Page 83 of Snowed In
“My general approach to that part of my life has just been a real head-in-the-sand vibe. If I’m not there, it doesn’t exist. And if it doesn’t exist, it didn’t happen. It makes perfect sense in my mind.”
“Please tell me this isn’t something you learned in therapy.”
“Oh, no that’s all me. Much easier than whatever he told me to do.”
I fight back a smile as one song bleeds into the next. At some point, we’d stopped dancing and started swaying, gentle, tiny movements that I only grow aware of when her hand on my shoulder inches down, curving around my bicep.
She doesn’t seem to realize how close we are, her gaze distant as her thumb sweeps over my arm.
“Mam thought I’d been kidnapped,” she says absently, and it takes me a second to follow her train of thought.
“When you ran?”
“Aidan had to talk her down from calling the police. In case you wonder where my dramatic side came from.”
“Was she furious with you?”
“Eh.” She tilts her head left and right as though weighing up her answer. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. Once she knew I wasn’t, you know,dead, I think she thought it was cold feet. Everyone did. That once I calmed down, I’d come back. But when she realized I wasn’t going to change my mind, she did everything she could to help me. She contacted an old friend of hers whose daughter had a spare room in Dublin, and a day later, she came up with a bunch of stuff from home.”
“She sounds like a good mother.”
“She was. She is. We’re just very different people. And back then, I was…I mean, you have to understand, I’d been with Isaac since I was fifteen. Do you know how much you have ahead of you at fifteen?”
“A lot?”
“A lot,” she confirms. “And it was all intertwined with him. I went to the same college as him so we could be together. I applied for jobs to be close to him. And then, all of a sudden, I was by myself. Just like that. Twenty-five years old, and I might as well have been a kid with how much I knew about being alone. I was terrified.”
“That sounds brave to me.”
“Being brave would have been stopping it months before it happened,” she says with that little frown. “There was nothing brave about letting it go on as long as it did. Spending the money, getting everyone’s hopes up.”
“A runaway bride is a lot cheaper than a divorce. And a lot more fun.”
“Stop trying to make me feel better.”
“Never.”
Her smile grows sad, lost in thought, and I have the strongest urge to comfort her, to wrap my arms tight around her and hold her close. But even though that’s well within our rules, and even though we did a lot more at O’Donoghue’s the other night, it somehow feels like a lot more intimate than what we’ve agreed to, so I stay where I am, my hand on her arm until someone clears their throat nearby.
My sister.
“Hi.” Hannah slinks into the room, her attention on Megan in a way that tells me she’s been eavesdropping for a while. “You guys training for your mam’s party?”
“I wouldn’t call it training,” Megan says, her voice a lot lighter than it was before. “But Christian’s showing off if that’s what you mean.”
“Sounds like him.” She takes another step, unusually hesitant. “I was wondering,” she begins, her eyes flicking to me. “If…well, I thought I could make you a dress.”
I think my surprise is matched only by Megan’s, who looks at Hannah like she’s never seen her before.
“A dress?”
“Yeah. To say sorry for how I acted. I thought…I don’t know what I thought. But I know I don’t think it anymore, and I…” She blows out an annoyed breath, looking to me. “I’m not good at this,” she says like that’s my fault. I just shrug. After how she behaved, she’s on her own until she makes up for it.
“I’ve been working on a gown for my final project,” she continues. “Nineteen-forties movie star shit, and I’d like you to wear it. It’s green,” she adds. “You’d look great in green. And it’s beautiful. It’ll probably get full marks.”
And there’s the girl I know. “Hannah—”
“I think it would really suit you,” she says, ignoring me as she focuses on Megan. “I’ll have to make a few alterations, but no one else will be wearing anything like it. Really, you’d be stupid not to—”
