‘You’re welcome.’ The smugness in her voice was almost enough to make Briar give it back, but Alice walked off before she could.
Briar eyed her as she sat with Freddie. The orange light of the sunrise caught on the strands of Alice’s hair, giving its color an auburn tint. Her skin was golden and her eyes sparkled. She looked just as beautiful as Briar remembered, maybe even more so. Because this version wasn’t a vague memory from high school, or a flattened image on her phone screen. This Alice was real, and right in front of her. And Briar hated her for it.
Chapter 7
Briar
‘Hello?’ Laurel’s voice came through weak and tinny. ‘Bri? Can you hear us?’
‘Yes! Can you hear me?’ Briar shouted into the phone.
‘There’s no need to scream,’ Hazel admonished. ‘Anyway, we just got in. Dad took us to Edinburgh for the weekend.’
‘Did he?’ Briar asked, her eyes narrowing. ‘Don’t you have take-home exams to finish?’
The University of Southern California had given Laurel and Hazel an extension to finish their coursework, but it didn’t stop Briar from worrying. She knew firsthand how hard getting back into the rhythm of school could be once disrupted. They were so close to finishing their final semester and Briar was determined that they’d get their diplomas.
Laurel groaned in the background and said, barely distinguishable, ‘We’ve got until the end of summer. Tell her to lay off.’
‘Lay off,’ Hazel repeated, and Briar rolled her eyes.
‘Are you at least having fun?’ Briar kept any anxiety out of her voice. It was silly to not trust her siblings with their father, but Briar knew how he could be, engaging for a week or two, then disinterested the next. Having spent most of her adolescence making up for his absence in the twins’ lives, Briar wasn’t sure they understood how easily he could let them down.
‘Yeah!’ Instant relief coursed through her at the excitement in the twin’s synchronous answer. ‘We went to Gran’s last week, then to the Lakes.’
She wanted to be happy, to trust that they were having a good time, but the constant travel their father seemed to be pushing concerned her. It could’ve been intended as a distraction from their grief or, more likely, it was just another symptom of his inability to provide stability for his children. The twins would have to face reality at some point, and Briar would be the one to see them through it.
‘You would have loved it,’ Laurel cut in. ‘So many dead poets for you to swoon over. Could’ve found some more words to immortalize on your body.’
Briar smiled. ‘If anything caught your fancy, send it my way. I could always use another tattoo.’
She glanced down at her forearm, the collection of images there scattered with some of her favorite quotes from her college literature classes. There would be a new one soon, whenever she figured out what words or illustration could capture the way she’d changed over the past few months. Sometimes she felt like her tattoos were an anthology of every time she’d thought she’d reached her final form, only to be thrown another curveball.
‘For your street cred,’ Hazel said sagely.
‘To add to the hot bartender mystique,’ Laurel agreed.
‘Oh, fuck off,’ Briar said good-naturedly. ‘How’s Dad?’ She didn’t know why her heart clenched at the question, especially after just having doubted him, but as her only living parent, his well-being was suddenly much more salient to her.
‘He’s good, the same,’ Laurel said.
‘Maybe a bit more melancholy,’ Hazel added. ‘But the love of his life died, so I think we can give him a pass.’
Briar ignored that comment, neither encouraging nor dissuading the twins’ fanciful notion that their parents were secretly soulmates who had just been too short-sighted to stay together. They were still in diapers when their parents had split; they didn’t remember the pointless arguments or the endless litany of passive aggressive comments as vividly as Briar did.
‘Is he there?’ she asked, twiddling the cord of the landline around her fingers. She didn’t want to talk to him, but they had business to discuss. There was a long pause that made Briar’s heart pound. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Oh my god, nothing!’ Hazel said. There was a loud clapping sound that Briar suspected was one of the twins hitting the other, but from across the ocean she wasn’t sure who to scold. ‘He’s not here.’
‘You can’t sell the camp!’ Laurel’s voice cut across her sister’s, and Briar blinked. She had been trying to think of a way to bring it up to the twins, but it seemed that, as with many things, her father had made that decision for her.
‘Dad told us,’ Hazel explained.
Briar nodded her head slowly before remembering they couldn’t see her. ‘An appraiser came out, but I’m still waiting to hear back.’ There was silence on the other end of the line. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t say anything before.’
‘Bri, you can’t sell,’ Hazel said, sounding much younger. Briar was suddenly struck by the memory of the twins, then only seventeen, sitting in the hospital waiting room when their mother had first gotten sick, looking to her for answers. ‘It’s mom’s camp. It’s our home.’
‘Nothing’s been decided yet.’ She heard voices and glanced out the open doorway. Freddie, Sierra and Alice were attaching the camp flag to the flagpole, the forest green and light blue fabric fluttering in the wind. Briar remembered when her mother had sewn the flag. A 6-year-old Briar had helped her cut out the two pine trees that sat in the middle. ‘Ihaven’t decided yet.’
