Chapter 6
SIX
After I get Dad to concede that we will build Mom a pick-your-own flower garden this spring, I head out onto the property to continue cleaning up.
After two days of working harder than I have in some time, definitely not in an effort to distract myself, I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel in terms of the decorations being taken down, and it couldn’t come soon enough, with a big storm forecasted for Tuesday.
By three o’clock, I’m tired and cold and can’t stop thinking about my nice warm house, where my girl is probably having yet another perfect day with Hallie.
Hallie, who, when she walked in this morning, looked at me in a way I hadn’t seen in a long time. Like she was interested in me, like she liked what she saw.
A hundred of those glances and my clear misinterpretation of what they actually meant is how this mess started, though, so maybe I’m not the best judge of that.
Either way, with frozen fingers and little motivation to spend more time outside, I pack things up and make sure to feed the goats, chickens, and other small animals in the petting zoo area before heading home.
When I walk in, a loud, carefree laugh fills the space, followed by a lighter, younger one, and suddenly, the cold is gone.
Warmth floods my system at the sound of my daughter laughing and chatting, and Hallie occasionally adds her own indecipherable murmurs.
Quietly, as I take off my boots, jacket, and gloves, I listen to their murmured conversation and head toward the noise.
They’re sitting on the floor around the coffee table, makeup palettes scattered about.
On a plate are a few cookies and some crumbs, and Emma is sitting with her hands splayed out on the table, chatting with Hallie.
Or, more likely, chatting at Hallie, who is adding a coat of clear polish to her own nails as Emma rattles on, telling her the gossip from her school, with a few names I recognize as friends or middle school-level enemies popping up.
Her hair is down and in loose curls, not like the ones she naturally has, but more refined, the kind that I’ve seen Wren do a dozen times with a curling iron, and it throws me back as I realize Emma is also wearing makeup.
“How’s it going, girls?” I say, and Hallie jumps, clearly caught off guard, turning to me with wide eyes. Emma turns as well, smiling wide at me.
“Good! We’re painting our nails,” my daughter says, wiggling her pinkies, her nails pink with little white polka dots.
Emma had been begging for makeup and girly stuff, since apparently the girls in her class are already wearing those kinds of things, and I’ve been at a loss for what to do.
I hadn’t gotten around to asking Wren about her thoughts on it, but I have to say, I was both grateful and panicked when Emma opened the giant gift Hallie got her on Christmas morning at my parents, revealing makeup and hair stuff of all kinds.
She looked at me immediately, and her face went soft as if feeling my panic across the room.
Don’t worry, Jess. It’s all very age-appropriate. No full faces or lash extensions, I promise, my sister had told me. I wasn’t sure what either of those things was, but the knot in my stomach did release just a bit.
“Hallie’s been teaching me to make up.” There’s an excited tone in her words, and when I step closer, I see what she means.
There’s a thin glide of blush over her cheeks, her lashes are a darker brown color, and there’s something shimmery swiped over her eyelids.
Her lips are glossy and pink, and even though it cuts deep to see it on my daughter, who just last week couldn’t have been older than five, I’m grateful to see that Wren was right: it’s nothing crazy, but something that, based on the grin on her face, makes Emma feel good.
I know her friends wear makeup, and I’ve seen some of their work and worried that Emma would try to use a heavy hand, but this feels like the perfect compromise.
“Looks good,” I say, pushing past the sudden annoying lump in my throat.
“Doesn’t she look gorgeous?” Hallie asks.
“And Hallie! I did Hallie’s makeup.”
“You both look beautiful, but you both always look beautiful.”
Emma rolls her eyes, but I don’t miss the blush that pinkens Hallie’s cheeks and down her neck.
For the first time in a long time, I find myself wondering just how far it goes, her fair skin always showing her emotions so quickly.
She looks away, fingers gently tapping on the tips of my daughter’s before nodding.
“You’re all dry. You want to wear that for dinner at your grandparents?”
“I’m gonna change. This face deserves a good outfit.”
Hallie looks at my daughter, something soft and easy, before nodding.
“So true. I’ll neaten this up, and you go change, okay?
I’ll set it aside, and you can clean it up after dinner, if that’s cool with your dad.
But when you get back, it’s your responsibility to put it all away.
If I find out you didn’t, then we’re not doing another makeup lesson tomorrow. ”
With Hallie’s words and firm look, I brace for Emma’s attitude.
Her nose scrunches just a hair in irritation, but then, to my astonishment, my daughter, who hates cleaning up almost as much as she hates ultimatums, nods, then grabs a few of the things out on the table, stacking them in her arms and walking toward her room without even being asked.
I watch in awe as Emma stands and moves toward her room without a single argument.
“How do you do that?” I ask in awe once she’s out of earshot and eyesight.
“Do what?” Hallie asks, looking at me quickly before wiping a makeup brush on a paper towel, leaving a trail of faint pink in its wake. I watch the way her hands move back and forth, deepening the color until the brush is cleaned.
“Get her to talk to you? Get her to drop her attitude? Agree to clean up? Not freak out about going to my parents’ for dinner?”
She looks at me, confused. “We’ve been talking about going to dinner all day, so it wasn’t a surprise. I asked her to clean up and made a deal that seemed fair to her. Easy as that.”
“When I ask her to do anything, I get the attitude. When I ask her to clean up, I get a fit. Same for Mom and Dad, even Madden and Wren. But she just…did it.”
Hallie’s face clears when she looks at mine, then nods as if she understands and gives me a knowing look. She neatly arranges the remaining items into a pile as she explains.
“Well, unlike all of you, I treat her like she’s a person instead of a little kid,” she says bluntly.
“She is a little kid,” I counter.
She lets out a small, reluctant sigh meshed with a laugh. “Not for long. Soon, she’s going to be a woman, and right now, she’s in a very awkward stage. She wants you to treat her like someone whose opinions matter, not like someone who needs to be told what to do.”
I open my mouth to argue, to tell her that Emma does, in fact, need to be told what to do. If I don’t, she might not bathe regularly or clean her room, or, actually, remember to do her homework, but then I look at Hallie’s face.
And then I remember who Hallie is.
A woman who was once a girl being raised by a clueless single dad. She’s a woman whose mom up and left her when she was barely ten, a woman who clung to my family in an effort to find a place to belong.
A woman whose childhood probably looked a whole lot like Emma’s. When I don’t speak, lost in my thoughts, Hallie stands, pushing her hair behind her shoulders and giving me the same stern look she gave my daughter.
“Go. Take a shower, get dressed—do whatever you’ve gotta do. I’ve got things handled with Emma, and then we can head over to your parents.”
I look down at my outfit, a thick flannel and a pair of jeans, with a couple of smears of dirt along the knees, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some pine needles stuck to my shirt.
“Are you coming to dinner?” I ask, though I know the answer.
“It’s a family dinner.”
Sunday is family dinner no matter what, and if you’re nearby, unless you’re deathly ill, my mother expects you to come. It’s the one time a week I see Hallie, though she always does her best to avoid me on those nights.
Because, regardless of blood, Hallie Young is family, something I’d be wise to remember if I want to make it out of this week with my head on straight.
brEAK
“How did I get stuck carrying all of this?” I ask, shifting the box in my arms filled with dishes and a tablecloth into my mom’s house.
Since the girls hadn’t been outside, they decided they wanted to walk to the main house on the Three Kings Christmas Tree Farm property, which is my parents’ house and my childhood home.
It’s barely a quarter mile, so I had no argument, until Hallie walked out the door holding a cardboard box filled to the brim.
“I think you offered,” Hallie says, and when I turn to her, there’s a slight smirk on her lips like she’s trying not to laugh. It brings a feeling so akin to nostalgia that it warms me up, despite the biting cold.
“Oh, yeah, definitely. Insisted, even,” Emma adds, and I sigh, shaking my head.
“Because Hallie could barely see over it,” I say, and the girls look to one another, sharing an exaggerated eye roll before breaking out in laughter.
“Look who the cat dragged in.” My dad stands on the porch of my childhood home, door opened wide with a grin on his face.
Emma runs up ahead and barrels into him with a hug.
“Oof!” he groans as she slams into him. The sound is Oscar-worthy since, despite nearing his sixties, the man would definitely need much more than a small-for-her-age eleven-year-old to take him down.
“Oh, my! Who is this grown-up hugging me?”
Emma pulls back, and even though I can’t see it, I know she’s giving him an irritated glare.
“Grandpa, it’s just some makeup. God, you’re so dramatic.”
I look to Hallie, who is rolling her lips between her teeth, fighting a laugh. I let out a silent one, shaking my head before tipping my chin for her to go ahead.
“And my Hallie girl, gorgeous as ever.” He reaches for Hallie next, pulling her in for a hug and kissing her hair.
My parents may not have actually adopted Hallie when she was a kid, but they might as well have.
My parents treat her no differently than they do Wren or even my brother and me.
Knowing she doesn’t have that from her family but gets it here always brings me some small form of joy.
When she pulls back and steps into the house, I hear her greeting my mom, and my dad tips his chin to me. “Jess. Looks like you’re the bellhop today.”
I shake my head. “You should’ve seen her trying to bring it over. Hallie could barely see over it. She was going to trip and bust her ass, along with every single piece of china in this box.”
My dad just nods, ushering me into the chaos that is Sunday dinner at my parents’ place.
Moving down the hall, I catch Hallie greeting my brother, his arm wrapped around her shoulder, and her leaning into him, chin tipped up to smile at him as he looks down at her, and I remember the truth.
No matter how well she fits in here or gets along with my daughter, it’s because she’s meant to be Madden’s.