She could still smell it, the kerosene and the ocean, like she was back there. There was a reason she’d done everything she could for ten years to forget that night. Noelle stroked Miriam’s hair until Miriam stopped shaking from the effort of telling this story for the first time.
“He thought he had left me with no options except to meekly join the family business,” Miriam continued when her voice was steady enough. She wanted to pull herself into a little ball, but she let Noelle hold her instead. She wasn’t sure she’d get to the end of this without that warmth. “When, shockingly, I was disinterested in working for him, he threatened to cut me off from any family funds. I took him up on it. He thought I had nowhere to go, but I had Cole’s couch.”
“Your dad underestimated your support network,” Noelle said.
“He doesn’t love anyone, so he never takes into account that people might help me because they love me,” Miriam said. “Cole let me stay, and never asked why or pried. It was the only thing that kept me alive. I owe him…everything, for that time.”
“He’s a good egg. Strange, but good.” Noelle’s voice was warm. Miriam loved that Noelle understood Cole. “And that’s when you stopped coming here?”
Miriam nodded, a bubble of grief rising in her throat. “I was barely making it through every day. I felt like I was being held together by worn-out tape. I thought if I came here, I would have to talk about it with Cass and Hannah, Levi would try to make me process it…I couldn’t face any of them. It doesn’t make sense, but it felt like, if I came to Carrigan’s, my whole house of cards would collapse.”
“We don’t always make logical sense when we’re responding to trauma,” Noelle observed wryly, and Miriam laughed a little wet laugh. “If he hated you painting high-end gallery art so much, doesn’t he hate your new work even more, especially with your real name attached? How did you get him to leave you alone and let you have a career?”
“I knew that I needed to make art, to live,” Miriam said, “but I couldn’t paint. I would sit in front of the canvas and cry. I needed to do something else. I spent a lot of time wandering in and out of antique shops in Charleston, making friends with the owners, trying to fill my days. Eventually, I started buying things, little tacky trinkets. They reminded me of Cass, you know?”
She gestured around them, at the room filled with small forgotten shiny things. “I would decoupage them, put them up on Pinterest. Cass loved them, and she kept buying them from me. When my dad found out, inevitably, because he hires a PI to keep track of me, he threatened to put me out of business. Cole suggested I threaten him back.”
“Did you threaten to cut off his balls and deep-fry them in a vat of hot oil in front of him? Because that’s kind of my response,” Noelle said, her whole body puffed up in anger.
It was so freeing to have someone else be righteously indignant on her behalf. She’d never given herself the space to feel that anger. Somehow, Noelle doing it let her move out of the flashback into a more neutral space.
Miriam chuckled. “No, I threatened the only thing he cares about. His name. There had been rumors for years that he was running high-end drugs through his car imports. Bored society wife kind of drugs, nothing he’d think of as ‘low-class.’ He’d built this reputation as a big Community Hero, appearing on telethons and donating giant checks to shelters for homeless children, that kind of thing. He wouldn’t be able to stand losing face. His ego won’t let him be exposed. He needs adulation.”
“Wow, so wealthy white dude playing with what he sees as ‘high-class’ drugs and being totally unconcerned about prison?” Noelle asked, sounding disgusted.
“Oh yeah, it’s some deeply fucked-up racist privilege in action,” Miriam affirmed.
“What the hell is he getting out of it that’s worth the risk?” Noelle asked. “Just getting to playact as the Big Cool Drug Boss?”
Miriam nodded. “Basically. I told him I had proof of what he was doing, and that if he ever came anywhere near my art or my career again, I would release the evidence. I can’t actually release the proof without someone finding out that Cole got it illegally, but it spooked him. He hasn’t come anywhere near me since. I assume, as I’ve built a platform, he’s gotten less willing to test me. If he tried anything, I would release his info to the Bloomers, and, like all fandoms, they have the capacity for vicious violence.”
“You know, if I were you,” Noelle said thoughtfully, “I think I’d yell at my mom a lot, every time I saw her.”
“I was trained not to yell from a pretty early age.” Miriam shrugged, and Noelle wrapped her up in a bear hug.
“So, now there are Mimi Roz paintings in the attic. Which I assume were stashed there, somehow, magically, by Cass,” Noelle said.
Miriam nodded into Noelle’s flannel, where her face was still buried.
“And you feel…elated? Terrified? Shell-shocked?” Noelle asked.
Miriam nodded again. “Yes. All of the above.”
“What are you going to do with them?”
“I don’t have the faintest clue, yet.” Miriam pulled away to look at Noelle’s face. “I haven’t even unwrapped them. I don’t know which ones they are. I just—I found them, I freaked out a little, then I ate cake and made a lot of art, and now we’re here.”
“I’ll support you, whatever you decide. We all will.”
“I know. But I need to focus on the tree lighting and getting the Rosensteins on board and the bank figured out. Make it to the other side of this crisis, and then I’ll deal with them. They’re not going anywhere.”
“My brave girl,” Noelle said quietly, and Miriam’s dam finally broke. She wept, and Noelle held her. They sat there, rocking together, surrounded by Cass’s smell and tulle and hypocritical twinkle lights, for a long time.
Chapter 17
Noelle
The night before Christmas Eve, they held an anniversary celebration for all the couples who had been married at Carrigan’s over the years. Miriam was helping Mrs. Matthews finish off the dinner rolls when Noelle walked by with a stack of wine bottles in her arms.