Chapter 21 An Ambiguous Meeting
Two days slid by easily at the Crescent Inn, filled with prepping for the blueberry picking festival and finishing adding a new coat of paint to the wraparound porch.
The menu for the Blueberry Festival was complete.
She and Eloise had chosen blueberry mint mimosas for those who could imbibe and a blueberry mint punch for those who could or would rather not.
For lunch, there was a grilled cheese with balsamic blueberry, a summer salad with a raspberry vinaigrette and fresh blueberries, and a blueberry, feta, and honey flatbread with burrata and mozzarella.
The dessert table would have miniature blueberry pies, blueberry lemon cream tarts, blueberry and cinnamon crumbles, and bags of dried blueberry granola mix to take home.
Fae was kind enough to offer her opinion that there were too many blueberries. It had been two days of trying to be kind to a sister who was, without a doubt, going through a difficult time. But also, without a doubt, making Tilly's life difficult.
Currently, she was sitting on the porch reading while Tilly took care of any spots needing a last touch-up of paint.
Earlier, as she'd been scraping old, dingy paint from this very railing, with a particularly thick chip of paint also came a small piece of paper. She was getting used to this now, and had started thinking of these buried notes as the house's way of sending her little love notes. This one read:
It is easy to feel inadequate. It is much more difficult to know that you're not.
It sat in her back pocket, heavy and honest.
"I don't know how women read these books." Fae's voice interrupted her blessed silence.
"Then why did you get it?"
A sigh followed with, "Because I'm trying not to spend money and the Inn's library only has romance and mystery."
Tilly held back the retort that her sister was somehow on her third romance that she was so critical of.
"Can you make me a salad?"
Tilly closed her eyes and prayed that she didn't do anything rash.
Like throw the small can of Westhighland White over her sister.
But she could imagine the perfectly cream, not too white paint dripping down her black hair and over the borrowed sweater that Tilly had given her to fight off the unseasonable chill.
It was a sacrifice she was thinking about making.
"Hey, want to come over tonight for dinner?"
Fae lowered her book and her pinched look gave Tilly her answer. "To eat with your friends?"
"Yeah. Eloise and Ursula will be there. Probably Bess. And they're great."
"Your friends the entire town calls witches?" she clarified.
"Yes. But I promise not to serve you bat wings or hex you." She smiled at Fae's look of annoyance.
"I don't believe in magic so I'm not worried about that, weirdo."
"Then come over. They're my people. Ursula makes a great salad. And she grows all of it herself."
That made Fae's judgemental pinched look loosen and reconsider.
As she was trying not to spend money, she was at the mercy of whatever food was at the inn or what she could pick up for cheap at the grocery store, and she wasn't exactly a whiz in the kitchen yet the premade salads were not to her liking.
"Fine," she finally said, as though she were doing Tilly a favor.
That evening she lead her slender, skeptical sister up the front porch steps of The Lost Souls House and after a slight tug-of-war with the moon glass door that wanted to close on her sister, she finally got Fae inside where her sister picked every detail apart with a silent but very critical eye.
Tilly watched her for a moment struck by the thought that she and her sister would probably never be close.
They wouldn't curl up on a couch and talk about everything going on in their lives while eating popcorn and chocolate chip cookies.
Twice today she'd almost blurted out that she and Theo kissed, but both times she played her sister's hypothetical reaction and was reminded of a lifetime of disappointing sister moments.
Even when she told Fae she left Brent, told her just a little about his affair and how much he'd hurt her, instead of the sisterly offer to bury his body somewhere no one would find it, she stiffly advised Tilly to move on and not to become a victim.
It was less advice and more of a directive to not bring her troubles to Fae's perfect doorstep.
"It's very...hedgewitch," Fae said. But the way she said it was not a compliment. Tilly looked around and smiled at the cozy, whimsy that the house had taken on from Ursula's house dreams. It was like if a house took on the personality of a wild forest. And she loved it.
"Hello?" Tilly called. A cat meowed and Tilly reached down to run her hand over Georgia's fluffy back. "They must be outside."
The kitchen looked like they had made dinner already and she saw Ursula and Bess's dark heads and Eloise's auburn head through the large windows.
"Ohmygod!"
Tilly swung around ready for whatever danger she might find at her sister's exclamation. But she found Fae pressed against one of the walls staring in horror at Lady Macbeth who was eating on the island.
She let out a loud sigh of relief.
"Don't worry. That's Lady Macbeth."
"You named a rodent?" she asked with disgust.
"Well, she's a raccoon, not a rodent. And yes. She kind of adopted Eloise when she was drunk one night. It's actually a funny story," she started with a laugh but seeing her sister's look she shook her head ending the story there. "Never mind."
"This isn't normal.""Well, depends on your definition."Fae pointed a finger toward the object of their conversation who was looking between the two women. "It's eating with a spoon."
"She is eating with a spoon. And yeah. Bess taught her that." Lady dipped the spoon expertly into a bowl of what looked like marshmallow fluff and licked it staring at a horrified Fae. Tilly gestured behind her. "Come on."
Fae kept as much distance between her and a perfectly unbothered raccoon as she followed Tilly to the back garden.
The evening was a perfect sixty-five degrees, still not the typical eighty to ninety degrees they were used to this time of year.
The lit cafe lights were strung above and they had the fire pit cover on, which was covered in a large pottery bowl, a small platter with ciabatta rolls stuffed with lobster salad and sliced peaches snuggled between fresh mozzarella and drizzled in honey and flaky sea salt.
"Hey there!" Eloise called. She was wearing a caramel felt hat and an army green jacket.
Everyone was dressed for fall in the middle of July.
Bess had an oversized flannel and her jeans and black boots.
Ursula was in a floral dress with a long black cardigan and her black hair wild.
"If you hadn't told us your guest was your sister, I would have guessed easily. "
"Really?" Tilly asked. She'd never seen much similarity between them.
"We don't look anything alike," Fae said.
Tilly's thoughtful look pursed into a tight line. Fae was quick to point out their differences.
"Well, other than Tilly's fabulous hair, which you don't share, you have similar features," Bess said. And Tilly had to bite her lip to keep from laughing at Bess's bold look which was a smile, but it was a smile that dared this new guest to say anything unkind.
Because Bess was that way. She was upfront and honest. And she had Eloise and Jen as role models to bring out and hone that particular gift of character. Tilly knew what could happen if you didn't practice kindness with a bold spirit.
Two sides of the same coin watched each other and everyone else watched them.
She watched her sister measure her weight here. She was a guest and Bess was a teenager. A teenager with a wicked ability to call people on their bullshit.
Fae's elegant face, her scrutinizing eyes finally looked away from Bess's stare.
"Well, listen, we have some amazing food. I made a grilled peach and mozzarella spinach salad with balsamic vinaigrette." Ursula used the wooden salad tongs to put a bunch in Fae's bowl as Eloise poured her wine.
They took seats joining them and Tilly felt Fae's discomfort but it was drowned out by the kind welcome from her friends. Bess watched her sister quietly as she took bites of her sandwich nonchalantly.
She wondered what it would have been like to walk through teenage years with that kind of gumption.
She had tiptoed, hoping she didn't make too much noise.
She slid into empty rooms and sometimes dark closets to hide where she wouldn't have to add herself to the scale of equilibrium and possibly tilt it.
Even now, she caught herself holding her breath when walking into certain rooms in hopes that she didn't alter the atmosphere and be noticed.
Dr. Sarah once asked her why she thought she felt anxious around new people and new places.
And it took Tilly a few sessions and quietly deep moments alone with a cup of coffee to realize that she was afraid to be known.
The people who should have made her comfortable with who she was, her core people, taught her that she was not safe to be herself.
Sometimes she was even punished for it.
So every new person she came across was, in a way, an unsafe person until they proved differently.
She had grown in the last few years of her life, shedding the assumption that others were ready to weigh and measure her. Most were just trying to bungle their way through an imperfect life with an imperfect map just like her. And there was comfort in that.
"So what do you do, Fae?" Bess's question pulled Tilly from her memories.
Fae shifted in her seat. Her back and shoulders were painfully straight and Tilly wondered when her sister ever relaxed.
She couldn't even imagine her sister relaxing into a passionate kiss.
Like the one she'd shared with the chief. The memory burned, as it had been doing since the kiss, leaving a delicious, sizzling sensation in her belly.