Page 72 of Henhouse
Craft night at Glitter & Glue began with a box of chocolates left on the counter and a note from Theo. Apparently, he did his best tobelieve her strange departure wasn’t an actual breakup, though it had felt like one to her. She didn’t correct him, because her head and her heart disagreed.
Yes, she’d done well hiding, but it was Monday which meant it was her turn to cook breakfast and she could avoid no longer.
“You’ve been keeping well to yourself,” Dorothea mused from her place in front of the cast-iron skillet warming homemade sausages they had prepped and frozen last week. The sage and thyme in the patties balanced the sweet aroma of the waffles Effie piled onto a platter.
“I’m sorry,” Effie said. Grams tried to catch her eye, but Effie kept her head down. Everything felt wrong since that night, and despite all that occurred around the dinner table, Effie only had herself to blame for her current angst.
Louisa was the first one downstairs, Hazel on her hip. She set the toddler in her high chair with a sippy cup of milk and a myriad of toys. She slipped between Effie and Dorothea en route to the coffee pot that finished brewing an aromatic roast that Effie loved the smell of but hated the taste of. “Good morning,” Louisa chirped.
“Morning, sweetie.”
The gurgle of coffee into the ceramic mug drowned out the other sounds of the kitchen, Effie hyperaware of Louisa’s location and movements. Pins pricked the back of her neck. For all her talk of confronting everyone, she was never very good at it. “Morning,” Effie muttered.
Louisa huffed, resting against the counter next to the waffle iron Effie tended. “Look, I’m sorry we ambushed you. For what it’s worth, I assumed you didn’t know howextensivehis history was and wanted to warn you.”
“You could have done that privately,” Effie said through grittedteeth, though she knew it wouldn’t have felt any better without Theo there to intervene.
“I promise it came from a good place.”
“I wish that mattered,” Effie spat as she plopped two more fluffy waffles onto the pile. She carried the platter to the breakfast table.
“Effie, come on.”
Effie spun around. “No, you come on! All you and Mom accomplished was getting in my head, unnervingme. You didn’t embarrass him or call him out or even tell me anything I didn’t already know! You just ruined things.”
“If he was so easily pushed away then we were right to say something.”
“He wasn’t! You ruinedmyconfidence,myfaith.”
Hazel fussed in her seat, not liking Effie’s rising sharpness. Effie stood beside her and smoothed back her featherlight wisps of hair. “I’m sorry, little bird.” She turned to Louisa. “You should have let it go.”
“We didn’t want you making the same mistakes we did.”
“They’re mine to make,” Effie scolded, though something in her gut prodded her not to think of Theo as a mistake.
Louisa crossed the kitchen past Grams who quietly hummed to herself as she continued her prep, doing her best to butt out. Louisa took Effie by the shoulders and looked her in the eye. “You’re right. Truly. I’m sorry.”
Effie believed her, would forgive her, but hated how easy it was when it didn’t change the fact that the seeds of insecurity that always lived in her head were now germinated with their meddling.
“I’ll talk to Mom for you.”
“It was her idea to ask around, wasn’t it?” Louisa clamped her teeth around a confirmation. “We can stand up to her you know? It won’t kill us.”
Louisa huffed a laugh. “I’ve never done it. It might.” Effie thought she had a point. “Regardless, I promise to apologize to him at the ball.”
“He’s not coming to the ball,” Effie muttered. “I never invited him. I guess I was worried he’d be gone . . .”
Louisa looked a bit guilty as she took her seat, the rest of the clan meandering to the table. “Well, no one ever said we weren’t excellent at self-sabotage. But he’s definitely coming. He bought a ticket.”
Effie nearly sloshed the tea she poured all over the table. “What? No.”
“Is that a problem? Did something happen?”
“Is what a problem?” Hope asked, easing into her chair, her sleep-mussed bun flopped to one side of her head.
“Theo coming to the ball,” Louisa said.
Effie clocked her mother’s smug look as she settled in reaching for the coffee pot Louisa had deposited on a trivet in the center of the table. All of a sudden Effie was five with storybooks about princes interrupted with bitter truths, thirteen learning that men only want one thing, twenty-one and told love was a losing game. Effie’s inner thermometer had risen past boiling before her mother even spoke. “Effie, love, what happened?”
