“I’m glad. I wanted to borrow you guys for a second.”
She tugs me by the arm as she rounds up the rest of my brothers and sisters. They’re all here—Silas brought Isaac and Bekah early to help and Naomi brought Leah a little later, so she wouldn’t be bored. I’m hesitant to be with all five of them at once, here at the restaurant. It makes the absence obvious. It wrings my stomach, the missing him.
“What’re we doing?” Leah asks.
“Just ducking outside for one minute,” Ellie says.
Leah turns to me. “Jonah, I love the pizza! It’s my favorite thing!”
“Me too!” Isaac says.
Pizza? Isaac notices my confusion. “Ya know . . . the one with the cheese. It has, like, apple slices on it?”
“The flatbread?”
Isaac and Leah shrug.
Huh. It’s a brie flatbread with apple slices and onion jam. And here I thought Leah would hate every new item except the desserts. I was prepared for four choruses of “This tastes like barf.”
We’re standing outside the restaurant, and Ellie motions for us to get together. I make eye contact with Naomi, wondering if she knows what this is about. She shakes her head.
“I just want a few pictures, okay?” Ellie calls. “My dad made me swear.”
Naomi, Silas, and I all look at one another. We’re already here. We might as well.
We cram together, the six of us. Silas picks Leah up, and Isaac leans against Naomi. At first I think I’ll have to force a smile, like I normally do with pictures. But then Bekah, who has one arm around my waist, gives me a little squeeze. I know we’ll be back to business as usual tomorrow, all of us talking over one another and breaking up fights among ourselves. But tonight is a good night.
“Smile!” Ellie says as she holds her phone up to us. She takes a few before we break apart. Silas sets Leah on the ground, and Bekah releases herself from my waist. I catch Naomi’s eye again. My sister and brother and I don’t hug. That’s just not how we are. But Naomi puts her arms around me and Silas, and we stand there in this weird three-person huddle that doesn’t actually feel weird at all. The littles join in, too, Leah hugging her arms around my leg.
I know Ellie’s camera isn’t pointed at us. It’s too private. And something a picture couldn’t really capture anyway.
We pull apart quickly because the moment starts to feel too solemn.
“Are you crying?” I ask Naomi, whose eyes look a little watery.
“No!” She swats my arm, smiling. “Shut up.”
We go back inside like it never happened.
Since January, I’ve been trying to believe that we’ll survive. And here, tonight, is the first time it occurs to me: I think we’ll more than survive. I think we’ll be good. Maybe even great.
I know the restaurant is not my dad. I know that his legacy is more than the bricks and mortar. I know that making oatmeal for my family isn’t going to single-handedly save them from heart disease. And I know that making Vivi pie isn’t going to fix what she’s going through.
But the point is that trying to make things better sometimes makes us better, too. The point is I’m trying to create good things in the midst of the bad. Grief or no grief.
And in my case, it’s still somewhere in between.
After the last guest has left, I wipe down the patio tables. The white candles have melted to stubs, flickering out.
This whole night, I’ve felt close to my dad. It aches—and somehow eases the pain, too.
But someone really is behind me now. The presence comes over me like a whiff of ocean water and something else. Wisteria. I sense Vivi right before I hear her voice.
“Hey.”
She’s standing in the alleyway, wearing a dress and flat shoes. It’s a tame outfit by Vivi standards, and her lips are very pink instead of red. The arm sling eclipses half her upper body. Her left leg is half-covered in large square bandages. She’s freeze-in-place beautiful—it’s like my eyes forgot these past few days. Like I’m seeing her for the first time and like I’ve known her my entire life. Like the first day and the last. “Hey.”
I put the rag down and turn all the way toward her, but she doesn’t move any closer. She’s keeping distance between us, hesitant of me.
“I’m sorry I missed the party.” She runs her hand over the wall of the hardware store that faces the patio. It’s something to do so she won’t have to meet my gaze. “I couldn’t be around everyone so soon, and—”
“Viv. I know. It’s okay.”
“I’m sorry about that day in the hospital, too. I didn’t mean to lash out . . . I just . . .” She sighs. “I’ve always loved the Wizard of Oz, you know? Every girl wants to be Dorothy Gale or maybe Glinda. I never wanted to be the tornado.”
I open my mouth to say that it’s okay, that I’m just so glad to see her. That if she’s the tornado, it’s not because she’s cut terror through a tiny town. It’s because she’s swept us all up into a place where there’s color everywhere. But she starts up again.