Little Monsters by Adrienne Brodeur

Author:Adrienne Brodeur
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster
Published: 2023-06-27T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

By the time Abby and the girls got in the Jeep, there was already a haphazard line of people, mostly women, filing down her brother’s driveway. She released the brake and the vehicle crept forward, inching past tourgoers already impressed by a stretch of landscape that Jenny had transitioned to native grasses, flowering shrubs, and ornamentals, each selected to support an ecosystem of local pollinators: hummingbirds, bees, and butterflies, every blossom surrounded by vibrating wings.

Then Abby saw them, the couple who’d visited her at the studio a few weeks back. Yes, it was them—the dark-haired one was carrying the baby, the blonde followed. They were wandering up the driveway, plucking honeysuckle from a bush and pulling stems through to extract drops of honey. The sight made Abby flash back to an early memory: Kenny placing drops of honeysuckle on her tongue. How old had she been? Four? Five? They used to pretend that the nectar gave them superpowers: hers was invisibility, his was strength. She remembered the feeling of wanting more, but the second she could taste the honey, it was gone.

Abby stopped the Jeep alongside the couple, who were too captivated by the blossoms to look up. She remembered that the baby’s name was Jonah, but the moms’ names eluded her. She rolled down the windows.

“Hey there,” Abby called out.

The dark-haired one looked up.

“Whoa, they’re pretty,” Frannie whispered from the back seat. “The one by the bush looks like a blonde Natalie Portman.”

“And look at the other one,” Tessa said, narrowing her eyes. “I know her from somewhere.”

Strange, that was exactly how Abby had felt when she’d first met Steph.

“Toni,” said the dark-haired one, tapping the blonde’s shoulder, “look who’s here. It’s Abby from the Arcadia.”

“Nice to see you again, Abby,” said Toni, standing up, butterflies waltzing behind her.

“What are you two doing here?” Abby asked. To her relief, their names came to her.

“We’re here for the garden tour,” Steph said. “You?”

“If you can believe it, this is my brother’s place. And these two,” Abby said, twisting toward the back seat, “are my nieces, Frannie and Tessa. Frannie, Tessa, this is Steph and Toni. They came to see my work at the studio a while back.”

The girls waved.

Steph bent down in front of the open back window, the baby strapped spread-eagle to her front, and took a long look at Frannie and Tessa. “It is so, so, so nice to meet you, girls,” she said. “This is Jonah.”

“Hi, Jonah,” Frannie said.

“He’s super cute,” said Tessa, reaching out to touch one of Jonah’s knitted fists, wriggling her pinkie into its center. “Look, he’s holding my finger!”

“He likes you,” Steph said. Finally, she broke eye contact with the girls and turned back to Abby. “Did you finish that painting? I haven’t been able to get it out of my head.”

“I did,” Abby said. She was about to thank her for asking when panic swept over her as she remembered confiding in them about her pregnancy. It hadn’t occurred to her she might see them again, let alone with her family.

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