Page 29 of What August Heard
Her chin was trembling. She started crying.
She got up and walked to the patio. The sliding door opened and closed behind her.
Fletcher sat there for a second. He looked at me. He looked sorry in every possible way a person could look sorry. Sorry for Margaux saying it, sorry for not stopping her faster, sorry for the vodka and the whole evening.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“It’s okay,” I said. “Go.”
He went.
Callie picked up the vodka bottle and looked at my glass. “Do you need any more of this?”
“I’m fine.”
Poppy was watching the patio door. “She thinks we don’t like her,” she said. “And we think she doesn’t like us. The only person she actually likes here is Fletcher.” She looked at me and Callie. She mouthed two words:The Calloway Name.
Callie covered her mouth.
I laughed before I could stop it. Then I felt bad for laughing and pressed my lips together and looked at the patio door and felt bad all over again.
The room was quiet. Outside, through the glass, I could see the shapes of Fletcher and Margaux on the patio. The curtains were half drawn and the sliding door was open a crack and I could hear the ocean but not their words. Fletcher was standing, hisback to us. Margaux was facing him. She was still crying, or close to it. Her shoulders were doing the small shaking thing.
“Maybe we should say sorry,” I said.
Callie looked at me.
“If she feels unwanted—”
“August.”
“That was never our intention. I don’t want anyone to feel like that.”
“It was absolutely my intention,” Poppy said. “I was very intentional about it.”
“She called you a fixture,” Poppy said. “And part of the furniture. And a flower girl. And a charity case. And she said that thing just now.” She held up her fingers and counted. “That is five things. In three days.”
“Poppy is right,” Callie said. “August, we’re all adults. She’s not sixteen. She’s been doing this since she arrived.” She leaned over and put her hand on my knee. “You did not make her feel unwanted. She has been the one making you feel unwanted. Those are not the same thing.”
“She’s crying on the patio.”
“She is a very good crier,” Poppy said.
I looked at the patio door.
I thought about the mother thing. The way Margaux had said it —tucked into bed by my mother— looking at the circle but meaning it directly at me, with that tilt of the head and that small smile. She heard me say it and she had used it. I was aware of that. I wasn’t stupid.
But she was also standing on a patio crying because she felt like nobody in this house liked her, and there was something about that I couldn’t entirely dismiss.
“I’m going to go say something,” I said.
“August—”
“Just something small. I won’t apologize for things that aren’t my fault. But if she’s feeling—”
“She is performing,” Poppy said.
“She might also be actually upset. Both things can be true.”
