She stopped. “What?”
“We, as in you?”
Her nose scrunched. “You know, when a mom and dad are together, they should be able to stay together. It’s already hard enough. They don’t need some…some…I don’t know what she is…making it tougher.”
All righty then.
“Agreed,” I said quietly.
She moved onward. “And anyway, Will feels like he has to be nice to her and feel sorry for her, and he can barely stand to look at her.”
Apparently, their first date was Celeste acting as sounding board to a justifiably angry, hurting young man.
“That has to be confusing,” I noted.
“Uh…yeah.”
We were in the cookie aisle.
And the Bohannans liked mega-stuff, both chocolate and golden.
How did these people keep fit?
“Does your dad know all this? I mean, about the earlier affair.”
“Everyone knows.”
I reached for an actual ingredient we needed for dinner, remarking, “I have to admit, I think it’s odd that this is talked about in high school.”
“Will’s a really good hockey player. We like our hockey in Misted Pines. You know, like other people like football. People just pay attention to things around guys like that. And he’s not quiet about it, or he wasn’t before. And the town isn’t that big. So it just…gets around.”
“Hmm…”
She stopped abruptly, and her gaze skittered to me.
“I’m not being mean,” she declared.
“You’re allowed to have an opinion, Celeste,” I replied.
“Obviously, it’s awful, what happened to Alice.”
“We’re not talking about Alice. We’re talking about something else.”
“I don’t want you to think—”
“Listen,” I said firmly. “I want you to share anything you want with me, how you want, unadulterated.”
“Un-ah-what?”
“Unadulterated. Honest. Straight.” I flapped a hand between us. “This is a no judgment zone.”
“Cool,” she whispered.
I gave her a wink. “Cool.”
We pushed forward but didn’t get far, when a lady in a home-knit, chunky wool sweater and beat up Dickies pants stopped at us.
“Won’t take up too much time in your day,” she said, voice low and chin in her throat like she was about to “ho, ho, ho” like Santa Claus. “Just wanted to say it was real kind, you doin’ that for little Alice.”
“I actually didn’t end up doing anything,” I replied.
“That’s ’cause Dern is a horse’s ass. But you met him, so s’pose you know that by now.”
I didn’t reply.
She squinted at me and said, “Yep. You know.” She squinted at Celeste. “Heya, gurl.”
“Heya, Frances.”
And true to her word of not taking up time, she moseyed on, saying, “Later.”
“Later,” Celeste called.
It took an aisle or two before Celeste said, “It was, you know.”
“What?”
“Really kind of you to do that for Alice.”
I shot her a grin, wrapped my arm around her shoulders, gave her a squeeze, she did that sweet teenager thing where she scrunched her shoulders forward while I did, but she didn’t pull away.
I let her go and we finished shopping.
Twenty-Two
Jack-o’-Lanterns
“We’re doing what now?”
Jace.
“No offense. But this is stupid.”
Jesse.
“Men.”
Bohannan, in what could only be described as a leashed bark.
Both boys looked to their dad.
Jace then turned to me.
“Right yeah. Totally into this, Delphine,” he outright lied.
Translation: We saw you sitting in the loveseat on the pier under the moon with Dad, but even before, we knew what was happening and no way are we gonna cockblock. So we’re up to pretend we’re good with carving jack-o’-lanterns when we so totally are not.
“It’s not just carving pumpkins,” I told them. “It’s a ritual.”
Both boys stared at me, trying very hard to exude interest when they just wanted to stab some pumpkins a few times to make me happy, which would make their father not pissed at them, and their sister happy too, then go out to a bar, drink a few beers and maybe pick up a girl.
Bohannan watched me with Bohannan’s normal level of interest, that being he didn’t give much away, but he didn’t take his eyes off me.
Celeste was practically dancing because I’d told her this part already, and she was all excited to do “witchy” stuff because “witchy stuff is so cool right now…a few weekends ago I bought my first tarot deck and everything.”
“Okay, I do this every year in October, and when my girls were old enough, we did it together. Camille and Fenn would be over at my house doing it now, if Fenn wasn’t an ocean away, and I wasn’t two states from Camille.”
This spoke to Jason and Jesse, because doing something dorky and for children to appease their dad’s new girlfriend (maybe) was one thing.
Participating in a family tradition was another.
“The thing is…” I touched my pumpkin where it lay in front of me on newspapers that were spread over their dining room table (we all stood in front of our own pumpkins). “You carve off the top, like normal. But when you scoop out the seeds, you think…to yourself, you don’t have to share…about all the things you want in your life in the coming year. All the good things. Things you have you want to keep. Things you don’t have you want to find. It can be anything. It’s yours to decide.”
I picked up the knife I was going to use.
And I carried on.
“Then, when you start carving, you think of all the things this year that you weren’t a big fan of. Things you want to cut out of your life. Things that happened or things you felt or things about yourself you want to change. Each piece of pumpkin flesh carved out represents those things.”
When I took a moment to assess their interest, I saw even Bohannan was now paying a lot closer attention.
“Then,” I continued, “we clean up the seeds, spread them on a tray, salt them, roast them and consume all the good things we want for ourselves for the next year. While the seeds are roasting, we take the pieces to the yard, dig a hole and put the bad things in the ground. Bury them. We do this to literally bury them, but we also do it to turn them positive. Change them. Because that happens when you return something of the earth to the earth. It nourishes it.”
I looked among them.
“Does that make sense?” I asked. “Are you okay to do that?”
“I’m in,” Jason said gamely.
Jess looked down at his pumpkin, and it was quiet when he said, “I’m in too.”
“Totes!” Celeste chirped.
Bohannan’s answer was picking up his knife.
I grinned to myself.
We stabbed and cut and carved and scooped. There were times of quiet. There were more times of conversation and ribbing. Jess had some chops with carving. Jace’s attempt was terrifying. Bohannan’s pumpkin looked exactly like a winking emoji…with eyebrows. Celeste’s had bow lips and eyelashes carved into the flesh. Mine was traditional with three teeth.