My fingers wobble when they grip the folder. Maybe Scott was right about everything, Imani was wrong, and I was so very wrong, and it’s printouts of the photos circling of Miller and me. At the grocery store. At the game. Wherever.
But I flip it open, and it’s nothing to do with my fake fraternization at all.
“This is a posting for an assistant curator at the Museum of ...” I trail off, my finger dragging over the paper before I arch a brow. “I didn’t think they had a large vertebrate collection at the Maritime Museum of Natural History in Halifax.”
“They don’t.” Graham shakes his head. “But they do have a small permanent collection of fossils from the surrounding area. Some unique pieces from the Bay of Fundy, and of course, they have rotating exhibits. We’ve lent to them before.”
“I know,” I say tightly. “I’m the one who decides what we lend out.”
He nods along, but confusion digs lines around his eyes when he frowns. He looks at me like he was expecting me to be jumping out of my seat or prostrating myself at his feet. “An old colleague of mine is the director there, and she reached out to me asking if I knew of any possible candidates.”
I blink. “I’m sure it’s a lovely museum but—”
“You want to be a curator, no?” He angles his head, and with the wide, confused eyes, the glasses, and the hair, he reminds me a bit of one of the taxidermized owls in theBirds of Canadaexhibit.
“I do,” I start, fingers tightening on the folder. I’m not sure how to explain to him that I do want that. It was what I wanted and reached for. But I wanted it here. This place where I was trying to carve out dreams of my own. Where I thought I might be worthy of standing amongst one of the biggest collections in the country. It was about proving what I could do. Not settlingfor something that—no offence to the small collection at the Maritime Museum of Natural History—is below me.
The paper slices against my fingertips as I stare at Graham, considering my next words, and I wince, pulling my hands away like it burns me.
It does, I think. Just not in a way anyone can see.
It’s a flame from a lighter held by another man underneath the petals of me contained in this small planter because someone put me there. Because I let someone put me there. Even though I had roots that desperately wanted to stretch and grow. That flame wants some of those petals to furl inward.
Blood wells, tiny red rivulets, and his next words slice tiny cuts into gaping wounds. “It could be a good opportunity. Your experience would far outweigh the educational requirements at a museum with a small collection. A foot in the door, so to speak, seeing as you’re still without your doctorate after all these years.”
Graham doesn’t notice the blood, and he turns back to his computer. “Think about it. I’d put in a good word for you.”
I don’t think he notices the way my shoulders slump, the tears biting at my eyes when I thank him and push to stand.
He certainly doesn’t hear the echo of his words reverberating around the room. How loud they get when they join the echoes of people who came before him that follow me all the way down the hallway.
Without, without, without.
Small, small, small.
Ren
I don’t have a favourite thrift store in the city.
I had one in Kansas. But it got ruined when every time I picked something stupid off the rack to try on as a joke, all I could hear was Scott telling me this activity was both of those things.
Stupid, and a joke.
Imani isn’t into thrift shopping—not as a rule. It’s just not something she’s ever done, so she’s no help.
I end up Googling the best thrift stores in the city, and when he’s back from another away series, Miller meets me at one early on a Monday evening.
I’m not sure I’d call it a thrift store—it seems more like a warehouse of thrift-store rejects, tucked into a grocery store–sized building in the West End.
And it’s practically empty, save for us and the teenagers who seem more interested in each other and whatever they’re doing on their phones at the cash.
“I’m glad you’re back,” I say quietly, running my hand over hanging T-shirts. “I had a weird week at work. Lots to think about.”
Graham’s job offer didn’t feel good; it wasn’t something I’d dreamed of. It wasn’t something I wanted.
But maybe it was the right thing to do. The only option for someonewithout. Someone like me.
“Yeah?” Miller asks, looking away from the vintage TMLB jersey he was inspecting. “Me too.”
