the dogs come running, saying, "wait, we swear we'll love you more"
Sooner or later,
we all discover that the
most important moments in life
are not the advertised ones,
not the birthdays, the graduations,
the weddings, the great goals achieved.
one. when you have gone to the earth i will let my hair grow long for your sake, i will wander through the wilderness in the skin of a lion
Her father is tall and golden and always, always laughing. His grin sneaks into dark corners and make them flare into light, and out of everyone, he understands her. Sue snaps at her to stop being such a diva, but Daddy - he understands. He gets it. He lets her drink coffee when she’s just thirteen years old and he helps her with Geography homework and when Sue makes a fuss over Leah getting twigs and leaves in her hair and grass stains on her jeans (climbing trees and wrestling with boys), Daddy laughs it off until the angry, tense line of Sue’s shoulders relax to the point where she can laugh, too. Leah and Daddy eat Rocky Road ice cream out of the same bowl, and she always halves her Graham crackers with him - until Seth comes along. Eugh. Seth. Seth always remains more of a Mama’s boy, though, thank goodness.
The kings in the storybooks she reads look just as noble as her father, but they don’t have his smile, all dancing and mischievous. When she’s seven she says that she wants to be the prince in the stories, so that she gets to slay dragons and ride a horse and everything, and for her next birthday he brings out a wooden sword, the blade shining with silver paint, along with a matching shield. She has to swear a solemn vow that she won’t use it on Seth and spends the next three days happily whacking at trees.
Daddy’s like Leah, all fire and restlessness, bright and sparking. They move together like father-daughter flame and she never thinks of what would happen to her if he died, the way that you don’t think of what would happen to the Earth if the sun ever went out.
(Just darkness, and darkness, and darkness.
The whole world turning to snow.)
She doesn’t even get to go to his funeral. She’s too busy running through the woods, going mad inside of a monster that she knows to be herself.
The rest of her life takes on the shape of atonement.
Sue remains strong through it all, through her husband’s heart attack and her children’s transformations. She is clear-eyed and up right, her voice IS calm, she makes all the proper arrangements, her black clothes are practical and in good taste.
She doesn’t throw tantrums and she remembers to bathe and she doesn’t scream and snarl when anyone tries to touch her. In short, she isn’t Leah.
For all that Daddy’s the one in the ground, Leah thinks of Sue as the cold one. Automaton, going through these clockwork motions. There’s something horrifying about being a nurse, about having a job so closely entwined with death.
Did you even love him at all? Leah screams at her mother.
Her mother’s mouth goes into a thin, hard line, and her eyes are black glass, and Leah thinks she knows the answer to that one.
It sends her howling into the woods once more.
two. i beat and pound for the dead
They are on the verge of an epic battle between wolf and leech and Bella Swan still gets a graduation party.
Leah is graduating that year, too, but it doesn’t matter.
“It doesn’t matter,” Leah says, sulkily, to her mother, and Sue just gives her this look like Heaven grant me patience, which she manages to do even with a mouthful of pins.
Sue says, “Stop fidgeting or I’ll accidentally stab you.”
“No one’s even going to see this dress underneath my grad gown, anyway.”
“It’s how you feel that counts, not what the rest of the world sees.” Sue smoothes down the skirt. Red, Leah’s favourite colour, a pretty thing, this dress. It’s been a long time since Sue’s broken out the sewing machine, but her mind and hands and feet still remember what to do. “There. Now let’s try to get you out of this without dislodging all these pins.”
~
Leah is digging through the attic closet which she knows Daddy always stuffed old junk in, despite Sue nagging at him to clean it up. She’s bored, hoping to find something that Sue forgot to throw away, something from Daddy’s own graduation. A tassel, maybe, or a Happy Graduation card. Or a yearbook or ribbons or something. Anything to make it feel like he’s here to see his little girl graduate, like he didn’t just abandon her, like she didn't kill him, like she doesn't have his blood on her hands or her muzzle or her heart.
She finds the letters, instead.
~
She finds Sue with her grad dress in her hands. “Oh good, Leah,” Sue says, “I just finished fixing it up, how about you try it on and - ”
Leah just shoves the handful of letters at her, tied with a pale blue ribbon. “You knew? You knew?”
It’s the irony that’s the most terrible thing. The question of Embry Call’s paternity, solved.
Daddy. My Daddy.
“Oh Leah,” Sue says, in that low, low voice.
Leah feels the sobs start somewhere deep in her belly and rise all the way to her chest. Frailty, thy name is woman, and of course it was written by a man. Of course. Of course.
“Why did you even take him back?” she chokes out.
And Sue looks at her, with this infinitely weary look, and Leah realises with a shock that they have the exact same eyes.
Leah thinks, then, of what Sam was to her, and of what Daddy was to Sue, and it’s like Ah. I see the light.
We are more alike than we ever knew.
And Sue says, “Wouldn’t you?”
three. though this be the last pain that he makes me suffer, and these the last verses that i write for him
It’s just the two of them, Emily and Leah, sitting in Emily’s living room and drinking - Leah makes a face - tea. Eleven o’clock in the morning, the sunlight around them is like a living thing. Leah watches out of the corner of her eyes as Emily condenses her essences so that she is the very act of brewing, serving, and drinking tea. Emily’s humming and her chores and the way she dances whenever doing the smallest things has always been a thin disguise for her restlessness, her nervousness. She finds things to do and to say because without them her fingers twitch uselessly and she shies like a deer.
So many years, and she can still read her second cousin, her sister-of-the-heart, her... Emily, so well.
Emily chatters on about the Pack and having to go grocery shopping for the second time that week since Seth found the stash of cakes that she’d been baking for three days and ate them all in one, and Leah just gets sick of the whole song and dance and says, finally, sounding more irritated than she actually is, “Fine, I’ll be your bridesmaid. Gods.”
Emily freezes.
And Leah has to add, “… Just stop asking me.” Not with words of course, but with eyes and gestures and her body leaning towards Leah, and all other unsaid things.
Leah takes a swig of her tea - something and lemongrass, who the hell drinks grass? Don’t Natives have a bad enough reputation for smoking all sorts of weird stuff as it is? - and looks up to see Emily, trembling like a leaf, staring at her with eyes made huge by unshed tears.
“Oh for gods’ sake - ” Leah starts, but she never gets to finish, because Emily is hugging her and crying so, so hard, crying as if the end of the world was coming but has been averted by the slightest act of grace.
“You’re getting my shirt wet,” Leah says, with a sigh, but she doesn’t pry Emily off her. She takes the opportunity to set down the tea, though - at least now she doesn’t have to pretend to like it. Tea is probably the last thing on Emily’s mind.
It was her favourite shirt, too. Geez.
But when she gets home, there’s spaghetti - Leah’s favourite dish - steaming underneath its tin foil cover on the kitchen table, a small dish of hot peppers on the side, just the way Leah likes it.
Sue is just sitting at the kitchen table, not even eating, but reading the paper. Her eyes never leave the World Affairs page as she says, “You did a good thing.”
Leah would ask her how she knows about the events of that morning, but she is stopped by the fact that (1) Nothing remains a secret in La Push for more than five minutes and (2) Sue has serious Super Secret Mama Skills.
Instead, Leah digs into the spaghetti. And she doesn’t even make the feeble joke about sending Emily her next dry cleaning bill.
~
The wedding is beautiful. Long, and irritating, with too much talking, and the costume changes are annoying as well, and Jared busts out the guitar which just gets on everyone’s nerves, and she never wants to witness another event where alcohol and karaoke are mixed, ever again, but still, beautiful.
She ignores the sideways looks and the whispers; she coolly looks into the face of anyone who gets caught staring at her, until they flush and scuttle away. She doesn’t drink more than a glass of red wine and she doesn’t fake a hideous coughing fit during the vows and she doesn’t throw herself at any of Sam’s relatives who are eligible, at least moderately good looking, and somewhere in her age range. And most of all, she doesn’t think about how all of this might have been hers.
… For one thing, she would have never allowed Alan Tillery, the newest member of the Pack, to get drunk. Or steal a microphone. Or do a duet with Jared on guitar. Actually, she probably would never have invited him.
It’s not hard to see why, though. Embry Call has a new girlfriend, some little slip of a girl that Seth mentioned once, the older sister of those two puppies, Collin and Brady. Embry and the girl haven’t even looked at anyone else but each other all night, by Leah’s estimation, and Alan hasn’t looked at anyone else but them. Leah allows herself to be amused by their stupid antics, because laughing is infinitely more preferable to crying.
She finds the girl alone, at some point, after it starts to rain. Such a little thing, such big eyes, her thin body almost lost in the folds of Embry’s jacket.
“Nice night for a wedding,” Leah says wryly, and the girl jumps like a startled rabbit.
Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf?
And then Leah wonders, abruptly, what Embry has told this girl about her.
Nothing worse than the truth, Leah thinks bitterly. Because the truth is the worst of all.
Her father had taught her that.
“Listen, kid,” she starts to say. A whole number of witty and helpful one-liners are tangling in her mind. If it’s not imprinting, it’s doomed. Get out while you can. You seem like a nice girl, nothing remotely like a masochist. He’ll love you and leave you and you’ll know exactly why, and knowing won’t help things at all. You will regret everything. It’s not worth it. It’s not worth it. It’s not worth it.
Then Embry materialises in front of the girl, holding two bowls of punch and not even pretending to look anything but threatening towards Leah and protective towards the girl.
Leah reels at the sudden reflection of herself, at suddenly understanding what she looks like to him : pure poison, ready to pollute the minds of the young with her acid and her own petty grievances. Always ready to lash out at the world.
The small girl places a hand at the crook of Embry’s elbow, and maybe she’s braver than Leah ever thought, to touch a hulking 6”4 teenage male who is almost vibrating with growls and who can transform into a monster at any time.
Embry gives the girl a look like, Are you sure about this? And the girl nods, and Embry relaxes, just a fraction, although he stays on guard.
Her hand stays on his arm.
And Leah has the sudden, blinding realisation, one of those epiphany things you always hear preachers talking about : This girl is nothing like Leah.
It’s that, combined with the thought of what she owes Embry, that makes Leah say, “Maybe it will be worth it, after all.”
~
She finds Mom sitting on the steps of the Uley house, a half-full goblet of white wine resting at her feet. Leah sinks down on the step just below her, and she finds herself doing something that she hasn’t done since she was six : she places her head on her mother’s lap.
Mom’s hands run through her hair, absent, soothing, steady and rhythmic as the tide.
“You did a good thing, Leah,” Mom says.
“Yeah,” Leah finds herself saying. “Yeah.”
end.
The real milestones are less prepossessing.
They come to the door of memory
unannounced, stray dogs that amble in,
sniff around a bit and simply never leave.
Our lives are measured by these.