Before and Again by Barbara Delinsky

Author:Barbara Delinsky
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

14

Town Meeting was a Vermont institution. State law dictated that it be held on the first Tuesday in March, and while there was always business to discuss, it was as much a social event, giving people reason to slog through snow or mud to be with others of like mind. We Devonites were just defiant enough to have voted—overwhelmingly—to hold ours on the last Wednesday of the month, though it was also a practical move. We didn’t like having to slog through snow, and by the end of March, the mud was drying. Besides, some of our most treasured members were snowbirds. This gave them more time to return, which they always did. Town Meeting was a reaffirmation of who we were. It was about self-identity.

Self-identity was a huge issue for me right now. In the life I’d built here, I was a makeup artist, a sculptor, and a friend. But that life had been hacked, broken into by two men I hadn’t invited. Suddenly, I was a sister and a whatever-it-was to Edward. I didn’t know how these roles fit into my life here, all the more so after Monday’s lunch.

My emotions were the problem. I wanted to deny them; denial was my thing. When someone hacked into your life, you shut them out. So yes, I could tell Liam he had two days to find a place to live. But I couldn’t shake the sense of family, that I thought I had shut out, but apparently missed, because I did like seeing him in my home. And Edward? I could demand he steer clear—could tell him that he stirred up memories too painful to bear. But seeing him brought good memories, too.

Besides, I could say whatever I wanted, but would my dreams listen? No!

Once upon a time, I had been a good sleeper. Then I became a mother and started listening for every peep from the baby monitor and, when the monitor was retired, from the room down the hall. After Lily died, I kept listening, hearing sounds that my therapist likened to the imagined pain of a severed limb. So I slept in short spurts, which meant that when I dreamed, those dreams were fresh enough to linger when I woke.

They were coming in droves again, and they were killers. Lily was in some, Edward in others. At times, I woke up struggling to breathe, when my only remedy was hugging whatever ball of fur lay closest to me. At one point Monday night, I even sat on the floor by my bed, pulling air into my lungs with my ear pressed to Jonah’s sweet heart, and, fooling neither of us, studying the green velvet box under the bed. I didn’t pull it out. I knew what was inside. Pandora’s box? No. It held no evil, just all-too-real pieces of the past.

Yes, Town Meeting would remind me of who I was now.

But so would clay. I arrived at the pottery studio Tuesday morning in the mood to make another teapot.

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