Chapter 30
Briar
Briar woke up in a tent, bracketed by her sisters. Hazel’s arms were a vice grip around her waist, and Laurel’s breath was hot against the back of her neck. Smelling bacon, she disentangled herself carefully and unzipped the tent.
She found her father hunched over a camp stove.
‘Wow,’ Briar said. ‘I didn’t know you could use one of those things.’
‘I’ll have you know,’ her dad said, ‘that I was the first person to bring your mother camping.’
Briar snorted, sitting next to him. ‘So, what? Everything she knew, she learned from you?’
He squinted at her. ‘Absolutely not; she surpassed me immediately.’
‘That I believe,’ Briar said, wrapping her arms around herself for warmth. Her dad shucked off his fleece and offered it, and she took it gratefully.
‘Breakfast’s almost ready, if you want to wake them,’ he said, pulling sausages off the griddle.
They ate breakfast in silence, then tidied the campsite and set off to do their mom’s favorite hike.
Trudging down the trail, Briar couldn’t stop thoughts of Alice from flooding in. There had been a time when she had come on these trips too. Susan had welcomed her into their family like one of her own.
Her mind went through the emails, over and over. She thought about Alice across the ocean, lonely and desperate, writing to Susan for news of Briar. And Briar had never known.
When she’d first stumbled across the emails, she had assumed they would be proof that Alice had never really cared about her, that she’d easily moved on.
This time, she’d been searching for any shred of evidence for what Alice had declared that morning.
The thing Briar had refused to let herself believe.
She wondered now if she should have heard her out instead of shutting her down.
She tried to picture what Alice was doing at that moment, probably acing her interview. Despite everything, Briar hoped Alice would be happy in her new role.
The hike was five miles out and back, but they’d been doing it for so many years that it felt like it took them no time at all to make it to the lake.
They reached the familiar beach, staring at the placid water, feeling the absence of Susan acutely.
‘This blows,’ Hazel said.
‘Totally blows,’ Laurel agreed.
RJ and Briar exchanged a look, but it was their father who spoke. ‘Yes, well. I know that this trip was always your mother’s thing, but I thought…’ He cleared his throat roughly, seemingly at a loss for words. No one spoke.
‘I miss the way she would tell me not to bite my nails,’ RJ said finally. ‘She’d even know when I was doing it over the phone.’ He held out his hands. ‘They’ve looked awful all summer.’
‘I miss how she’d always be able to tell us apart,’ Laurel said, taking RJ’s hand. ‘Just by our voices, or by the way we walked. When we’d try to switch on her, she’d always catch us.’
Hazel linked their arms together. ‘I miss her hot chocolate. I don’t know how I’m gonna get through Christmas without it this year.’
Briar felt her throat close up. She’d been so focused on the summer that she hadn’t let herself think about what came next. Alice leaving was only the start. The leaves would start changing, the world would keep spinning. And her mom would still be gone.
‘I—’ Briar cut herself off, trying to stifle the emotion but not quite managing it. It didn’t matter anyway; she didn’t want to hide her pain from the people who loved her – not anymore. ‘I miss her in the greenhouse. Tending to the plants, snipping off dead leaves, propagating new ones.’
‘I miss her calls,’ her dad said. ‘Your mother had a knack for always calling when I couldn’t sleep. It was like she could sense it, even across the ocean.’
Briar stared at him. She hadn’t known that her parents spoke regularly, but then again, she hadn’t known a lot of things.
‘She was a terrible cook,’ Laurel said, and the rest of them laughed. ‘Remember RJ’s tenth birthday? She tried to make those meatless tacos.’
‘Briar was the vegetarian,’ RJ said, shooting a mock glare at Briar. ‘I don’t understand why the rest of us had to be subjected to it. It was my birthday!’
Briar had been thirteen at the time, and she and Alice had stopped eating meat after watching a documentary about factory farming. In the end, she hadn’t even made it a full year, but Susan had been supportive, happy that Briar was taking an interest in the natural world.
‘She was a good mom,’ Briar said. It didn’t fix any of the things Susan had done wrong.
Briar still felt like she was failing her by selling the camp, still felt like there were a million things she needed to say to her and was still grappling with the fact that she never would.
But in this moment, in this place, with her family, she could give her mom some grace. ‘She did her best.’
They took in the view for a moment. Briar finally reached into her pack and pulled out a long bamboo tube. They all walked to the edge of the water.
‘Well, mom’ – she sighed, twisting off the cap and pouring out a small handful of ashes into her palm – ‘here we are.’ She looked to her family, pouring ashes into their outstretched hands. ‘To Susan,’ she murmured.
‘To Susan,’ they repeated. Briar let the wind sweep the ashes through the cracks of her fingers and out into the water. She watched them collect on the surface then sink, until the flecks were indistinguishable from the sand at the bottom of the lake.
Hazel leaned her head on Briar’s shoulder, and Laurel did the same.
Briar reached out, taking RJ’s hand in her left, and her dad’s in her right.
They stood there for another long moment, listening to the rustle of the trees, the lapping of the water, the clicks of the cicadas, the caws of distant birds.