“You just stay,” Noelle said, putting both arms around Miriam and kissing her curls. “You take care of what she built. You make a wild, hooligan, joyous life that breaks the rules, in her honor.”
“She must have loved the hell out of you. I wish I could have seen that.”
“Why do you say that? Maybe she thought I was good with an evergreen,” Noelle said.
“Look at who she left the farm to. The two nieces she helped raise, the son of her best friends, whom she lived with since the day he was born, and you. She loved you like you were one of us.”
“I think that’s why I was so mad at you, after the will reading. Because I knew I didn’t fit, with the three of you. Some part of me thought you deserved Carrigan’s and I didn’t, like I didn’t have an equal claim.”
“You belong to this place, and it to you,” Miriam said, squeezing her hand. She couldn’t imagine Carrigan’s without Noelle, like the Christmasland had always been saving a seat for her.
Noelle nuzzled her hair. “Thank you. For saying that. When I got here, it felt like Oz, you know? Like it was too good to be true, and eventually I was going to accidentally click my heels and end up back in Kansas,” Noelle admitted.
“Dorothy wanted to go home,” Miriam pointed out.
“Yeah, I never understood that. Why wouldn’t you want to stay in the fantastical world with the talking lions?”
Kringle chirped at this.
“Do you want me to put ruby-red glitter on your Docs?” Miriam teased.
Noelle moved away in horror. “Her slippers were silver in the book, and you wouldn’t dare.”
“Are you sure? I have a lot of silver glitter.”
Noelle laughed, and Miriam had a moment of fierce, pure joy. Here, surrounded by the detritus of a life lived to its absolute maximum, she knew she needed to stop keeping secrets if she wanted to be an heir of Cass in any real way. She couldn’t really be settled here, for good, if she didn’t start building bridges from her island to the Carrigan’s mainland.
“I have to tell you something,” she said. Noelle must have heard the gravity of her tone, and she turned her whole body to Miriam, all her attention focused. “I found some paintings in the attic, yesterday. Some Mimi Roz paintings.” Her voice stuck. She couldn’t figure out how to continue.
“Who’s Mimi Roz?” Noelle prompted.
“I am. Or I was. I, wait, I’m starting in the wrong place. I have to tell you more about my dad.” She took a deep breath, rubbed her hands on her legs to center herself. “He raised me to follow him into business, marry well, be a jewel in his crown. He started out owning a car dealership, then bought rental properties, invested in local businesses, served on a bunch of boards.” She waved dismissively. “He’s a big name in Scottsdale but not a national presence. Don’t tell him that, though. He likes to imagine himself as a power broker.
“During college, I started painting,” she continued. “I didn’t show anyone at first. I was so scared of how much I loved it.” She swallowed. “When you grow up with someone who has a very specific idea of who you are supposed to be, it’s terrifying to have anything that’s all yours. After college I moved to New York for a couple of years, ostensibly to work for a friend of my dad’s and gain some business experience, but really to try to make it in art. I was pretty good, I thought, and I had a friend from high school who was interning at a gallery in New York. My friend agreed to show some paintings to the gallery owner. He loved them and gave me a spot in a show.”
“That’s huge, Miriam. You must be incredibly talented, which isn’t surprising, considering your other work,” Noelle told her, squeezing her hand.
“Thank you.” She squeezed Noelle’s hand back. “I submitted the paintings under the name Mimi Roz, after Cole’s nickname for me and my mom’s maiden name. I thought if I didn’t tie it too closely back to my father, he couldn’t be too angry with me, and maybe he wouldn’t interfere.” She kept her eyes unfocused. Noelle brought their grasped hands up to her lips.
“Maybe he wouldn’t have, either, if I hadn’t gotten such good press. The show got written up in theTimes, with pictures of me and my paintings. There were interested buyers for every piece. We sold a couple to collectors. And then, suddenly, they were all bought, by one ‘very generous patron,’ the gallery owner put it.”
She paused to acknowledge Noelle’s sharp intake of breath.
“We went out to our house on Cape Cod for a weekend, and my father was terrifying. Jovial, almost gleeful. He opened a bottle of wine, built a bonfire, served lobster. And then, he started talking. Not yelling. He was calm, almost pleasant.”
She’d started shaking. Noelle rubbed her thumb in circles over Miriam’s shoulder.
“He explained that he’d been telling his friends for years about his brilliant daughter who was going to come join him in business as soon as she graduated. He said that he couldn’t simply have me run off to paint silly fairy-tale paintings and play boho. What would it look like to his business associates? They would all judge him if his own daughter didn’t want to come work with him. It would make a fool out of him.”
She breathed in, sucking air into her lungs like she was drowning.
“I can still hear him in my head. I’ve been hearing him, every day for ten years. I could see, couldn’t I, why I couldn’t be allowed to continue this delusion I had of choice. I wasn’t even talented. I wasn’t even using the name he’d so graciously given me. It looked like I wanted to distance myself from him.”
“Miriam,” Noelle asked, sounding sick, “what did he do?”
“He took the paintings out, one by one,” Miriam said. “He’d bought all of them, except for the two we’d already sold. He fed them all into the bonfire. I should have stopped him, I know, but I was frozen. I thought, if I lunge at him, he’ll just throw me in the fire, too.” Tears streamed down her face, and she swiped at them.
“So I sobbed, and I begged him to stop. And he laughed, and they kept burning.”