“Connecting with Noelle,” Cole interrupted, his look pointed.
“Sure, that too.” Miriam laughed.
“How are you adjusting, really? You’ve had a tornado of stuff happen in the past couple of months, and your life is completely different than the last time I saw you a few weeks ago. You seem like you’re breathing easier, or standing up straighter? Something’s different.” Cole set his chin on his knees, his tone turning serious.
She held her hands up in a show of ambivalence. “I’m still terrified I made the worst decision of my life and it’s going to explode in my face any minute, and I still have to pep talk myself every morning about the fact that I’m taking this big risky adventure, but at the same time, all these fears I’ve had all my life are gone. I’m not afraid of facing my past anymore, and I feel really proud of myself, you know? I faced so much and I’m here, making a new life for myself.”
“I’m proud of you, too,” Cole told her seriously. And then he winked dramatically, so that the moment didn’t get too emotional.
“So, to address the elephant in the room,” Miriam said, “my ex-fiancée, your lifelong friend? How’s Tara?” Tara, who apparently had stolen cars in the middle of the night with Cole during their shared, misspent youth. She guessed they’d both kept secrets.
“You know,” Cole said, his face thoughtful, “I think she’s doing well. She asked me to go dancing at Dudley’s last week.”
Dudley’s was the gay bar in Charleston, and not usually Tara’s scene, since it didn’t fit in with her country club image.
“Good for her!” Miriam said, meaning it. “Okay. I need to decorate a tree, and you need to help me find stuff for it.”
She blew the dust off the top of a box and opened it. “Oh, vintageNational Geographics!”
“You’re the only person who has ever said that sentence.” Cole shook his head in horror.
Miriam ignored him. “I’m going to start making a pile for you to carry downstairs, so we can get started. I hope I have enough glue…” She trailed off as she disappeared behind an armoire that hid a life-sized paper diorama of a tapdancing pig, cut in intricate detail, and which popped up when the doors were opened.
Behind the diorama, resting against the wall, she saw an unmistakable shape wrapped in brown paper. She must have made an involuntary noise because Cole came up behind her.
The package, several flat surfaces unevenly stacked together, had Cass’s distinctive handwriting sprawled across its front.
Mimi Roz
“Is that what I think it is?” Cole asked, putting an arm around her to steady her.
“You know about the paintings?” she whispered because the noise in her brain was too loud to think anything else.
“I do, baby. I’m sorry, I snooped.”
She would be mad, maybe, later, when she could think again.
“What do I do? Do I open them?” She turned to him, feeling wild, terrified. “What do I do?”
He put both hands on her shoulders. “You don’t have to decide right now, and I will support you no matter what. So what we’re going to do is go downstairs and eat cake. You’re going to kiss your new girl and spend your birthday with your cousin and your surrogate parents for the first time in ten years. And you’re going to give yourself as much space as you need to decide.”
“I love you,” she said, looking into Cole’s eyes, her voice breaking.
“How could you not?” Cole asked, waving her off, pretending flippancy. “Come on, kid. We need cake.”
Miriam stayed up all night, working on the decorations for the tree lighting, supergluing and glittering as she thought. She worked with intensity, Mod Podge in her cleavage and feathers stuck on her arms. She had a vision for the tree lighting, and it was going to take everyone’s breath away.
Making art she was really excited about felt electric. Like she was breathing again, after having held her breath since the moment her mother called to tell her about Cass.
And all the while, her brain was a locomotive.
How had Cass gotten her paintings, and why had she hidden them? What the fuck was Miriam supposed to do, knowing they were sitting there, where she could open them at any moment? Part of her wanted to leave them there, a sleeping viper that couldn’t bite if it weren’t awakened, but she wasn’t sure she could. Still, she needed to complete the tree installation, and if she wasn’t willing to go back to the attic quite yet, there was only one other place to get the materials.
“We’re cleaning out Cass’s closets,” she announced to the dining room when she went for breakfast, which was, this early in the day, just Hannah, Noelle, and Mrs. Matthews.
“Allof them?” Noelle asked in horror. “Do you know how many clothes Cassiopeia Carrigan owned?”
Hannah cleared her throat. “That’s, um, a big job.” Miriam watched her fiddle with her teacup handle and then actually sit on her hands. “Are you sure you want to take the lead on that project?”