Page 49

Siblings, Maggie thought. Siblings.

Tom and Bridgers had been engaged in what Maggie could only call a glaring contest for days; even the vague threat of a town-wide boycott hanging over their heads had not united them in the way Maggie had expected. Typically, when they hit a bump in their relationship, Tom insisted on locking them into a room until they had discussed the problem to their mutual satisfaction, but the tactic seemed to have failed this time around. They weren’t arguing, exactly, but they weren’t treating one another with the casual, unthinking affection they always heaped onto each other when they were safe from prying eyes. Maggie was nervous in the apartment alone with them, and stayed downstairs or out of the shop as much as possible to avoid the charged air.

Which Theo was helping with. He stopped by most evenings, just after the shop closed, and accompanied Maggie on errands or walks along the small, muddy river that rumbled a mile or so from the center of the village. The last friendly stroll had ended with her pressed against a thin birch tree, his mouth clamped to her neck and his hands busy on her body, stroking, pinching, lavishing attention wherever he could reach. He liked to grind himself against her, securing himself above her thigh, and she was having the most dreadfully vivid dreams that left her warm and wet when she woke. It was becoming a nuisance how much he absorbed her thoughts. She kept missing stitches and stabbing her fingers bloody. Lou’s presence was unhelpful, too, with her bright blue eyes that mirrored Theo’s entirely, and the narrow, thoughtful looks she aimed at Maggie as the days progressed.

“What?” Maggie finally asked after intercepting a stare for the fifth time that day.

Lou set her mouth. “I’m supposed to invite you to dinner,” she said, sniffing. “Teddy asked me. To ask you,” she clarified. “I’ll be gone. I’m going to Laura’s.”

“Why are you going to Laura’s?”

“So that I won’t be there while you’re having dinner.”

“Oh.” Maggie wiped at her bloody fingers with a rag.

“So he can be alone with you.”

“I see.”

“Because he wants to⁠—”

“Thank you, Lou,” Maggie said, hating how hot her ears were.

“Woo you,” Lou finished, looking rather discomfited. “Can you pass me the scissors?”

Maggie did. “Where are your parents going to be?”

“Oh, they left this morning.” Lou looked up at Maggie’s silence and laughed at the look on her face. “They never stay long. Just enough time to unsettle everyone.” Her smile was tinged with real humor, but mostly she looked tired. “He’s making a roast. He loves a roast dearly, and it’s the only thing he knows how to make reliably.”

“I can enjoy a roast.”

“The potatoes will be runny but if you say so you’ll hurt his feelings.”

Maggie nodded slowly. “Don’t tell him the potatoes have an off texture.”

“The gravy is quite good, though. He uses the drippings.”

“A good man always uses the drippings.” Maggie hadn’t meant to say it, and even to her own ears it sounded vaguely suggestive, but Lou’s face was priceless.

“Don’t say that about my brother,” she whispered.

“Anyway,” Maggie redirected loudly, “I’m glad your parents left. They seemed … draining.”

Lou snorted, focusing in on her stitching. “Yes. Well. It’s good to see them once in a while. It reminds us how much better off we are without them here.” She avoided looking at Maggie, bringing the trousers she was adding buttons to up to her face. “You don’t ever talk about your parents.”

The familiar uneasiness crept up Maggie’s veins, settling in her chest. Part of the comfort of the constant movement of the past eleven years had been not needing to bother keeping the stories straight—they were siblings with different fathers, hence their exaggeratedly different looks, and that had been the extent of the necessary lies. Settling down had required a more thoughtful narrative, one that she and the boys had hashed out to everyone’s satisfaction, and she considered how best to present this fairy tale to Lou.

She didn’t want to. The idea of rolling out a series of lies to her friend felt like a betrayal, and while Maggie’s sense of self-preservation usually trumped any other emotion, waves of guilt now flooded her.

“I don’t,” she said. “They both passed quite some time ago.”

Lou looked up but remained quiet. Smart girl.

“Mama died when I was eight. A fever of some sort; no one ever told me which kind. Papa passed nine years later. Heart trouble, the doctors told me.”

“What was your mother like?”

Maggie’s heart hurt. “I remember her being very beautiful. She always looked a bit tragic, like she belonged on stage. Dying of a mysterious fever suited her.” She smiled. “She used to tell me scary stories before going to bed so I would have nightmares and come sleep with her and Papa.”