Page 11 of Henhouse
“Soggy cardboard.”
“Soggy from what?” Louisa asked, but she didn’t actually look like she wanted to know. Effie shrugged. It didn’t matter. Soggy was soggy. Cardboard was cardboard. And Theodore was Theodore.
The sun had set completely. Effie spent the last hour or so bathing and nursing a cup of tea while she read alone in her room. She was currently halfway through a pirate romance novel that would likely scandalize the entire Thatcher family if they discovered it. They’d never known Effie to have a sultry bone in her body, but that had been by design. Many of them had flaunted their desires,and look where that got them. Effie hadn’t wanted to let her desire to see the light of day and be tempted to act on it. It felt too much like tempting fate. But just because she had vowed to keep her legs closed didn’t mean her mind had to be.
She wanted to discuss the book with Hope, who had read it before her. They were in the habit of swapping criticisms, favorite characters, and passages they loved. It was often like research for Hope, but for Effie, it was just fun.
Effie checked the hobby room off the front foyer where a wall lined with bookshelves housed their beloved novels, and a credenza under the bay window stowed paints, brushes, yarns, and threads. She found Aunt Bea instead, painting another portrait of her pet conure parrot, Issa, who sat perched like a perfect model on the golden roost that stood atop the antique desk.
“Have you seen Hope?” Effie asked.
“Not since this morning. I think she was going to talk to the father today.”
Effie scowled; she would have left word if she’d be out with him all night. That is, if the reaction had been positive. If, however, as Effie now feared, Brayden didn’t take the news well, home would be the last place she’d find Hope.
“Must have gotten caught up café writing again,” Effie lied before ducking through the double pocket doors into the foyer, through the great room, and into the kitchen, where the bustle of dinner prep was overwhelming and a bit comical.
Ellen and Pamela’s night always descended into chaos. Mostly because Pamela led the charge, pulling out virtually every dish they owned while Ellen struggled to make efficient sense of the recipe in poor time to her mother’s frenetic cooking style. It always ended with Ellen following Pamela with a dish rag and a compost bin, throwing away scraps and wiping up spills. Pamela’s food was always fantastic, but she somehow couldn’t cook without making an absolute mess. It drove Ellen crazy. The only thing that would have made her crazier would have been not tending to the hurricane chef as she passed through the kitchen.
“I don’t think Hope and I will need places tonight,” Effie said.
“Okay!” Pamela chirped from behind a cabinet door.
“What could you possibly need now?” Ellen reprimanded as she scrubbed an endless mountain of pots in the sink.
“The salad spinner,” Pamela remarked as though it were obvious.
“I’m going to start cooking in my kitchenette for dinner.”
“You’d miss me,” Pamela teased.
“Plus, you only stock that kitchen enough to make instant ramen,”Tibby added from across the room. “This is much better.”
Effie turned to catch Tibby’s gaze. She sat at the breakfast table with the littlest Thatchers reading a newspaper. She went from relaxed to on edge as soon as they locked eyes. Still overwhelmed, Effie guessed, with the news of her impending grandchild. Soon, though, Effie knew that Tibby would be thrilled.
Effie grabbed her coat from the closet in the foyer by the front door. It was a dusty-pink wool peacoat that belted at the waist to show off the curve of her hips. She pulled on a knit, cream-colored hat with a matching pink flower crotched into the side and gloves that made the set. It may have been spring, but the temperature dropped off significantly after the sun went down. She could drive her beat-up old Jetta that she kept parked down the street, but it was too quick. She needed the ten-minute walk in the chill of the air to soothe her nerves and steel her resolve.
Effie assumed the news was taken poorly. Effie assumed that Brayden had disappointed her. And if Effie was heartbroken that the Thatcher curse had caught up to Hope, her cousin would be too. The least Effie could do was help her nurse her wounds with a pile of pasta and a cup of cocoa for the walk home.
6
Theodore Tillerman had a terrible day. He relived it as he walked the streets of Portsmouth, warm street lamps illuminating his path past the brick buildings and glittering restaurants.
His bad day began when his sunrise alarm clock failed to do its job. The secondary alarm blared with an unholy siren that stirred fears of an air raid in his semi-conscious brain. He bolted out of bed with a spark of adrenaline that had his heart racing. It was not the ideal way to wake up. Too much in the modern world already made you feel like you were being chased by a bear, merely waking shouldn’t involve a fight-or-flight response at six a.m.. But he also didn’t have the luxury of relying on his natural rhythms. Those would have kept his Scorpio self up until three in the morning, waking well past eleven.
Modern society was a scam, but one he knew he had to play a part in. Which is why he had dedicated himself to being so enlightened that he knew he was not his work, not his salary, not his role in the machine of life, but rather an integral soul having a human experience. Andmore often than not, he could parlay his bad experiences, setbacks, irritations, and minor slights into lessons or fodder for his poetry.
But today had been a shitstorm of little things, and he was still human after all. It began with air raid–level alarms and quickly devolved from there.
His first three appointments had all added to his angst. The worst was when he collected an extinguisher from his van, only to watch some careless idiot fling his cigarette into the bushes right outside the local pharmacy. They went up like they were drenched in kerosene. He emptied the new extinguisher meant for the store to put out the flames. Instead of being thanked for quelling the inferno, the store manager yelled at him for ruining the plantings with foam.
Even worse—he had run out of extinguishers at that point and had to drive thirty minutes back to the warehouse to restock. After which, he was again berated by the pharmacy manager.
Then there was his inspection at Glitter & Glue.
He hadn’t exactly been on his best behavior. He could admit that. A better version of him would have taken the lack of awareness of the inspection in stride, would have been kinder. He would have enjoyed the way Effie’s gaze lingered on his eyes, his arms, his hands. She was sweet, endearing, light. Until she wasn’t.
He let himself bristle at her indignation and the sour face she made when she said his name. He’d been so startled he didn’t even have space to tell her to call him Theo instead. The impossibility of her condition made it hard to believe that she could taste words, taste his name. In all likelihood, she believed he enjoyed making people’s work harder with his inspections and decided to put him off.
