Free The Worst Thing I've Done by Ursula Hegi

brought those two together in rich, deep whites. But you didn’t like it enough, never exhibited it.
    You don’t honor your art the way I do, Annie, won’t allow me to call it art. Whenever I say your art should be in museums, you tell me it doesn’t work like that.
    White on White . I hold it up to the window. Outside, the air is gray, the way it gets moments before a storm when you think it can’t be evening yet though it’s dark. Drive carefully, Annie.
    In the sauna last night, that peculiar smell of wood—swollen and contracted a thousands times—rose from the slats.
    â€œDoing it now,” I said, wanting to cancel that urgency, to cancel all of this, “is the only way you can convince me it doesn’t matter.”
    â€œYou’re hassling us, Mason.” You, again, Annie, growling at me.
    More steam, as I added water, and when I lay down again, the hot slats dug into me, measuring me, defining me. “Nothing will change,” I told both of you. “Because of the trust we have among us.”
    â€œYou’e done some miserable things,” you said, “but this is the worst. At least lock the door.”
    I got up. At the door, I suddenly wished I could escape. And I thought: Why not? Tried to figure out what to say to undo al this, maybe pretend it was some joke all along—not this wretched jealousy that stalked me, tackled and leveled me, again and again. You think it’s easy, lugging that with me, Annie?
    â€œJake?” You leaned toward him. “Jake?”
    When he—

Three
    Mason
{ Pond House }
    T HE MORNING AFTER all the anniversaries, rain smudged the browser bushes and phragmites outside Aunt Stormy’s windows. Mason felt lazy, content, as he lay on the old velvet couch, his head on Annie’s knees, his feet on the stack of books Aunt Stormy usually kept on the couch.
    â€œLittle turtles are the most intelligent ones. See?” Aunt Stormy turned a page of National Geographic.
    Opal’s hands padded the magazine as Aunt Stormy made up stories for her.
    â€œEspecially turtles with red on top like you.”
    Mason felt Annie’s fingers in his hair. “Don’t you stop.”
    â€œWhat is it worth to you?”
    â€œMy life,” he said without thinking but meaning it, knowing it to be true.
    â€œIs that so?” Her face above him, open, wide. Her smile mischievous. But her eyes sad. Not matching her smile. Not back— yet? —to the light from before her parents’ death.
    Yesterday, on their anniversary, she’d woken up crying, hard, and last night she’d cried for her parents again in his arms, quietly, because they were in Aunt Stormy’s guest room with Opal sleeping nearby in the crib. He’d held Annie like he had all those other nights she cried; but all at once he’d felt furious at her parents. For dying on his wedding day. For squeezing the light from Annie. For making their anniversary a day of mourning—now and to come.
    It’s my day too. He’d loved her parents, especially her mom, who’d looked at him with such joy from the time he was a kid and knocked at her door. If only they’d died a week later, say, or even a month, he and Annie could have their day of celebration. And later their day of mourning. Instead of having their joy sucked up by grief. Is it selfish, wanting joy and grief separate?
    No. It’s Opal’s day too. Her birthday.

    â€œY OU’RE VERY strong, Opal,” Aunt Stormy said.
    â€œWhat did she do?” Mason asked.
    â€œShe untied my shoelaces by pulling at the ends. And she pulled my foot into the air.”
    â€œYou are strong, Stardust,” he told Opal.
    By the windows, she was nestled against Aunt Stormy atop a mound of rugs and blankets from Your Personal Taste, Aunt Stormy’s second business. It had nothing to do with cooking or eating but was a service for summer people whose tastes were