Chapter 8 #2
Jonah touched her elbow, and Summer drew her arm away. “There weren’t any crossed wires. I said they were staying.”
“Kylie’s not used to people telling her no.
” He said it like a reassurance, like something he’d had occasion to say before and expected would settle things.
Summer looked at the empty doorway where Kylie and Lorraine had gone.
From the front room she could hear the scissors snipping and Lorraine asking whether the font was too small.
“I told her no and she went around me to Lorraine. Now I look like the bad guy.”
“I don’t think she meant to do that.” Jonah glanced toward the doorway too, then back. “She just gets enthusiastic.”
“When we were kids,” Jonah said, “she wanted this bike. Not a new one — it was at a yard sale, the kind with the basket and the streamers on the handlebars. Her mother said no, they weren’t buying anything, they were just looking.
Kylie was maybe nine.” He paused. “She asked every five minutes for an hour. Then she asked the woman running the sale if she could hold it for her. Then she sat next to it on the grass and told anyone who came near that it was hers already.”
Summer said nothing. She could see the shape of the story already, the child on the grass with her hand on the basket.
“Her mother bought it,” Jonah said. “She said it was because Kylie was being patient, but we all knew it was because she wanted to go home.”
“And Kylie learned that sitting next to something long enough made it hers.”
Jonah looked as though he wanted to argue, then didn’t. “She was nine,” he said again.
“What happened when she was older?”
Jonah rubbed the back of his neck. “In high school she wanted the lead in the fall play. Auditions were in the spring. She didn’t get it.
So she turned up to every rehearsal anyway, helping the stage manager, learning the other girl’s lines.
By opening night she was understudy. By closing weekend she’d gone on twice. ”
“Did the other girl get sick?”
“She got laryngitis. Kylie brought her tea and honey every day.” He looked toward the doorway again. “I’m not saying she caused it. I’m saying she positioned herself so that when something went wrong, she was the only solution.”
Summer looked toward the ballroom, where the chairs stood in their uneven rows.
The bare branches along the walls had been threaded with small warm lights, and someone had begun hanging them higher near the staircase.
The room would look extraordinary in the dark.
She could almost see it — the candles, the masks, the skirts clearing the floor on the way down the stairs.
“Jonah.” She kept her voice low, though the sound of the scissors covered it. “When she wanted to go to Italy, you’d broken up. She told me though she thought you’d come visit and you’d work it out. Did you know that’s what she thought?”
He didn’t answer immediately. His hand went to the back of his neck again, and this time he left it there. “She might have thought something like that. I wasn’t planning to go.”
“Did you know she was waiting for you?”
“I didn’t think she was.” He frowned and dropped his hand. “Summer, I told you — we broke up. She wanted to go alone. I took her at her word.”
Summer looked at his face. He believed what he was saying; she could see that. But she could also see that he hadn’t asked too closely, that the same instinct which made him kind to people from his past had kept him from examining what alone meant when Kylie said it.
“The ravens aren’t the play,” she said. “Or the bike. I meant it when I said no.”
He looked at her. In the other room the scissors stopped, and she heard Lorraine say something about the spacing. Then they started again. “No ravens,” he agreed.
Summer held his gaze. She wanted to feel the concession land, wanted it to satisfy something, but the sound of Kylie’s voice carrying from the front room — laughing now, about something on one of the labels — pulled the satisfaction out from under her before it could settle.
Summer nodded, then went to the front room without answering. Lorraine was holding a label against a portrait, and Summer stopped beside her to look.
Jonah’s father arrived with a stepladder, and Lorraine sent the men to help Kylie hang a mirror above the refreshments sideboard.
Summer would have preferred to leave, but Lorraine was already finding the tickets, asking about flavors again, and she followed her rather than explain why a simple visit had begun to feel so tiring.
Lorraine found the tickets in her folder and took Summer’s payment. The hook for the mirror was in place; Jonah’s father carried the ladder out while Jonah and Kylie lifted the frame from the sideboard.
“Upstairs is open during the party if you need to change,” Lorraine told Summer. “There’s a bathroom as well. I’ll show you when you come.” A volunteer called from the kitchen, and she went to answer, leaving Summer to fetch her bag and put the envelope away.
Her phone had slipped from her bag beneath the chair. She crouched to retrieve it, still holding the ticket envelope, just as Kylie spoke through the partly open connecting door.
“You know you didn’t have to be a martyr.” Her voice was lower than it had been in the ballroom, softened at the edges. “Nobody expected that of you.”
Summer stayed crouched. She could see only the chair leg and a strip of sunlight ending on the floor. “What are you talking about?” Jonah asked. The mirror scraped lightly against the wall.
“The wedding.” Kylie paused. “I know you moved so fast because of the baby. I’m saying you can admit it was a lot.”
“Of course it was a lot.” He sounded distracted. “Can you hold this corner?”
There was a rustle, then the small knock of wood settling. Summer’s knee began to hurt against the floorboards. “You’d only been seeing her a few months,” Kylie said. “Then she was pregnant, and suddenly you were married. That’s a lot to put on someone.”
“Summer didn’t put anything on me.” His voice was sharper now. “We were both there.”
“I know how you are.” Kylie gave a short, affectionate laugh. “You an amazing guy. You’d never leave someone in that situation.”
Summer straightened slowly. She’d heard that those same insecurities in her own head at night, when Jonah was asleep beside her and she couldn’t bear to wake him to ask.
“I married her because I wanted to, Kylie.” Jonah wasn’t laughing. “This isn’t a conversation I’m having with you.”
“You don’t need to get defensive.” Kylie sounded hurt. “I’m your friend, I’m just looking out for you. I can ask if you’re happy.”
“You haven’t asked.” The silence afterward was so complete that Summer heard a car horn from the street. “You keep insinuating I made the wrong choice.”
Kylie said nothing for several seconds. Summer stood at the connecting door, unable to go forward without revealing that she’d been listening and unable to leave before she knew what came next.
“I just didn’t think this would happen while I was gone,” Kylie said.
“What did you think was going to happen?” Jonah asked. Summer heard the frame knock softly against the wall. “We’d broken up, Kylie.”
“I thought we’d decide what we wanted. After Italy.” Kylie breathed out, impatient now. “I needed space, Jonah. I wasn’t saying I never wanted you again.”
“You broke up with me.” He said each word distinctly. “You told me you wanted to be on your own.”
“I needed to find myself.” Her voice rose, then lowered. “You knew that. It didn’t mean what we had didn’t matter.”
“I didn’t say it didn’t.” A pause followed, long enough for Summer to feel the pulse in her throat. “But I’m with Summer now, things changed.”
Summer pushed the door open. Both of them turned, Kylie with her hand still against the mirror frame. Jonah’s expression changed at once.
“I’ve got the tickets,” Summer said. She held up the envelope. “Your mother gave them to me.”