Verity would ask her about the festival, and Sorrow would have to decide how to answer. She didn’t want to lie. She didn’t want to tell the truth. She hated the feeling that every possible thing she could say to her mother was a potential land mine, and she was navigating a path so narrow she could barely keep her balance.
It wasn’t normal, to approach every conversation like that. That wasn’t how families were supposed to talk to each other. It was another thing Sorrow hadn’t understood until she moved away, until her father put her into therapy, until she met and spent time with Sonia’s family, who shouted out their concerns rather than burying them, who talked over everybody’s problems and faults and decisions ad nauseam. It had terrified her at first, the way Sonia would march over to her sister Lu’s house after Lu lost a job or had a bad breakup, demand she get up and get dressed and go out, growing louder and louder and refusing to back down, throwing open the curtains rather than drawing them, forcing out laughter rather than smothering Lu in whispers.
Sorrow knew it wasn’t at all the same thing; a bad day wasn’t comparable to a chronic illness. But as a scared, grieving child in a strange place, all she had understood were raised voices where there should have been quiet, recklessness where there should have been caution, a noisy, stubborn defiance of every rule she had lived by in her mother’s house.
The careful way she and Verity stepped around each other wasn’t how mothers and daughters were supposed to communicate. It certainly wasn’t how Andi spoke to Sonia; Andi always felt free to say whatever she wanted, even if she knew it would make Sonia angry or it wasn’t anything Sonia wanted to hear. There had been times when Sorrow had been frozen with anxiety about telling their parents about something—a bad grade on a test, a fight with friends, even a desire to stay home rather than go to the beach—and Andi would laugh at her, and then her laughter would pass and she would turn thoughtful, and finally she would help Sorrow figure out what to say.
But Andi wasn’t here, and Sorrow wasn’t even sure she would help. She didn’t know how they were with each other now, after their phone call the other day. She didn’t know if she had ever told Andi enough about Verity for her to understand.
She reached the corner of the house, but before walking around to the back she stopped, and she leaned against the wall beside the spigot and coiled-up hose, and for a moment she let the homesickness wash over her. She imagined turning around. Walking back to the end of the driveway. Calling Andi or Dad or Sonia and blubbering out that it had all been a mistake, that she shouldn’t have come back to Vermont, where nothing was like she had expected, where everybody knew her family but didn’t know a thing about her except her crazy mom and dead sister. Admitting that the only reason she had come back was because there was something wrong with her mind. Revealing the black spots in her memories where the past had rotted away. Telling them, through her tears, how desperately she had hoped that patching old wounds with stories and rumors would settle the jittery fear she had been carrying in her chest since that day in the Everglades, when she had realized she’d grown into the kind of person who couldn’t even remember important things about her own sister.
Sorrow sighed and pushed away from the wall. She wasn’t going to leave, and she didn’t need to add her own blows to the embarrassment Cassie had already heaped on her today.
She walked around to the back of the house. The light in the kitchen was on, casting squares of warm yellow through the window and screen door. Verity sat in one of the rocking chairs with a bundle of knitting on her lap.
“There you are,” she said.
Sorrow’s steps faltered. She had been hoping to offer a quick hello, did you have a nice day? and good night before escaping up to her room, but Verity sounded as though she had been waiting for Sorrow, and worrying, even though it wasn’t yet eight o’clock. She hadn’t asked Sorrow to be home by any particular time. She hadn’t asked her to call. Sorrow hadn’t done anything wrong.
“Yeah,” she said. “Here I am.”
“Are you hungry?”
“No, I had some stuff,” Sorrow said.
“How was the festival?” Verity asked.
Sorrow paused with her foot on the porch step. In the light from the house Verity’s face was half illuminated, half shadowed. Sorrow couldn’t tell if she was upset. She didn’t know how she was supposed to answer.
“It was fine,” she said. “Kind of ridiculous, but also kind of funny. I guess it’s always like that.”
“So I’ve heard,” Verity said.
Sorrow crossed the porch, reached for the door, changed her mind. She settled into the other rocker instead. It was a warm, clear night with crickets singing all around and stars emerging from a velvet sky.
She asked, “Grandma already go to bed?”
“I think she’s reading.” Verity passed the bottle of hard cider to Sorrow.
“You know I’m only sixteen, right? Which means I’m technically not supposed to be drinking this.”
“I won’t tell if you won’t,” Verity said. Then, after a pause, “It was hot today. It wears her out more than she likes to admit.”
“Yeah,” Sorrow said.
But immediately she wondered if she ought to have denied it, claimed she hadn’t noticed any signs of Grandma’s advanced age. She had been seeing, but not thinking much about, the way Grandma was slower to rise when she knelt in the garden, her longer breaks and earlier bedtimes, the way she sometimes ate so little at dinner it might have been a child’s portion. She was still steady on her feet, clear-eyed and active, but Sorrow, when she paid attention, could see the years bearing down on her, an invisible burden carried softly, quietly, her silence hiding any complaints or fears she might have. Sorrow didn’t know if Grandma would voice them even if she could. Grandma used her pen and notebook to answer questions, make suggestions, make lists, and give instructions, but not once since she’d been back had Sorrow seen her put a single line into one of her private journals. If she had any place to share her worries, her mind and her heart, Sorrow didn’t know about it.
“Why did we never—” she began, but she paused, her courage faltering. She took a breath and tried again. “Why did we never go to the festival when we were kids?”
“There never seemed to be much point,” Verity said. “I don’t care to hear what they think of our family history.”
“They didn’t make our ancestor the bad guy,” Sorrow pointed out. “Pretty much the opposite, really.”
“It may have seemed that way to you,” Verity said.