Chapter 10 Dove
DOVE
Liv remained quiet in the back seat, and at this point, I was feeling unnerved. Nothing about Liv was quiet or tame, so the influx of silence filled me with more stress than her usual noise and disruption ever did.
“Okay,” Ellis murmured through a yawn. “Like I said, three hours max. First stop, Ted Drewes Custard.”
“Well,” Liv began heavily from the back seat, “we do love organized fun, don’t we?”
Ellis rolled her eyes and muttered, “She says it like it’s a bad thing.”
We got out of the car, and I turned on my heel, squinting into the sunlight as I looked up at the white building in front of us. Ted Drewes looked like exactly like the pictures. Big red letters confirmed we were in the right spot, along with an illuminated sign buzzing faintly in the daylight.
“This better be as good as the reviews said it was,” Ellis muttered, glancing back toward the Mustang. “Is she coming or what? This was literally on her list.”
I blinked and sighed, realizing Ellis was in no way going to ask Liv herself.
“Liv?” I called, tapping on the back window while glancing around discreetly. “Are you coming with us?”
“No.”
“Oh my God,” Ellis groaned, annoyance flashing in her eyes. “Why are we even stopping here then? These stops are for her. I’m certainly not here for the damn scenic route. Let’s go.”
“Wait!” I called, and Ellis paused, her hand on the door handle. “Listen, I kind of am here for the scenic route. Also, you know, being some sort of magical conduit and, you know, scattering my grandmother’s ashes, but I’m enjoying it as we go. Come on. Let’s get some custard.”
There was only a short line as we approached the window. Ellis immediately began scanning the menu the second it came into view, lips pursed in that Ellis way. Her black aviators were perched low on her nose, arms crossed like she was offended by joy.
“What are you going to get?” I asked lightly, desperate to shake off prickly Ellis and rediscover whatever version of her I’d found in the car earlier.
She squinted and wrinkled her nose. “Something that won’t put me into a sugar coma.”
“There are worse kinds of comas,” I said with a grin.
She gave me a sidelong look, but I caught the ghost of a smile tugging at her lips, gone as quickly as it appeared.
“What can I get you, love?” asked the woman at the window, smiling from beneath a pale blue visor.
Ellis settled on the Caramel Apple, which was basically apple pie topped with custard, caramel, and almonds, though she asked them to hold the caramel. I tried not to cringe before going all in on the Muddy Mississippi, a sundae packed with chocolate chips, peanut butter, and cone pieces.
We walked over to the side of the building and leaned against the wall. Ellis took the tiniest bite imaginable, and I frowned at her.
“I can feel my blood sugar rising already,” she murmured, though she eyed the cup with more interest this time.
“That’s not the custard,” I said, sucking the peanut butter off my spoon. “That’s the Dove Marley effect. Stick around me long enough and you’ll be needing insulin therapy.”
A sound came out of her that I hadn’t expected, a laugh. One loud laugh. It was sharp, quick, and kind of warm. It hit me square in the chest before I could shield myself.
She shook her head and took another mouthful, larger this time, and her eyes fluttered closed for a second, as if she were savoring it the way someone starving might.
The hum of midmorning traffic rolled by without much notice, but I caught sight of Liv’s pink hair still in the back seat of the Mustang and frowned. I swallowed my mouthful and nudged Ellis’s arm.
“She’s being too quiet today,” I murmured. “I don’t like it. Something’s up.”
“Yeah, something’s up,” Ellis grumbled, casting her own glance toward the car. “She dragged us on this road trip, harassed me all night while I reworked the schedule, and now she won’t even get out of the car to see the places she picked.”
“Hello?”
A voice pulled our attention away from the Mustang, and we both turned to see a woman approaching. She looked to be in her late thirties, red hair pulled back into a ponytail, gray eyes steady. Her hand rested on the shoulder of a young girl currently hiding behind her legs.
“Ellis Langley?”
Ellis blinked and straightened, glancing at me briefly, as if I might have some clue who this woman was.
“Um... yeah?” Ellis replied, her voice tentative.
“Hi,” the woman said, offering a nervous smile. “My name’s Claire. This is my daughter, Emilia. We... we follow your videos online. We’re huge fans. Just wanted to say hello.”
It was like the words flipped a switch in Ellis’s brain. Her spine straightened, as though pulled by invisible strings, and her expression softened. Performer mode was activated.
I watched with avid fascination.
“Oh,” Ellis said, her voice suddenly softer, warmer. “Hi. It’s nice to meet you both.”
The young girl peeked out a little more now, eyes wide beneath a brightly colored headscarf. I guessed she was around six, but what the hell did I know? She was tiny. Her face looked thin, her cheeks just a bit too hollow.
“She’s a little shy,” Claire said with a laugh, “but she does love you. Um, she has leukemia. We... we watched your videos during chemo. She loved the one where you tried to make hospital food look gourmet. You remember that one, Em?”
I saw Ellis’s expression falter then as she looked back at Emilia, lips parted, eyes blinking a little too fast.
“The way your videos made her laugh,” Claire continued, smiling a watery smile.
“She, uh... well, we just found out the cancer has spread to her brain and, uh...” She cleared her throat.
“Well, it’s not good. But your videos, they brought her a lot of joy.
And those products you recommended... the cooling cap and the plush pillow with the armhole, they helped her so much. ”
Ellis was nodding, but to me, she looked frozen. Her animated smile had started to look robotic, her eyes dropping again to Emilia, who had stepped out more fully from behind her mother’s legs.
“Could we get a picture?” Claire asked hopefully, holding out her phone. “Just for Emilia.”
“Of course,” Ellis breathed, nodding a little too fast. “Uh, Dove, could you—?”
“Yeah!” I said quickly, setting my custard cup on the ledge and taking Ellis’s from her, placing it beside mine. Claire handed me her phone with a grateful smile.
She guided Emilia to stand between them, a hand resting gently on her daughter’s shoulder as they all began to smile. I snapped a few shots. In one moment, Emilia reached up and grabbed Ellis’s hand, and I watched as Ellis froze, her eyes dropping to the tiny fingers wrapped around hers.
And the expression on her face as she looked back at the camera... I didn’t take the shot.
Something in her had cracked.
Broken.
Her mouth trembled, her eyes watered, and then her expression shifted. She offered that familiar, fabricated smile again. The one that hid more than she ever let on.
“Got a few,” I called out, my voice tight. I cleared my throat as I handed the phone back to Claire.
She looked at Ellis again. “Thank you, so much, for sharing your story with the world. You’re making a difference, Ellis. You... you give people hope, even when there isn’t... isn’t much hope left.” Claire smiled and swallowed hard. “It was lovely meeting you. Thank you for the picture.”
Claire turned and walked away with Emilia, and Ellis watched them go, her expression unreadable as she tracked the small girl ambling alongside her mother. Without a word, she picked up her custard cup and dumped it in the bin, then headed back to the car.
My heart ached with something I couldn’t quite name as I watched her go, because I knew, in some way, Ellis had just seen herself reflected in that little girl. And now she was spiraling, unsure how to carry the weight of it.
When Ellis pulled the silent car into the parking lot for Chain of Rocks Bridge, it felt like we were all holding some kind of collective breath.
I glanced into the back seat—only to find it suddenly empty—and frowned, turning to Ellis.
“Liv’s gone,” I told her.
Ellis said nothing. She just stared ahead, her knuckles white from the death grip she had on the steering wheel and gearstick, her face pale.
“Hey,” I said softly. “Ellis, you okay?”
“She grabbed my hand,” she whispered, the words so quiet I almost missed them.
I nodded, offering a grim smile. “Yeah. She did.”
“She was smiling,” she said again, turning her head to look at me with tear-filled eyes, making those vibrant green irises look molten. “She’s dying, and she was smiling.”
I bit my lip and glanced down at her grip on the gearstick. There wasn’t anything I could say to make what she was feeling better. Sometimes people didn’t need words, didn’t need consoling monologues. Ellis didn’t seem like the type to want them anyway, and I wasn’t the type to give them.
Sometimes people just needed someone to share the silence with, to feel the weight of their pain without trying to soften the inevitable blow.
So instead, I reached over slowly and gently pried her hand from the gearstick, curling it into mine and giving it a soft squeeze.
We sat like that for a long minute, the car silent until, finally, a rush of air left Ellis, like she’d been holding her breath since the custard shop. And as if I’d been holding mine too, I felt my body begin to deflate beside her.
“Come on,” I told her quietly. “Let’s go see this bridge.”
The Mississippi spread out beneath us, wide and roiling, as we walked across the bridge.
The air felt cool and damp against my skin, and I admired the rusting steel beams, graffiti tagging some sections in a way that almost added to the charm.
Every now and then, there was a plaque offering small bits of history.
Ellis walked beside me, looking deep in thought as she stared straight ahead. Her red hair was coming loose from its braid, a few strands curling at the edges.