7. Megan
Chapter Seven
MEGAN
The first day of the Snowflake Falls Summer Festival is packed. It opens at ten and by eleven we've sold out of all the rainbow dresses and the feather-embellished robes.
Delphine is in a sequin-spangled caftan that can be seen from the parking lot and probably from space, holding court behind her display stands.
Whenever people stop to admire them, she tells them a local artisan made them in collaboration with a talented artist. Winnie sells more than either of us because she’s a born hustler.
At lunchtime she vanishes and then comes back with a dreamy look on her face that I need to ask her about later.
My brother Russell, also known as Viper to the MC he rides with, turns up at noon in head-to-toe leather with Jean and a twin on each arm.
“Aunt Megan,” he says, and hands me one without asking. “Hold Zadie, but be careful. She’s having a biting phase.”
“She doesn’t bite,” Jean says.
“She bites me.”
“Well, she knows she can get away with it.”
Zadie yanks the caftan I’m wearing, delighted at the sparkles.
Russell stands in the middle of my aunt's stand with his arms folded over the front of his leather cut, looking like he’s conducting some kind of threat assessment.
He walks over to Harris and starts talking to him.
After I’ve served a customer, I glance over at them nervously.
They appear to be getting on enormously.
Jean pats my arm. “It's going great. Russell's already decided he likes him.”
“How can you tell?”
“Harris asked Russell about his bike. That’s a green flag if ever there was one.”
The twinkle lights strung between the trees come on at eight and the band starts up, playing covers of eighties tunes with a slightly out-of-tune saxophone.
Harris dances with me, under duress, with his hand spread over the small of my back and his mouth against my hair.
Gram tells half the festival that she saw it coming.
It's the best day I've had this year.
But when I wake up, there’s an email waiting for me.
Megan, wonderful news on the fox pages, the team adores them. Can we get you in the office this week? Alina wants to talk about the next two books and we'd rather do it face to face. Let me know your travel plans.
I read it in Harris's bed with him asleep behind me and his arm heavy across my waist. A cold chill goes through me, while my feet are icy.
This week.
I've known this was coming; I have a contract and a deadline. I've been walking around since I met Harris with my hands over my ears and my eyes shut. There's a lease on an apartment in the city in my name, and a life I built over there.
Harris shifts and pulls me back against him without waking up.
I don't tell him at breakfast, and by the time the sun sets that evening I still can’t. It becomes like another person, an unwanted visitor, sitting right there in the room with us.
The next day, I’m helping my aunt to restock. Delphine’s talking about her friend’s hip operation, the committee's plans, and the awfulness of the whistling man with the birdhouses, and then she says:
“I heard that Hollis woman came about the gallery. Gram saw her car drive up here.”
I stop with a tablecloth half folded. “What gallery?”
“The one out in Ember Heart. She's been after Harris for the autumn show; she's been bugging him for years to do a photography exhibition.” Delphine's got her back to me, stacking boxes.
“Gram caught her at the Heart’s Delight on the way back.
Said he told her nobody's interested in a lot of pictures of birds.”
She turns and puts her hand on my arm. “Megan.”
“It's fine.”
“It isn't.”
“He can say no if he wants to say no.” I fold the cloth, but my hands are doing it all wrong. “It's his work… and not my business what he does with it.”
I think about it, walking back up the hill in the heat. I stood in that room and told him people should be standing in front of those photographs. And I’m not the only one who knows how good he is. He belongs here, in nature, not in the city. I can’t ask him to move with me.
Whatever I am to him, I'm not enough to change that.
He's on his porch when I come up the hill.
“Long day,” I say.
“Yep.”
I sit down on the step below his and he puts his hand on the back of my neck. I lean into it, and neither of us says anything for a long time while the light fades into the trees. I take a deep breath.
“My publisher wants me in the city. For a meeting.”
His hand stays where it is, but stops stroking my skin.
“When?”
“End of this week.”
“Right.”
The wind comes down through the pines, bringing with it a cooler, fresher breeze that ruffles my hair.
“That's good. They want the next books?”
“Yeah.”
“You should go.”
He means it kindly, but it goes into my heart like a splinter.
“Right,” I say. “Yes. Obviously.”
The day after, I'm coming round the side of the workshop with a coffee and I stop when I hear Delphine’s voice. I’ve been working with my headphones on, so I didn’t hear her drive up. I stand there like a coward with a mug in each hand.
“Megan's going back to the city,” Harris says.
“For a meeting.”
“Yes.”
“And you've said what to her about that, exactly?”
“Well, I said she should go.” A long pause; the sound of something metal being set down on the bench. “She's got a career, Delphine. A whole life over there. I'm not going to be the thing that stands in the middle of the road and blocks her from that.”
“So you're giving her space?”
“Yes.”
“Harris.” My aunt's voice is serious. “There's a difference between giving someone space and pushing them away.
Standing very still and saying nothing looks the same from the outside as not wanting her.
My niece has spent two years with a man who didn't want her and got very good at recognizing it.”
He doesn’t say anything. I hold my breath, hoping, but he’s silent. So I put the coffee down on the sill outside the window and walk to my cabin. I don't come over to his place that evening, and he doesn't come to mine.