Page 71 of Henhouse
Effie nearly cackled. “Ew, too much information.”
“Hey, you started it.”
“And Brayden finished it apparently,” Effie joked.
“Badumbah. Since when do you make dirty jokes?”
“It’s your sex life we’re discussing, so I can joke all I want. You have a more physical relationship with your physical relationships. I think I need . . .more.”
“What do you mean?”
The birds hushed as if listening to the confessions of their ethereal princess. The breeze rustled the grass and mimicked Effie’s sigh. “I think it’s a mental game.”
“So you need to get out of your head and into your body?”
“No. That’s what I mean. The way you talk about it, or Louisa, or even my novels, it’s all body forward. It’s physicality and touch and that’s all there, but it’s not enough to fully turn me on, I don’t think. I need the right headspace, I need to connect intellectually, I need words and romance, and I need it to be about intimacy, not just about getting off.”
“Isn’t that what Theo’s been telling you? That intimacy is all-encompassing?”
“Yeah. It doesn’t matter though.”
“Why not?”
“It just . . . doesn’t.”
Hope tried to unravel the hidden meaning there. She didn’t think Effie had broken up with Theo or she’d be more upset. But maybe Hope was projecting. This was the first real relationship Effie had ever had, unlike Hope who had four or five serious boyfriends in college. Maybe this was Effie post–break up. Hope didn’t want to prybut couldn’t quell her curiosity. “Does Theo have his tux rented for the ball?”
“I never invited him,” Effie confessed. Hope wobbled to the patio stones from her perch in the shade. She sat down beside Effie and let the ground support her aching joints and swollen body. “Are you going to move in with Brayden?”
“Yeah,” Hope said and it felt like a confession. It was almost too much to imagine life without Effie on the other side of her bedroom wall. They’d grown up in this house together. Hope had once viewed it as a failure to have returned to her room here after college, but now she wouldn’t trade those three years together with the people she loved most for anything. She reached out a hand and laced it with Effie’s. “I’m going to miss you.”
“I’m going to miss you more.” Effie breathed around the lump Hope heard forming in her throat. “What does it look like?”
“What?”
“Your life from now on?”
Hope sighed. She had been on such a roller coaster since learning about the baby that the answer to that question seemed to change daily. It had been dangerous to wish for a future she wasn’t sure was hers to claim until that morning. “I think it looks like standing Book and Bar dates with you, and an office library where I write my next twenty books. It looks like a bigger guest list at Christmas dinner and learning what kind of mom I want to be. I think it has the same roots, Effie. I really do, but it’s heartier and fuller and better than I could have ever imagined. What about you?”
“I think Book and Bar dates will be the highlight of my week.”
“Don’t say that.” Hope couldn’t keep the worry from furrowingher brow. She wanted to ask about Effie’s dreams and vision for her life, but she wasn’t built like that. Hope had always known what she wanted to do and be. A writer, a mother. But Effie didn’t dream up possible futures, almost as if she didn’t think it was safe to do so.
“It won’t feel like home without you.”
“I’ve spent time living away before.”
“Never for good.”
“Maybe you’ll need to renegotiate what feeling at home means,” Hope offered, a bit of guilt tugging at her insides about abandoning Effie amidst her turmoil when the Thatchers had been in rare form as of late.
“Yeah, maybe,” Effie whispered, and Hope knew there was more she wasn’t saying, but she let it lie.
Instead, she bathed in the sun, Effie’s hand in hers, knowing with conviction that they would always flock together, whether they shared a wall or not.
Effie kept to herself most of the rest of the week, not wanting to engage in any actual confrontations with her sister or mother. Only Ellen had sought her out to apologize for their behavior. The other two were either afraid to approach Effie or didn’t feel bad enough to say anything.
She’d managed to dodge them all weekend, keeping to her room with her nose in a romance novel or out for walks or lingering late at work.
