Page 120 of Hot Tea & Bird Calls
She roamed the coveted space. Eighty percent of the wardrobe comprised of Shanice’s fashions, the remainder full of Byron’s drab colors and dad sneaker collection. Elise sat on the floor in Byron’s section, legs crossed. And she’d uncovered a mini file cabinet that’d seen better days.
Celene scratched a nail across an edge that’d gone rusty. It was probably older than her. “Snooping through Byron’s stuff? When we’d done that fifteen years ago, we found old photos of him in bed with Mom.”
“God, don’t remind me,” Elise groaned, finger walking into the topmost of two drawers, through a faded accordion folder. “He doesn’t throw anything away.”
Like the summer house. Celene bent down next to her. “What are you looking for?”
“Don’t worry about it. Here.” She pushed a chunky old digital camera forward, bouncing it off Celene’s foot. “Dad keeps a box of portable chargers and cords in the computer room?—”
Celene’s heart raced in recognition. Minutes later, she’d collected the necessary charging connector and sat across from her sister as the dead camera winked a tiny amber light.
It could be charged.
Elise’s voice sliced into the silence that followed.
“Theo’s still asleep,” she announced, nodding at the viewfinder of the baby camera. In a similar tone, she attached, “I’m sorry, Celene.”
“For?” she asked, eyes on the amber light.
Elise waved for her attention. “Last week, I hung out with Big J’s cousin and his girlfriend. They’d been out of the country during our wedding. So, we brought out my laptop to present photos from both days, and I offhandedly mentioned ‘my sister.’ They got confused and asked, ‘What sister?’” She wet her bottom lip in two nervous licks. “Big J and I hunted through hundreds—god, thousands—of images from the photographer’s final delivery. You’re only in a handful. I?—”
Jaw clenched, Celene stared.
“I was so fucking embarrassed,” Elise concluded. “You helped us prep for the wedding and took on a huge role to assist Brenda. I can’t believe I had the nerve to question your commitment to us. Or—” she gasped in the loud way Celene hated, slapping a hand over her mouth. “Or inviting Quinn and her girlfriend—wife—oh my fucking god, Celene. I never thanked you.”
Satisfaction didn’t describe what dripped tears from Celene’s eyes. Vindication was better, maybe some relief. The best she could do was beseen. Her sister saw her. “It took you long enough.”
Elise tackled Celene in a hug that almost broke her hip. Her annoying little sister wailed her gratitude for the flowers and wrangling her friends, and adhering to the schedule. It tookCelene too many pats to her shoulder and a hard shove to make Elise get a hold of herself.
Scrabbling at the floor in her jeans, Elise scooped up the digital camera and jammed her thumb onto the power button. “This has to be charged enough.”
Celene pinched the toast charm on her necklace, her eyes darting. The camera’s small screen toured them through a cascade of decades-old photos. Christmases, birthday parties. Everyone’s smiles less burdened, hair free of grays, clothing choices questionable but comely in the way that history dictated.
But Elise and Celene were on the same unspoken goal with the swiftest mashing of the arrow button, made abundantly apparent when the greenery of the Poconos began framing photos. Elise went through them slowly, grumbling at the target not found. Thus, she punched her thumb so fast, it must’ve hurt, blazing through their childhood homes, candid shots, visits to theme parks, and then to an older visit at the Vale house. And finally. Finally?—
“Bingo. Oh my god. I can’t believe?—”
Snatching the phone like the girls in the flashes of their youth, Celene went lightheaded, reminding herself not to pass out. Smiling back at her was a picture of herself and Skye Florentine at ten years old. Arms around each other, eyes free of strife, backdropped by the house she once called a hassle. Skye’s hair down to her shoulders in a twist out, shiny and bearing a single flower, the way Luce does, and Celene with a long braid draped over her shoulder, woven with tiny purple flowers.
Smooth aster. The skin at the back of her arm tingled, begging to be touched.
“You have to blow that up and hang it on a wall,” Elise mused, as out of breath as Celene.
She nodded absently while she checked the rest of that summer’s photos. Celene found five more photos of them, themost captivating being a candid shot: her and Skye unguarded, legs swinging upon the sturdy old deck, hands full of different flowers, and heads close, like they were sharing a secret.
Celene’s favorite part of the summer.
“Dad called me back to the hospital room after you left,” Elise said softly, closely enough to grasp Celene’s shoulder again. She revealed a manila folder, softened at the edges from age. “He’d been trying to arrange time for you and him to sit and talk. So he could give you this.”
Fingers trembling, Celene pulled out its stack of papers. The summer house’s deed and other closing documents.
“Elise. This...”
Her sister shut the file cabinet with a rusty screech. “Don and Bri don’t have the bandwidth. Neither Mom, Lonnie, nor Shanice want it. Byron’s out of his depth. Big J’s not done with the city, and my allergies can’t handle it.”
At a loss for anything else, Celene could only agree. “Pennsylvania’s air wants you dead.”
“It does. It really does.”
