Page 53 of Good Dirt

Ebby

S trange to think it, but it’s not half bad being around Avery. Despite everything. Now that they’ve been forced together like this. Sure, Ebby would prefer not to be in this situation, but still. Avery is a people pleaser. Positive. Polite. Curious. Ebby recognizes the type. Always on . Service-industry smile. You can’t really know the half of what she’s thinking. But it’s easy to be around her.

For one, Avery isn’t constantly dropping Henry’s name into the conversation. She could do so. Avery could stake her claim to Henry with a thousand little jabs. Go out of her way to remind Ebby that Henry’s moved on. In four hours, Avery has mentioned Henry only in relation to the fact that they’re due back at the hospital.

“I’ll drop you off and go do some work, then come back to get you after visiting hours,” Ebby tells Avery.

“Oh, that would be great, thank you.”

With any luck, Henry will be out of the hospital tomorrow. Maybe he’ll rest up for one more night at the cottage, and then Ebby can be rid of them both. In the meantime, she can handle Avery. In another life, she and Avery might have hung out together. Ebby has only two friends, really, who aren’t her cousins. There’s Hannah and there’s Ashleigh. And neither of them lives in Connecticut.

“So you’re actually working while you’re here?” Avery says.

“Yes, editing for clients and doing some writing of my own.”

“What are you writing?” Avery asks. “I mean, if you don’t mind me asking.”

Ebby pauses. How to explain, without saying too much?

“We used to have a family heirloom, a historic jar, but it broke.” Ebby feels a tug of sadness. “Still, we have all these stories about the jar and how it ended up with our family in Massachusetts. So I’ve been writing them down.” Ebby does not say how the jar broke. She wants to avoid mentioning her brother’s death.

This is the story of our family, Baz once told her. And their mom, who’d overheard him, said, That’s true, Baz, but not only. Because our history is everyone’s history. Our history is American history. Ebby hasn’t thought about that conversation in years. Back then, she was too young to truly understand what her mother was saying, but as it comes to her now, she thinks, Of course . Just as people were segregated in America, people’s stories have been segregated, too. But it’s all part of the same story, isn’t it?

“The jar was made by an enslaved craftsman down south,” she says. “But it was with my family in New England for more than a hundred and fifty years. It was part of our identity.”

“Like an old Bible with family dates and notes inside,” Avery says.

“Something like that.” Ebby nods, keeping her eyes on the road ahead. “Only not as precise. Either way, we know that our family wouldn’t exist without that jar.”

“So your brother knew these stories, too?” Avery asks.

Ebby is surprised by the directness of Avery’s question.

“He was older than you, right?”

“Yes,” Ebby says. “Baz was fifteen when he died.” She takes a deep breath and releases it quickly. It feels good to say his name out loud. Another surprise. “He was five years older. But anyway, my brother loved my dad’s jar stories. That’s what we called them, even though they weren’t so much about the jar as about people.”

Ebby will not talk to Avery about her brother’s death, though this may be what Avery is expecting to come next. Still, as she drives toward the hospital where Henry is staying, she decides there’s no harm in telling Avery about the jar.