Page 8 of Bound By Fury

Beside me my mother finds my hand.

“I come to Earnest by way of the coast, in search of the history my own gran spoke of. Instead, I found community. I felt a calling, a kinship to this here town. And more than that, I found a best friend.”

Maureen’s voice grows tighter the longer she speaks, and her chin trembles as tears splash against the paper she’s reading from.

“Sometimes… sometimes I think, people are born into this world, but they were never truly meant to be here. Harper was like that. She was so bright, it hurt to look at her. She was too good. Too kind. Too giving. Too earnest. She was a safe place to land. Harper was the sun, and we were all helplessly entrapped in her gravitational pull. She was everything…” Maureen shudders, “… and without her, the sky will never be as blue, the sea never as calm, the land never as plentiful.”

I don’t acknowledge how jealousy mixes with the despair inside me. I don’t allow myself to feel the heat of rage gurgling somewhere low in my chest. It’s ridiculous, this overactive emotion, this peculiar, deep-seated anger that simmers the longer she speaks. It’s a hungry, possessive tightness eating me from the inside out.

Maureen’s eyes meet mine, something curious swimming in them. “On July 16, 2010, Harper’s life was forever changed. She was born anew alongside her granddaughter, filled with a purpose she lacked for much of her life. Harper Scott, who shares a first name with both her grandmother and great grandmother, came to Earnest like Moses down the Nile—screaming pink in a little wicker basket.”

I can’t help but chuckle through my tears, even though I’ve already heard this story a million times from my grandmother’s own mouth.

“She was smitten. She carried that baby everywhere she went and begged the baby’s mother to let her stay summers in Earnest with her father.” An awkward hush rolls through the crowd at the mention of him. “Xavier was an incredible dad despite not growing up with one of his own. I know that wherever he is, he feels her loss. He’s mourning today just as we are.”

The tips of my ears heat with indignation, and I have to bury the instinct to suck my teeth. An incredible dad? If he cared at all about Gigi, about me, he’d be here. If he really cared, he wouldn’t have ever left. Even if I’m not enough to come back for, then certainly this is. But I know in my heart that he’s probably dead by now, despite what Gigi believed or what my mother thinks. And that’s better anyway. If he’s gone because he’s dead and not because we weren’t worth staying for.

Though that thought doesn’t help the bitterness swelling inside me. Because if he’s dead too, then that’s it. I’m really all alone. He’s dead. Gigi’s dead. Mom might as well be dead half the time anyway. And the boys, my so-called best friends? They’re dead to me too.

By the time Maureen is finished, I’ve cried half my makeup off, and my head is throbbing at the temples. When she beckons me to the front, I finally understand Gigi’s vision. We blend in with the wildflowers. Purples and yellows and emerald greens and topaz. This isn’t some bleak mass of black clothing. This is a celebration of her life, exactly as she intended.

As I start to speak, time slows, and a hollowness spreads through my chest. I blink away my tears and sweep the loose curls from my face.

“Hello,” I say, the word coming out all warbly.

Sparks travel across the apples of my cheeks, and I recoil against the strange new feeling.

“I’m not that good at public speaking—” I warn as leaves rustle in the trees behind me. I swipe the folded, sweaty paper out of my dress pocket, pressing down its edges with shaking hands until the wood of the podium groans beneath my touch.

I glance down at the words I’ve prepared, and my vision goes black at the edges.

Dear Bug,

No. No, this isn’t right.

These are not the words I’ve prepared.

I squeeze my eyes shut, scrambling to fold the pages back up. Because I can’t. I can’t. I can’t look at it. Not yet.

The morning I turned sixteen, I sprang from bed and halted at the lack of decorations—Gigi always decorated the house for my birthday. I slammed through her door and nearly vomited all over myself at the state of her. And later, when I crawled back beneath my covers, the house empty and still except for the anxious pacing of my mother downstairs, I finally saw it.

A letter addressed to me and a little box wrapped in shining silver paper and a familiar lavender bow.

The gold pendant sits at the base of my throat now, warm and growing warmer in my panic. I haven’t read the letter yet. I can’t. I can’t.

Tucking it back into my pocket, I root around for the words I meant to bring instead, but they’re not here. I must have mixed them up with Gigi’s letter while I was getting dressed.

The crowd is growing restless. I plaster a shaky, apologetic smile on my face and peer out at them, struggling to find comfort in their faces.

“Sorry—” I mumble into the microphone, pleading with my mind to come up with anything coherent.

I can’t say what I really want to. About how Gigi wasn’t so much my grandmother as she was my mother. She was the woman who raised me, who validated me, who enabled all my wildest dreams. She was the one who made me believe in magic, even if not literally. I shouldn’t say these things, even though they’re true. Because they would hurt my mother. And I’ve gotten used to shrinking myself for her, just enough to spare her from her own reality.

My mother never wanted me to love Gigi like I do. To know her how I do. She didn’t want Gigi’s “woo-woo” to rub off on me. She didn’t want me to end up like my dad.

So why do I still care so much about how she feels?

If I close my eyes, I can still hear her words crystal clear. Desperate and raw from crying in the days after my father left.