An Archive of Happiness About the author

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It was mid- afternoon on a Thursday, the summer solstice, and the branch of the granny pine at the edge of Grace’s garden had been precarious for months and creaked a bit in the increasing wind. Beneath the tree, April and her dad, Sonny, were slapping the yearly coat of paint onto the fence. It wasn’t going well. The paint was old and lumpy despite Sonny’s attempted vigorous stirring. He swore under his breath, cursing his sister- in- law.

“Buying a new tin of paint wouldn’t have killed her.”

April noted his frustration when something wasn’t done as he’d do it, which would be just as half- arsed, but in a different way: he’d have bought new paint but he’d have forgotten to clean the brushes before putting them away the year before. Little flares of dread at the coming days rose in her. Nothing specific but something; just tiny accumulated disagreements and resentments they’d all have to navigate.

“The paint is perfectly fine. Put more of your back into it and the lumps will go.”

“You spent too long living with her.”

April had lived with her Aunt Grace for a number of years when she’d dropped out of university, and she didn’t know where she’d be if she hadn’t. Since March she’d been living in a cottage that sat on the southeast side of the same hill as Grace’s house, which was to the northeast. Her dad, newly arrived this spring, got the cool, stable light of the north. Her twin sister, Nic, lived two hours away on the northwest coast and her brother, Ben, would be out to sea anywhere his work took him. Their mother was a broken satellite circling and they never knew when she might plummet unannounced back to Earth.

April thought of the individuals in her family as they moved through the world, each in their own place but connected in time, and sometimes when tempers or resentments or impatience flared she imagined them all meeting at the stone ruins of the abandoned crofts that sat on the top of the hill she, Grace and her dad shared. All six adults arriving, backs to each other like in a Western and someone would say, Ready. Aim. Fire. When she imagined this, she knew the guns held blanks or paint balls or those wee darts with cushioned tips. Although, as their history showed, they were not adverse to using their fists, they weren’t the kind of family to fire real guns at each other; not really, not even in this escapist flight of fancy – though sometimes, wouldn’t it be easier if.

Elizabeth Reeder is originally from Chicago and lives in Scotland. She is the author of two critically acclaimed novels, Ramshackle and Fremont. She teaches Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow. An Archive of Happiness is published by Penned in the Margins on 15 September, price £ 9.99