Twice Shy

FOR SOMEONE WHO HATES having me around, Wesley sure loves getting in my way.

It’s April sixth and I’m exhausted, heartstrings stretched until I’ve lost all emotional elasticity from the highs and lows of discovery and loss as I clear out Falling Stars. I am a sparking, smoking jumble of raw wires.

But I still haven’t cried.

Why haven’t I cried? I won’t feel like I deserve this gift from my aunt until I’ve grieved the way a loved one is supposed to grieve.

So this is what it’s come to: me sitting cross-legged in a circle of Hannobar mementos, immersing myself in Aunt Violet–ness, begging my heart to pick up any station other than the numb detachment I’ve been tuned in to.

Wesley’s footsteps are getting stompier. I can tell he wants to say Do you have to sit right THERE, but he swallows the words. He presses his lips together to keep them from falling out as he grunts and sighs from heavy lifting, dismantling the living room furniture around me.

I do have to sit right here, in point of fact. This is the part of the house where I feel closest to Violet. My favorite hours on this earth were all spent in this living room, side by side with her, chatting about anything and everything. Violet was one of a kind. She didn’t talk down to me, but she also didn’t treat me like I was a grown adult. Mom went back and forth between extremes: one minute she’d snap at me that I needed to do whatever she said because I was a little kid who didn’t know anything; the next minute she’d tell me too many details about one of her dates and if I made a face, I’d hear Oh, grow up.

“Oh, Violet,” I say mournfully, since maybe a theatrical performance will bring the tears. “I wish I’d been able to say goodbye.”

I can’t help a glance at Wesley, whose expression is incredulous until he realizes I’m watching him. Then it smooths over, impassive. He’s judging me.

“I wanted to call,” I sniff. “It’s complicated.”

He says nothing. He gives up on trying to remove an unmovable floor-to-ceiling wardrobe that has stubbornly decided to fuse to the wall. It’s an antique, white with a long oval mirror on the front. He shoots the bulky piece of furniture a glare and I have to admire its tenacity for winning that battle.

Wesley crouches in front of a table, beginning to do something to it with a screwdriver. I’d help, but 1) I don’t think he wants me to, and 2) my back, legs, and arms are jelly from lifting and carrying so much junk these past few days. I’m used to hard work, but clearing out a house as big as this is a merciless beast. And we’ve only got about 3 percent of it cleared away. I’m so daunted by all we have left to do that I wouldn’t mind screaming into a decorative pillow if they weren’t all so musty. However, I am a Maybell Parrish, and Maybell Parrishes do not give up.

I’m sorting through papers, which are a rabbit hole of Victor and Violet Hannobar history. Deeds and documents, court papers and letters. So many letters.

My mouth curves into a smile when I select one, skimming the top line. It’s so old that the paper is nearly transparent. When I hold it up I can see the writing on the back bleed through the front, rendering it all illegible.

“Did she tell you about how she and Victor got together?” I ask casually.

No response.

I glance up to make sure he hasn’t left the room, which he hasn’t. I frown, lowering the paper. “Are you going to ignore me forever?”

Sweat rolls from his hairline, down his forehead. His gaze lifts briefly to mine, impatient and piercing, before he continues focusing on his task.

It’s been too long since I’ve felt heard by anyone, and I want to talk to somebody about Violet. Nobody else shares my memories of Falling Stars and my amazing great-aunt. I think that about half the people still alive who cared about her (or at least, he might have cared about her) are in this room.

“They dated when they were teenagers, but they went to different schools,” I tell him. “Their senior year he broke up with her and she mailed him a Sorry for your loss card.” It might be in this pile of cards I’m riffling through as I speak, actually. She saved hundreds of them, stacks tied with plaid Christmas ribbon. “When they reconnected a few years later, he sent her a Please forgive me card.”

I tug the end of a ribbon, a new stack fanning out across the floor. Jackpot. “In their early twenties, Violet and Victor were officially just friends, but obviously she was still holding a grudge about him dumping her, because she knew he was her soul mate. She knew from day one that Victor was the man for her, but teenage Victor was a little too slick and he wanted to play the field. Also, he didn’t see it working out because, you know, he was Black and she was white. Interracial relationships weren’t exactly smiled upon, even though their families liked each other.”

Wesley, I notice, has been loosening the same screw for two minutes now. He doesn’t want to appear like he’s listening, but I know I’ve got an audience.

“Her letters were petty brilliance. Hello, Victor. Would you be a dear friend and ask Henry if he’s single? I’m dying to finally be kissed by someone who knows what he’s doing.”

I read a few aloud, but I have to keep stopping to laugh. Violet bedeviled Victor with recaps of all the dates she was going on with basically every other boy but him, and her signatures were a riot: The Mighty & Majestic Violet Amelia Parrish, Knower of Her Worth, You’ll Wish You Had This, Runner-Up Miss Good-Looking 1953.

Victor wrote back with fevered desperation, penmanship atrocious to convey his passion, confessing how jealous she’d made him.

“Victor was working at his family’s shop in . . . I think Cookeville.” I squint. “Yeah. Cookeville. Once a week, Violet got dressed to the nines and flounced past his store, all carefree and stunning, rubbing it in. She’d send him photographs, too, of her posing on the hood of other guys’ cars.” I cackle. “She really let him have it.”

I check on Wesley, whose gaze flickers away. He slowly removes the leg of a table and gets started on another one.

“Victor begged her to go out with him again. She dangled him on her hook for a month, but of course gave in, and eventually they got married on Starr Mountain in the middle of a thunderstorm—secretly, since they weren’t legally allowed. The bride wore a ruby-red gown to match her hair.” It’s the reason I idolize nontraditional wedding dresses and why, if I ever do get married, I want to wear a bright color, too. “No one would rent them a house even when they applied to landlords separately, because everybody knew they were together. Her dad tried to buy a place for them, but the bank wouldn’t give him a loan, either, so Victor and Violet had to live with her parents for years. Violet didn’t give me a lot of negative details. She put kind of a glossy finish over the story, but by Victor’s account they were pretty badly harassed when they lived in Cookeville. When his business made him enough money, they bought the most remote home they could find and got a pack of dogs to guard them. They got a real marriage license in 1967 but always kept their symbolic one up there.” I point to the mantel. “It mattered more to them since they’d typed it themselves.”

I browse through more letters.

“Dearest Mighty and Majestic Violet Amelia Parrish, Angel Among Mortals, Only Woman for Me: I am begging for another chance. You once called me the man of your dreams. Try to remember that!”

Wesley is looking sterner than ever. This must be the face he makes when he’s firmly decided against feeling anything humor-adjacent.

I try another letter. I’ll get him to fold.

“Violet, how long are you going to make me suffer? I can’t sleep. I don’t eat. Your grandmother thinks you’ve put a hex on me and I don’t care if you did, I just need you to either lift the hex or marry me. Love, your future husband (hopefully).”

He bites his lip.

“My beloved Violet, I saw you at the skating rink with James and my spirit has faded away to almost nothing. Remember that being good at tennis doesn’t translate to being superior in other pursuits in the real world and I’m going to be a millionaire someday. Yours most sadly, Victor.”

I stop cold at the curious noise that punctuates Victor’s plea. “Was that a chuckle?”

Wesley’s eyebrows slam together. He doesn’t respond.

“Oh, c’mon,” I tease. “You’re so serious.” That was definitely a chuckle. Or a mouse.

I don’t think he’s going to reply. At least a minute passes in silence. But then he ventures, almost reluctantly, “What made her say yes to marrying him?”

“He broke his ankle on a skiing trip, but Violet was told by their scheming mothers that he was dying. She made another boy she was dating drive her up to say her last goodbyes. She took one look at Victor in his hospital bed, right as rain aside from the busted ankle, and said, ‘You can propose now.’ He tried to get down on one knee, with the cast on. Aunt Violet could never finish telling the story because she’d be laughing so hard.” I grin. “It was her favorite story to tell. Uncle Victor loved hearing it.” I think he loved hearing it because it made his wife laugh. He was always just so gone for her.

I reach for another stack but snatch my hand away. My heart beats fast.

The Lisa Frank stationery. The diligent cursive with hearts dotting the i’s.

From: Maybell Parrish

309 Ownby Street

Gatlinburg, TN 37738

There are twelve letters with twelve different return addresses, which, in retrospect, explains why I never got a letter back. I can’t believe Mom posted them. She said she did, but I didn’t believe her. Not when she hated Violet so much and hated how attached I got to her in such a short period of time. She wouldn’t let me call or visit.

I begin to open one of the envelopes but can’t complete the process. I stare at the off-yellow strip on the inside flap that a young Maybell licked and sealed, the stickiness long gone. I’m floored she got my letters. When did I send the last one? In my mind, I posted them all the way through my teenage years, but I only see twelve here and they’re all from the Lisa Frank set. I rack my memory trying to recall when I stopped writing. All I can recall is that I didn’t think it mattered anymore, that she probably never received a single one. I was careful not to say anything negative about Mom or anything negative about my life in general, since Mom was prone to snooping and I’d get in trouble over what she found if she didn’t like it.

As I scoop up the letters to return them to their box, the sharp corner of a Polaroid scratches my palm. It’s a picture of the manor, with a little girl in front. She’s in corduroy skort overalls and a bucket hat, face rosy with sunshine, front teeth a little too big. I want to reach into the picture and give that little girl a hug, because I know why she’s smiling so hard. She thinks she’s there to stay. She wants her wonderful aunt to adopt her, so she’ll never have to leave.

The house behind her is gray.

“I don’t understand,” I murmur, turning it over to the other side. There’s a cursive inscription, but the soft pencil has worn away all but the letter M. “It was pink. Why do I remember it being pink?”

Wesley isn’t looking at the photo. His attention is locked on another piece of paper that’s tipped out of the stack: an old clipping from the Daily Times, dated 1934.

Fall in Love with Falling Stars Hotel!

By Elizabeth Robin

THE DAILY TIMES

WE HERE AT the Daily Times covered the construction of Falling Stars Boarding House in 1884, when the newspaper was only a year old. It’s fitting that on the fifty-year anniversary of that article, we’re back with the first peek into the mansion’s fresh revamp as a luxury hotel. Goodbye, outhouses and candlesticks, hello, twentieth century! The new proprietor has gone modern with an elevator and all-electric

The clipping cuts off after that. To the right, no bigger than two inches, is a black-and-white smudge of a house that I’d know anywhere. A glamorous woman with finger waves and dark lipstick twists her hand in hello under a wrought-iron archway that spells falling stars hotel.

“I didn’t know it wasn’t always just a house,” I tell Wesley, stupefied.

“I didn’t know there was an elevator. When did it get taken out?”

“No clue.” That’s so fascinating to envision—an elevator here, in my house. “I wonder if it was still a hotel when Victor and Violet bought it. I think they’ve had this place since the seventies.” I keep using the present tense. “Or, they did have it.”

He doesn’t find this as fascinating as I do, evidently. “Weird location for a hotel. Who’d want to come all the way out here?”

“We did.”

He glances at me briefly, then scratches his jaw and lines up his screwdrivers in a neat row.

“It’s pretty here,” I point out. “Lots of hiking trails. Mountains to explore. I haven’t checked out all the nearby towns yet, since I’ve been so busy. Any good restaurants or shopping malls within thirty miles?”

“I hate restaurants and shopping malls,” he grumbles.

Jeez. “What do you like?”

If his scowl is any hint, Wesley doesn’t like that question. It takes him two seconds to disassemble the rest of the table, and after he hauls it outside, he doesn’t return.

BY EARLY EVENING, I can’t take being in the house by myself anymore. I have to get out. A painful lump that’s been rising up my throat since I found my old letters to Violet intensifies when I try to seek refuge in the cabin—her memory lingers there, too. Everywhere I go, a fresh wave of confusion or guilt or heartache follows, or a funny remembrance that sets me off-kilter because how can I laugh when it’s all so terribly sad, so I decide to pour all of my attention into her dying wishes.

Wish 2. Victor thought there was buried treasure out here but I never did find any. For the intrepid explorer, Finders Keepers rules apply.

“I’m going to go digging,” I call out to Wesley, who’s sitting in his truck bed with a bowl of macaroni and cheese. I can only assume that the reason he’s not eating in the cabin’s kitchen is that I was just in there. He’s been avoiding me all week. Any time I walk into a room, he finds a reason to leave that room. When I try to make chitchat, I get crickets.

He stiffens with his fork halfway to his mouth. “Digging up what?”

I ignore him. A taste of your own medicine is healthy, now and then. To the garden shed I go! I’m surprised dust doesn’t shoot out in all directions when I open the door, since the groundskeeper around here obviously isn’t doing much pruning. Imagine being a professional groundskeeper and getting paid to make someone’s yard look worse. But inside, I’m surprised to find a tidy space. The door doesn’t stick. Someone’s been prowling around recently.

Wesley’s invested a fortune in insecticide, I’ll give him that. Along the dirty plywood walls are propped-up shovels, a million varieties of seeds, shears he doesn’t use, weed killer he doesn’t use, and a wheelbarrow piled with boxes. Shoeboxes, Amazon boxes, a round hatbox. I’m about to lift the lid of one when a shadow slips across my hands and it’s whisked away, over my head. A large body towers behind me.

I duck, letting out an “Aghh!”

An unreadable face scrutinizes me, but says nothing.

I drape a hand over my heart. “How do you keep sneaking up on me like that? Please announce yourself!”

Wesley places the shoebox on a shelf out of reach, followed by the other boxes. His face is tight as his eyes sweep mine, estimating whether putting the boxes out of reach is going to stop me. It is. I’m curious about them now that I know they’re off-limits, but scrounging up a stepstool sounds like too much work. Life is short, like me.

“Calm down, I’m only here for a shovel,” I explain, barely managing to grab one before Wesley’s silently edging me out of the shed without touching me, pushing a rake like a shuffleboard stick at my shoes.

Once we’re out, he slams the padlock on the door closed and spins its dial.

I raise my eyebrows. “Seriously?”

His eyes cut away, as though he’s bored, and he turns to leave.

“With an attitude like that, I’m not sharing any of the treasure,” I call to his receding back. “Unless you want to help? Do you happen to have a metal de—”

I give up. He’s heading swiftly back to the cabin, where I hope his macaroni and cheese is cold. A few beats pass. My hands are frustrated little balls at my sides, and it’s like being picked on by school bullies again. “I liked you a lot better when you weren’t you!” I yell once he’s a good distance away. If he hears, he makes no indication.

Thwarted, I survey the overgrown woods and chew my lip. Fine. I always end up doing the lion’s share of the work in group projects, anyway.

If I were a ridiculously rich person burying treasure (and you’d have to be ridiculously rich to pack some of it away in a hiding place), I’d bury it at the foot of a tree. I follow a trail into the woods, having barely begun but already tempted to write this off as a lost cause. Nearly three hundred acres of possible hiding places, and I don’t even know what I’m looking for. I dig random holes, sweating, the skin on my fingers angry from gripping the handle. I am going about this uneconomically. But if I’m not actively dedicating myself to what Violet wanted me to do, how can I justify accepting the house? I don’t deserve it. I haven’t written, haven’t visited, haven’t cried. I don’t have the right to be sad, either, since I was so flaky when she was still alive. I ran out the clock.

I use the shovel to make a shallow slice in the earth, then hop on and jump with all my strength. Down we sink, about four inches. Every time I hit a tree root I think I’m going to uncover a treasure chest.

I let the shovel drag the ground as I roam, searching for a big red X that marks the spot. That’d be too easy, of course, and if the treasure were easy to find, Violet and Victor would have found it themselves. I know when I’ve reached the part of the woods that has always been here when an old, old tree bursts out of the middle of where two paths fork. It’s gnarled, bark peeling, draped with moss. In a smooth, whorled eye, a heart has been carved. Within the heart, initials.

I trace the engraving with my thumb: V + V. So touching I could melt, lasting evidence of love that’s survived them both. What would it be like, to know love like that? To carve my name on someone else’s heart? Mine has been dropped and broken a few too many times, held together with sheer, dumb optimism, a few ribs, and maybe magic.

The greenery around me shifts, trees shrinking down to houseplants in colorful planters. Yellow birch and blackberries flatten, becoming one-dimensional patterns on wallpaper. Cicadas change their tune, now a low melody wafting out of the jukebox, and my hands aren’t raw and blistering from a shovel but from the spitting oil of a fryer. Between one footstep and the next, I disappear from the woods and rematerialize in my own little world.

“It’s not your fault,” Jack tells me, springing to my side.

My mind always, always misses its footing and lands on Jack unless I’m carefully, consciously choosing my steps.

I sigh, smoothing my hands over the familiar countertop in my café, the red vinyl booths, the cold window eternally spotted with rain. The thrashing sea of my blood pressure calms, settling into a still, waveless lake.

“Your aunt was in here earlier,” he tells me soothingly. “She had to go, but she wanted me to tell you how happy she was to see you yesterday. How much she appreciates your visits.”

A musical chime as the door opens, which another dimension might filter as the sound of leaves crunching underfoot as a woman walks through a forest. Who’d want to be her, though, when I can be this Maybell instead? When here I’m equipped with omniscience to kill the unknown in its cradle, and am the architect of every heart and every heart’s intention?

I smile gratefully up at Jack, who will always listen, always put me first, never reject or betray me. “Thanks, I needed to hear that.”

I serve donuts to friendly customers and chat with the inventor of Check Your References, an app that allows you to rate the accuracy of your exes’ online dating profiles. She introduces herself as Gemma and tells me she can’t wait to come back tomorrow for more of my wonderful cinnamon twists. I can tell we’re going to be great friends.

I stumble over a broken floor tile, which transforms into a twig when I study it closely, and as quickly as I blew into the café, I drop out of it, landing hard on wet dirt and laurel.

In the dark.

“Damn it. Not again.”

I dig in my pocket for my phone to check how long this time-slip lasted but come up empty. My phone’s back at the cabin. And the cabin is . . .

I turn in a delirious circle, pulse thudding. It is dark and the woods are very, very loud all of a sudden. Only moments ago the only thing I could hear was the intro of a song called “Everywhere,” which sounds like wind chimes and feels like opening a well-worn epic fantasy novel. Now I’m being swallowed up in the hoots of barred owls and small, furry footsteps. Bats’ wings. An army of undead gem miners eternally seeking out the treasure, possibly.

“It’s okay,” I tell myself steadily, releasing a low breath that accidentally turns into a whistle. “You can’t be too far out. You’re still on the trail, so . . .”

I’m standing where the trail diverges in two. If I listen really hard, I think I can hear the universe laughing. Along with more twigs snapping.

This is when I remember the dense black bear population in this neck of Tennessee.

My kneecaps liquefy.

I’m imagining the thud of heavy paws, I try to convince myself, regretting that I seem to have dropped my shovel somewhere and can’t use it as a weapon. I’m surely imagining how the sound grows closer. I squeeze my eyes tightly shut, as if that’ll rearrange reality to be more to my liking. Taking away one of my senses makes it worse, my hearing sharpening to compensate. I am not imagining the footsteps closing in.

Closer, closer.

I want to run but my arms and legs lock up instead; what a terrible way for me to learn my instincts in the worst-case scenario are all wrong. I’m frozen in place. I’m going to get mauled by a bear and I’ll just stand here and let it happen without making so much as a squeak. Even the bear will be confused.

And then there he is.

He gazes down at me, moonlight dusting the curves of his features. Bears don’t have wavy blond hair or cotton T-shirts. I’m so happy to see Wesley Koehler that I’d cry and leap at him, if only I could unstick my feet from the ground.

He waits. Watches. I still can’t talk, and he chooses not to.

Finally, my voice starts working again. “I’ve grown roots,” I say weakly. He must think I’m a huge baby. I can’t deny he’d be right. Tonight I’m sleeping with all the lights on.

Slowly, he holds out his hand, palm up. I examine the pale fingertips from a slight distance, as if this might not be real, but his gesture has a strange effect on my muscles, freeing them. I’m moving before I know it.

I lay my hand over his, which he tugs lightly, reeling me in. Once I’m safely at his side, he lets his hand drop, then motions for me to proceed down one of the trails.

His pace is measured so that I can keep up, the trail just wide enough to accommodate both of us walking side by side. It’s full dark now. I dearly hope I am not hallucinating this rescue, which seems like something I would do were I being eaten alive by a bear and decided I’d rather not be present in the moment. Out of the corner of my eye I glance at Wesley, who’s staring straight ahead. I don’t think my imagination could paint the tension he radiates, though, his awareness of me but refusal to glance my way. Annoyed that he had to stop whatever he was doing and come save me from being killed by elk or falling rocks or a river I didn’t see coming.

I don’t think my imagination would have the bandwidth, while I was spurting blood like a fountain, to generate realistic details like the small tear in his sleeve, the smear of dirt on his arm, the nick on his jaw from shaving. When my arm accidentally brushes his, I don’t think I imagine how his hand clenches. If I were making this up, the least I could do as a gift to myself would be to design a Wesley who smiled at me. And carried a military-grade flashlight.

We still haven’t spoken when we emerge from the woods, the tide of trees pushing us out and dumping us right on the cabin’s porch. The television is on, subdued voices bumping up against the door. He swings it open. There’s a plate on the coffee table with a meal only half-eaten, handle-end of the fork lying in sauce as though dropped in a hurry.

I open my mouth to say Thank you for finding me, for leading me back, but Wesley doesn’t grant me the opportunity. He yanks the cord for the pull-down ladder and climbs up to his bedroom. Only when I’m directly behind him do I notice the back of his shirt, which reads koehler landscaping, fabric darker from saturation. His nape glistens. It’s cool enough outside that the tip of my nose is numb and my teeth are chattering, but Wesley, not even wearing a jacket, is drenched in sweat.

THAT NIGHT I DREAM in black and white. I open the cabin’s front door to find that all the trees are gone, only gently sloping hills and prairie smoke flowers everywhere, everywhere, as far as the eye can see. They slant over and under one another in the breeze, each monochrome tuft a happy wave hello. The manor soars larger than life, laced up with climbing roses rather than creeper vines. There’s a wrought-iron archway in front—falling stars hotel—and beneath, in vivid color, Wesley waits for me with an unreadable expression, hand outstretched.

I sit up straight in bed.