Chapter 16 #2
They’d always gotten along, but were never that close, not like some cousins were.
Naomi chalks it up to Katie being a couple years older, but part of her wonders if it’s because she had a more stable upbringing, spending her childhood playing soccer instead of coloring on the wet floor of a bar while her mom rehearsed.
Plus, Naomi and Faye had each other. They didn’t need anyone else.
“When are you going to join the mommy club and move back here?” Katie sways, grinning from ear to ear as she cradles her bump. “We miss you!”
Naomi laughs awkwardly and shrugs. She wants to tell Katie not to hold her breath, to explain how she no longer pictures herself playing happy families.
How her dreams of having children have now morphed into nightmares, her mind constantly wondering how anyone can cope emotionally with worrying about all the bad things that could happen to them.
She figures these are details Katie would prefer to be spared, though, so she avoids the question.
After a quick chat about life in LA, Naomi moves aside so the newly arrived guests can greet Katie, while Naomi moves onto Nick.
“Thanks so much for coming,” he says, arms outstretched for a hug. Nick was a year ahead of Naomi in school and lived in their neighborhood, so she hung out with him more than Katie when they were younger.
“Of course, it’s really nice to see everyone,” she says, pulling away. Her gaze lands on the faded scar on his forehead, more visible now than ever thanks to his receding hairline.
“Still have the scar, I see.”
Nick’s face flushes as his hand moves across it. “Have your sister to thank for that.” He laughs.
She smirks, remembering the night Faye chucked a piece of splintering firewood at his head.
Unbeknown to Naomi, freshman Faye had been hooking up with Nick, a senior at the time.
When he broke it off with her—either because he got what he wanted or because he was about to turn eighteen and realized it wasn’t a good look to be dating a minor—she didn’t take it well. He needed eight stitches.
Naomi hears her aunt before she sees her, talking loudly about “pa-tay-ta salad.” She uses it as an excuse to break away from Nick and turns to find her.
“Ah, there she is,” Aunt Mary exclaims, engulfing her in a hug. “So happy you made it! Been too long…”
Naomi’s heart aches at the words as she squeezes her aunt, breathing in her pungent flowery perfume.
It takes her back to Faye’s funeral, where Aunt Mary must’ve been wearing the same exact scent.
Feeling her eyes get teary, Naomi clenches her jaw, looking around for something else to focus her attention on as she pulls away.
“Great job with the decor,” Naomi says, eyeing the white tent and dozens of pink and blue balloons.
Aunt Mary swats a fly away with her hand, covered in rings and bracelets like some pirate merchant, before answering, “Why, thanks hun.”
Being here now, seeing her aunt after so long, makes her feel even more guilty for distancing herself.
They exchange messages around the holidays, but Naomi doesn’t put in much effort.
Sometimes, if she remembers Aunt Mary’s birthday, she thinks of calling.
But the thought of having to have conversations, even just answering a simple “How are you?”, makes her feel sick with anxiety, so she never phones.
It’s wrong of her, especially after how much Aunt Mary helped with both her mom’s and Faye’s funerals, but Naomi simply hasn’t been able to face it.
All she has wanted to do is distract herself from her old life.
“My god, you look so thin,” Aunt Mary says, looking Naomi up and down. “Come on, let’s get you some food, fatten you up.”
Relenting to her aunt’s command, Naomi follows her to the gazebo, where bowls are filled with the usual selection of cold salads, next to a stack of burgers and hot dogs.
She picks at a plate of macaroni salad as she mingles with some of the guests, a few extended family members she saw occasionally as a kid, and unfamiliar others.
Her conversations mostly consist of awkward greetings and intrusive questions.
“Why’d you move to LA?” “What happened to Matt?” “Do you want to get married?” “Don’t wait forever, your biological clock is ticking.
” “A family is so much more fulfilling than a career.” And on and on.
She loiters next to her Aunt Mary and her friends, preferring to nod along as they chat at her rather than having to endure more painful small talk.
“I just had the weirdest dream last night,” Lori, Nick’s mom, says to the group. “I saw my grandmother—I was very close with her—and she told me everything would be okay with the baby and not to worry.”
“Well, it was very foggy last night,” Laura says. Naomi frowns, eyes darting from brown-bob Laura to blonde-bob Lori, who also furrows her brow.
“You know… what they say about fog and spirits?” Laura waves her fork in the air, looking befuddled, as if she merely asked what five plus five was.
She chomps down on a cube of watermelon. “When it’s foggy out, or misty…” She holds a finger in the air, still chewing. “…spirits are able to more easily enter through the human realm and communicate with us.”
Naomi shovels in a forkload of macaroni salad so she doesn’t have to speak, eyeing the group.
It’s not that she doesn’t believe in any sort of supernatural phenomena.
In high school she worked at a creepy bed-and-breakfast, where multiple parents reported their children talking to a tree.
The same tree. Naomi later learned that a man was reportedly hanged there during the Revolutionary War.
“I’ve never heard of that, but it makes sense,” Lori replies, as Aunt Mary, Kath, and Donna nod in fascination.
Naomi sneezes and all the women turn their attention to her. She curses the Hudson Valley air.
“God bless you!” Kath says, placing her hand on Naomi’s back.
“Thanks,” Naomi replies. “Allergies.” Her allergies have been acting up since she stepped foot in Poughkeepsie, almost like she is allergic to the place itself.
Laura lets out a laugh. “Allergies. More like government intervention!”
Naomi’s eyebrows shoot up, taken aback.
“It’s got nothin’ to do with the pollen, honey, believe me.” Laura waves her fork around again. “The government orchestrates it all, dumps the chemicals round here as a test twice a year.”
“Don’t want us feeling well enough to fight back,” Lori chimes in, taking Naomi by surprise. But then she remembers all the other conspiracy theories she’s seen Lori’s kids, including Nick, post about on Facebook and decides to just nod along.
She tunes out, gaze drifting behind her to the woods where Nick’s young nieces are playing.
She smiles, remembering how magical the woods felt when she was a kid.
She recalls the time when she and Faye, nine and seven, found an intricately carved miniature door at the base of a tree, painted yellow.
The fairy door, they called it. It soon became their spot, a sort of safe haven.
It was where they’d go if their mom was having one of her “days,” when she was too hungover to do anything, or when she was having a spat with her latest boyfriend.
Then, as they got older, it became the party place for them and their friends.
They’d play beer pong with Hennessy and Peach Schnapps and drink by the fire pit they dug out.
Naomi pulls her jacket tight around her as a cold wind moves in, thinking about how life changes you.
As a child, the woods represent magic. As a teen, excitement.
As an adult, danger. She pictures the ramshackle house, hidden by trees.
The one Faye was found in, not too far from here.
Naomi moves her shoulders around and adjusts her neck from side to side, feeling squeamish.
She’s catapulted from her thoughts back to the party when Nick makes an announcement for everyone to gather around the big box near the side of the house.
She breathes a sigh of relief, knowing the party is about to be over and she can make her way to Millbrook.
She considers visiting her sister’s gravesite first, but the mere thought of it puts her on edge.
She just wants to get out of the area. Something about being home feels wrong.
A constant tightening in her chest, shortness of breath.
A feeling that will worsen tenfold if she goes to the cemetery.
No, she’ll visit when she has answers about Harlow, like she originally planned.
“Five!” Guests begin counting down excitedly, eager to see what color balloons will be unleashed from the box in front of Katie and Nick.
“Four!” Naomi imagines pink balloons flying toward the sky. Her sister’s face flashes in her mind, snapshots of her as a little girl through to adulthood.
“Three!” Naomi pictures Jade Dutton, another sister lost.
“Two!” She envisions blue balloons and thinks of Colton Scott.
“One!” Everyone cheers as blue balloons fly out of the box. But Naomi stays silent, stuck in a daze, with Harlow Hayes’ smirking face imprinted in her mind.