The Favorite Daughter

by Patti Callahan Henry

  The vodka did its job on most nights, plummeting Colleen toward a deep, dreamless and amnesic sleep. But that vodka, it fell down on the job by the time dawn leaked through the small square window across the room. Then Colleen’s mouth felt like it was made of the black ash at the bottom of her dad’s grill. Her head felt like a bowling ball too heavy to lift and her throat was lined with broken, sharp oyster shells. She could have handled all of that, but the remembering did her in every time. She’d awaken, curse the obvious hangover and then pull at the threads of blurry memory in a continuous effort to understand why.

  Oh, yes, she’d think. I drank most of Maggie Marlow’s vodka because I’m in Connecticut to forget that my sister and fiancé are in love.

  Had they taken advantage of the wedding already in place and walked down the aisle together? Had they eaten her shrimp and grits, drunk her champagne? Said the vows she and Walter had practiced at the rehearsal? Gone on the honeymoon to the wine country of California?

  Colleen wanted to know, yet she didn’t want to know. She wanted to call Shane or her parents and ask. But above all—shimmering on top and below and around those questions—was an imperative need to forget.

  When two weeks had passed, Maggie urged Colleen to come out with her to the local watering hole. “You have to get out of my house,” she joked with a wink. “Actually, I have to get out of my house and you’re my excuse, so let’s go.”

  It was a pretty town, a northeastern version of Watersend, with Tudor style replacing coastal shingle-style homes. The streets’ gaslight lampposts and iron sidewalk benches were reminders of home. And it was a damn Irish pub that Maggie chose, obviously trying to be comforting, bringing Colleen somewhere that felt familiar. But how could Maggie have known that emotional triggers hid on every street corner and inside every lit window? When Colleen walked into the dimly lit bar she felt she were floating, untethered from her life, dizzy. This was a pub, but it wasn’t the Lark. She was Colleen, but she wasn’t engaged to Walter. This was a small town, but it wasn’t Watersend.

  Maggie met up with her crowd of friends and Colleen found herself alone at the bar impressing a guy with red hair in a blue suit, with a white hanky in the pocket, with her knowledge of whiskey. “It’s a single malt from one of the last family distilleries in Scotland. The name means ‘Valley of the Deer’ in Gaelic.”

  He was handsome in a buttoned-down way, as if he’d never put on worn jeans to go out on a johnboat or strained to hold a fishing pole against a struggling catch. His qualities might have come prepackaged in a fluorescent-lit man-factory.

  “Whiskey is a science with you, is it?” he asked as she downed her third.

  “An art,” she told him.

  “You can’t be from around here.”

  She fell into his smooth voice, his sense of humor and, hours later, his bed.

  That next morning she awoke with a hangover worse than she’d ever had, one that barreled through her with such force that she finally understood the truth: she could not drown the pain; it knew how to breathe underwater.

  So she’d learned to swim.

  Chapter Eleven

  You think you have a memory; but it has you!

  John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

  The fiddle player was tuning up in the back left corner of the Lark. Colleen went behind the bar, grabbed a bottle of Glenfiddich and a shot glass. Just one shot to soothe her nerves after meeting the adorable nieces, who were still bolting around the pub like Hallie and she had done as children. Hank gave her a clownish nod and a salute.

  The guy at the bar—the one she was sure was drowning his heartbreak—leaned across the counter. “Are all the customers allowed to serve themselves?”

  Colleen downed the shot. “I’m not really a customer.”

  “You’re a bartender who drinks on the job?” he asked, still smiling, and leaned back on his bar stool. His gaze turned into a squint. “Wait, I know you.”

  He was awfully jolly for a guy with a broken heart, and awfully sober for one drowning his sorrows. She’d summed him up incorrectly.

  “You do?” She leaned over the bar and poured him a shot from the same bottle. “On the house.”

  “Yes, you’re a Donohue.”

  A Donohue.

  No one had said that to her in so long, she felt an unexpected rush of warm family sweetness.

  He nodded, but slid the shot glass back toward her. “You can have it.”

  He wasn’t heartbroken. He was happy and go-lucky, a mischievous type. What was he doing in a pub in midafternoon?

  “How do you know that?” she asked.

  “Research.”

  “You’re researching the Donohues?” She wrinkled her forehead. Did she know him? “Why the hell are you doing that?”

  “Not the Donohues per se,” he said with a grin. “But the pub, the Lark. South Carolina is talking of making it a historic landmark.” He leaned forward, a sly smile on his face like he held a delicious secret. “Did you know this was the first structure built in Watersend? The home of the founder, Mack Turnbull? When he’d finished building his home on the river, he turned this into the town pub, what he’d always meant it to be.”

  Colleen laughed and slapped her hand on the bar. “Seriously? No. I had no idea.”

  “Yep. It was more important to him than the library or the town hall. He believed it would be the central hub of the town. And damn if he wasn’t right even all these years later. So I’ve been looking at old photos and records, and I recognized that smile of yours.”

  Colleen set her palms on the edge of the bar. “So what does it mean to be a historic landmark?”

  “It means a lot, actually. Historical preservation keeps us grounded in who we are as a town and as a state and even as a country. The past defines us. It matters. And we need to preserve it.”

  He was so earnest she almost laughed, but that would have been cruel. She also wanted to tell him that there wasn’t any problem with preserving the past around these parts—it was as natural as greeting everyone you passed. She also wanted to tell him that she had spent the last ten years trying to do exactly the opposite of preserving the past. But instead, she smiled at him. “But don’t you think some history should be let go? Knocked down. Destroyed?” she asked.

  He laughed, this guy who wouldn’t take her shot and who smiled at her like he already knew her. “But some things shouldn’t be destroyed. And if we can get a historical marker for your pub, it will always be preserved.”

  “What about when it’s better to turn something old into something new?”

  “Well, that’s part of what we decide.”

  They were having two different conversations, two separate rivers rushing parallel, and Colleen wondered if he realized that, if he knew she was talking about something other than the structure where they stood. “But save it if you must. It’s a good old building. No one is trying to take it down.”

  “Someone,” he said, “is always trying to take down old things. Trust me. Might not be now, but . . .”

  Colleen eyed him—was he serious or teasing her? She spied the scar on his left ear that extended in a silver hairline to the edge of his cheekbone and crinkled when his cheeks rose with his smile. The drink warmed her and allowed an easy smile before she glanced over to see Hallie approaching the bar, her two girls twirling in their skirts. “Here comes another Donohue,” she said to the man. “They’re everywhere.”

  He turned and watched Rosie reach the stool next to him and crawl onto it.

  Sadie stood behind Hallie and peeked out to tell Rosie, “You ask her.”

  “Aunt Lena,” Rosie said, placing her little elbows on the surface of the bar, settling her face into the cradle of her hands, “can you come for a sleepover tonight?”

  She and Hallie had done the exact same thing as children—Hallie pushing Colleen
forward to negotiate with their parents. You ask, she’d say. You ask.

  Hallie caught Colleen’s gaze and unsaid recognition flew between them, wings flapping both in the air and in her chest. Don’t betray your sister someday, that was what Colleen wanted to say to Rosie. Instead she came from around the bar to speak to the child. “Oh, I have to stay with Grandfather in his house. I promised him.”

  Sadie clung to Hallie’s skirts and spoke to Rosie, pretending Colleen didn’t exist. “Don’t make her come. We don’t know her yet.”

  Colleen laughed despite herself, the sound startling little Sadie into retreating further. “I’m not scary, I promise.”

  “Sadie.” Rosie spoke in a grown-up voice and jumped off the bar stool to pull her sister from behind their mother. “Don’t be such a scaredy-cat. See? She’s pretty and she’s nice.”

  Hallie laughed, but then stifled it quickly, taking her daughters’ hands. “Aunt Lena needs to stay with Grandy.”

  “But,” Rosie said, “we want to have a tea party and make bead necklaces with her.”

  “That sounds like great fun,” Colleen said, “so let’s find another time to do it.”

  Rosie looked at Sadie and stated loudly, “Sadie, that’s what grown-ups say when they will never play with you.”

  “Oh! That’s not true,” Colleen said. “I have a magic wand now and I can make anything happen.”

  Rosie brightened and grasped a handful of Sadie’s tutu. “See? She’ll play with us.”

  Hallie was quiet during this interchange, but a small smile played on her lips. She tried to quell it; Colleen saw her try, but it wasn’t working. Rosie and Sadie were playing the two different parts of Hallie—one ready to play and the other scared of drawing near to Colleen.

  “Rosie,” Colleen said, “will you scoot on back and tell Uncle Shane I need him? Sadie, can you go help your sister?”

  “Okay.” Rosie grabbed her sister’s hand and together the two little girls ran off.

  Colleen faced her sister, moving a bit away from the man who was researching their building. Hallie spoke first. “I know that not even a magic wand could force you to spend the night at my house.”

  “You’re right. Why would I do that? It’s absurd.”

  Hallie leaned closer. “I know we have to work together to help Dad and we will, but I want you to tell me all the things you’ve wanted to say. I can feel them, Lena. Like snakes running under your words—all the angry, hateful words you never said.”

  “Why does it matter now? Really? It doesn’t.”

  Hallie brushed her bangs out of her eyes, reminding Colleen of the time her sister cut her bangs to the roots in the mistaken belief that this meant she would not have to grow them out. She’d been six maybe? “It matters to me,” Hallie said. “I want you to say it all. And I want you to let me say things, too. You didn’t reply to one letter or text or e-mail. I don’t even know if you read them. But I have things I really want to say, that I want you to understand.”

  “You said all you needed to say when you married Walter. When you said, ‘I do,’ you said enough.”

  Hallie slammed her hand on the bar. Old Mr. Brown turned toward them and Mrs. Baxley, the librarian just joining her book club, took a few steps toward them and then seemed to think better of it. The historical society guy stared up at the TV as if he didn’t hear or see a thing. Hallie continued, unaware of anyone else in the bar. “You can be self-righteous if you want, but you made choices, too. And not one of them had to do with love.”

  “Are you serious? Is Walter telling you to say these things? Is he totally in control of that head of yours? My God, you betrayed me in the most embarrassing way one can, and you have the nerve to say I made choices?” Colleen tried to lower her voice, but it rose anyway.

  “You chose. You ran. You didn’t listen. If you had cared about either of us at all, you would have at least . . .”

  “At least what, Hallie?”

  “I don’t know. But not cut us off. You left the people you loved the most and rode off on your white high horse.”

  “From what I remember, I drove away in my beat-up Volkswagen ashamed and humiliated and heartbroken. Not quite the same thing as a white horse.”

  “I know.” Hallie closed her eyes. “We’ll never see eye to eye again. I hoped for so long. I prayed even. But what I broke can’t be fixed. I see that. All we can do now is help Dad. Do our very best to put it aside, not let the volcanoes inside us erupt every time we get together.”

  “You’re not the same,” Colleen said in a low voice, taking a step toward Hallie. “You don’t sound real; just spouting all the things you think you should say like a programmed robot.”

  “Of course I’m not the same. How could I be? And you . . . you not speaking to me for so long? It broke something in me.”

  “And you don’t think you shattered something in me?” The anger felt fresh and vivid now; it was awakened and appearing as a fire from far, far below.

  Hallie averted her eyes, let her chin drop to her chest. “I know. I know. You hate me and I deserve it.” And with that, she was gone, slipping to the back room.

  Colleen stood alone for a minute, or maybe it was ten, she wasn’t sure, slowly breathing in and out. The faces in the pub blurred; the sounds of glasses clinking and somewhere a cell phone ringing seemed faint and far away. Finally, the man she’d spoken to at the bar, the one she’d forgotten was sitting only a few bar stools down, spoke. “Family feud?”

  “What?” Colleen remembered him then. “No. Not a family feud. Just a sister feud. Big difference.”

  “In the photos I’ve seen, you look thick as thieves.”

  “‘Thief’ being the key word.”

  “Huh?” The man crinkled his eyes in confusion; he shifted on the bar stool so his legs lengthened and she could see how tall he would be when he stood.

  “Is eavesdropping part of your historical job?”

  “Sorry. Promise I wasn’t listening in—it was kind of hard not to hear. Guess I’m not that good at jokes.” He grinned. “I never was.”

  Colleen turned away as the fiddle player tested the microphone and set up, beginning a tune. Colleen’s chest thrummed with the memory of the song, of singing it with her parents. It was a comedic ballad that always had the crowd singing along with hand movements and rowdy cheers.

  Colleen closed her eyes to absorb the tune. She knew the words—the song about the unicorns with the roaring chorus and the hand motions. It was a song the Donohues had jumped around to or sung at the top of their lungs with their hearts in their voices in between doing homework on the back tables of the pub before it opened.

  “Don’t you forget my unicorn,” sang the eavesdropping man next to her in an off-key voice.

  Colleen’s surprise made her laugh out loud. “You know this song?”

  “Who doesn’t?”

  “Most of the world.” Colleen realized she didn’t know his name, this man who knew the unicorn song and the history of the pub and her name. “And it’s not fair that you know my name and I don’t know yours.”

  “Oh, I’m so rude.” He bowed his head and tipped an imaginary hat. “I’m Beckett Cooney. Would you like to see some of the old photos of this place?”

  “What?”

  “Old pictures of the Lark. Old ones of the past owners and your family and . . .”

  “Is that a pickup line?” she asked. “Because it’s terrible.”

  “Isn’t it working?” He grinned at her. “But no, I just wondered if you wanted to see some of the past. Sometimes we know about it, but it’s different altogether to see it.”

  “I’ve had enough of the past to last a long, long time. My brother, Shane.” She pointed at him. “He might want to see the photos and know everything about this place. He runs the pub now.”

  “Yes,” Beckett s
aid. “I’ve talked to him.”

  “Well, it was a pleasure to meet you.” Colleen nodded at him and set off for the front door just as it opened and in walked Brad Young, dapper in his police uniform. He caught Colleen’s eye and smiled with a wave. Yep, Watersend exactly—you couldn’t escape your past or your mistakes, even if they’d only happened the day before. Colleen waved in return and wound her way through the familiar maze of tables to the front door.

  Chairs were set upside down on the tables waiting to be set up, their legs sticking up like miniature tree trunks in a man-made forest. Soon a bartender and waitresses would wander in wearing green polo shirts with The Lark and the emblem emblazoned on the breast pocket. They would take down the chairs and hum along to the fiddle player, set condiments on each table to accompany the few menu items that hadn’t changed in fifteen years. Shepherd’s pie. Fish and chips. Pub fries. A mixed salad for those who cared. But no one came there for the food. They gathered for the music and the camaraderie and for Gavin and his wisdom and his terrible jokes and to hear him say, “Well, as the Irish say . . .”

  From across the room, Colleen heard Hallie’s voice as she called to her children, “My adorables, let’s be on the move.”

  Colleen froze in midstep, her heart catching on the phrase. She glanced backward; Hallie was walking with a hand stretched out for each child. Their gazes caught and the sisters stood still and quiet in the slice of time that couldn’t belong to anyone else. No one could know what hidden doorway was opened to another time as Hallie repeated a call and a gesture their mother had said and done until they were too old to hold her hands, old enough to be embarrassed by the phrase “my adorables,” grown enough to roll their eyes at each other and run from their mother, holding only each other’s hands.