Will
Chapter Forty-Five
Iwish that the first family dinner I was bringing Elsie to was a normal Friday night dinner and not a national holiday.
Only because it felt like it added pressure, and I didn’t want her to be nervous. My family would love her. Ava would behave. And I would just be grateful she stayed in Colbridge with me.
Let’s just say that I didn’t poke too many holes in Elsie’s obviously fabricated excuses for why she wasn’t going back to Boston for Thanksgiving.
I didn’t want her to think too hard about it and change her mind.
The only regret I had was that Matthew wouldn’t be there.
It hurt knowing they’d never meet each other. They would never laugh together, or find some annoying bond they would inevitably form through taunting me.
I would’ve rolled my eyes at them, pretending to be annoyed, while secretly revelling in the fact that the two most important people in my life were getting along.
But Matthew would never see Elsie’s eyes sparkle when she laughed. And she would never see the way he could cut through any type of tension with an easy joke and a smile, because for some reason, fate had crueler plans.
For the first time in my life, I wasn’t just grieving the brother I’d lost, but the man my future family would never get to know.
My kids would never know their uncle. My wife would never meet her brother-in-law. They’d see his face in pictures, hear of him in stories, but that’s all he would ever be to them. An idea of a person. Nothing more.
I guess I hadn’t thought of stuff like that until Elsie came around.
“Wait.” She put a hand on my arm as I threw the truck into park outside my childhood home. “What do you want me to say if they ask me what I do for a living?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t want to embarrass you. Do you think I should tell them I still work for the newspaper back in Boston? I mean, technically, I quit. But it’s the last job I had, so—”
“Why can’t you just tell them the truth? That you’re here writing?”
“Because that sounds so incredibly stupid.” She cringed, looking nervously between me and the house. “I just don’t want them to think I’m some silly girl floating her way through life.”
I laughed. “That’s actually a pretty accurate assessment.” She swatted my arm. “Not in a bad way.”
Not at all.
But she groaned, apparently coming undone at the thought of going inside and presenting herself as she was.
“Els.” I took her hand, giving it a squeeze. “My parents aren’t going to care what you do or don’t do for work. It’s just a job. I think they’ll actually admire that you’re doing something you love.”
“Okay, well, do you want to give me a code word if you think I’m talking too much? Sometimes that helps.”
“What do you mean, ‘sometimes that helps?’” I frowned at her, pulling back to get a good look. “Are you normally around people who give you a code word to stop talking?”
“Well, yeah,” she said shyly. “Otherwise, I can get carried away. Wait, why are you mad?”
“I’m just confused,” I told her, assessing her with new eyes. “You’ve never been like this before.”
Truth was, she’d been rattled the last few days, and I couldn’t figure out why. There was a tense set to her shoulders, a nervous energy to her that hadn’t been there before.
And some part of me wondered if it could all be traced back to that phone call she’d had.
“I’m sorry. I promise I’ll calm down before we go in. Just give me a minute to get it together.”
“I don’t need you to calm down for me. I want you to calm down for you. And I definitely don’t want you walking in there thinking you have to be on guard. Just…be yourself. Okay?”
“You’re really not worried about me embarrassing you?” she asked hopefully.
“You couldn’t if you tried.”
“No?” Her eyes gleamed at the challenge, and I was relieved to see that bit of her coming back. “Are you sure about that?”
“You can try, if you want. I give you my full permission to do your worst.”
“That’s nice.” She sighed blissfully.
“What?”
“Spending a holiday with someone who isn’t worried about managing me.”
I felt that there was a lot to unpack there, but we’d have time for that later. I didn’t want to make her shut down again, the way she had a tendency to do every time I brought up any questions about her life before Colbridge.
Something happened. Or someone. But I trusted I had all the time in the world to learn. To show her she could trust me and open up when she was ready.
It didn’t mean I didn’t hate whoever made her feel like that.
“Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
I came around to her side and opened the door, walking beside her up the path to my parents’ house, noticing the entire time how decidedly un-Elsie like she approached the door.
“What are your parents like?” She leaned in to whisper as my knuckles tapped against the door.
“You’re asking this as if you aren’t about to meet them in three seconds.”
“Just give me something to work with. A few talking points. Anything!”
The door opened, silencing Elsie and revealing my mother’s ecstatic smile.
“Hi, Mom. Happy—”
“Elsie!” She reached forward to pull her in for a hug. “I am so glad Will convinced you to come!”
“Okay, don’t scare her, Mom,” I said, but was relieved to notice that it had the opposite effect.
Whereas before Elsie was all stiff posture and tense shoulders, her body had relaxed once she was out of my mother’s grip.
Elsie returned a greeting, thanking my mother for letting her come, and we were gestured inside to the front room where I watched them converse, a warm feeling pooling in my chest.
It was bizarre watching her stand there in the house I learned to walk in. The place I used to have Nerf wars with Matthew. I’d only known her for a few months, but having her here made me feel like she was glimpsing into a past she hadn’t been a part of, somehow.
And I couldn’t help but think she fit perfectly into the scene, there with my parents and our family pictures on the walls behind her. It was as if she was a puzzle piece we hadn’t known we were missing.
That I hadn’t known I was missing.
But I sure couldn’t live without it now.
“Can I help?” Elsie asked after dinner.
She’d won over my parents within seconds, not that she really had to try. They were ready to love her on account of me, but decided they liked her entirely on their own.
I could tell they really did. She and my dad spent ten minutes laughing about some obscure show I’d always been convinced he was the only one in the world who watched. After that, my mother started divulging family secrets that never should’ve seen the light of day.
First, she revealed a childhood crush I’d had on the Little Mermaid.
Then about the time Matthew broke his leg, and I cried.
She even brought out the big guns when she told in humiliating detail the story of when I took in a stray cat without telling them and freaked out when it peed on my carpet.
I’d let them think I wet the bed instead of coming clean about it all.
Elsie had said she’d set out to embarrass me, but my mother took the win in that area. Big time.
But despite it all, despite how well the evening went, Elsie couldn’t get over her disappointment in not having made any progress with Ava.
Hence, her desperately clutching a dirty dish, pleading with Ava for the privilege to wash it.
“No,” Ava said tightly, pulling it out of Elsie’s grasp. “You’re a guest. You should sit and relax.”
“No, really,” Elsie insisted. “Let me do something.”
“It’s okay,” Ava said. “I have a system. The dishwasher is tricky. It’s really better to just let me handle it.”
“Maybe you can show me,” Elsie said. “So I know for next time.”
“Next time?” Ava asked, voice high-pitched and airy.
“That is, if I’m invited.” Elsie blushed, as if she’d misspoke somehow.
“Of course, dear. Anytime. Our house is your house,” Mom chirped from the other side of the kitchen where she was pulling desserts from the fridge.
Ava stiffened while my mother stared between her and Elsie, trying to diffuse a match she hadn’t known had been lit.
“If you want, you can help me make coffee,” my mom suggested, seeing Elsie’s obvious need to do something and Ava’s obvious need for space.
“Oh, I can do that,” Ava was quick to add. “I know how everyone takes it.”
“Ava, dear. You work so hard. Why don’t you go sit and take a break?” My mother crossed the room, holding her arm gently. “You seem tense.”
“I’m not,” Ava lied. “I’m fine.”
“Okay,” Mom relented. “Well, don’t worry about in here. We’ll get to it later. For now, I’d love if we could all talk in the other room. Get to know Elsie a little bit. Come join us.”
“No!” Ava said, plunging her hands into the dishwater.
“Ava,” Mom and I said in unison—her voice one of puzzlement, mine of warning.
“She’s been here for months,” Ava continued, shoulders tense as she scrubbed at a dish. “I know her well enough by now. I need to finish cleaning the kitchen.”
“Your sleeves are getting wet, dear.” My mother came by her side, a gentle hand on her back, but Ava stiffened under the touch.
“I don’t care,” she buzzed, transferring plate after clean plate into the drying rack with reckless speed. “I’m fine. I can clean up. I can—”
The plate she’d been holding slipped through her sudsy fingers and smashed onto the kitchen floor.
Elsie flinched, and Ava dropped to her knees at once, scooping pieces up into her hands.
“I’m sorry,” she said, voice shaking. “I’ll clean this up. I just need a broom—”
“It’s okay, Ava.” Mom’s eyes were round and worried. “Please, don’t worry about it.”
“I didn’t mean to—” She started unraveling, and I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Ava,” I snapped, drawing her attention to me. “Go cool off.”
She stood quickly, not looking at any of us as she dropped the pieces back to the floor, wiped something wet from her eye and bounded down the steps to the basement.
Elsie’s demeanor fell, green eyes following Ava, as if she were responsible for whatever the hell was going on inside her head, while my mother looked entirely puzzled by everything that had gone down.
“What in the world is going on with Ava?” My mom’s voice was full of concern as she looked after her surrogate daughter.
“She’ll be fine, Mom. Go sit with Dad.” I nodded my head toward the sitting room, where my father was blissfully unaware of the female war raging just a few feet away from him.
Lucky guy.
Reluctantly, she went, picking up on the fact that I needed a minute with Elsie.
“Please tell me what I’m doing wrong.” Elsie laughed sardonically. “Because for the life of me, I haven’t been able to figure it out.”
“I’m sorry,” I told her, hating that she felt rejected here in my parents’ house, where I wanted her to feel nothing but loved. “But it doesn’t matter what she thinks, you know that, right?”
“She’s your family!” Elsie exclaimed. “Of course it matters!”
“What makes the opinions of family worth more than anyone else’s?”
“Because…” she started. “Because they just are!”
“Nice logic.” I offered her a smile.
“I know it might make it a lot worse,” Elsie said. “But can I go down there and talk to her?”
I stared at her like she was crazy.
“Why would you want to, after the way she’s been acting?”
“Because she’s allowed to hate me, but I think I’m also allowed to know why.” Elsie shrugged. “And the last time we had a one-on-one conversation, it wasn’t so bad. The only issue seems to be when other people are thrown into the mix.”
“You can do whatever you want,” I told her. “But she might not give you any answers.”
“I want to at least try.”
“You’re a bit of a people pleaser, huh?” I asked. “I wonder where that came from.”
“A gift from my parents, I expect.” Her smile was low and subdued, and I was hit with a wave of gratitude that she was here with me instead of them.
“Promise me,” I implored, “no matter what she says, you won’t let it get to you.”
She nodded, and I perched a thumb under her chin to tilt her face up.
“I mean it, Els. I know it’s hard to believe, but all of that, it wasn’t about you.”
“It feels like it was,” Elsie said softly.
I shook my head because I didn’t know how to make her understand.
“Ava’s always had…issues. I don’t know. It’s complicated.”
“Issues?”
“She grew up with us. You know that, right?” Elsie nodded.
“Well, her parents weren’t—well, they weren’t ever around, really.
She only had us, and I think she was always scared that someday we’d lock the door on her or something.
It sort of made her feel like—I don’t know.
Like she had to prove herself so we’d keep her around? ”
Elsie mulled it over.
“Not that that was ever the case,” I was quick to assure. “It’s just what I picked up over the years. I might be wrong about it. But one thing’s for sure, Ava has always needed to be in control. Even if she burns herself out doing it. It’s the only way she ever feels okay.”
“Well, I can’t relate to that.” Elsie laughed lightly. “But I do think I understand it.”
“The two of you are just…really different,” I noted. “I don’t think she knows what to make of you.”
“Neither did you when we first met.” Elsie poked me. “And look at us now.”
I rolled my eyes, but couldn’t stop the smile.
“So, maybe there’s hope? For Ava and me?”
“I think you can win anyone over,” I told her honestly. “But whether she comes around or not doesn’t change how amazing you are.”
I tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, hoping she’d believe me.
Elsie softened and grabbed my hand.
“You say pretty things, Will Hughes.”
I shrugged.
“As long as you think I’m amazing, then I’ll try not to worry too much about anyone else.”
“Well, I do,” I told her. “But you don’t need me to tell you that either.”
“Like you said, I’m a people pleaser.” She frowned. “Give a girl the luxury of at least knowing she pleased her favorite person.”
“Your favorite, huh?”
She nodded, and I leaned forward to kiss her head.
“Call me if she bites,” I teased, to lessen the anxiety of sending her down there with a precariously minded Ava. “I’ll be right up here.”