“What, like you are?”
I paused, looking toward the phone like he could see me. “I’m not blaming myself for anything.”
Elio groaned into the speaker. “Ugh, you so are. You and Cres both. Me dating an abusive asshole had nothing to do with either of you. It happened. I survived. And nobody could’ve known.”
I could’ve, though. I should’ve. There were a hundred different signs I could’ve noticed.
When I didn’t say anything, Elio continued. “Anyway, enough about that. Check-in time. How’s life look for you?”
It was something Crescent and I did when he’d moved away, and we couldn’t see each other often. When we could sit down and call each other, that’s where we’d start. Hearing Elio use the same phrase made me smile. After thinking about it for a moment, I realized there were a few things I could tell him. “Well, I’m currently working on my third stained glass piece, and I have a boyfriend.”
Elio gasped. “A boyfriend? Who? What? How? When? Oh, my god. I don’t think I’ve ever known you to date anyone. Well, wait, there was that one girl when you were in high school.”
I flinched at the mention of her, messing up the final line of solder I’d been doing. I stared at it for a moment, letting too much time pass to fix it. The silver melted over a part of the edge, blocking some of the red there. Covering it up. Suppressing it.
The red meant to be spilled and unleashed. The carnal, evil, disgusting sin I’d manifested into reality. I shook my head and turned the soldering iron off. “Uh, yeah, it’s Emerson. We made it official a few days ago.”
“Holy fuck, bro! I’m so happy for you! Crescent was telling me about him. I can’t believe he ended up moving here.”
“I know. What a coincidence, huh?”
“Nah, after finding Cres again, I can’t not believe in fate. I think it was fate at play here.”
“Fate, huh? Mom and Dad really have rubbed off on you.”
“It’s fate, Moon. Not meditation in the front garden with incense burning even though the wind just carries it away.”
None of us really took after our parents’ spirituality. I kept more of it close to my heart than my siblings, though. I believed in some things, like the universe giving back, and nature being the center of our energy. I think I was the only one who reallyknew anything about the idea of sin, rather than good and bad karma, though.
I grabbed two hooks from beside me, turning the stained glass around to position them. “Yeah, I know. Has the universe spoken to you today, Elio?”
“No. Has it spoken to you today?”
I snorted. Mom and Dad had a plaque right by their front door with that same phrase on it, with all our names etched into the metal. They’d included Elio when he first came to live with us and never took it down. Deep down, we always knew he’d come back as part of the family—we just never expected it to be in this particular way.
As the wind blew outside, carrying fallen leaves and whispering secrets too quiet for me to hear, I realized that the universe had tried to, at the very least. I just wasn’t very good at listening. “No, I don’t think it has. What’s life look like for you, hm? Aside from you and Cres’ ever-blossoming relationship.”
He sighed dramatically. “Oh, you know. The usual. I’ve been painting my ass off. I’m working on one commission now for an underwater scene with some really creepy imagery. There’s all these skeletons and a shipwreck with some ghosts coming out of it. They want the ghosts to look like shadows beneath the water. It’s pretty challenging, but I’m getting the hang of it.”
With the hooks melted into the stained glass, I pulled a silver chain out and looped it through them. At the very top, I placed another hook. “That sounds spooky. You making a lot of money, though?”
“I’m making enough. It’s still wild to me that people are actually buying shit from me. Like, Jude convinced me I had no talent, yet here I am, selling this big ass piece for eight-hundred dollars.” He was chuckling through the end, as if there wasn’t a fiery rage coursing through me at the mention of Jude. “Hey, wait, did you say stained glass?”
“Sure did. Em and I went to this workshop thing a while back where they did an intro to it. I really like it so far.”
“That’s so cool! I want to see pictures. You know you could make money off those too, right?”
“Oh, I’m not good enough for that.”
“Shut up. Practice makes perfect. We’re a creative bunch, aren’t we?”
Yeah, it looked like we were. The Miller family seemed to have something in our veins that pushed us to do more and more, fueling art and creation with emotion. “We make quite the spectacle, indeed. Though I can’t say my creativity is all that pretty. But I’m about to hang this one up, and I’ll send you pictures.”
“Good! Well, I’ll let you go for now. Please promise you’ll text me if you need anything. I know you have Emerson now, but I’m still family. And one day, I’ll even share your last name.”
“Your last name has nothing to do with being family, Elio.”
“I know. Still. Just please don’t pull a Crescent and suffer in silence. You don’t have to.”
