A/N - This chapter is short, but oh-so-sweet. I'll put up the Christmas chapter tomorrow - my gift to you :)
Anna saw Sophie through the window. They'd never met, but at a glance, she knew this was Frida's sister—her hair, the shape of her nose and her slightly crooked smile. She was tall, strikingly beautiful, and she was in Anna's favorite bookshop.
Anna eased the door open, anticipating the bell's ding. Nothing happened. Huh. Maybe this was her lucky day. She stepped in, letting the door go—and that was when the bell caught, announcing her arrival in the silent shop. Sophie looked over at her, without recognition, then went back to browsing crime novels.
"Ooh, this won a Ngaio Marsh prize," Sophie said. Anna hadn't seen Sophie's companion. Who was she talking to?
"Last year's winner was so depressing." Frida's voice answered, stopping Anna mid-step. Frida still read crime novels. Was it that or the lilt of her voice that seemed to land on Anna's chest, hot and scratchy.
"I love depressing books," Sophie said.
Anna couldn't help but smile.
"I'll see if I can find it for you."
Anna moved along to the big, fat, hardback non-fiction books. She flicked open Cabin Porn: Inspiration for your Quiet Place Somewhere and found a treehouse she could happily live in for the remainder of the summer. Staying with Mere and the boys was a mixed blessing, but now that Frida looked to become a regular visitor, a treehouse in the woods would be a brilliant escape from it all.
"There you are!" Hannah burst into the book store, Louis not two steps behind her. "We found you."
"Nothing like a little last-minute Christmas shopping." Sophie turned back to the psychological thriller in her hands.
"Oh, Anna's here too." Louis peered at what she was reading.
"What do you think?" Anna showed Louis the treehouse.
He laughed.
If Frida had reacted in any way to Anna's being there, Anna had missed it. Hannah had gone directly to Frida's side. Mere might be right about Hannah's interest there.
The cherry on top of Anna's summer.
Louis was turning the page to see the next of the cabin porn book, so Anna left him to it. A title at the end of the aisle caught her eye: My Mother and the Hungarians. As she reached for it, she saw Sophie just out of the corner of her eye. Then she saw the book in Sophie's hands. "That one will definitely keep you up nights."
Sophie looked up. "That's decided then. Anna? Meredith's sister Anna?"
Anna nodded and turned back to My Mother and the Hungarians.
"I think you used to know my sister."
Teaching high school had gifted Anna with infinite opportunities to work on her poker face, but she had failed as yet to kill all emotion. She moved her lips to answer, but words failed.
"I don't know if you'd have seen, on Facebook or somewhere—she got married last month."
"Oh," Anna said, out of breath, forcing a smile, head spinning, "that's great."
"She's been at St Andrews in Wellington for a while now, I guess. You probably haven't been in touch."
Of course Sophie was talking about Mona. If Frida was married, someone would have mentioned it by now. "Is St Andrews right in the city? Am I thinking of the right one?"
"Yeah, you know Mona, loves to be in the thick of it. Sean runs the AA meetings. They're a match made in heaven. Though I suppose I'm hardly one to laugh at her lack of interest in any kind of quiet or normal life."
Hannah joined them and saw what Anna was holding. "Reading short stories always seems like schoolwork to me."
"It's all Frida ever reads," Sophie said. "Commitment phobia."
"Oi!" Frida said from the other side of the shelf. "Now that I'm staying in one place for more than ten days, who knows? Perhaps I'm ready for something long-term."
"I have a theory," Sophie said.
"Go on." Hannah nibbled at the bait.
"Please don't." Frida waved the newest Witi Ihimaera at her sister. "For Adam?"
"My theory," Sophie said, turning to Hannah, "is that she's tired of having to work so hard for a lay."
Anna turned away from Frida's laughing face, terrified of meeting her eye. Was that what Frida's life had been? A long line of exciting hook-ups, one following the other like the fairy lights chasing each other around the storefront window.
"How is this about my reading habits?" The humor in Frida's voice didn't fail to make Anna smile.
Sophie shrugged. "It's nothing to be embarrassed about. In fact, I highly recommend commitment. You need a girlfriend—"
"Or a boyfriend," Frida said. "Ooh, Mona loves Annie Proulx." She turned Barkskins over to read the back.
"If your sister can't say so, who can?"
"Yeah, yeah. Here I am, ready to throw myself headlong into a mad-passionate car crash of a relationship. Someone vaguely cute just has to admire my photos, flick their hair, and I'm a goner. Gone-burger. Head over—ooh, pretty." She pulled an art book off the shelf and made a good show of being utterly enthralled.
"Well, don't blame me if it's a car crash," Sophie said. "That's not what I recommended."
"Someone kind and steady, then." Frida seemed to pointedly not catch Anna's eye, instead looking over the shelf at Sophie. "Someone who knows who they are and what they want, and doesn't change with the wind. There you go."
"Better." Sophie caught Anna's eye and smiled as if they were both in on a secret—but clearly, Sophie wasn't in on the secret at all. If Frida had told her, all those years ago, she hadn't said enough for Sophie to put the pieces together now.
"I saw this exhibition." Frida showed a page to Louis. "It was in the Auckland Museum, at the end of 2009. Right before I went overseas." Frida's voice did not falter and Anna had no real reason to assume her eye wandered toward her—but there was no way she wasn't thinking about the same thing, even if, unlike Anna, it caused her no pain. The end of 2009 was when they had broken up. Right before Frida went overseas.
And Anna hadn't gone with her—not to the exhibition, not anywhere. Every word from Frida's lips poked at that bruise.
Sophie sighed and turned back to the books. "Every year I swear I won't leave present-buying till the last minute—and when you have to ship stuff from Timbuktu, that's basically October."
"Is Timbuktu a real place?" Hannah said.
"You've been to Timbuktu?" Anna spoke at the same time.
"The postal system was actually not terrible. And the mosques are breathtaking. The mosaics, the gardens. I'd go back."
Hannah lay her head on Anna's shoulder. "I wanna travel. Do you wanna travel? Go traveling with me."
"Yeah, sure," said Anna, feeling the fraud. Given the opportunity to travel the world with Frida, she'd said no. But in all the years since, she could have traveled. Why hadn't she? Staying home, when Frida wanted to whisk her away—had that, on some baffling, subconscious level, paired travel indelibly with Frida? It would have seemed a betrayal to go without her? But that was ridiculous.
But maybe Anna was just... ridiculous.
Sophie snatched up a cookbook with sudden energy. "Either of you know what to do to a turkey to make it edible? I'm hopeless at Christmas. I don't own decorations or anything." She laughed at herself—it was charming, and for Anna a painfully familiar mannerism.
"Come to Upper Crust," Louis said. "We always open for lunch and Hannah goes nuts with the decorations. Dad does turkey and ham. Mom crispy-roasts every kind of vegetable you can imagine."
"Tempting." Sophie put the recipe book down again.
"He means it," Hannah assured her. "Charlie and Mere would be thrilled if you joined us—all of you." She gave Frida a flirtatious look.
"I'll have to check with Adam."
"If it means he doesn't have to cook a turkey," Frida said, "and, be honest, that was the only way there was gonna be a turkey."
"It's a date!" Hannah clapped. "Ooh, I want to show you the Christmas decorations in the Red Cross shop. They're really cool." This was directed at Anna, who was known to love second-hand stores.
Sophie turned to Frida. "Hey, it's your lucky day—there's a thrift store."
Eight years ago…
Anna had stood in a triangle of sunlight outside Miss Bliss, pretending to look at the window display but actually watching in the reflection for Frida. She hadn't seen her coming though; Frida had appeared at her side, startling her with a breathy, "Hey, you." She had orange paint on her chin and a bit of white in her hair.
"I thought you did photography." Anna pointed to her own chin, wishing she were brave enough to reach out and touch Frida's face.
"We do a bit of painting, too. Badly, in my case." Frida licked her thumb and smudged it. "It's supposed to make me a better photographer. Did I get it?"
Anna fought the urge to rub it off. Was Frida hoping for that? Anna's courage failed her. "There are mirrors inside." She pushed the door open.
Minutes later, paint-free, Frida held up a khaki green jacket. "What do you think? I'm going for investigative journalist meets… I dunno, military dictator."
"Sounds dangerous."
"Sounds like my big break." Frida pulled out a sleeveless pink top.
"Gorgeous," Anna said.
"I mean for you."
Behind the dressing-room curtain, Anna let the flimsy fabric fall against her skin. Her nerves were all on high-alert, and she hadn't even so much as touched Frida today. The top was not like anything Anna would have picked out for herself, but it was gorgeous. Would she have liked it so much if Frida hadn't chosen it for her? Impossible to say.
Frida was waiting when Anna pulled back the curtain. Her eyes went wide and her pursed lips made a sound like "woo."
"No?" Anna said.
"Are you kidding? Definite yes."
"Beautiful." The shop assistant joined them, breaking the moment.
Back in her own clothes, Anna returned to the store-front to see Frida holding a skirt up against her hips.
Anna stepped past, close to her. "Try it?"
Frida looked up and stopped just a breath away. "Try it?" Her eyes were wide.
Anna nodded, and Frida kissed her. Soft, so soft. Breathy and tentative. And then not so soft, not so tentative. They both had their hands full of clothes but stepped in together, as if moving to the beat of a song. It was better than any imagining.
Anna had kissed a guy once, on a dare, and a girl, more or less on a dare as well. An experiment really. This was a whole other kind of experiment. A true first. A real kiss.
Frida stopped to breathe, and smiled and blushed. Anna realized she should probably breathe too.
Then Frida remembered the skirt and dashed to the back, behind the curtain. Thank goodness Anna wasn't the only one who suddenly wanted to hide. What was that? Why was she so torn—desperate to be near Frida and, a moment later, ready to run a mile?
She paid for her new top and wished she could wear it right away—make Frida look at her that way again. She heard the curtain opening and had to turn and see.
Frida's legs were long, tanned, strong-looking. Shapely, someone might have said, a generation ago. The skirt was short, and there was a freckle on Frida's thigh just below the frayed hem.
"With the jacket?" Frida said. "A counter-balance to the whole military dictator thing."
Anna's mouth was too dry to speak, so she just nodded.
I'll put up the next chapter tomorrow, on Christmas Eve - it's the Christmas scenes. But if you're feeling impatient, you can grab the entire e-book on any e-book platform, for less than the price of a cup of coffee! books2read dot com /withinmyreach will send you to your ebook store of choice.