Chapter Seven
The warm kiss of the sun filtering through the curtains.
The buttery aroma of Mom’s baking.
The chirp of crickets in the field and the twitter of chickadees in the branches of the apple tree.
Chick-a-dee-dee-dee. Such an optimistic song.
I lie in bed, waiting for the wallop of devastation to hit.
But it’s just the sun, the crickets, and the birds.
It’s July 16. In another life, this would have been my two-month anniversary, and I’d be packing for a honeymoon.
I picture Nate’s face, but it’s like pressing on a fading bruise—it doesn’t hurt like it used to.
I’ve been home for more than a month now.
My parents live in a classic orange brick farmhouse on Old Stone Road in the Kawartha Lakes region, although they don’t live on water.
Their tiny piece of central Ontario is completely landlocked, about two hours northeast of Toronto.
It’s not exactly the middle of nowhere, but it’s very rural.
The Big House is right next door, but otherwise the closest neighbor is half a mile up the road.
Before George moved in, there were no children aside from my brothers within walking distance or even a bike ride away. It’s all fields and woods and rock.
Now, alone in my bedroom, I find that time collapses.
I look around at the Katniss Everdeen poster and the bulletin board covered in letters from George, track and field ribbons, and recipes clipped from magazines.
It’s easy to imagine that I’m sixteen. I let myself pretend that George is in the kitchen, scarfing down my mom’s banana bread while he waits to give me a ride to school in Mimi’s Cadillac.
I’ll find him on a stool as my mom slices him a second piece, chatting to her about ocean acidification or melting glaciers.
All it takes is one text to drag me back to the present.
Aurora: You’re the strongest person I know. I love you, and I’m thinking about you. GO TO TOFINO!!!
Groaning, I send her back a string of heart emojis. Aurora has been the go-between on all post-relationship administration between Nate and me. She says Nate is adamant that I go on the honeymoon. But all of my friends are busy with work, and a romantic getaway for one is beyond my limits.
I hear Darwin’s truck pulling into the driveway and my dad walking out to greet him before they start their day in the workshop behind the house—Gardiner Cabinetry is now Gardiner & Son Cabinetry.
I never thought I’d move in with my parents again, but hearing my oldest brother and father greet each other warmly every morning is comforting, and I love seeing more of Birdie.
My niece is messy and silly and loud, and her tawny hair is always in tangles.
She reminds me of myself when I was little.
Birdie has a big appetite and declares almost everything I feed her to be “Yummy! Yummy! Yummy!” Grilled cheese and carrot sticks are her favorite, and even though anyone could make them, seeing her smile as she eats something I prepared satisfies me on a soul level.
I force myself out of bed and put on a bathing suit and the Parks Canada T-shirt I stole from George when we were roommates. I head down the stairs, my flip-flops slapping against the maple treads, and find my mom in the kitchen, with muffins cooling on wire racks.
“How are you feeling?” she asks, pulling a second muffin pan from the oven.
“I’m fine,” I say.
Mom doesn’t push—she never does.
She points at the beach towel over my shoulder. “Heading over to the Big House?”
“Yep.” Mimi has given me an open invitation to use the pool. I booked a stretch of vacation days in the lead-up to the honeymoon, and I plan to spend them working on my tan. “I made Mimi a batch of kimchi fried rice,” I say, taking the Tupperware out of the fridge. She’s a sucker for fried rice.
“Let me pack up some muffins,” my mom says.
Containers in hand, I cut across the property to the gap in the cedar hedge, where a wooden birdhouse rests in the tangle of branches.
It’s shaped like a log cabin, with a peaked roof that lifts open.
George put it there the year after my mom came back.
We’d been learning about volcanoes at school, and that’s exactly how I felt.
My feelings were hot, bubbling lava that would burst from me wildly, and I didn’t always understand why. I felt angry all the time.
“It’ll be like the mailbox Laurie gives the March sisters in Little Women,” George said, knowing how to talk me into anything, even then. We’d recently seen the movie for the first time. “I’ll write to you today, and you can check for the letter tomorrow morning.”
Like magic, his note was waiting for me beneath a shiny red apple. I still have it.
Dear Frankie,
This is the first official letter in our new mailbox!
(It’s actually a birdhouse, but I found it in the basement, and I think it will work.)
Remember the other day when you said you sometimes have a hard time explaining how you feel? I wondered if it would be easier to write it down. That’s what I do when I need to figure stuff out.
We can say whatever we want, and nobody but us will read it.
From,
George
While writing didn’t come naturally to me the way it did for George, putting my feelings on paper and letting the mailbox carry them away is how I coped with my most complicated emotions for years.
But I was just as likely to leave treasures as letters—a blue jay feather or a bowl of wild raspberries, and later, clippings of places I wanted to visit or recipes I wanted George to taste test for me.
I’ve been home for six weeks now, and I’ve never needed my best friend more.
I see him everywhere I look. The sweet eight-year-old I defended fiercely.
The high school heartthrob I’d tease when girls fawned over him.
The boy who climbed through my window when I’d had a fight with my mom.
The man who yelled at me in the field at Christmas.
I open the lid to the mailbox and leave him the letter I wrote last night. I don’t know when he’ll get it, but it’ll be here. Same as me.