Page 48 of Henhouse
“Keepsakes are important,” Tibby offered. “They give us something to connect to when we’re apart.” Ed cast her a grateful nod. Effie thought it a valiant effort, but Pamela was an argumentative demon, one that needed a formal exorcism to back down.
“I suppose when all you are is apart, a keepsake is all you get.”
“I’m not built like you, Pam. I don’t grow roots, or bleach them.”
Shots fired.Effie looked to Hope who had the right idea in keeping her eyes on her plate. She had an uncanny ability to blend into the shadows when she didn’t want to participate. Effie envied her that.
She also envied Grams’s and Aunt Bea’s stoicism on nights like this. They played it so close to the chest, that you never knew what they thought of Ed’s visits. Effie, on the other hand, took every word, every jab, every flinch from her sister to heart. She felt it all, packed it in a bag, and flung it over her shoulder to carry herself even though she had no business claiming it. Not when she’d never been able to do anything to fix it.
“And I suppose your latest child bride keeps it au naturel?”
“Samantha was twenty-six,” Ed growled. Effie’s nose scrunched until Grams told her to check her face with a look.
“And what’s this one? Older or younger than your twodaughters?”
“Mom, stop. It doesn’t matter,” Ellen asserted, fed up with the immaturity on both sides. Effie never asked what Ellen thought of Ed’s second wife. She didn’t last long enough to bring around, but her social media pages, when Louisa showed them to her, were as good as reality television.
“Doesn’t it? You two have always wanted a better relationship with him. Well, here’s your chance. Ask your dear old dad why he has to be such a perv. Childhood trauma? Identity crisis? If I remember right it’s most likely small di—”
“Enough!” Effie was as alarmed as everyone else that the outburst had come from Ed. He was known to hurl a few insults, insert himself in matters he had no business judging, but he never raised his voice. “I am tired, Pamela. You want to know how old my wife is? She’s forty-eight. Not that I owe any of you an explanation about how I live my life or why.”
Effie watched Louisa sink into her seat, and suddenly it felt like there were too many bodies around the table, all playing at being a family but not very convincingly. The words bubbled up her throat, every impulse telling her to defend her sisters, take her turn at being mother hen.
Dare.
“I don’t think that’s true,” Effie whispered. Ellen cast her a glance, a subtle shake of her head telling her todrop it. But Effie thought it was enough of this too. “I think you owe Ellen and Louisa an explanation for why you chose the world over them.”
Something in Ed softened like Effie had unwittingly found the trapdoor to his well-kept secrets. It was brief, almost too quick to notice, but Ed’s eyes shifted to Ellen. Another quick shake of her head.Don’t go there.Effie wondered if Louisa saw before Ed simply said, “I showed up the only way I knew how.”
“With a checkbook,” Pamela scoffed.
Ed’s jaw ticked in irritation. “You weren’t complaining when it put them through college, were you?” Ed turned to face Louisa who flushed in an effort to keep from crying. “I meant what I said. I don’t put down roots, but I am truly sorry that it has caused you such disappointment. That good enough for you there, Effie?”
Effie resisted the urge to cower. They’d heard different iterations of the same thing all their lives. A bird that couldn’t be caged. If only he realized it made it sound like he viewed their personhood, their affection, as a prison and not something to come home to when his wings were tired.
26
Is it me, or does it feel like there’s more to the whole Ed story than we thought?” Hope mused from her perch on Effie’s bed. Her head hung over the edge, feet propped on the wall as she stared at the swirls of plaster that spanned the ceiling. Her gaze dropped to Effie, sprawled like a starfish on her faux sheepskin rug.
“What do you mean?” Effie asked, her voice quiet. Hope knew her dear cousin was still reeling. No one hated confrontation more than Effie. After her call for an explanation, dinner was tense. It culminated in a fantastic explosion of rage and pent-up resentment from Pamela that scared Issa into frantically flying about and nearly colliding with Ed’s nest of perfect hair. Effie and Hope retreated shortly thereafter, vowing they’d scrape caked-on food for hours and endure dish duty later rather than stay another minute in the powder keg.
Maybe everything that happened with Brayden had Hope seeing the other side of things for the first time, but she had the distinct awareness that there were two sides to a broken heart. “In a perfectworld Ed would have wanted to stay home, provide in ways that didn’t require him to travel the world, but what if ... I don’t know. It’s stupid.”
Hope wasn’t sure she could make such a leap. Not when it questioned the integrity of the stories Pamela had been telling about Ed their whole lives. She didn’t want to burst Effie’s bubble if she hadn’t dared consider a different reality herself. But Effie sighed. “What if my mother pushed him away?”
Hope spun her feet down off the wall and came to sit cross-legged on the bed. Effie’s question meant that they could travel down this road and look at their supposed curse from a new angle. “Maybe he never really wanted kids and your mom thought she could change him. Or maybe she gave him an ultimatum or wasn’t willing to include him in planning their life together?”
The latter felt painfully true for Hope. She was disturbingly close to causing her unborn child the same kind of heartache she and Louisa and Ellen had endured because she never asked Brayden what he wanted. Never included him in the reality when it showed up in two pink lines. She had almost ruined her chances of a real family. Not that she and Brayden were back together.Notyet.
She hadn’t wanted to know Brayden’s side of things or how he wanted their relationship to move forward. She didn’t want him to weigh-in on the being growing in her belly. She was selfish, short-sighted. It was everything she’d confessed to him at the park about why she didn’t give him a chance. Why she kept the baby a secret. It was the most shame she’d ever felt, and it still formed a greasy pool in her chest.
Effie rolled onto her stomach and propped herself on her elbows. “My mother does like to be the center of attention,” Effie mused. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she wanted all of him or none of him.”
“But is that fair? If there are kids involved?”
“I don’t think so. But Ellen wasn’t exactly planned. And whatever mom thought families should look like didn’t jive with Ed’s vision, I’d guess. And when he didn’t bend to her vision, they probably spiraled and totally collapsed under the weight of Louisa’s arrival.” Effie huffed and buried her face. It was more words in a row than Hope had heard Effie utter in a while. She didn’t envy whatever cocktail of flavors poured over Effie’s tongue as she said them.
“I suppose I know what that kind of stubbornness feels like,” Hope said, hands soothing the squirming beast beneath her naval. Bug seemed an inadequate nickname as of late, given the unrelenting martial arts and acrobatics that began whenever Hope dared be still.
