Nothing about losing her was easy, and her choice to leave part of the farm to two people who’d walked away when they had been needed the most still irked Noelle. She didn’t want to be mad at Cass, but she couldn’t help it.
Admittedly, Miriam wasn’t as bad as Noelle wished she was. She also fit better at Carrigan’s than Noelle would have liked.
Noelle noticed, and didn’t want to, how naturally Hannah and Miriam fell into a lifelong secret language of sideways glances and half thoughts. She noticed Miriam and Mr. Matthews riffing goofs at dinner, and how the light from the Christmas trees caught in Miriam’s curls.
She noticed Miriam.
Noelle had been up late the last several nights scrolling Blum Again Vintage & Curios’ Instagram feed. She might have looked at every picture Miriam had ever posted, which was…many. If Miriam was going to disappear again, rather than stay and be part of the new Carrigan’s, Noelle wished she would get it over with. Noelle needed her equilibrium and sleep to return. Where was Miriam’s absentee fiancée, and why hadn’t the woman come to swoop her back South? If Miriam were hers, she would be there for her in her time of grief, standing by while she made an impossible life decision, acting as a guard for when Miriam didn’t feel up to dealing with Ziva.
But Miriam wasn’t Noelle’s, she was someone else’s. Noelle couldn’t start wanting to take care of her.
Everything about Miriam was a puzzle. Noelle knew parts of her. The girl Cass talked about glowingly, whom she was jealous of, and the swath of heartbreak that girl’s absence had left behind. She knew the sad, adorable elf who had shown up on her doorstep and drunk all her coffee. She knew the art she lived with every day and felt a connection with. And she knew the woman who, when asked about her mother, started to unravel. It was clear that somehow, Miriam leaving Carrigan’s was rooted in trauma; she hadn’t woken up one day and decided she didn’t care about her family. That didn’t undo the harm her absence had caused, but it forced Noelle to re-evaluate her initial judgment that Miriam was flighty and unreliable. Miriam was spooked and running from something. For whatever reason, Carrigan’s had gotten caught up in that.
She had to figure out the whole picture of Miriam Blum, whether she could trust Miriam to be a part of this place Noelle needed for her own survival—and if she could work with Miriam, without combusting in ill-advised lust.
Since the shit had hit the fan, hard enough that even her trees couldn’t talk her off the ledge, Noelle did the only thing she knew how to do: she went to a meeting.
Her normal meetings were at night, after work. There was a different crowd at a noon meeting in the middle of the week—a crew of little old lady alcoholics who’d been sober as long as Noelle had been alive, and who’d been up in each other’s business just as long. Noelle knew them, because being sober in the Adirondacks meant you knew every other sober person in driving distance. They had great recovery, but she usually avoided them because they were always trying to con her into helping out with an event.
Her usual haunt, the alano club in Mt. Pleasant, had meetings all day, cheap bad coffee, and always a few alcoholics up for a card game. They also had alcothons—twenty-four-hour meetings on Christmas and New Year’s, so people without family had somewhere to go in case they had the urge to drink. At the first sign of weakness, Noelle would get suckered into providing a tree, bringing a ham, and welcoming newcomers. She didn’t even know where she would cook a ham. Certainly not in Mrs. Matthews’s pork-free kitchen.
Seeing the little old lady alcoholics made Noelle think about Miriam’s Old Ladies. Noelle had overheard Miriam on the phone, checking up on them.How did the surgery go? Did you get the grocery delivery I sent? I told so-and-so to get in touch with you about that piece, if she doesn’t give you a fair price you let me know.She was like a mother hen clucking over her chicks, except all her chicks were over seventy.
After the meeting, the ringleader of the old lady alcoholics cornered her.
“You didn’t listen to a single share, kid,” the woman said. “Your head was a million miles away. Get your ass in the car, we’re going to lunch, and you’re going to tell us about it.”
Noelle wanted to protest that she had her own ride, but she just yes ma’amed and got her ass in the car. She was taking her life in her hands, as the woman drove like a bat out of hell, but she would also have been taking her life in her hands if she’d said no.
When they were all settled on the patio of an old beat-up diner, long menthol cigarettes lit, coffee cups filled and rimmed in red lipstick, they turned to her.
“We’ve been worried about you since Cass died,” the ringleader said.
“If you hadn’t come down off the hill soon,” another added, “we were going to come up and get you. Did that woman leave a mess behind her? Is that what’s got you all twisted up?”
“No,” said a quiet, ancient woman who looked like she might have played pro ball in her youth, “she’s got girl trouble.”
Noelle choked on her coffee. “Cass did leave a whole hell of a mess,” she said, feeling disloyal. Still, if you couldn’t tell the truth at the meeting-after-the-meeting, you were in real trouble. “And there is a woman who’s complicating my brain. But nothing’s going to happen with her.”
“Why not?” the ringleader asked, waving her cigarette. “When was the last time you dated?”
Noelle sighed. “Before my parents died,” she admitted. “I’ve been focusing on my sobriety. But!” she raised a hand, as one of them started to speak. “Even if I wanted to date, I couldn’t date this woman. She’s not staying at Carrigan’s, and she’s engaged. Although there’s something weird happening there. She never talks about her fiancée.”
“Girl,” said the quiet, ancient woman, her white curls bobbing as she shook her head, “if you can’t get laid and stay sober at the same time, there’s something wrong with your sobriety.”
The others nodded, taking long drags of their cigarettes and long sips of their lukewarm coffee.
“The fiancée is a different matter entirely,” said the ringleader. “If she’s off-limits, it’s simple, she’s off-limits. So what’s the tangle?”
Noelle sighed. “I prejudged her, pretty badly, and I was unkind, and she thinks I hate her. I made her feel unwelcome at Carrigan’s, which is not what Cass would have wanted.”
“It’s good you came here today, and you’re not trying to figure everything out in your own head. It’s not safe up there alone,” the quiet woman said.
Tears came up, ones she’d been stuffing down since the funeral just to get through. Before she knew it, Noelle was weeping into a polyester tracksuit while the woman closest to her held her and rubbed circles on her back.
“I was so angry,” she choked out, “and scared and sad, without Cass. And this woman, Miriam, she got in the path of that. Somehow all my anger at Cass got pushed on her. Because I would have done anything to have another ten years with Cass, and she could have but she didn’t.” She was speaking around big, wracking sobs, and the old women were nodding. One handed her a crumpled tissue from the bowels of an alligator purse. “I didn’t know how to be fair and everything hurt so much, and now I hurt someone else. And I do like her, and I do wish she didn’t have a fiancée, and I do want to date again maybe eventually, and I don’t know what to do.” Her run-on petered out, and she took a deep breath before blowing it out. “I’ve been trying to hold it in and be strong for everyone, and it came out sideways.”
“You need to make amends, first of all.” The ringleader put out her cigarette and pointed a neon pink nail at her. Noelle nodded. She really, really did. “And then, you need to pray. You’ll figure it out. But not alone, and not all right now. One day at a time.”