Hazel flinched, startled by Eve’s voice. Hazel hadn’t realized Eve had been towering behind her in her transfixion with the baskets. And, in earnest, the whole garden. The whole shrine.
Hazel twirled her body and started to say, “I don’t know,” but paused when she observed a figure emerging from the end of the pergola. As it moved closer, the fuzzy outline of its silhouette hardened into the unambiguous contour of Silas’s broad, strong body.
There was suddenly a feeling that they were in a place they were not meant to be. Seeing things they were not meant to see. Hazel’s body tensed, and she could sense that the same was true for Eve.
“You girls really leave no rock unturned, huh?” His tenor was buoyant and breezy as he marched toward them with his typically clunky strides.
“Torrey and Ruby are just two gals I know. Well, more like used to know.” He winked, casually. But Hazel could detect restraint in his voice.
There was something fabricated about his vagueness. It gave the impression that he was deeply and intimately connected with these facets he pretended not to know. That Torrey and Ruby, whoever they were, once meant something to him. Probably still meant something to him. Something big and painful even.
Hazel and Eve remained still and quiet.
Silas sat down on the old bench and tapped on the seat, urging Hazel and Eve to join him. Both girls slowly broke free from their fixed positions to join Silas.
“What is this place?” Eve asked brashly, ignoring the thick tension that had enveloped the garden since Silas came, before her bottom even met the bench.
He pulled three cold cans of Coke from a small bag he was holding. They had little beads of cold around the outside. There was a crisp crack when he opened one and handed it over to Eve.
“Well, this place was a garden.” Silas opened a second can and pretended to take a sip before handing it to Hazel. He leaned back, crossed his legs and extended his arms along the back of the bench, one arm resting casually behind each girl’s back.
“But it appears it has been turned over to the woods now.” He smiled and took a big long gulp from his can. Hazel watched his throat ripple.
“Cool,” Eve said and returned to her drink. “I like that thing,” she continued, pointing at the pergola.
Hazel had her eyes on Silas, though. There was a quality of discomfort in his position. She detected a tension in his chest and shoulders. A disquiet in his legs that he crossed and recrossed as if to displace or dispel it. His long dark lashes were shining. The green in his eyes was dustier than usual.
After another brief moment of silence, Silas abruptly lunged forward.
“Well, that’s enough of this,” he said impatiently, interrupting nothing but quiet. “Let’s head on up to the house, yeah?”
Eve popped right up off the bench, sipping from her frosty Coke, and walked briskly back into the pergola.
Hazel lingered on the bench for a moment, as Silas turned around to follow. There were two big roses, one a vivid pink and one a deep ruby, sticking out of his back pocket. The flowers were crushed from Silas neglecting them as he’d sat there on the bench with Hazel and Eve, drinking soda.
27
The next day was hot and sunny again in Grandor, and Hazel found herself in the kitchen quietly swirling the last bits of her cereal in its milky lake and trying not to make eye contact with Silas and Eve as they did the same. She did not want to appear too desperate for attention. Eve poured herself a glass of water, making the sound of the ice clanking against the glass the only sound in the room.
Silas eventually looked up from his newspaper to greet the girls. He did it with a curious weight in his smile.
“Listen, gals, I’m sorry to do this but I just got word of a big job with a deadline pretty soon. I really hate to leave you to your own devices when there’s so much fun we could be having together today, but I’ve gotta take a day to get this stuff done.”
Hazel and Eve both looked up but didn’t respond.
Hazel had the impression that although she was absorbing the scene, there was an energy in the air, scattering around her, that she couldn’t identify. A shifting momentum. A cause for unease that she couldn’t quite grasp.
“You know how it goes. Get the materials. Get into the shop. Cut, saw, sand, hammer, you name it.”
She had never heard Silas talk like this. Hint at even the smallest particle of sentimentality. Or remorse. He always carried himself so confidently. As if at every moment he was doing precisely the thing he wanted to be doing. And that nothing could sway him otherwise. This wavering was unconvincing, sliding across his lips.
Neither Hazel nor Eve uttered a word, but Hazel found herself nodding.
“I knew you girls would understand,” Silas said.
But he grabbed his car keys and rubbed his palm against Eve’s head.
“You know I hate when you do that!” she said, not fully in good spirits, as she tried to duck out of the way.
“I know, but it’s our thing now,” he responded, unfazed by her annoyance. And then he winked and slipped out the door.
Hazel and Eve returned to the quiet. Eve scrolled through her phone and Hazel scanned the kitchen looking for things she could busy her hands with by cleaning. She was starting to really hate the quiet.
The sounds of home back in Verona always vexed her, too—the twins babbling nonsense, the murmurs of her mother and Cam scheming their next parenting move, the drone of the TV as she took care of the boys at her mother’s request. But this silence, it was worse.
With nothing else noticeably dirty in sight, Hazel rinsed a set of large bowls from last night’s dinner that were possibly already clean.
And then Eve’s luring voice broke the silence.
“Let’s go see if there are any hot dudes with boats.”
Hazel rolled her eyes. “I think we both know that’s not an option here.”
“Can’t you let a girl dream?” Eve responded, and flipped her hair over to one side of her head. “Plus, I need something new to post that doesn’t look like it’s part of this rickety old cabin.”
Hazel wasn’t convinced.
“Come on. I’ll get one of you laughing or looking cool by the lake. People have been asking me for sister pics.”
Hazel couldn’t help it but she swelled with excitement at the idea of appearing on Eve’s feed. It wasn’t even about how many followers she had. It was more about memorializing their connection. Documenting their togetherness. Showing the world that they were a part of each other. It was curious, even to Hazel, that she could spend all these days with Eve and still feel a gaping hole in their relationship without being pictured in her digital world. Hazel thought back to the moments she’d first come across Eve, clicking through her Wassup? profile. She had learned so much about her that way. And surely others were looking for a glimpse into the life and thoughts of Eve Warrington. Hazel felt another rush course through her veins at the idea that she could be a part of that story.