Ceridwen’s hands faltered over the tiny clay pot. Still, when she spoke, there was no tell.
“I’ve known her for longer than I’ve known you. Which is a very strange thing to say to your own sister.”
Rhiannon narrowed her eyes but didn’t speak. She could tell her sister was not finished. This was about to turn into one of those famous Ceridwen Crowhart lectures. She gritted her teeth and lifted her chin just a fraction of a degree, which she guessed was enough for Ceridwen to go on.
“Your thanks should be to her, when all is said and done.”
Rhiannon’s patience had had enough of being patronized. And the slight proprietary way Ceridwen talked about Prudence was beginning to grate. Teaching her was one thing. This? This, whatever this was, was another.
“I did thank her. And I apologized to her. What do you want me to do?”
“Ah.” Ceridwen set aside the finished pot and reached for another one. Rhiannon could almost hear the pulse in her temples. She’d need medicine for the headache that she had apparently been brewing since she set foot in the flower shop.
“Ah, what?” she gritted out, her sister as always getting the upper hand easily. Rhiannon hated herself for falling into these traps every single time.
“Ah nothing. You must’ve had reason to apologize.”
“What does that even mean?” Rhiannon threw her hair back and stood up. She couldn’t sit still. Ceridwen was too close.Hitting too precisely at the spot that smarted. Her own guilt. Her own atrocious behavior. And her own heart that seemed incapable of leaving well enough alone.
“That if you had been honest with her about your marriage?—”
Rhiannon saw red. Saw herself hurling the goddamn pots at the wall. Like the glass, like the pieces of it she collected with her bare hands, one by one. It was the rage that sobered her instantly. What was becoming of her?
She took a breath, a tiny shallow one, aware of Ceridwen watching her every move. Every heartbeat. Aware of those eyes, just a touch lighter than hers, assessing her. Well, pettiness was one hell of a motivator. She’d analyze later the sudden appearance of a conscience.
“You mean my widowhood, Ceridwen.”
She let that arrow fly and watched it hit dead center of her sister’s chest, the satisfaction of the perfect aim fading immediately at Ceridwen’s sincere sympathy.
“Rhiannon! Oh Goddess! Oh no… I’m so sorry.”
Rhiannon lifted her hand and kept Ceridwen, who was already getting up to embrace her, in her seat.
“Don’t. Don’t say anything. It was almost a year ago.” And then seeing the tears spring to her sister’s eyes, she cursed herself for a fool. “Ceri, please. What is there to say? I was married for twenty years and then I was not. I had filed for divorce two months before she…” Rhiannon trailed off, surprised how easy the words came, the words she had so much trouble uttering in front of Prudence, the words she had entombed in her chest and held there like prisoners of her own sin. Maybe it was the sheer repetition. Maybe saying them again and again and again was the trick?
“And you hated her anyway. There’s nothing left to say.”
Ceridwen tsked and shook her head.
“We’re Crowharts, there is always something left to say. We stay silent for decades and then unleash our trauma on everyone around us. It’s the way of the Crow.” Rhiannon disguised her laughter with a huff and Ceridwen just kept shaking her head. “I did hate her, you know? I blamed her for you leaving, she was an easy target. Mostly because she was indeed at fault. You were so young, Rhy.”
“She was alone, victimized, and I thought I loved her. There was no changing any of that.”
“You broke my heart.”
“Don’t, Ceri. I broke my own heart and just didn’t know it back then. By the time I figured that out, there were no more pieces left to pick up and it was decades later.”
Ceridwen nodded and ignored Rhiannon’s earlier protestations and came to stand in front of her. Rhiannon almost smiled at how the same and yet not they were. Same height, same build, with Ceridwen getting a touch willowier with age. There was gray in Ceridwen’s mahogany, something Rhiannon would never allow to happen to her auburn. A few shades of red, a few pounds, and they could be twins.
“Yes, Mother always said we looked more like each other than Seren and Deryn.”
Ceridwen laid a hand on Rhiannon’s arm, and she had to focus all of her energy to share nothing, to hold back. To not spill everything over the tiny plants and the cute clay pots and Ceridwen with her annoyingly honest eyes and careful touch.
Her heart beat in her temples louder now, pulsing, alive by itself, outside of Rhiannon’s will.
“I saw Deryn in LA, you know. She was filming something or other. ‘The talent,’ as they kept calling her, was impressive.” She smiled and moved just enough for Ceridwen’s fingers to fall off her sleeve. If her sister noticed her little act of obfuscation, she said nothing. Instead, Ceridwen sighed wistfully.
“She keeps asking Seren and me to come see her, she was opening a pop-up spot in Manhattan not too long ago. Seren went.”
