This is the last of the bi-weekly short stories of 2020! From August through December, I’ll be posting one short story a month. I’m grateful to have shared so much with you, these past few months. I leave you with the wrap-up to the Stan Clan’s annual summer camp, plus a new tradition!
Wednesday afternoon, the sun is as brilliant as ever and the humidity has passed. Fiona shades a hand over her eyes, mouth set, her other hand on her hip. She backs up another two steps, then one more. There, that should do it.
The planks of the pier are warm but not too hot. They ‘re uneven, but Fiona runs at a half crouch, as if she’s dodging bullets or punches. She reaches the edge and launches herself up, arms fanning through the air as if through water. She brings her knees up but keeps her toes pointed, hugging herself into a ball as she sails, her stomach floating upward as she drops.
The plunge is cold enough to force the air from her lungs and make her gasp, but she tightens her muscles against the impulse and reaches for the cold. It caresses her shoulders, licks the balls of her feet, and for a moment she is weightless, suspended, neither rising nor sinking.
When she breaks the surface again, inhaling sunlight and bright air, a chorus of cheers and chatter greet her. She turns about, laughing—and is surprised to find that she has won their little game.
“That was incredible!”
“You have to teach me how to do that.”
“Since you won, does that mean I get to shove Gator-face in the water?”
“I’m already in the water!”
“Okay, can I hold her under until she stops being such a—”
Fiona hugged Carolyn, still laughing, and high-fived Tristan. Tressa caught her eye, and Fiona’s smile brightened at the softness there. At the love. At the pride. And the relief.
There are more rounds of tag and marco-polo and there’s volleyball and then they are wrinkled and green and starving. Tressa tugs Fiona’s hand, lingering back by the pier while everyone headed to the deck.
“I want to tell them,” she said.
“Now?”
Tressa shrugged, lingering on her decision for a little while longer before suggesting,
“Today?”
Fiona nodded, squeezing Tressa’s hand and kissing her cheek. In the kitchen, Tristan and Carolyn are squabbling over burger patties. Tressa sneaks past them and steals the last hot dog, along with the rest of the chips. There are more, of course. There’s more of everything, but they’re too tired to fix another round of food.
That evening, they hike through the trail that leads to the vista. Tressa does her best not to swat at every mosquito that buzzes by, but they’re annoyingly loud—almost as bad as Carolyn’s cereal-eating. The sunset brings the humidity back, but the view is perfect.
The four of them sit close to the railing, legs dangling over the edge. The tree-tops almost look close enough to touch, or at least like she could stretch out her toes and nudge the branches. But it’s an optical illusion of sorts; the drop is at least fifty, a hundred feet.
“Fiona and I are getting married.”
Tressa surprises herself by saying it—and by the way she says it. It’s so easy, and a pang sneaks into the back of her throat. When was the last time she could say anything to her siblings with ease? Or had that just been Carolyn and Tristan’s thing, but never hers?
“No you’re not.”
Carolyn points out the lie, puncturing whatever pretend nostalgia Tressa had been feeling.
“Okay, fine.” She blew out a sigh, trying to keep her voice from biting. “Fiona and I are having a wedding. And we want you to be there.”
“When are you having it?” Tristan asked, grinning. “Where? How did you propose? I’m so happy for you! Wait—how can you have a wedding and not get married?”
“They’re already married.” Carolyn stomped away, digging for rocks and sticks to drop over the ledge. “They did it at the courthouse, or however you do it when you want to keep everything to yourself.”
“Is that what you’re going to do?” Fiona asked, tossing a pine cone at Carolyn.
“I’m never getting married.”
The first pine cone bounced off her shoulder, but the second one snagged in her ponytail. She glared, but Fiona pointed at Tristan.
“I doubt that, Bibi.”
“Why not just have your wedding on Friday?” Tristan suggested. “We’re all here, there’s plenty of food—”
“But I don’t have a dress and Fiona’s family isn’t here and what about—”
Carolyn hopped up from the ledge, hands on her hips, face pinched. Oh boy, here we go. Tressa grimaced, already dreading what her sister was going to say. Carolyn drew in a deep breath, bent over, and yelled directly in her face.
“YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE PERFECT OKAY? LET YOURSELF BE A TRAINWRECK SOMETIMES, IT’S MORE FUN THAT WAY!”
In the miles of forest below, chipmunks froze and birds scattered and rabbits hid and foxes raised their hackles. The silence lingers, a bubble of something rising in Tressa’s chest. When it bursts, uncontrollable laughter spills out of her and she sags back into Fiona. Fiona who gently squeezes her and laughs along.
Carolyn huffs and tosses her head, her hands still on her hips. Tristan looks uncertainly between them, concern coloring his face when the laughter turns into tears and Tressa buries her face in her hands. Then they all crowd around her, holding her, sitting with her. She wants to apologize but the sobs won’t let her and the hands on her shoulders and back and knee all squeeze, keeping her in place, not letting her run away.
It’s like they planned this. Except they didn’t have to plan to be there for her, they just were, and somehow that was both better and worse and maybe in the end it didn’t matter because they loved her. No matter what…they would love her.
The nearest town was an hour away, and anything in the way of a shopping center was double that. They piled into three different cars—and of course Carolyn had only had enough gas in her tank to make it to the cabin. So they redistributed themselves into two, and spent the day playing phone tag and racking up a credit card bill that Tressa decided she would worry about later.
Friday morning is full of messy make-up and uncooperative decorations and sizzling curling irons. The humidity is back and it’s angry and it takes everything Tressa has not to scream at Carolyn. But she ends up screaming anyway, except it’s because they’re throwing water balloons and their wedding dresses are soaked and wildflowers are everywhere and Fiona grabs her hand and before she knows it they’re jumping into the lake instead of over a broom.
The next 36 hours are such a flurry of presents and promises and packing that Tressa barely has a moment to process everything that happened. But then Tristan and Carolyn are taking advantage of one last night swim. Tressa and Fiona steal away to the deck, curling up on the sofa to watch as the moon rises and the fireflies float by.
“I have an idea,” Fiona murmurs into her ear.
“Oh no.”
“We should do the same thing with my family, but at Christmas.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know—have a spur-of-the-moment wedding.”
“It’s not really spur of the moment if we’re planning it now, are we?”
“I’m proud of you for this, you know. You did good.” Fiona tapped her knee. “You’re usually not great with surprises or being spontaneous.”
“Does this mean I get a gold star?”
“I’ll put one on your chart as soon as we get home. But seriously—it would be fun. You’re good at pretending to be engaged.”
“It’s easier since, you know, we’re already married.”
“But did it take any of the pressure off?” Fiona looks at her, face suddenly serious. “Think about it. You said you wanted to get married before the wedding so it would make all the planning and ceremonial stuff less stressful. Did it work?”
Obviously not well enough. Tressa sighs and sits up a little, thinking back to the conversation with Carolyn on the back porch. Thinking about how many times they fought over the same things, and how nothing ever changed. They were always at odds, al each other’s throats—and for what?
“What if I don’t know how to be different?” Tressa hates feeling like she’s teetering on the edge of self-pity, sliding into a puddle of her own pouting. “What if I always freak out, what if—”
“What if that’s okay?” Fiona gently interrupts.
“Is it?”
“You’re here and that’s what matters. I’m here, and that matters too.”
“But—is it enough?”
“Why can’t it be? Who says there has to be more?”
Tressa falls silent again. She knew there was stuff she couldn’t plan, but—wasn’t it still a good idea to be prepared for as much as she could?
“Okay. We’ll plan to have a haphazardly thrown together wedding over Christmas. But can we avoid jumping into a lake?”
“Come on, where’s your sense of adventure?”
“Nonexistent.”
“Oh!” Fiona pulls back, kneeling on the cushions as the idea comes to her. “Can we go ice skating?”
Tressa opens her mouth to object, but sputters into laughter instead. Why not? If the whole point was to get her to relax—which she’d had a lifetime of people advising her to do—then maybe this was good practice.
“I just want you to know that you’re the only person who could convince me to make an absolute fool out of myself.”
“You’d be a fool not to marry me.” Fiona winked. “And I’d be as much of a fool, for letting you talk yourself out of it.”
They fell quiet again, the wind stirring algae-scented air from the surface of the lake. Tressa leaned down and kissed the top of Fiona’s head. She’d thought she’d be able to bring up the news in some unobtrusive way, but nothing about her family was quiet. There would inevitably be squeals and shrieking and demands—when, how, tell us the whole story, do you have a date, where…
Maybe it was a good thing that it had happened this way. It had saved her a barrage of questions that she would have felt awkward and incapable of answering. She could already hear Carolyn sneering at her. How do you not know your own engagement story? Definitely better, this way.
“I am terribly in love with you,” Tressa murmured.
“You ought to be.” A sly grin slipped across Fiona’s face as she looked up. “And you should be proud of yourself. You kept the family tradition.”
“I—what? How?”
“Three’s the magic number, isn’t it? So now Tristan and Carolyn have to have three weddings, too.”
Tressa’s laughter was as abrupt as the idea was absurd. She couldn’t imagine Carolyn making it through one wedding of her own, let alone three. And although she was tempted to think of this new tradition—if that’s what it ended up being—as some sort of payback, it didn’t sit right.
Something in her softened, and she remembered Carolyn’s words from the day before. Would her sister let herself be a train wreck, when the time came?
“You can plan the third one.”
“Hm?”
“The third wedding,” Fi says. “You can plan it, however you want.”
“Maybe I won’t plan all of it,” Tressa says, half-smiling. “But I do like the thought of having lists of invites, RSVPs, table settings. Knowing who all I will get to share that day with—who all I’ll get to show you off to.”
“Oh, so this whole time, that’s what you were trying to figure out?”
Tressa kisses her wife instead of replying, marveling at the way one weekend can somehow unlock the doors she had never been able to open on her own. Everyone wakes later than usual on Sunday, but it doesn’t seem to helps anyone’s mood. Carolyn glares at her over breakfast, the sunlight bright in her eyes.
Tressa finds herself going through the rooms a third and then a fourth and a fifth time, not sure if she’s looking for anything or if she’s just looking at everything. She realizes, all at once, that she’s stalling. They all are. There’s the usual bickering as Carolyn finishes packing, thanks to the accusation of a stolen hairbrush.
Fiona saves the situation from escalating to screeching and scratching, and Tressa swears she enjoy being the referee. In the end, Tressa unpacks half her suitcase to prove that she did not, in fact, steal anything, all for Carolyn to find she’d already tossed the brush into a tote bag.
“If you weren’t so messy, you would be able to find your own stuff.”
“You’re being a bitch again. Stop being a bitch, please.”
“Well you won’t see me again until Thanksgiving, so that should be a comfort, right?”
She swats Carolyn’s shoulder on her way out to the car, two coolers loaded up with the last of the leftovers. Tressa decides not to say anything about possibly missing Christmas. Tristan had better be sure he’s there this year, or else—but then Fiona is squeezing her arm, and she finishes locking up the cabin and finally gets into the car.
V. H. King's Ink 
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