https://archiveofourown.org/works/59184913/chapters/150916465
My completed work Honey is on AO3. I did start to publish her but I’m old and I forgot but here it is 😂
Summary: After a few months in Jackson, Ellie has settled in. Joel, however, still feels on edge. But a new arrival in town, and Ellie’s instant connection to them, will force Joel to confront parts of himself he’d rather not think about.
You have lost everything when you arrive in Jackson. Will the town, and the community you find there, be enough to give you a reason to carry on, to stay?
Chapter One - Prologue
“we are continually overflowing toward those who preceded us, toward our origin, and toward those who seemingly come after us. ... It is our task to imprint this temporary, perishable earth into ourselves so deeply, so painfully and passionately, that its essence can rise again “invisibly,” inside us. We are the bees of the invisible. We wildly collect the honey of the visible, to store it in the great golden hive of the invisible.” Rainer Maria Rilke
———
“Would you get a move on!”
You could hear her saying it but your attention was caught by the sun glinting through the leaves of the tree outside your house. The oak that your great grandfather had planted there, according to family legend. Now it was a beautiful old fellow, always there when you stepped onto the porch, casting its shadow onto the front lawn.
Erin lent on the horn, snapping you out of your daydream. “Magpie!” she shouted, leaning down across the passenger seat to peer at you. “Come on! I’m gonna be late for work. Again.” Running down the steps and down the path to the car, you got into the passenger seat, worried that she was irritated, but she just started up the car and smiled at you.
“Maggie Magpie,” she laughed, as she checked the side mirror and pulled away from the kerb. “Always looking at something.” Erin had been calling you that for almost as long as you could remember. She hadn’t used your real name for years, firstly calling you Magpie and then settling into Maggie. People you met now thought that was your actual name and sometimes you didn’t correct them. You liked it and because she had given it to you, it was special.
The car pulled out into the street that morning, the houses still quiet, the sun still low in the sky. That morning. September 26th 2003.
———
Late 2023
“You have to keep quiet,” you whispered, trying to make her see that speaking out would only lead to trouble. But Erin was angry.
“That’s easy for you to say,” she snapped back at you, but seeing the hurt on your face, she sighed. “Christ I’m sorry, Magpie,” she said. She hadn’t used that version of your nickname for a long time, and it made you think of her as a teenager, as a young woman. It hurt. Hurt to think of her this way, of everything that the two of you had gone through.
You looked at her, thin, older than she had any right to look. If things had been fair on the two of you, you would have had careers by now. Families. You should have been living next door to each other and car sharing on the school run. Not here. Not this.
“I’m sorry,” she said again, and put her hand on your arm. “I just can’t stay here any more. Can’t live with these people any more.” And she was right, but the idea of leaving made you feel terrified too. What would they say? How would they take your departure?
Erin was standing by the open window of the room you shared, the autumn wind lifting her hair slightly. Suddenly you both heard footsteps and the sound of someone running away. Erin spun round and looked outside.
“That fucking brat,” she grimaced angrily, and you leant to look out seeing a child running away towards the meeting house. “Shit, he was listening. We have to go, Maggie,” she told you, “The sooner the better.” She slammed the window closed as if it could hold in the secret that you had been discussing. But it was too late. Her voice had been heard.
———
It was freezing the day you finally walked away, smoke on the horizon behind you, silence after the storm. You had gone to get your coat, your bag, your few belongings. Stood in the crowd with everyone else, but finally had turned your back on them, left that nightmare behind you. You had no food. You would find that on the way. Or you wouldn’t. Because what did it matter now?
You skirted the village, keeping to the bare tree line, and focused on putting one foot in front of another. The snow was new, only a couple of days old, as you walked the line between what was behind you, still burning, and what lay out there. And there in the snow were footprints, leading out into the forest. Someone had already made a path there, and you let the footprints decide your way. You had no idea of where you were going, but this seemed as good a start as any. Or as good an ending.
You followed the steps into the silence.
———
Read on at
https://archiveofourown.org/works/59184913/chapters/150916465