Fiction Fix Seventeen

Firefly Night 4
drug problem. No differences of religion—
that had brought about Gail’s best friend’s
divorce: her husband turning Catholic overnight.
But there were Norwood’s flirtations,
his endless need for validation from every
waitress and receptionist who breathed. And
his way of withholding affection behind a
stone wall of silence when he disliked himself.
There was Gail’s ever-deepening resentment
and ever-hardening pride, each a leviathan,
scaly and terrifying in the depths beneath
the surface of their daily exchanges. Even
now, sitting next to Norwood but not touching
him, Gail has the ageless urge to hold his
hand. But she is bone-weary of making the
first move and exhausted from pretending
that his indifference can’t hurt her.
Norwood is quiet now, staring off into
the slowly-darkening trees across the river.
Connor is sullen as always, leaning back on
his hands, giving his sister one-word answers
when she speaks to him. Hallie, fifteen years
old, is so different—animated, always vocalizing
this dogged fascination with all things,
where Connor is withdrawn, somehow at
seventeen already too bitter to engage with
the world. She suspects he is not at ease with
himself, maybe never has been. This is something
Gail recognizes as having come from
Norwood, and it scares her.
As the sky darkens and a thrill of anticipation
trembles through the growing crowd,
Gail strains hard for her first sighting. When
Norwood suggested bringing the family here,
she was surprised. Now she’s struck by the
audacious thought that he might be doing
this for the same reason she agreed to come:
because the sight of these lights might rekindle
something in them. It seems possible to
Gail. She has never seen the synchronized
fireflies before but already has an idea of
what they might remind her and Norwood
of: the snowstorm they were caught in during
a road trip in their twenties—bright spinning
crystals caught in a violet sky above their
ice-dappled windshield. The stars above
Gregory Bald, where they camped in summer
among newly-bloomed rhododendron and
flame azalea, whose reds and pinks darkened
to velvety violet in the night. Or the day they
made love in the field behind Gail’s childhood
home, stirring up the silver skeins of