Milly And Asa Quotes

“After Twiss went out the barn, Milly went up to their bedroom with the brown paper bag. She looked out the window before she turned it upside down and the bars of lavender soap shaped like seashells and the card shaped like a rectangle came tumbling out. Asa's name graced the front of the card. A note graced the back.

'I know why you did it, Milly. Bella swings a golf club just like him.'

Milly sat a long time on her old twin mattress, staring at the fleur-de-lis carved into the headboard, at the life that didn't belong to her and the life that did, before she placed the soaps beneath the velvet tray in her jewelry box and closed it. She never washed her hands with a single one of the seashell-shaped soaps, although from time to time, when Twiss had gone for a walk or to the barn, she'd open her jewelry box and examine her only secret.
'La joie de vivre.' The scent of lavender. Forgiveness. Age-old love.”
― Rebecca Rasmussen, The Bird Sisters

“As much as Milly loved seeing Asa on that tractor, a part of her dreaded the days he came to mow, not only because her father made her go out to him with cookies and lemonade and watched her closely the entire time, but also because on those nights, Bett and Twiss would trick her into talking about Asa, and Milly would fall for their tricks. Milly understood Twiss's reasons for teasing her- Twiss didn't want to lose her- but she never understood Bett's.
Bett would start innocently enough. "I heard Milly was talking to someone in the meadow the other day. I heard she baked him a red velvet cake shaped like a heart."
"I heard she did more than that," Twiss would say.
"With Mr. Peterson."
"She likes them old, yep, she does."
"Wrinkly," Bett would say.
"Hairy."
"Pruney!"
When Milly could no longer stand the teasing, she'd pull her blanket over her head and say, "It wasn't Mr. Peterson I was talking to, it was Asa! And it wasn't red velvet cake, it was butter cookies! They weren't shaped like hearts, either!"
And then the laughter would come, and Milly would know she'd been fooled into giving up another part of herself that she preferred to keep secret. The night she first told them about how much she admired Asa's work ethic (when she really just meant him), Bett and Twiss had made fun of her, and of Asa's slight stutter.
"M-M-May I eat one of your cookies?"
"Y-Y-Yes, you may."
"M-M-May I love you like coconut flakes?"
"L-L-Love me like coconut flakes, you may."
They laughed when they said the word "love," but that was the word Milly had begun to think about- the possibility of it- whenever she was with Asa and, even more often, when she was without him. The word was with her when she pinned clothes to the line, or scrubbed the linoleum, or baked a pie. Sometimes, when no one was looking, she'd trace an A into a well of flour or hold a mop as though she were holding Asa's hand.”
― Rebecca Rasmussen, The Bird Sisters