The Weird Sisters - Eleanor Brown [132]
“I asked him to look out for you,” he said.
Bean turned, the postmodern garden forgotten. “You what?” Her voice bounced across the empty street, fluttering against the plate glass windows. “What am I, five?” She felt her mouth pulling down as her mind worked a thousand hours overtime, recasting every moment with Aidan in the light of this new information. So he hadn’t . . . he’d never . . .
“Holy shit,” she said. She had never misjudged anything as egregiously as she’d misjudged his interest in her. There hadn’t been any interest at all. None. Only textbook psychological transference and the pity of a man who didn’t actually care about her at all, who was just doing his job. She burned at the thought of how he must think of her. “What did you tell him?” Her voice cracked, hysterical.
“It’s not like that, Bianca. Just that you had come back suddenly and seemed hurt somehow, and you might need someone to talk to. Someone who wasn’t us.” This last bit sounded melancholy, a sadly accepting smile directed at the ground. Bean turned and walked away, ahead, shame pressing her shoulders forward until they ached.
In front of the post office, she pulled the envelope out of her purse and opened the slot, dropping it in, listening to the whisper of paper against paper as it fell down. The collected earnings of the library, the sale of that awful car, and all the glittering artifice of her life in the city. Thinking she could go back now was foolish. She hadn’t the wardrobe for it anymore.
Our father came up beside her and they stared into the empty darkness of the mailbox’s maw for a moment. “Barnwell’s not such a bad life. I know you always wanted more, but I wonder what you believe you need so badly that you cannot find here.” She let the door of the mailbox clang shut and they walked on. “You were the youngest to start walking, you know that? Rose crawled so well it took her ages to decide she wanted to walk, and Cordy was content when we carried her. But you, you went straight from lying down to running at full tilt. I think of that every time I read Midsummer. My legs can keep no pace with my desires.”
They were nearing the library. Our father, walking on the outside of the sidewalk, ducked under the branch of an elm tree that swept its leafy arm across the sidewalk as though taking a bow. “If you felt lonely in the midst of all those people, Bianca, there is nothing to be lost by letting the crowd go. The question to ask is what will satisfy you? What will bring you peace? And perhaps the answer to those is in asking yourself when you were last happy.
“The city, that burning desire you had for freedom, what has it brought you? Sound and fury, signifying nothing. You may think I’m a foolish old man, gone to seed already, but we chose this life, your mother and I, and we have never regretted it. I earn what I eat, get what I wear, owe no man hate, envy no man’s happiness, glad of other men’s good. We won’t hold you back, Bianca, but we want you to find happiness.”
His St. Crispin’s Day speech ended, they came to a stop in front of the library’s wide stone steps. Bean turned to our father, put her hand on his arm, and gave him a kiss on the cheek, the tickle of his beard so familiar on her lips. “Thank you, Dad,” she said. He nodded, stood with his hands still in his pockets, his shoulders hunched forward, and watched her until she got inside. Then he walked away, staring up at the sky, and Bean watched him go. She wanted to hate him for asking Aidan to look after her, for making her an object of misfortune instead of beauty. But hard as it was