Chapter 9
A CRUSH IS BORN
Cricket
I’m still an alien in my own skin, but I’ve showered.
I did it with all of the doors locked—stairway door, exterior door, bathroom door—and with my phone powered off and the lights low in the bathroom, but I did it.
My hair is combed and knot-free.
I’m wearing fresh clothes that someone left in a basket by my door yesterday.
And I smell like a human again.
Heath must’ve encountered things I can’t comprehend in his EMT days, considering that he didn’t make any faces or ask me if I was part cave troll.
I force myself to imagine the horrific things he would’ve come across rather than remember how solid his body was when I hugged him—which I should not have done without asking first—or how he nearly instantly eased my mortification at realizing he’d overheard my conversation with my parents.
How easily he told me I wasn’t alone.
That I’m far from the first person to be this kind of a mess when they get here.
And that my parents don’t deserve me.
I’m more than a little rocked right now.
Family’s supposed to be there for you at your lowest.
Some parents want bragging rights, not kids.
I had friends, one ex-boyfriend even, who’ve implied the same. But I wasn’t ready to hear it.
Here—here, I needed to hear it.
And having a man that I punched in the face tell me that I’m worthy, that I deserve better, that I deserve acceptance and peace from my family, even if he didn’t use those exact words—it’s like my world is both tilted sideways and also right side up for the first time in my life.
I thought going viral broke me.
But I was wrong.
Part of me was always broken. Going viral—it forced me to see how much about my world was wrong.
The way I’ve always felt like I don’t fit into my family.
The fears that my life wouldn’t be worthwhile if I didn’t get back to real journalism and win Pulitzers.
The insecurities that I’d never win in this unspoken competition with my sisters to have the most to show off.
Today, I’m facing my fears and insecurities.
Starting with journeying across the fields back to the main house.
The landscape’s beautiful. It’s a mix of rows of grapevines, green hills rising up to meet mountains in the distance, and lingering wisps of fog as I let myself out of the apartment and start toward the house.
“Cricket!” a little voice cries before I’ve made it very far.
I suck in a breath of courage, then look back and smile at Lavender, who’s wearing a green dress printed with kitten paws. And also still the whiskers drawn on her face, though they’re lighter today. “Good morning.”
Heath’s trailing her, his long strides keeping up with her skip-dance-hop journey.
He nods to me.
“Thank you again,” I say awkwardly while Lavender flings herself at me and hugs me around the waist. “I washed your coffee mug. I’ll bring it back later.”
“No rush. Got plenty.”
Considering it’s a Makepeace Cellars mug, he’s likely telling the truth.
They probably have those all over the place here.
“The dragons set you up,” Lavender announces.
I’ve heard the two of them moving around in the mornings, and I see them walking across the fields toward the house nearly every day.
So the ladies can watch Lavender while Heath goes to work.
That’s what I was told the first day.
When I was helpful.
I hope.
I could offer to walk her over, but I don’t yet trust myself to make it there without causing some kind of incident, so it’s probably best that Lavender and I both have a chaperone.
“How so?” I ask her as we all fall into step together.
“Those eggs you spilled were dragon eggs. They snuck in and replaced the chicken eggs with the bad dragon eggs, and the bad dragon eggs burned the bottom of the carton off when you lifted it.”
I manage to not wince at all or slow my pace or change my mind about going to the house at the reminder of the egg incident. “You’ve been studying dragons?”
“I’m a dragon slayer,” she announces.
“Are you still a cat too?”
“Cricket. I was never a cat. I could just talk to them.”
I used to offer to take my nieces and nephews for a day to give my sisters a break, or to watch them so they could have date nights with their husbands, but they rarely took me up on it.
Talking to Lavender about cats and dragons—it makes me wish they’d let me be Aunt Cricket back home more than on holidays and birthdays and special occasions.
One more way they didn’t accept who I am and how I’m different.
One more way that they made me feel like I was wrong. Unworthy.
“Can you talk to the dragons too?” I ask Lavender.
“Yes, but you can’t hear me when I do. It’s at subatomic frenemies.”
“Subhuman frequencies,” Heath murmurs.
Lav slides me a cheeky grin that makes me bark out a rusty laugh.
I’ve been reading. Mostly popular fiction that makes me cry.
I’ve also been watching documentaries. Mostly true crime that also makes me cry.
So laughing?
This is nice.
I like laughing.
Lavender tells me all about where she’s found dragons in the house and the garden while we stroll through a break in the grapevines.
“Different varieties,” Heath tells me when he notices me glancing at another wider break in the fields going a different direction.
“Oh. Do they still make wine at all here?”
“No.”
“Who’s tending the grapes?”
“A neighbor. She farms them in exchange for the yield.”
“She wouldn’t if she knew there were grape dragons,” Lavender says.
“Good thing we have a new dragon slayer then.” I wince as the words leave my mouth and wait for the Cricket, don’t encourage her that doesn’t come.
Heath’s not looking at me. Just walking along with us, hands in his pockets, staring straight ahead.
I’m on his left, so I can’t see his black eye.
It’s almost like this is a normal stroll with a neighbor on a pretty summer morning.
“Aunt Pip found dragons in the fireplace yesterday, but Mabel told us we needed to set traps instead of climbing in to get them ourselves,” Lavender says.
Heath’s lips twitch, and I can’t tell if it’s amusement or irritation.
“Is Aunt Pip a dragon slayer too?” I ask.
“She’s retired, so she’s just a spotter now. Olivia! Olivia, look! Cricket’s alive! The dragons didn’t get her!”
Olivia looks up from her spot on the porch steps.
She has an identical mug to the one Heath left with me this morning, and she seems to be taking in the morning.
“Well, hello there,” she says to me with a warm smile that lights her dark brown eyes.
“You’re just in time for a honey puff pancake if you’re feeling up to breakfast.”
“I love honey puff pancake,” Lavender shrieks. “Bye, Daddy. I love you. I’m going to get more dragon-slayer fuel.”
She hugs him, then dashes up the stairs. “Mabel? Ginny? Aunt Pip? Did any dragons fraternize you yesterday?”
Mabel’s voice floats through the open window. “You mean terrorize?”
“Yep!”
Their voices fade.
“I’ll be back around one,” Heath says to Olivia.
“Take your time. We’ve got her.”
He glances at me. “Cricket. Enjoy your day.”
“Thank you. For—for everything.”
Am I wincing at seeing the purplish bruise still lingering under his eye?
Yep.
But he just nods and turns back the way he came.
He’ll get to the house, climb up in his truck, and leave, just like he has every day since Monday.
Not that I’ve been watching.
It’s more that I’m easily distracted by noises.
“How about you?” Olivia rises, still smiling warmly at me. “Would you like a honey puff pancake?”
“I don’t actually know what a honey puff pancake is.”
“Then let’s go find out.”
I join her on the steps, and she gives me a side hug. She smells like roses and baby powder, and she feels like security and strength.
“It’s good to see you,” she says. “We’ve been worried.”
Heat builds in my sinuses and my eyes. “Oh, I’m sorry, I—”
“No sorries here. That’s my way of telling you we care, not my way of trying to make you feel guilty.”
She opens the door for me, and the first thing I see when I walk in is Ginny.
On crutches.
I cringe, but she smiles even brighter than Lavender did a few minutes ago.
“Cricket! You’re here!” She switches directions to swing herself into the foyer, then props both crutches under one arm so she can hug me with the other.
“Your hair smells amazing. How’re you feeling?
Join us for breakfast. Elizabeth got an email from the drag queen whose show she interrupted, and it’s honestly the most healing thing I’ve ever heard in my life.
And also hilarious. You have to hear it.
Dori’s gearing up for a dramatic interpretation. ”
I blink back tears, but I can’t blink back a sniffle.
Mabel strolls by with Lavender, but she pauses to hand me a tissue that she plucks out of a box on the side table in the foyer. “Glad you made it to the other side,” she says.
“Who maimed a side of fries?” Aunt Pip asks.
She’s letting the girls hang out, though she’s wearing pants today.
Sheer genie pants that clearly show the hot pink thong beneath, but still pants.
“Made it to the other side,” Mabel repeats. “Come on. Breakfast time.”
“Pfft,” Aunt Pip says while we all head toward the kitchen. “You act like she set a record. No one’s ever touching Temperance for how long she squirreled up. That girl didn’t leave her bedroom for seventeen days.”
“Seventeen days?” And I thought I was being ridiculous. “How did she go viral?”
“Stomach issues,” Ginny says.
“On an office call with those stupid video meetings,” Aunt Pip says. “She was sitting in the bathroom on a meeting and everyone could hear her—”
“Maybe after breakfast, Aunt Pip?” Mabel says.
“I get the idea,” I say.
Actually, I think I remember this.
If not Temperance, then someone else who did something similar.
“She didn’t stay long after she finally left her cave,” Aunt Pip says to me.
“She got a high-paying job as the spokesperson for a sanitation department in a major metropolitan area,” Ginny tells me.
She points to Temperance’s picture on the wall, in a section labeled top-tier goddess level.
“Spent seventeen days locked in her bedroom, opening it to take food and pass dirty plates out, then came out for two days to just sit on the porch, and announced on the third day that she was ready to go back.”
“Wow.”
“She’s my hero,” Olivia says, which makes everyone laugh.
“Reason she’s goddess level,” Mabel replies.
We all step into the kitchen—the scene of my last crime—and find Samantha and Dori there.
They’re not related as far as I know, but they have similar builds and they’re each wearing sweatpants and eighties band T-shirts despite the thirty years between them.
Dori’s shoulder-length purple hair is tied up in a loose bun, and Samantha’s shorter hair is sticking up in green spikes.
They’re setting cast-iron skillets of a fluffy yellow cake-like thing with wide cracks and spotted brown crusts on the table.
“Morning, Cricket,” Samantha says with a smile. “Are you a fig jam kind of person? Or do you take your honey puff pancakes plain?”
“I want powdered sugar,” Lavender says. She’s already sitting at the head of the table, up on her knees, leaning toward the nearest pan.
“Hot, remember,” Elizabeth says to her.
Lav makes a face. “I’m a dragon slayer. I can handle hot.”
“Easier to eat when you’re not hurt though,” Mabel says.
“Dig in before it falls,” Samantha says. “Bacon and sausage are coming in a minute.”
And that’s that.
I’m here.
No one hates me.
I’m probably not even the first person to make a mess in the kitchen.
And speaking of messes—
I glance at Mabel, who’s seated across from me as we start on breakfast. “Can I—is it okay if I mess around in the garden later?”
“The flower garden between here and the mother-in-law house?”
I nod, and I don’t verbally vomit out that I did a segment on gardening once, and how much I’ve been thinking the past couple days that I want to touch the earth again.
I remember feeling so grounded.
“Do whatever you’d like,” she tells me. “No one’s touched it in a decade.”
“Who’re you calling a sexcapade?” Aunt Pip asks her.
“You, Aunt Pip. You’re a sexcapade,” Mabel replies.
Maybe tomorrow, I’ll hang out with these women again.
And maybe tomorrow, every lighthearted moment won’t make me want to cry in gratitude that I can be here for now.
But for today—well, today, I think I’ll let my eyeballs leak in happiness.
It’s a nice change.
For now.