Clara’s head bobbed and her vision grew blurry again.
Kate grabbed her hands, squeezing them, and whispered through tears, “Clara, you were the baby.”
***
The next several minutes were a blur. Clara had already put two and two together in the course of Kate’s story. But the confirmation of what she suspected slid across her like an avalanche.
Her panic attack took hold once again, paralyzing her muscles and launching her stomach into full-blown nausea. She rose from her chair and stumbled to the kitchen sink, retching until Kate ran out to the back and hollered for the others to come inside.
Three women rushed in behind Clara as she lifted her head from the porcelain. She turned the faucet on, scooping tap water into her mouth and swishing. It was the most normal thing she could do.
Amelia and Megan twittered behind, shushing her and patting her back. Clara felt Kate’s presence nearest her, murmuring assurances and rubbing Clara’s neck.
“She must be in shock. Let’s have her lie down.” The voice, calm and deep, was a stranger’s. And, apparently, her father’s. Another wave of nausea filled her throat and she heaved again into the sink.
Kate continued rubbing her neck then directed orders to the others. “Get a glass for water. See if there’s ice in the freezer. Pack it in a dish towel. Clear the parlor sofa.”
It was an emergency. An actual emergency. “Take me to the hospital,” Clara wheezed from the sink. “Take me away from here. Away from all of you,” she wheezed between heaves. Dramatics be damned, she couldn’t handle the pain in her heart.
But the others just kept on shushing her, treating her like the baby she was. The baby she had always been.
***
Minutes later, minutes that felt like hours, Clara lay prone on the sofa, alone now. Dust motes floated past her blank stare and down beneath her slack jaw, settling onto her blouse. A blouse she’d selected for its conservativeness and comfort. The perfect teacher’s uniform. Boring and trusty. Just like Clara.
“Clara?” Kate’s face appeared, cutting off rays of the setting sun as they pierced the parlor windows and cut across the younger one, allowing for her view of the twirling, whirling dust.
Clara blinked. “What?”
Kate squeezed herself onto the cushion. “Can we talk?”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Well,” Kate went on, her voice still trembly, “you must have some questions, right? Do you want to go over anything, or—”
At that, Clara tugged the ice-packed dish towel from her forehead and pulled herself to a sitting position. “You’re my mother.” It wasn’t a question. Just a statement. But Clara wanted to test out the words. See how they felt. She swallowed and took in Kate’s features. Her own features, in many ways. The blonde hair—kept up by highlights nowadays—the blue eyes and petite, aquiline features. Features that were also inherited from Nora. But now, Nora was dead. Her inheritance didn’t matter anymore.
Kate nodded silently.
Clara glanced past her, toward the foyer. “Did Matt leave?”
“No. He’s waiting.”
“For what? To talk to me? Where has he been all these years, Kate? What happened between you two?” For some reason, their relationship felt more pertinent than their parenthood.
“Mom made us end it, of course. Clara, it was a major scandal. It was as big of a deal then as it feels to you now. You know? A shock?”
Clara’s face softened. She sat up and crossed her legs beneath her, and Kate moved deeper into the sofa. A stale smell tickled Clara’s nose, and she felt a sneeze coming on.
“God bless you,” Kate said in reply to Clara’s gaped mouth and subsequent spasm.
Clara couldn’t help but giggle. Kate smiled.
“Kate, I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
“Are you kidding? You have nothing to apologize for. That would be me. I’m the one who ought to say I’m sorry.”
“But for what?” Clara answered.
Her older sister—or whoever Kate was to Clara—hesitated for a moment, gathering her thoughts before replying, it appeared. “Clara, I bent to Mom’s will very easily. Especially back then. I felt like I didn’t have a choice. Coming back here as a mother would have been hard. And, even if I was up to the task, things might have been different for all of us, you know?”
“How?” Clara pressed, desperate to know anything else that would help her paint a truer picture of her childhood—the one that felt so much less like a childhood. If Kate had raised her, would she have had playmates? Would Ben and Will be obnoxious little brothers she shooed away from her bedroom? “Oh,” Clara added, upon finishing the thought.
“I would have had nothing to offer you. Matt and I couldn’t have made it work, not financially. And... I never would have met Paul, probably.” Kate closed her eyes for a moment.
Clara interrupted. “I still can’t believe it. It feels... unreal.” She lifted a hand and pressed it to Kate’s arm. Her sister—her mother—felt older beneath her fingers. Her skin felt different. She even seemed to smell different. Everything, in the blink of an eye, had changed. “It still doesn’t explain the will,” Clara said flatly. “If Mom—er, Nora, I guess, adopted me, then I should still get one-fourth. Just like I always thought. I should still be her daughter, right?”
Kate swallowed hard, her eyebrows falling low and her voice dropping. “I think you need to read the diary entry.”
Chapter 36—Nora
December 1992
I lied to my daughters.
There, I’ve written it. I can’t say it. I won’t say it. I will never say it.
I was not going to commit to paper the events of the past year. I was dedicated to keeping the secret. Let me be clear: I am still dedicated to this secret. But you know how secrets go! They fester like blisters, desperate for someone to come along and poke at them until they bleed.
I won’t let anyone poke, but I have to confess somewhere. To someone.
I did not file the paperwork.
I did not adopt Baby Clara.
Chapter 37—Kate
They were all together, sitting at a large weather-worn table on the back porch, sipping from glasses of lukewarm soda. Two boxes of delivered pizza flapped open and closed to the rhythm of the breeze. Kate studied her glass. It was one of the many she’d known as a child, growing up among the heirlooms left to them in the house on the harbor. Hannigan heirlooms.
Amelia and Megan were the only two with any appetite left, but it was with deference that they nibbled on their slices, chatting quietly to themselves while Matt and Clara cracked open the lengthy process of getting to know each other.
Their words were stilted, to be sure, awkward, even. But Kate saw the flecks of hope in Matt’s eyes, flecks she’d seen when she’d first told him she was pregnant. Flecks that died off when Nora had turned him away, time and again, from their door in the days and weeks—and then even years—after the news.
Did Kate and Matt ever meet in secret? No.
They never met again, in fact. It was too painful. That she carried his child when she and Matt were both only children was too much for the teenage girl to bear.
Instead, Kate finished school, graduating quietly among the rest of her class then heading to college where she would meet Paul; safe, dependable Paul. From there, life settled into place, happy distractions cropping up one after another as if to reassure Kate that she had moved on. That she could move on.
But Kate Hannigan never did move on. Yes, she grew accustomed to knowing Clara as her sister, but it was always and painfully an act, a fact that she had to force herself to digest and learn and apply, much like a newly wedded woman must digest and learn and apply her married name. And yet, Kate wasn’t a newly wedded woman, excited to change her name. She was a mother thwarted. Jilted, even.
Now, she knew that that’s exactly what Nora had left Kate in her will—a silent inheritance—a jilting.
At
first, back when they were still inside on the sofa together, once Clara came around, Kate thought it best that everyone go home and call it a day. They could address the remainder of the estate and the fallout from the news another time, when they’d be better able to handle it.
Clara had protested, however. She had no one to talk to, after all. She needed her sisters, she’d claimed.
And that’s when they agreed that Wendell Acton had always been right. They could still be sisters. They could leave it alone. Let go and let God.
So, there they sat, Kate, Amelia, Megan, and Clara. Still sisters. Nothing more. Nothing less.
***
After another sleepover in Clara’s cramped quarters at The Bungalows, Kate awoke early, much earlier than the others. The predawn morning hummed outside Clara’s window.
Kate admired the place. It had the charm of the 1920s and the comfort of living in community among others. She knew that Clara wasn’t very social, much like her.
Quietly, she poured herself a chilled glass of water and slipped out onto the back patio and tucked herself onto the wicker seat. The courtyard needed a little work. Flowers. A good raking. But Kate wasn’t bothered. She wasn’t upset with Clara. She knew that Clara had long been living under a state of oppression, and it was time that she did a better job of helping her.
All three of them could do a better job. So, Kate decided they’d have a final family meeting. At the house on the harbor again, this time without Matt.
Yet, Kate had to see him again. She couldn’t sleep the night before. She couldn’t move on without some sort of closure... or something with Matt.
Nervous, she pulled her phone from her pajama pocket where she’d slipped it first thing when she rolled out of bed.
She moved to her text messages and shuffled into her exchange with Matt. So far in the past day, their messages were terse and business oriented.
It was early, very early, but she couldn’t wait. And if it woke him, oh well. Tapping out another terse, brief message, Kate asked if Matt could meet her and hit send, drawing her finger to her mouth and nibbling on a sharp hangnail as she slid the phone back into her pocket.
Mentally, she began preparing for the meeting they would have as sisters. The “Who Gets What” meeting that had been dangling over them for going on two weeks now, in effect. Kate had a sense of what she’d like to see happen, but then again it was not quite her place to dictate the matter.
A vibration tickled her thigh. Like a cowgirl, Kate whipped the phone out and held the screen to her face.
Matt.
Her heart skipped a beat.
She tapped the message open and read and reread his words. He hadn’t slept either. He’d love to meet. She could name the place and time, and he would be there.
Swallowing, she responded with the location and the time. The house on the harbor. Now.
***
There were no ferries, but Matt had a boat. He could have docked it at the house, if the Hannigan dock were in any decent shape, which it was not.
Once Kate arrived at the house, she immediately regretted it. Thinking that, instead, she could have walked to the marina.
Hesitating at the front door, it occurred to her that she still had time. She could walk there. Surprise him. Then, they could walk back to the house—or even wherever they wanted to go. Anywhere in Birch Harbor.
She spun on a heel and, for the first time in a long time, followed her heart instead of her brain.
Morning was settling over the harbor, and the warm glow of the sun thawed Kate’s hardness. A smile even pulled at her face when she saw Matt, there at his slip, tying off his boat and carousing with the few others who were on the dock so early.
It was hard to avoid drinking in the sight of him. Khaki shorts gave way to tanned, taut calves. His polo hung loose around his torso, but with each jerk of the rope, his shoulder blades cut through the light fabric, revealing a fit upper half.
Kate tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear and ran her tongue across her lips. She’d been limited in primping, but she felt good about herself. Healthy. Plain but pretty. It’s how she felt when she was in Birch Harbor. Like herself.
She felt like a spy, watching him from a close distance without his consent. But then, as he strode up the dock, his sun-kissed face turning away from the men he’d just waved to, he saw her.
A broad grin spread across his face. Kate thought she saw the shape of her name part his lips.
“Matt,” she whispered, slowly striding toward him. “Hi,” she said once they met on the sidewalk that would carry them up and down Harbor Avenue.
“Hi,” he replied, scratching the back of his head, his hair flopping over his forehead in a boyish mop. “Good morning,” he added, smiling again.
“Good morning. Thanks for meeting me.”
“How’s Clara?” His face turned solemn and he dipped his chin, searching her eyes for a good answer. The right answer.
But there was no right or wrong anymore. Not since the truth came out. There was only now. “We talked a lot last night,” she answered him. “She’s... hurt. She doesn’t understand why we never told her. I’m starting to wonder the same thing myself.”
He nodded then said, “Let’s go for a walk, okay?” She agreed and they strode side by side in the direction of the house on the harbor. “You know, Kate,” he went on. “Lots of families have secrets. Some of them are way worse than yours.”
Intrigued by his attempt to reassure her, Kate glanced Matt’s way. “Oh yeah? Do the Fiorillos have skeletons in their closets, too?”
Chuckling, he replied, “Maybe. Well, yes. I do. My family doesn’t know about Clara, for one. Not even Viviana.” He slowed to a stop and licked his lips, his hands shoved deep in his pockets.
Frowning, Kate stopped too and faced him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry about that.”
Matt shrugged half-heartedly. “Can I tell them now?”
Caught off guard by this, she blinked. “Do you want to?”
He pushed air out of his mouth and shook his head. “It’s all I’ve wanted to do. Do you know how hard it is to live in the same town as your daughter and never... ” He faltered, searching for words that she could have filled in for him.
And, she did. “You mean do I know hard it is to live in the same house as your daughter and be forced to pretend that I didn’t give birth to her? Why, yes. I know that feeling quite well.”
Matt flushed a deep red, his jaw working as he licked his lip and twisted his head side to side slowly, uncomfortably. “Kate,” he whispered, pulling his hands from his pockets and running his fingers through his hair before pinning her with a sad look. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“It’s fine,” she replied, compassion filling her voice. “I shouldn’t have thrown it back in your face like that.” She regretted being harsh with him. Swallowing, she jutted her chin back up the road. He took her cue and they resumed their stroll. “I guess we both know what it feels like.”
“You’re the one who carried her,” he pointed out.
“You’re the one who stayed here,” she shot back as they neared the house.
Matt’s eyebrows drew together above the bridge of his nose and, catching her entirely by surprise, he grabbed Kate’s hand in his and squeezed it hard. They now stood on the other side of the stout, white fence. Kate suddenly couldn’t tell if she was fifteen again or not.
He cleared his throat. “Are you going to stay this time, Kate?”
She fell away from him half a step, dizziness clouding her vision. It was a thought she’d considered for some time. Returning to Birch Harbor. To her sisters.
To... Matt?
“I’m not sure,” she answered, finding her footing and straightening. “Maybe. I don’t know what we’re doing with the properties.” As she said it, she remembered his initial interest. The notion of Matt Fiorillo buying her family home had felt sour before, but now it didn’t. Now, it made sense. It was a
way for him to connect with Clara. And, with Kate. “Did you... did you still want to buy this?” She waved a hand up at the towering home.
He shook his head. “I don’t think so. I have other projects going on, and I’m away from Vivi enough. Mostly, I was curious. I figured I’d see what you all planned to do. What would happen, you know?”
“Matt,” Kate asked, crossing her arms over her chest. “Did you know that our mom was going to reveal the secret or something? Is that why you poked your head in?” She said it with a smile, but the accusation hung in the morning air like a missile.
“No, no, no.” Matt held his hands up in defense. “I never knew she’d tell you. I figured she wouldn’t. Your dad on the other hand... ”
Kate’s eyes grew wide. “What do you mean my dad?”
He muttered a swear and bit down on his lower lip. “Listen, no. I mean, I took your dad as the type who might have said something. I tried to talk to both of them, Kate. When you were in Arizona, I went to your dad. But he didn’t know what to say to me. That’s the impression I got. He was confused, I guess. He didn't know how to handle the whole thing. Especially your mom.”
Propping her hands on her hips, Kate frowned. “He didn’t know how to handle my mom?”
“Yeah, I mean... your dad was a nice guy. I didn’t want to come between them or interfere with the ‘plan,’” he threw up air quotes.
“What ‘plan?’” Kate mimicked him.
“To keep your secret. To keep the town from knowing that Nora Hannigan’s daughter got pregnant by some Italian kid.” He laughed nervously.
Kate frowned. “You think my parents didn’t like your family?”
Matt blew out a sigh, rubbing his eyes with his fists. “Your mom didn’t like that you got pregnant. And I’m the one who did that to you. I think she saw me as a... perpetrator or something. The bad guy.”
Shaking her head, Kate replied, “She didn’t think you were a bad guy. She thought I was an embarrassment.”
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