15. Pieces of Him
Unlike the decision to sell Hawthorne Hall, which came to her in gradual increments of acceptance, her decision to call things off with Mr. MacKinnon came all at once. He was being dragged along by the false hope that she and the estate named after her would be there indefinitely, and when her conversation with Corey caused her to see that she was the one dragging him through it, she knew what she had to do.
Unfortunately, Avi had never broken up with anyone before. Not only was she not sure how she was supposed to do it, but she wasn’t even sure if their circumstances called for a breakup seeing as there was nothing official about their more assumed-than-stated secret relationship.
After pondering and pacing over every inch of her bedroom floor for the better part of the morning, Avi determined how she would tell him: she wouldn’t. She would stay in her bedroom all day…all Monday and Tuesday as well if she had to. He’d get the picture, get back with Bonnie and everything would revert to normal…old, depressing, lonely normal. Her plan required missing game time with her family, but after last night”s shakedown, she didn’t care to see much of Corey either.
With no electricity, she had little to do but read. Fortunately, that was exactly what old, depressing, lonely normal looked like to Avi Hawthorne. So she crawled into bed and began reading away the day in preparation for reading away the rest of her life. It wasn’t how she’d envisioned spending the second to last full day at Hawthorne Hall, but at least it was familiar and safe. However, sometime between breakfast and lunch, a knock on her bedroom door set her plans of avoidance ablaze.
“I’m sorry, Helena, but I’m not feeling well this morning,” she lied as she tried to mingle her voice with an artificial rasp.
The knocking persisted. Helena would have apologized and stopped after hearing Avi was sick. Whoever it was either didn’t care or didn’t believe her. Apparently, her acting skills weren’t quite as exemplary as Corey’d led on.“I said, I’m not feeling well.”
Still, it continued. Who was either rude enough or persistent enough to continue pestering a sick person in bed? Gracie? Corey? Mr. MacKinnon? If it were twenty-four hours earlier, she’d have been most excited for the latter two, but that morning, she could only hope for the former.
“Who is it?”
“Tis me, Ms. Hawthorne,” came muffled, Scottish whisperings from the hallway.
Avi shot up in bed. She wasn’t even close to presentable. The night’s tossing and turning had tied her hair in knots, and her nightgown, though modest, was far too enticing a garment to wear while breaking up with someone. “But what’s wrong with a little friendly enticing?” she thought.
No! She couldn’t keep going back and forth. She couldn’t think like that anymore. She cared too much about him to continue leading him on while knowing what she knew. Avi wrapped herself in her eiderdown comforter and vigorously prepared to stare into the pearloid blue of his eyes without falling madly in love…and tell him the truth. She rested her hand against the handle, took a deep breath, and opened the door.
“Haha! Got you, Sissy!”
“Josh, you…you…you…dingus!” she yelled as she repeatedly pounded his chest with the side of her fists before pulling him into the room and quickly shutting the door.
“Hey now…don’t be angry ‘cause my impressions are spot on while you can’t even impersonate a sick person.”
“I didn’t say I was sick. I said I wasn’t feeling well.”
“Then why’d you use the same sick voice you used to use with Aunty Lisa when you wanted to stay home from school and watch Price is Right? Huh? Huh!? Exactly.”
“Idiot…did you want something?”
“Yeah. I wanted you to come play with us. We’re about to fire up a game of Clue…your favorite...and Corey even said you could be Ms. Scarlett, so…”
“I doubt it.”
“For reals. She also said she was really sorry. She didn’t go into details, but she feels awful about whatever she said to you last night. Listen Sissy...don”t let it get to you. That’s just Corey. She’s always shot from the hip and told it like she sees it. She didn’t mean anything by it.”
“She meant a lot of things by it.”
“Well, was any of it true? I mean I don’t know what she said, but are you mad because she was wrong or because she was right?”
“I don’t know, yet. I’m still just…mad, okay?”
“Okay, okay. But just know, when you’re ready, I expect your butt down there. Clue ain”t Clue without Ms. Scarlet, so I’ll see if I can get them to play…I don’t know…Risk or something ‘til you’re ready. Risk should buy you enough time, right?”
Riskwould give her all day to make an appearance. Avi nodded.
“Cool cool,” he said before once more impersonating Mr. MacKinnon, “N’ if ah see Dane, ah’ll let him know he kin be yer…Mr. Boddy.”
As Avi considered reigning down one final fist, Josh disappeared with a laugh via sprinting retreat. She could forgive him. Had he known her heart was falling apart, Josh never would have used Mr. MacKinnon as the medium for his teasing. It was far more difficult to forgive Corey, who while expressing remorse for her offense, knew exactly what she was doing when the infraction occurred.
To make matters worse, Corey knew she was right about everything, and after much morning pacing and pondering, so did Avi. Still, Corey being right didn’t change Avi’s plans. Ethel’s death, losing the estate, and all the circumstances that prevented her from ever kissing him seemed to scream her fate like signs and signals from some otherworldly will; too powerful to keep combatting. She felt at peace in her submission.
However, Avi couldn’t help but wonder how long that peace would last if she ever saw him again. As such, Avi conscribed herself to her room, less to avoid an awkward reconciliation with her baby sister, and more to avoid another tantalizingly beautiful encounter with Mr. MacKinnon.
After another hour or so of reading in bed, Avi felt something she’d never felt before while plumbing the depths of a novel: boredom. It was so new to her that she initially mistook it for hunger. After all, it was almost lunchtime, but while both sensations stemmed from longing for something more, she had always been able to keep reading through random bouts of low blood sugar. She’d even been known to accidentally skip entire meals, getting lost in the pages of far less interesting books than the one in her hands. That was her first indication. The second was her wandering eyes.
She didn’t catch herself looking toward the door standing between her and the dining room. Instead, she found her eyes meandering over to the sights outside her bedroom window. There, she had swung over streams, danced, ridden horses, raced, shot arrows, and played. There, she stopped perusing through the fabricated adventures of fictional characters and started having her own. There, the non-fiction of her existence had finally surpassed all fantasy in the battle for Avi’s intrigue. She had at last tasted the sweetness of experience and was ready for more. As such, in more or less one motion, Avi threw her book on the end table, lept from bed, slipped into her most informal dress, and set out to sneak past any and all guests on the way to her awaiting family.
Unfortunately, the thrill of her mission was short-lived. As soon as Avi left her room, the end-of-lunch chatter was rapidly cut off by the shutting of the front door. There was no need to sneak. The guests were all together off to enjoy the outdoors, and Avi was altogether disinterested in the clear path that led to the riskless game of Risk happening only three rooms over. However, when she was only two rooms away, Avi’s lowered guard caused her to collide with the very person she’d set out to avoid.
“Oh! Excuse me, ah…Ms. Hawthorne! Ah wis wonderin’ where ye were. Where’d ye go last night? Oh…ye’ll never guess what happened…Jack caught himself on fire playing charades! Ah put him oot o’ course, bit ah’ll be honest…ah did hesitate fur a second. Him flailin’ around wis juist too funny!”
“Well, I’m sorry I missed it. I just wasn’t feeling very well. I’m still not, but I’ll be…”
“Ye should be in bed then. Whit can ah do fur ye? Ye need any medicine? How aboot a bowl o’ soup?”
“Oh no. I’ll be fine. I was just checking to see what my family was up to before heading back to my room.”
“Well, they’re all in the drawing room. Bit ye listen here, missy…tomorrow’s the Day Eight Ball, ‘n,’ well…ah kinda need ye there.”
Each syllable was like a splinter lodging itself deep into the inner lining of her lungs. She didn’t want him to need her there…she did…but she didn’t want to want him to need her there, or anywhere…or at all. Why did he have to be so pleasant? Couldn’t he just say something vulgar, rude, or conceited to help her loathe him the way she used to when she thought he was an arrogant, smug, and awful man?
“Sae rest up, a’right? ‘N’ if ye need anything, dinnae hesitate tae ask.”
“Thank you,” she muttered as she left him standing there without any hint of feeling or care.
Avi hoped her cold and brazen exit said everything she couldn’t, but she hated herself for it. If he truly cared for her, which wound would be worse? The swift pierce of honesty’s sharpened blade, or the prolonged torture from the dull instrument of sudden and subtle, pretended indifference? Abuse is what it was! And he of all people did not deserve to suffer; wondering what he’d done or hadn’t done…what he’d said or hadn’t said…
As she turned around, unprepared yet determined to heal his cuts with the merciful murder of their assumed relationship, Avi found Mr. MacKinnon nowhere in sight.
“There she is!” Ben exclaimed before quickly reverting attention back to the game at hand.
“Come sit.” Gracie demanded as May scooted her chair over to make room.
Corey said nothing and appeared to question whether or not she was even allowed to look at her big sister after everything she’d said. However, when she finally got up the grit to lift her gaze, Avi was ready to greet her with a warm and forgiving sisterly smile. Corey responded in kind as Avi made her way over to the empty chair Josh had just placed next to his wife’s.
“So…” Avi inquired, “who’s winning?”
“It’s down to my wife and me,” boasted Ben.
“Please. It’s down to me. I have both Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, and New Zealand, while you’ve got three troops, no cards, western Australia, and beads of nervous sweat forming on your forehead and begging me to end you quickly.”
“Nonsense. I’m only sweating because it’s hot down here in the outback,” he said, glancing at his only remaining territory. “Besides, doesn’t the Bible say something about husband and wife becoming one flesh? You win, I win, right babe?”
“We were one flesh…until you attacked Poland, so don’t you ‘babe’ me.”
“It was my only move.”
“Only the worst sorts of people attack Poland.”
Avi couldn’t help but snicker at their playful relationship. As Kai climbed up into her lap with a few of the soldier pieces Corey had obliterated off the face of the board, Avi couldn’t help but take a moment to appreciate having everyone she cared about gathered together under one roof. If only that sentiment were true, she could have truly enjoyed the moment. Instead, she found herself hoping that at any moment Mr. MacKinnon would come barging into the drawing room demanding she love him. Avi pushed him out of her head for the seemingly billionth time that day and tried to give her family the entirety of her focus. And that’s when it hit her.
“Wait…where’s the puzzle?” Avi asked as she lowered Kai off her lap.
“I put it away,” Josh said. “I bought another one for us to do today. Not quite as big as the last one you did, but…”
“Where is it?” she asked again as she frantically stood from her chair.
“Umm…I think I put it up in the cupboard. Why? Did you…”
“Well, did you save the…I mean…did you put it away so most of the pieces were still intact, or did you just kind of…?!”
“...I made sure to mix up all the pieces. I figured if they were still stuck together, the next time you wanted to do it, it’d be too easy.”
With that, Avi beelined to the cupboard.
“I’m sorry, Sissy. Maybe I should have asked. I just always saw you putting puzzles away the same day you finished them with Grandma Jean so long as you had another to replace it with.”
“It’s fine…I just…there it is,” she said as she pulled it down.
Lifting the box top from its bottom half, Avi felt overwhelmed by the sea of 17,999 meaningless pieces. She combed through the endless variants of shapes hoping to catch a glimpse of cracked cream fresco. By the time she realized how insane she looked, she didn’t even care. The piece was lost. She could redo the whole puzzle or at least most of it until she found it, but what was the point? This was just another sign from the heavens that Avi”s destiny did not include Mr. MacKinnon.
“Avi…are you…alright?” Gracie asked somewhat scared for her.
“Yes…I’m…I’m just not feeling well. And I said ‘well,’ Josh; not sick, so don’t…”
“I wasn’t going to. How ‘bout that game of Clue? Would that help?” Josh asked, mirroring Gracie’s worried expression.
Had she gone mad? Was she madly in love? It felt like hunger more than boredom but more like thirst than hunger. Whatever it was, Avi knew she needed to get her mind off Mr. MacKinnon immediately; for whether deprivation or madness, she knew he was the cause.
“Yes, actually. Clue would be wonderful.”
The rest of the day was…fine. Avi won Clue, at least, and while she made decent attempts to match their joviality and excitement as they cycled through various board games, her mind remained elsewhere through it all. By the time Josh pulled out the replacement puzzle he’d bought, Avi felt ready for bed. When she realized it wasn’t even three in the afternoon, she felt ready to cry. And when she heard the front door open and the voices of her guests coming in from outside, she felt ready to run. She excused herself from the game table and returned to her room; fully intent on hiding away the rest of her days at Hawthorne Hall.
Had Mr. MacKinnon not made a brief visit after dinner, she probably would have stayed in bed until dawn. It wasn’t much of a visit, but after knocking, he left a bowl of lukewarm chicken noodle soup atop a handwritten note outside her room. The note read:
Whit’soup? Hope ye’re ok.
-me
The hastily torn, broth-stained square of paper was no puzzle piece, but it was at least something to remember him by…that is if she could only find the courage to keep it. As it stood, she could hardly bear looking at it. If she didn’t know any better, she’d have thought he’d written the message with some magical, Umbridge-like pen whose sharp, metal point scratched its words deep into the fleshy tablets of the heart. Avi had never planned on getting a tattoo, nor had she wanted one, but if she had to have some silly soup pun permanently penned on her person, at least it was inscribed beneath the skin where no one else could see it. Still, that silver lining did little to dull the burning sting in her chest, so Avi took two Aspirin and went to bed.