers through hers. “You’re sure?”
She pauses, tips her head up to mine, and, with her voice low, says, “My mother hasn’t left this house in five years.”
Since Ed Green died. “ Never ?”
“Never.”
I swallow, unsure of what we’ll find. April Green was always helping someone, never sitting still. I can’t imagine her home-bound.
April rounds the corner. Her brown hair has streaks of gray spilling through it. It’s cut short in a bob, though she used to keep it long. While she’s gained a few wrinkles since I last saw her, she still resembles an older version of her daughter. She’s smiling, her lips dabbed in pink gloss, and her cheeks warm with a blush. She looks like her .
“Ezra Bennett?” she calls out, joyful and somewhat shocked. She sounds like she always did. “Is that you?” Her arms open wide and her eyes drop for only a second to mine and Autumn’s clasped hands.
I’m a bit shocked she’s letting me hold her hand—and in front of her mother. Reluctantly, I slip my fingers from Autumn’s and fall into a hug from little April Green. She’s even shorter than her daughter.
Their home looks the same—maybe a little more worn, but not much. It’s clean, with photos of her girls on the wall, with Ed’s carving knife still on the end table next to his chair. That knife lies to me, making me think he’ll be next to round the corner.
I remember this place as if it were my own home. It was the happiest place of my childhood, next to the loft barn. Being alone with Autumn was always my happiest place.
“Hello, April,” I say, patting her back, then standing straight.
“I can’t believe you’re here. It’s been years.” Again, her eyes dart to her daughter. “What brought you back?”
Autumn . Though I told myself it was a job and the need for a paycheck and a place to stay. It was Autumn that brought me. I told myself she wouldn’t be here, that I wouldn’t have to face her or the past. But now I know I was only lying to Phil and myself. I wanted her to be here.
“Work, actually. I’m designing the bistro the Linus’s are opening up.”
She chuckles. “Autumn’s place?”
I nod and return April’s warm smile.
“Come sit!” April grabs me by the hand and drags me into her sitting room. The place Autumn and I weren’t allowed to hang out as kids.
“I’m going to grab your groceries, Mom.”
“Okay,” April says without bothering to offer her help. It isn’t like her. She was always helping.
“Do you need another set of hands?” I ask her. I hadn’t seen any groceries, but then it all must have been packed in the back already.
“She’s got it,” April tells me, tugging on my hand and sitting me down on the floral couch she got when Autumn and I were juniors. Summer spilled red punch on one of the cushions, and after that, no one under the legal drinking age was allowed in that room. My eyes zone in on the faded pink stain in the right corner. It almost looks as if it were one of the rose petals on one of the many flowers adorning the fabric. But I know better. And so does April Green.
Autumn’s gone for ten minutes before April excuses herself to the bathroom.
This sitting room is the one room in the Green’s house that doesn’t feel like home to me. I hear Autumn in the kitchen and escape the space while April is still gone. I step inside to see three large boxes of food on the counters. She’s putting away groceries in April’s kitchen—the kitchen only April was allowed to organize, last I remember.
“How often do you bring her food?”
“Once a week,” Autumn says, setting a coffee can on a shelf in the corner.
“And she’s okay with you putting things away?”
Autumn snorts. “Yeah. She’s okay with it.” Her head tilts. “Now.”
“She seems mostly… normal,” I say, thinking about her bright smile and warm embrace.
"She isn't." Autumn sighs. "Well, she is and she isn't." She holds the box of cornflakes to her chest and stares up at the cupboard I'm assuming it goes into. "She smiles and talks. But she won't leave. For anything. Summer graduated from college. She refused to go. She watched it over Zoom. She would never have missed one of our events before, let alone something like graduation." She sets the box inside the cupboard and turns her attention to her next box. "She even cuts her own hair, Ez."
That doesn’t sound like April. She was so meticulous about things. But then the front of the house is proof that’s changed. While Ed may have been the one to cut the grass and maintain the house, April told him just how she wanted it.
“It’s so short,” I say.
“Mom says it’s easier for her to cut it that way.”
I think about that—more confused than anything—and zone in on the next box she’s working on. “What are those?”
She pulls disposable silver pans from a box. “Freezer meals. I have to bring her meals. She stopped cooking. She’d eat cereal every day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner—unless she can just pop something in the oven or microwave.” She bends, opening up her mom’s bottom-level freezer. She takes out one lone freezer meal already inside and sets it on the counter. Then she files the four from her box into the opening and sets the older one on top.
When does she have time to prep all this, with the farm and the bistro? How will she do it once the restaurant is open? “Does Summer help?”
Her eyes narrow and she gives me the smallest of glares—no one was ever allowed to mess with Autumn’s sister. Clearly, some things haven’t changed. “She’s worked really hard to get this job. She can’t do it here—”
“Writing grants?”
“She has meetings. And conferences. She can’t do her job in Love. And she deserves that job, Ezra.”
I hold up my white flag. “I never said she didn’t. I’m sure you’re right.” But doesn’t Autumn deserve her travels and education too?
“Besides, she sends money. And she visits every break she gets. She lost Dad so young. And she was away at college. She didn’t get to spend time with him like I did. It was hard on her.”
But bearing the burden alone, without her sister… “I’m sure it was hard on you too.”
Autumn lifts her gaze as her mother enters the room. “It was hard on all of us,” she mutters, only for me.
“So, Ezra. You’re back in Autumn’s life?” April asks me. She’s watching the two of us, just like she used to. I just can’t imagine this woman—young and healthy, always busy, always working—never leaving her home, not living.
“I am,” I say.
Autumn’s hip bumps into mine. “Not like that, Mom.”
“I’m shooting for that ,” I tell April. “I just need to get Autumn on board.”
April chuckles. “I never understood what happened to you two. Ed and I were saving for a wedding.”
“Me too,” I say. It slips from my lips, only to get me another bump from Autumn.
She smirks for her mother, a false laugh falling from her lips, one that doesn’t sound as casual as she thinks. “Excuse us.” Pulling me along by my shirt tail, she drags me back into the sitting room. “What are you doing?” she whispers.
“I’m sorry.” I chuckle—I can’t help it. “It just came out. All true, by the way.”
Autumn reaches in and pinches my stomach—or at least she tries. I run a couple miles every day and the gym has definitely been part of my therapy these past ten years. Her attempts only make me laugh harder.
“I’m sorry,” I say, calming myself. Her mother has changed—in ways that are hard to see at a glance. It’s hard for her. I need to acknowledge that, to respect that. And probably halt the marriage talk—for now. “I’ll behave.” I peck her lips and I’m calling it a win that she allows it.
Her chest deflates. “Thank you,” she says, sounding winded. I think she is tired. She’s been tired for ten years. The thought has me pulling her in with a need to comfort her.
I hold her close, hugging her tight and silently telling her she isn’t alone anymore.
I’m not going anywhere.