Chapter 7
Briar
‘Hello?’ Laurel’s voice came through weak and tinny. ‘Bri? Can you hear us?’
‘Yes! Can you hear me?’ Briar shouted into the phone.
‘There’s no need to scream,’ Hazel admonished. ‘Anyway, we just got in. Dad took us to Edinburgh for the weekend.’
‘Did he?’ Briar asked, her eyes narrowing. ‘Don’t you have take-home exams to finish?’
The University of Southern California had given Laurel and Hazel an extension to finish their coursework, but it didn’t stop Briar from worrying.
She knew firsthand how hard getting back into the rhythm of school could be once disrupted.
They were so close to finishing their final semester and Briar was determined that they’d get their diplomas.
Laurel groaned in the background and said, barely distinguishable, ‘We’ve got until the end of summer. Tell her to lay off.’
‘Lay off,’ Hazel repeated, and Briar rolled her eyes.
‘Are you at least having fun?’ Briar kept any anxiety out of her voice.
It was silly to not trust her siblings with their father, but Briar knew how he could be, engaging for a week or two, then disinterested the next.
Having spent most of her adolescence making up for his absence in the twins’ lives, Briar wasn’t sure they understood how easily he could let them down.
‘Yeah!’ Instant relief coursed through her at the excitement in the twin’s synchronous answer. ‘We went to Gran’s last week, then to the Lakes.’
She wanted to be happy, to trust that they were having a good time, but the constant travel their father seemed to be pushing concerned her.
It could’ve been intended as a distraction from their grief or, more likely, it was just another symptom of his inability to provide stability for his children.
The twins would have to face reality at some point, and Briar would be the one to see them through it.
‘You would have loved it,’ Laurel cut in. ‘So many dead poets for you to swoon over. Could’ve found some more words to immortalize on your body.’
Briar smiled. ‘If anything caught your fancy, send it my way. I could always use another tattoo.’
She glanced down at her forearm, the collection of images there scattered with some of her favorite quotes from her college literature classes.
There would be a new one soon, whenever she figured out what words or illustration could capture the way she’d changed over the past few months.
Sometimes she felt like her tattoos were an anthology of every time she’d thought she’d reached her final form, only to be thrown another curveball.
‘For your street cred,’ Hazel said sagely.
‘To add to the hot bartender mystique,’ Laurel agreed.
‘Oh, fuck off,’ Briar said good-naturedly. ‘How’s Dad?’ She didn’t know why her heart clenched at the question, especially after just having doubted him, but as her only living parent, his well-being was suddenly much more salient to her.
‘He’s good, the same,’ Laurel said.
‘Maybe a bit more melancholy,’ Hazel added. ‘But the love of his life died, so I think we can give him a pass.’
Briar ignored that comment, neither encouraging nor dissuading the twins’ fanciful notion that their parents were secretly soulmates who had just been too short-sighted to stay together.
They were still in diapers when their parents had split; they didn’t remember the pointless arguments or the endless litany of passive aggressive comments as vividly as Briar did.
‘Is he there?’ she asked, twiddling the cord of the landline around her fingers. She didn’t want to talk to him, but they had business to discuss. There was a long pause that made Briar’s heart pound. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Oh my god, nothing!’ Hazel said. There was a loud clapping sound that Briar suspected was one of the twins hitting the other, but from across the ocean she wasn’t sure who to scold. ‘He’s not here.’
‘You can’t sell the camp!’ Laurel’s voice cut across her sister’s, and Briar blinked. She had been trying to think of a way to bring it up to the twins, but it seemed that, as with many things, her father had made that decision for her.
‘Dad told us,’ Hazel explained.
Briar nodded her head slowly before remembering they couldn’t see her. ‘An appraiser came out, but I’m still waiting to hear back.’ There was silence on the other end of the line. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t say anything before.’
‘Bri, you can’t sell,’ Hazel said, sounding much younger. Briar was suddenly struck by the memory of the twins, then only seventeen, sitting in the hospital waiting room when their mother had first gotten sick, looking to her for answers. ‘It’s mom’s camp. It’s our home.’
‘Nothing’s been decided yet.’ She heard voices and glanced out the open doorway.
Freddie, Sierra and Alice were attaching the camp flag to the flagpole, the forest green and light blue fabric fluttering in the wind.
Briar remembered when her mother had sewn the flag.
A 6-year-old Briar had helped her cut out the two pine trees that sat in the middle. ‘I haven’t decided yet.’
‘Okay,’ Laurel said. ‘But will you tell us before you do anything?’
‘Of course!’ The words came out louder and more emphatic than she’d intended, but it made them laugh, which in turn made her smile.
‘We love you,’ they said in unison.
‘I love you, too.’
Briar hung up and stood there for a few minutes watching the group by the flagpole.
Alice laughed at something Sierra said, her whole face lighting up.
She tugged on the rope, hoisting the flag higher and higher.
Sierra and Freddie watched, shielding their eyes from the sun with their hands.
Alice tied off the rope and stepped back, admiring her work.
Freddie slung his arms around them, a picture-perfect image of camp camaraderie.
Briar sighed, turning back to the landline and punching in a new number.
‘Briar,’ her brother greeted her.
‘RJ.’ Briar matched his business-like tone.
He sighed. ‘I told you to call me John.’
‘I’m sorry. River it is.’ She could almost hear his eyes roll through the phone.
‘What do you want?’ There was a faint clacking sound in the background, meaning he was at work.
He always was. It couldn’t be good for him, especially when he’d hardly taken any time off for bereavement.
Every time she spoke to him, he sounded exhausted, and she had no idea how to convince him he needed a break and a trained professional to talk to about his grief.
‘Did dad tell you about selling the camp?’ she asked.
Despite their differences, she had always appreciated her brother’s preference for bluntness.
He’d stopped letting her baby him when they were teenagers, and while she never forgot that she was the eldest, RJ had become a confidant and co-conspirator against the rest of their family.
It was a relief not needing to manage him to the same degree she did the twins.
‘Do you have an offer already? I thought it would take at least another month.’
Briar blinked. ‘No, no offers yet.’
RJ hummed. ‘Well, don’t get discouraged. You’ve got all summer.’
‘You want me to sell it?’
RJ had never loved camp as much as her or the twins, but he’d still come every summer until college. It was as much his home as theirs.
‘Of course.’ The typing stopped. ‘What would you do with a camp? What would any of us do with it? I’m in New York. The twins are in California. You’re the closest, but it’s still two hours from DC. It’s better to sell it and then split the profits. I mean, if you’re willing to share.’
‘Obviously we’d split the money,’ Briar huffed, hearing the hint of wryness in his tone.
‘It would be a good thing. I mean, that money could be a down payment on a condo, or I could invest it for Hazel and Laurel and give it to them when they’re twenty-five. You could go back to school…’ he trailed off meaningfully.
Briar nodded along, knowing he was making very good, very smart points. But she ignored his comment about college. Any thoughts of her own future were on hold until she was confident her siblings were settled.
‘Right.’ She couldn’t stop herself from adding, ‘But it’s mom’s camp…’
‘And she’s not here to run it.’ He paused, and Briar heard him inhale an unsteady breath.
She prepared to say something comforting, to remind him that she was there for him during this difficult time, but he cut off anything she might have said, his tone steely.
‘That was crass, but whatever, it’s true.
She’s not here anymore. You can’t keep it just because you miss her. ’
Briar swallowed around the lump in her throat, every fiber of her being wanting to scream, Why not? ‘I know.’
They sat in silence for a few moments, before RJ finally said, ‘You have all summer, just try to enjoy it and worry about this later. I’ve got to go. Work.’
‘Right.’ Briar leaned against the wall, the weight of her body suddenly too heavy to hold up.
‘Be well.’
‘You too.’
He hung up, and Briar slid down until she was sitting on the floor, the dial tone ringing in her ear. She had forgotten to ask him about his therapist search, again.
She sometimes wished she had RJ’s logical approach to life; it seemed much simpler than being bogged down by constant feelings.
On paper, selling the camp was the right thing to do for her family.
If it were up to simple practicality, like her father and brother seemed to think, it would be an easy choice.
But being in the same cabin that her mother had spent the last twenty years making a home, seeing shades of her in every acre of woods, it felt impossible to say goodbye.
She didn’t know how long she sat like that, only that it was Alice who eventually found her. She was covered head to toe in dirt, with a cobweb stuck in her ponytail, but, despite the mess, she was grinning wildly.
‘You alright?’ she asked, wiping her hands on her T-shirt and leaving two dark trails in their wake.