Wild Swans - Jessica Spotswood Page 0,5

voice, and this big, dorky grin spreads over his face.

I nod, because what am I supposed to say? That sometimes I feel like I’m growing up in a museum, a shrine to our family’s history of mental illness? That Dorothea’s poetry was beautiful, but she destroyed two families because she flaunted her affair all over town? She was shot and killed, her lover was paralyzed from the waist down, and his wife was sent to prison. Four children—Grandmother and the three Moudowney kids—grew up without mothers. I find it hard to feel reverent about someone responsible for that.

Obviously Connor feels differently. So does Granddad.

“Did you grow up here?” Connor asks.

“Yep.” I hope he won’t ask about my parents.

Or maybe he already knows about my mother. Erica called Granddad at the office; maybe Connor’s the one who answered the phone. It’s strange to think he might have talked to her. I wonder if she sounds like I remember, if my memory of swaying around in her arms is real or just a story someone told me once.

Has she ever looked me up online? I searched for her last night. Couldn’t find much. No Facebook profile.

It would help if I knew her last name.

I wonder if my sisters are Milbourn girls. Grandmother kept the Milbourn name when she and Granddad got married, then passed it on to my mother, who—maybe on account of not knowing who my father was—gave it to me.

I glance up, realizing I’ve been quiet too long and Connor’s waiting for me to say something. Jesus, Ivy, get it together. “What about you? Where are you from?”

“DC.” He smells like coffee. I wonder if he was scribbling poems with his fountain pen in a coffee shop. “Near H Street,” he adds.

I shrug an apology. “I’m not real familiar with DC.”

But Erica and my sisters live there. For all I know, they could be Connor’s neighbors.

“It’s a cool neighborhood. Lot of gentrification over the last couple years though. Folks like my gram get pushed out to make way for hipsters.” He shakes his head. “Don’t get me started.”

I smile and smooth the red hem of my skirt. “Can I get you something to drink? Iced tea?”

His eyes land on my legs and I catch him looking. “Uh, no. No thanks.”

I can’t believe this guy is Granddad’s suck-up student. He’s six feet three at least, with ripped arms and broad shoulders that taper to a narrow waist. He looks like a goddamn quarterback. As he scrubs a hand over his head, the words tattooed on his right bicep snag my attention; they’re as familiar as breathing. “Is that from Dorothea’s ‘Second Kiss’?”

He grins, pushing up his sleeve so I can get a better glimpse of the poem that curves over his skin. “Yeah. It’s one of my favorites.” He flips his arm over, revealing lines from another poem spiraling like a snail across his forearm. “I’ve got Langston Hughes here. And Edna St. Vincent Millay here.” He taps his chest.

“I love Millay.” I wonder which poem it is, what it means to him. Why he chose to have it inscribed right over his heart.

Hell, now I’m picturing him without his shirt on, all muscles and poetry and—

I stare down at my bare feet, flushing.

“The Professor said you’re a poet too.” Connor shares it casually, but my head snaps up, my body tensing like a bowstring.

“What? No.” I bite my lip. “That’s not true.”

“Oh.” Connor squints at me. “Sorry, I must have misunderstood.”

But he didn’t. I know he didn’t, and I hate it when Granddad goes around talking me up, making it sound like I’m special when I’m not. “No. He probably did say that. He exaggerates. I write a little. Sometimes. It’s not really my thing.”

“Right.” Connor’s lips twitch. “So what is your thing?”

My shoulders hunch. “I don’t have one. Not everybody has a thing.”

Connor does though. It’s tattooed all over him.

I’m being kind of weird and prickly, but he plows ahead, unheeding. “Your family’s full of such incredible artists I guess I just assumed that—”

“You know what they say about assuming.” I’m trying to tease, but it comes out more of a rebuke. I shrug. “I’m not like the rest of my family. I’m ordinary.”

And now I sound pathetic. I fold my arms over my chest. Connor’s gaze dips down to my cleavage, and I fight against a blush when, a second later, his eyes meet mine.

“Nope,” he says. “I don’t believe that.”

Hold up. Is he flirting with me?

Jesus, his