“You should join us for pub quiz next week,” Ernie said to Miriam. “Elijah and Jason run it, and it’s kind of the only fun to be had in this town if you’re between twenty-five and fifty.”
“She won’t still be here this weekend,” Tara said, her drawl thick and excruciatingly polite. “She’s coming home with me, to Charleston.”
“Oh,” Ernie said, looking at Hannah in confusion. “I thought Cass…Never mind. I’ll be back later to check on you.”
“What was that about?” Tara asked pointedly, her eyes cutting between Cole and Miriam. Cole ducked his head, and Tara reached over and flicked him. He looked up at Miriam, his sea-blue eyes beseeching.
He never had been able to say no to Tara, and Miriam knew it wasn’t fair to make him tell her this. Miriam had to get her shit together, she’d already fucked up badly by not being honest. She didn’t know if there was any way to mitigate the damage at this point. It might be too late to make amends, and Tara might genuinely not forgive her, but she could do the right thing anyway.
“Can we go outside to talk?” she asked. She knew Tara hated when laundry was aired in public.
Tara turned to face her, her blue eyes iced over and her movements precise. “Well,” she began, her drawl like molasses, “I would say that since all these people already know our business, it could not possibly hurt to discuss it in front of them, as I am clearly the only person who does not know what’s happening, but I would not want to put them in the situation of feeling uncomfortable, since I suspect they have done nothing to deserve that.”
Tara’s tone was cold enough to freeze Miriam over. She deserved it. Cole scooted out of the booth to let them out, grimacing at her behind Tara’s back.
As soon as they were outside, Miriam began talking before she could lose her nerve. “Cass left me a quarter of Carrigan’s,” Miriam said in a rush of air. “At first I thought I’d give it to Noelle and Hannah, but Tara…I really want to stay here. I want to set up a shop, and help them get the business back on its feet, and lure tourists here to sell them art. I can’t stop wanting it.” She had wrapped her arms around her, both for warmth and in some misguided attempt to protect her from Tara’s response.
They stood in silence. The dam inside Tara that kept her from yelling in public remained unbreachable.
Finally, she spoke. “You couldn’t have told me this over the phone?” Her voice was quiet, and Miriam strained to hear. “Before I made excuses to everyone in my life about where you were? Before I looked a fool? What about the store, Miri? What about our life? Was I so impossible to talk to that you couldn’t tell me this thing that’s upending our entire future?!”
“I talked myself out of telling you because I was scared. I should have trusted you more,” Miriam said, chewing on her lip. “My head was a mess, and I handled all of it poorly, and that wasn’t fair to you. To our deal with each other. I was a really shitty co-conspirator.”
“Did you do this so I would keep paying the lease on your studio?” Tara accused.
“No!” Miriam said immediately, horrified. “I promise, no. It wasn’t that mercenary. I just didn’t know how to make you understand where my heart was.” Miriam ran her hands through her hair, and wondered how Tara managed to look completely, perfectly polished in the middle of a breakup fight. Probably another sign that they were wrong for each other, the fact that she couldn’t ever fluster Tara.
“You’re right. I would not have understood giving up our beautiful home, a fascinating city, all the good work we were doing, to live in a ramshackle dying inn with molding parrot-print wallpaper, in the middle of the woods, surrounded by nothing but trees and lakes as far as the eye can see. This would never be what my heart could want.”
“Cass—” Miriam started.
Tara cut her off. “All weekend I’ve heard about the magical Cass.” That Southern drawl somehow made her sarcasm extra sarcastic. “But you can’t use her as an excuse with me, because you never introduced me to her.”
“I deserve that,” Miriam conceded. “I just didn’t think you wanted to deal with all the baggage that came with Carrigan’s.”
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe I wouldn’t have.” Tara shook her head. “I’m tired, Miri. I know we’re not some great love story. It’s fine if you came up here and realized you needed something different. It’s reasonable to decide you want to fall in love. But we’re friends. We were a team. You should have told me the truth.”
“I didn’t know if I would be brave enough to stay,” Miriam admitted. Saying the truth out loud, to Tara, made it so real. The part of her heart that always hid from realness was screaming at her, even as the rest of her breathed a sigh of relief. It was all out there now. She couldn’t take it back.
“I’ve never seen you happier than you are, here,” Tara told her, stuffing her hands in her jacket pockets. “I didn’t even know this side of you existed. I’m glad you’re staying, if this is who you are when you’re at Carrigan’s. And maybe you didn’t tell me because I’m hard to talk to about emotions, or because I would have tried to lawyer you into the rational choice, but now I’m out here in the snow getting dumped, instead of with my family for the holidays, because you were scared.”
Every day since she’d arrived at Carrigan’s, Miriam had been forced to confront the fact that she’d hurt people she cared about by shielding herself from reality and avoiding difficult conversations. She owed Tara better than that, and Miriam wanted to believe she was becoming better than that.
“You’re right. You deserved honesty, and I was too scared to even be honest with myself. Let me try now. I love it here, and I want to stay.”
Tara chuckled sadly. “God, you’re a mess, Miriam Blum. I didn’t even know you had it in you to be this chaotic. I’m kind of glad for you. One of us should be able to lose her shit. And to be honest, this is low in the ranking of worst Thanksgivings of my life.”
“Maybe next holiday season, you’ll fall in love and throw your life into chaos,” Miriam said, cautiously hopeful that they might end on, if not good terms, at least not catastrophic ones.
“You shut your mouth,” Tara said, sounding horrified and crossing herself. She opened the bar door and leaned her head in, yelling, “Cole, you’re driving me to the train station.”
Cole ran out the door, followed by Hannah. “Ooh, stealing cars at midnight,” Cole said, jacket in hand. “We haven’t done that since middle school.”
Hannah squeezed Miriam’s hand. “I’ll go with them to make sure they take a farm truck instead of Noelle’s truck.”
Tara took one last look at Miriam. “Don’t call me for awhile.” Miriam nodded. It was better than she’d hoped for.
Once they were gone, Miriam slid back into the booth across from Noelle, who had been left alone, an ocean of cold leftover onion rings in front of her.