The Wake

Juniper first met Shiloh Coyle at a funeral. It was poetic then that they saw each other for the first time in twelve years at a wake. The first was Juniper’s pa’s, and this time, it was her little sister Hazel’s.

The family’s general store, Furman Supply, sat at the front of the two-story building where they lived, separated by a door which was now open so that the folks could come to pay their respects. With less than one hundred souls, Orchard Hill was hardly a town, but they were a midsized town in this part of the Federation. Everyone knew the Furman girls: Juniper was their lioness, and Hazel was their jewel.

Once upon a time, Coyle had been the third point on their triangle. It had been so long now that Juniper wasn’t sure it was him. The last time they had spoken, he was a knobby-kneed eighteen-year-old who wore his shiners like badges of honor, while she was newly sixteen, too young to recognize her attachment to him as anything but friendship. Coyle, however, knew Juniper before she turned around. Her bright golden hair hadn’t changed, though now she wore it in a bun with a braid around it rather than in messy bunches. For him the sight of her loosened a tightness in his chest that had been there from the time he’d stowed away on the train out West. He had a small factory of rare ore and dined with the West End’s governor multiple times. Still, he didn’t remember ever feeling this cocktail of adrenaline and nerves. Every few minutes he thought he heard Hazel’s voice across the room, sitting at the faded blue divan with knitting in her lap.

The small family sitting room opened to the back of the shop, and as townsfolk passed by, squeezing her shoulders or worse, hugging Juniper tightly, Juniper pinched her nails into her palms. She kept wanting to tell Hazel about all of this, how the icy wind gave Old Mr. Munro a combover or how the Innis girls had worn the shawls Hazel had knitted for them. But there was only Mama and Hazel’s husband Davy, whose red eyes were even more vacant than Mama’s.

And Shiloh Coyle. He was all dark eyes and wide shoulders, staring from his perch near the door to the shop. He looked like money—dark suit and slicked back hair. She longed to scuff up those city boy shoes and loosen his curls back to their natural frizz. She bet he even drove an automobile. He always wanted one ever since they first saw one drive through town.

How had he found the nerve to come back here, Juniper wanted to ask. For years after he left, folk had asked her for news of “that boy” when she had heard not a whit from him. They’d all loved Hazel, and in the early years of Coyle living with his uncle they had been so inseparable that he might as well have lived with them. The truth was she had no idea what he’d been doing all this time, and she had no desire to remedy that.

Two long tables had potluck food on it—casseroles and pies, breads, ham—that people left for the family after they’d made their way through the room. Some folks sat on the couches or in the extra chairs Davy had set out in the dining room, but they dwindled as the day progressed.

Coyle hardly spoke to anyone. After the tenth person asked, “Now who are you, sir?” he realized these folks didn’t know him from Adam. They still thought of him as the scamp who terrorized their chickens and scrapped with their kids. Even his old bully Chip Munro was married with his own towheaded brood; he’d just nodded at Coyle with a tip of the hat and passed right by. He didn’t know why he expected anything else. Maybe it was the letter in his suit pocket that taught him to hope.

Come back to me.

Those were her words, yet Juniper hadn’t looked his way for two hours, despite the fact that he knew how this prolonged exposure to small talk and hugs would grate on her.

When there was a lull in conversation, Coyle pushed his way toward Juniper and Davy.

“Good tidings,” he said.

That voice was odd to Juniper’s ears. Some part of its timbre still evoked the young man she’d wrestled and fought in the dirt street outside her family’s shop. In his accent, however, echoes of places beyond the Great River reminded Juniper that he was a stranger.

“And to you,” said Davy.

Coyle took no offense that Juniper remained taciturn. She did not follow the usual scripts of politeness. He’d once imagined that she was some faerie for all the attention she paid to things others ignored. She used to regale him and Hazel with such outlandish tales by the fireside on cold afternoons that he felt anything was possible around her. But here she was dressed like a prim Orchard Hill lady in a starched dress and pearls. The way grief had dimmed her light cut him deeply. He wanted to give his condolences, but she turned back to straighten some platters on the food table without catching his eye.

If Hazel were here, Juniper could have left by now. Her sister always knew the best things to say to people, while all Juniper knew was work. Years had passed since the worst of their debts had been paid off, but Juniper hadn’t played a note of her violin in years. Part of her fidgeted for it like a talisman that could change this reality to one where the world still made sense and her sister’s hand was wrapped around Davy’s like it used to be. Twenty-five was too young to die, they all said. But what about Juniper? Twenty-eight was too young to feel this blank.

When the townspeople had left and Mama had retreated upstairs, Coyle remained. Juniper ignored him, while Davy fidgeted with some of the extra chairs that belonged in the front part of the store and eyed Coyle and Juniper like a couple of restless colts.

Coyle nodded his head toward the door that separated the rooms, but Davy didn’t take the hint. He appeared to be waiting for Juniper’s permission above all.

Just then, Mama called downstairs; she needed Davy to help with her sweater or some such lie. They all knew she just wanted to force Juniper to speak to Coyle, and it wasn’t because of her fondness for him. It was just that this type of meddling was what Hazel would have done.

“Good to see ya,” Davy said, shaking Coyle’s hand. “Hazel…” There seemed to be something else he wanted to add but nothing came.

“I know,” Coyle replied without knowing if he really did or not. The day had not gone how he’d hoped.

Alone now, Juniper and Coyle gathered and stacked the covered dishes along with dirty cups where some had drunk tea. Apart from the sound of the clothes outside on the line, silence shrouded them, and it was almost companionable, until Coyle said, “I got your letter.” After a pause he added, “Mighta been too late for seeing Hazel, but I’m…glad you wrote.”

Juniper blinked. For a moment she forgot her intention to ignore Shiloh—Coyle, for he wasn’t hers anymore—and she faced him with her head cocked in that way about which he used to tease her. She looked like a golden cat when she did that, her blue eyes sharp and her face calculating.

He was across the room in one long stride, his tentative grasp on her hand the only reminder that this conversation was real.

“A letter?” she asked.

Coyle clutched her hand harder, ashamed that he’d forgotten her distaste for soft touch. Her hands were no longer calloused from violin strings, and she had a burn scar on her index finger. When had that happened, he wondered?

“A few months ago,” he said then. He didn’t give himself a beat to examine her stillness for what it was. “You told me Hazel was poorly, that she would die before winter’s end.”

Juniper continued to blink. Why would she write a man whose dreams of zapilotine ore mines and wealth out West were more important than her? She could see he’d made some riches. She hated to admit she’d imagined he’d have a wife and six perfect children, just like he’d joked about.

When Coyle finally took in how impassive she was, compared to what he’d read in those words—Come back to me—Coyle dropped his hands from hers. But the movement knocked over the tower of dirty serving trays. He had no space to process her confusion because there was porcelain everywhere and cheesy casserole all over their shoes. The echo of the clash gave way to Juniper’s disquieted hum.

Muscle memory kicked in for him, and he spoke in quiet tones, narrating to her what he was going to do. The broom sat by the back porch exit, so he grabbed it. “Nothing to worry about now…” he said, returning with the broom and a metal bucket they used for peeling vegetables out back. “Just let me clean us up.”

Juniper listened to Coyle’s tone more than his words, straining to remain in her body instead of wherever she went when the world was too much. It had been some months since she’d felt anything but empty, so the hum of anxiety almost felt like relief, a cold rain after the summer drought.

Suddenly, she remembered being in her sister’s room just a few months ago, remaking the bed after having a particularly bad day. Anxiety thrummed in her ears like a haze of wasps. Hazel’s illness left her bedridden most of the time, but she had gone to the sitting room with Davy so Juniper could clean her bedclothes. Their hushed argument hadn’t penetrated past the overstimulation back then, but Juniper recalled now that they’d been discussing a letter.

“You can’t do this to them,” Davy had said to Hazel.

“I know she needs this, so do you,” was Hazel’s reply. “She can’t see past the hurt, but when I’m gone, she needs somebody to take her side in things. She’s done so much to care for me and the shop. She doesn’t deserve to be alone.”

Back then it had been so clear to Juniper they were dealing with the estate for Mama’s sake. She’d done her best in the years after Pa’s death but Juniper and Hazel ran the store. But no…the she was Juniper. They had written to Shiloh without ever consulting her.

“Hazel,” she whispered, all her anguish trapped in two syllables. It was so like her to make plans for the world she was leaving behind. Juniper could hear her explanations now. You deserve joy, she would say.

Coyle had just finished tidying, and now he straightened back up so he loomed over her. His eyes studied her face. A tear escaped, and he brushed it with his thumb, leaving a spark in its wake.

“Hazel,” Juniper repeated. “She wrote you.”

Furrowing his brow, he sunk back on his heels. Of their own accord his hands pulled out the wrinkled envelope and offered it to Juniper. He thought she was playing some sneaky joke on him like she used to do. She’d often write him silly rhymes to chase away whatever the other boys had been saying to him after classes. So he knew her hand, her voice—she had to have sent this.

“Shiloh,” she read aloud, “You may not have heard, but Hazel is ill. Pneumonia, says Doc Torrance. She has till the new year at most, likely six weeks.” She flicked her eyes up at him, wondering what in this anodyne note had made him put so much stock in her pleasure to see him.

His eyes still roved her face. “Come back to me.”

She bit on the inside of her cheek before glancing back at the page. Yes, that is what the last line of the note said, and yes, that looked like her signature. What was the worst part was that it was exactly what she would have said to him in those months after he’d disappeared. But that lonely girl who had dreams of conservatory training in the city had a sister with compromised lungs and creditors knocking on the shop door to collect.

“That’s what I dreamed of you saying to me,” he said again, an urgent rush in his voice that thrilled and petrified her. “Every night for twelve years.”

She almost laughed at that deep ache in her now. She should let the past go. This reunion was Hazel’s last wish, and anyone would be grateful for such a chance as this. But her sister wasn’t here. Somehow Shiloh had returned to her, even though when Hazel never would. Juniper clung to that anger, even though her caustic laugh stung her just as much as it did Shiloh.

“Why?”

He was stunned by her laughter, but the way she didn’t understand what these words meant to him—no matter who wrote them—just made him furious, too. “What do you mean why?”

“Why’d you dream about me? You left me. You tossed me aside. After all we went through, you thought riding off West couldn’t wait?”

He held his fists tight against his thighs. “You were the one who said I wasn’t good for nothing!” He should be embarrassed how quickly his accent flooded back, but he didn’t have the space for that in the face of his blessed anger. It was far better than being ignored.

She flopped the letter down into the residual food mess at their feet. “Why’d you have to fight Chip Munro, huh? I told you I didn’t care what he thought of me.”

Coyle scoffed. He wagered anybody decent would have laid into a spoiled ham hock like Chip. That day, Coyle had finished work on the farm out near the Munro’s. Ever since Chip had laid eyes on Coyle, he’d been on a mission to destroy him.

“Hey, Cootie,” he called, “where’s the wifey? I never see one of ya without the other?”

Wifey was pretty tame, but that was not where Chip stopped.

“I guess since she don’t talk much she can’t cause harm. And her stupid brain’s not what we like her for, huh?”

Some smarter man would never have turned, and therefore, they wouldn’t have seen the rude gesture. But Coyle wasn’t smart. He was fast, though, and while he had two shiners from that fight, Chip had a broken nose and a busted ear drum.

“Before you tell me how you really meant I was good for things other’n fighting,” he said to Juniper now, “I’ll remind you I’m only one man. We can’t all let things just wash over us till we explode like you do.”

Juniper had no argument there. Her temper was quick when it erupted, but she had a long fuse. Anyone who was different in a small town might understand; in fact, for a while she knew Coyle to be the same way. But that summer he’d gotten into so many fights with anyone who spoke crossways about her that folk had begun to assume that the two were betrothed and that he was just settling accounts. That assumption was not something she could abide. All these years later she still felt like nothing could contain her rage at that narrative.

“I don’t think you’re useless,” she said. “What hurt so much was how all those people were talking about me like they knew me, and the person who should have known me best of all was out there acting like he was my knight! I ain’t anyone’s damsel You’re just so far into your own way of living that you can’t hear me when I’m telling you what I want.”

He gritted his jaw. “What you don’t want, more like,” he replied. “Tell me again how disgusting you find it that people thought we were sweethearts.”

If only they had been sweethearts, she thought. Shiloh was her best friend and a beautiful person, even before he had the big-city swagger and the fine wool coat. Somehow, he never understood that she didn’t know how to handle all that gossip without feeling like she was the world’s fool. Everyone always made these assumptions like there were guidelines she had followed to signal that she was going to marry Shiloh, when she hadn’t even realized how much she loved him until he was gone.

What did she have to lose anymore? She could tell him anything then, and this anger she felt right now had to be worth something right? She tried to speak, but nothing came out.

His challenge rang between them. From where he stood, he was across the country dreaming of her, making something of himself, while she hadn’t looked back on him with anything but resentment. She hadn’t written him; Hazel had! And now she didn’t want to have him come groveling to her, because, he began to understand, she had never felt a fraction for him of what he felt for her.

He wanted to tell her it was all still worth it, no matter what she thought of him. He couldn’t read her mind, but Juniper wished he could see how much she regretted never writing him. Her sister had seen that, even before she had, and for once, someone else reading her better than she did herself brought her a mighty comfort.

“Shiloh…”

He froze with his hand on the back doorknob. She hadn’t called him by his name—no one had—in so long he thought it was just the place that made him imagine it.

“Stay.”