by Kelly Rimmer
“It’s Ruth,” he tells me, and I give him a surprised look as I take the phone.
“Hi there. Everything okay?”
“Not really. I miss Dad and I hate feeling like this.”
“Me, too,” I say, softening.
“I’m taking today off. Want to meet me at Dad’s place to do some more cleaning?” She clears her throat, then adds, “And...bring Noah?”
“Oh, I don’t know—”
“I’ll help with him, Beth. I just could really do with some squishy baby cuddles today. Please?”
I meet Ruth at Dad’s house midmorning, and as promised, she takes Noah right off my hands. She sets up the playpen in a clear space in the attic, and we work at bringing the boxes and baskets to the dumpster and sorting through the rest of the loose trash. We swap memories of Dad as we work, and ponder all of our questions about Grace.
“I just keep thinking all of this would be easier if she was here. I think that’s why I’m so stuck on understanding what really happened to her,” I admit. “I have been fixated on these things.”
“You’re looking for closure, Beth. That’s all it is.”
“It’s called rumination,” I tell her, sighing. “Repeatedly pondering a concept or thought without completion. Obsessing on ideas. It’s classic behavior from someone who’s depressed and I should have seen it for what it was.”
“Right, Beth, we’re going to stop talking about should haves and just talk about moving forward. Everything is awful right now—we just lost Dad, you’ve got postpartum depression and all of this confusion with Grace and these notes isn’t helping. We can’t do much about Dad, except give it time. But you can think about therapy and medication, and you and I and the boys can clean out this attic.”
“Practical, as always.” I give Ruth a sad smile. She throws a paint rag at me playfully. “Do you have memories of Grace?”
“Yeah. I do,” she says softly. “I remember lots of random things. Her reading us stories, mostly. And she wasn’t a great cook, so we were forever eating her dreadfully bland eggs. Oh—and Jeremy and I were desperately jealous because we thought you were her favorite. You were always sneaking into her bed at night and she’d let you stay there, but if we tried it, she’d carry us right back to our own beds.”
“You were...what...three when she died?” I say, thinking for the first time in a week about that perplexing death certificate. “And I would have been two. It’s extraordinarily young for us to have retained permanent memories.”
“I know you think the certificate says it was 1958, but you really must have read it wrong. I know we were older than three.” Ruth shrugs. “I remember her taking us to our first day of elementary school in 1960.”
I sigh.
“I can check that death certificate when I get home, but I’m pretty sure I read 1958.”
“Is it handwritten?”
“Parts of it, yes.”
“Maybe the handwriting is poor. She must have died in 1961 or maybe even later.”
“It would have to be pretty awful handwriting for me to read 1961 as 1958,” I laugh weakly. Ruth shrugs.
“Look, we were very young, but I do trust my memory. She definitely took me and Jeremy for our first day of school, and she can’t very well have done that if she’d been dead two years by that point. Right?”
“Right,” I sigh. Besides, if Grace did die in 1961, that means I was four when she died, and it makes a little more sense that I’d have memories of her.
We get back to work cleaning and sorting, and we’re making great progress. Ruth finds several notes in a pile under one of the tables, and then I find another scrunched up in a clean, empty paint can. I leave Ruth and Noah and pick up some treats from the bakery a few streets over that Dad used to love, and when I get back, she has my son giggling hysterically as she pulls funny faces.
It’s adorable, and I watch from the door for a while, not wanting to disturb them.
“Get in here,” Ruth calls when she realizes I’m there, and I cautiously approach. When I come into view, a huge, joyous smile crosses Noah’s face, and I feel something soft and warm inside...something close to affection. I scoop him up and hug him close to my chest, and I suddenly get what Ruth meant when she said she needed squishy baby cuddles.
Whether or not I’m providing Noah everything he needs is still in question, but in this moment, he’s providing me with something new. I feel a flush of love and gratitude for my son as my arms close around him—the warmth of his body against mine, the softness of him in my arms—these things are a magnificent focal point for my thoughts, and I’m startled by a real sense of purpose for my life.
Dad is gone, but life must go on for the rest of us, and despite everything, a baby like Noah is the perfect representation of the way life works in cycles.
* * *
By late afternoon most of the loose trash has been dealt with. I never thought I’d miss the chaotic mess up here, but there’s something particularly sad about watching the “to-sort” pile shrink until it’s just a handful of wrappers, especially since there’s still an unmatched canvas on the table.
“Maybe we’ve accidentally thrown the last note out,” Ruth says.
“God,” I sigh. “Wouldn’t that be disappointing?”
We sit together to sort through the last of the trash, and soon we’ve cleared it all, without finding any more notes.
“We can check through the ‘to-keep’ pile again,” Ruth suggests. I flip quickly through the notes, checking the dates against canvases, just in case we’ve missed counting one.
“We’re definitely missing the note that goes with that really dark one,” I say, holding up the bleakest of the canvases. “But the date is April fourteenth...maybe the canvas just represents her death. Maybe there isn’t even a note to find.”
“Maybe,” Ruth sighs.
We hear the faintest ring downstairs, and Ruth grimaces as she climbs to her feet from the floor.
“Told you it was hard to hear,” I say lightly as she passes, and she rolls her eyes at me as she sprints downstairs. I stare at that last, bleak canvas...and then at the clipboard, lined with notes. I pick up the clipboard and run my gaze again over that first note.
I know this desolate wasteland. I recognize the subtext of desperation and isolation. Read them, Dad said. She would have helped you.
I’ve been desperately curious about the notes, and the only reason I’ve managed to wait this long to read them all is that I promised my siblings we’d do it together. Even so, I haven’t felt ready to read them. Not until now.
“Temptation getting to be too much?” Ruth asks me quietly as she steps back into the attic. I startle, and give her a guilty glance.
“I wasn’t going to read them without you guys. Who was on the phone?”
“Jez. He was just checking in, but I told him we’ve finished. He’s going to call Tim and they’ll meet us here tonight to read them together.”
I meet her gaze.
“Good. I think I’m ready.”
She nods.
“Yeah, Beth. It’s time.”
* * *
Tim, Ruth, Jeremy, Hunter, Ellis and I gather around Dad’s dining table that evening, passing yellowed pages around like a production line. If I wasn’t already exhausted, seeing life through Grace Walsh’s eyes would have wrecked me. I have felt alone, and I have felt lost and isolated, but even my experiences over these past few months don’t compare to the life she describes.
Ruth and I are crying long before we get to the end, and at one point she drops a note onto the table and pulls me into a hug so tight, her muscles shake.
“Are you sure you can deal with this right now?” she chokes. I nod, squeeze her back and reach for the next one. I know I’m not the only one feeling strangely guilty, like I’m betraying Dad’s memory.
“This isn’t the Dad I knew,” Ruth and Jez say again and again as we peek into Grace’s world.
“Something doesn’t add up,” Tim keeps muttering.
But all we can do is keep reading. And by the time we reach the bottom of the pile, we’re all in pieces. Maybe we should have waited longer before we tackled this—Dad’s loss is still so raw—but by the same token, we won’t move on until we put these questions to bed.
Hunter is at the end of our little production line, and when he finishes the last note I blurt, “Do you all agree...it sounds a lot like she took her own life?”
Tim hesitates.
“There’s no way to be sure, is there?” my sister says cautiously.
“Oh, come on, Ruth,” I groan. “She couldn’t stand the idea of going through the depression again and she took herself back to the bridge, only this time she went through with it.”
“Probably,” Ruth says, but then she gives me a sharp look. “But we can’t be sure. Do you really think Dad would have lied to us for all of these years if she killed herself?”
“Yes,” I say immediately. “That’s exactly why he would have lied. Especially if he blamed himself. And given the things he said before he died, and the fact that we know he read these notes, we can be pretty sure he did blame himself.”
“There’s a lot to process in all of this,” Jeremy murmurs.
“So this note says that Mom had a sister. This Maryanne she talks about,” Tim says suddenly, glancing around us all.
“Seems so odd that we might have an aunt out there somewhere and Dad never thought to tell us about her,” Ruth says, tilting her head.
“Doesn’t seem odd to me,” Jeremy shrugs, motioning towards the notes. “It’s pretty obvious they didn’t get on.”
“Dad called me Maryanne a few times in those last weeks when he was really confused,” I say, throat tight. “Remember that last day? When he apologized to me? He was calling me Maryanne.”
Tim reaches across to squeeze my hand.
“You know, guys...we could...”
“Track her down?” I finish for him when no one else does. My throat is suddenly dry.
“It’s probably not going to be easy,” Jeremy says. “We know her maiden name was Gallagher like Mom’s, but Maryanne is probably married by now and probably has a new surname.”
“Leave it with me,” Ruth offers. “I can at least try to find her.”
“Can I...keep the notes?” I ask hesitantly. I feel heat on my cheeks as the moment stretches, with my siblings and husband all staring at me, each obviously waiting for someone else to talk me out of it. Ruth speaks first.
“Honey, obsessing on those notes is not going to help you—”
“Or maybe it will help me a lot,” I interrupt her. I don’t even know if this is true. I just feel like I want to read through them again, to feel her close to me again. I’m painting a new picture in my mind of the Grace I’ve always remembered.
Despite her depression. Despite her misery. She made me feel loved and she made me feel safe. Maybe I can do that for Noah, too.
Hunter gives me a thoughtful look, then asks quietly, “What was it she wrote about loneliness?”
“It’s worse than sadness,” I whisper because those words already imprinted on my heart. “Because by definition, the burden can’t be shared.”
“I’m tired and I’m grieving and I’m sad. I know you feel the same,” Tim says suddenly. “But if there’s one thing we aren’t, it’s alone. If those little notes remind you that you aren’t the first woman to go through what you’re going through, and if they remind you that you’re part of a family who would never want you to feel as isolated as she obviously felt, then you take them. Even Dad seemed to think they could help you.”
* * *
“So, good news,” Ruth tells me on the phone the next night. “Not only is Maryanne still Maryanne Gallagher, she was also the third M. Gallagher in the first phone book I tried—she lives in Fremont.”
“What?”
“I just called her up and explained who I was, and she wants to meet us. I invited her to Sunday dinner.”
“But...”
“But this is tremendously good news?” Ruth suggests.
“Terrifying,” I laugh weakly. “You just called her? Just like that?”
“Sure,” Ruth says matter-of-factly. “I said ‘Hello, my name is Ruth Turner, née Walsh. Did you have a sister called Grace? Because if you did, I think I’m your niece.’ And she swore in ways I didn’t know a person could swear. I mean, she didn’t sound entirely displeased to hear from me, just utterly shocked. She’s a professor, apparently. At the University of Seattle. I told her Jez is an academic, too, at Washington U, and that seemed to shock her more than the call itself.” Ruth laughs, the sound light and melodic, then says drily, “So pretty sure she did at least meet Jeremy when we were young.”
“Doesn’t it make you wonder?” I murmur. “Dad raised us all on his own once Aunt Nina died. That must have been so hard on him. Grace seemed to think they weren’t fond of one another, but given the circumstances, I can’t understand why this Maryanne didn’t help with us once Grace died.”
“Yeah. That’s one of the things I want to ask her on Sunday.”
“I can’t believe you found her,” I say, laughing softly. “Ruth. You blow my mind sometimes.”
“Well, you should know by now—I’m a problem solver.”
EIGHTEEN
Maryanne
1958
With just two weeks left until my departure, I sunk into something of a funk. I’d swept the house for those notes twice more and still couldn’t find any sign of them. Worse still, Patrick was no closer to figuring out how to keep his children, and I knew that my departure would mean the family could no longer stay together.
Day and night, these things were all I could think about. In fact, I was about to start a third search for Grace’s notes when I heard someone thumping on the front door. The kids followed me as I ran to answer it and were right at my heels when I opened the door to my father.
“What do you want?” I asked him flatly. He sighed and reached into his suit jacket to withdraw a piece of paper.
“You know what I want. You’re going back to college soon, are you not? This has gone on long enough, Maryanne. They’ve had time to grieve. It’s time for them to get used to their new life.”
“Father, this is cruel,” I whispered, snatching the paper from his hand. My vision blurred as I read the notice—a letter of demand from some lawyer I’d never heard of. “So you’re really going to go ahead with it?”
“Mother and I agree, this is for the best—” Father started to say, but he didn’t get a chance to finish because I took a step back, gently shifted the girls out of the way and slammed the door in his face.
Mr. and Mrs. Francis Gallagher will be petitioning the courts for custody of their grandchildren, Timothy, Jeremy, Ruth and Bethany Walsh, based on their father, Patrick Walsh’s, immoral character and his inability to provide for and care for them to a satisfactory degree. It is the opinion of this firm that based on the evidence supplied by Mr. and Mrs. Gallagher, Mr. Walsh is unlikely to win judicial support for his ongoing custody of the children, as the courts favor normal family arrangements and frown upon single fathers. We advise you to seek independent legal advice if you do decide to fight this petition, otherwise please deliver the children to the Gallagher family home by this Saturday, July twenty-fifth at 10 a.m.
“What does the letter say, Mommy?” Tim asked as I sat on the lounge weeping.
“Auntie Maryanne,” I corrected him automatically, then I sobbed again. “It’s hard to explain, Timmy. I’ll let your dad talk to you about it when he gets home.”
* * *
That night I watched Patrick as he read the letter. His face flushed as his anger
rose, but his eyes remained dry. If anything, he looked frustrated but resigned, and when he reached the end, he dropped the letter to the table and gave me a miserable look.
“We knew this was coming.”
“It’s still very upsetting,” I whispered.
“I’m out of options, aren’t I?”
I racked my brain for the millionth time, but there was no solution that solved his problems.
“I’ll call Ewan and go into work late tomorrow so I’m here when the kids wake up,” Patrick said suddenly, raising his chin. “I should be the one to tell them. That’s only right.” He pushed his chair back and stood. “You’ll have to excuse me, Maryanne. I need to go to bed.”
I knew he was going to his room to cry. Even if I had doubted the changes in Patrick’s character over those months, I faced irrefutable proof of it that night.
Even in failure, he was taking responsibility. It seemed bitterly cruel that just when Patrick Walsh pulled himself together, my parents were taking his family away.
* * *
Once again it was Timmy who understood the coming changes well before his siblings. Now though, Tim was unable to hold back his tears, and as Patrick tried to explain what was happening, Tim wailed in a way I’d never imagined he was capable of. He finally looked like a child in that moment—like a terrified, overwhelmed child.
“No!” he kept shouting, stomping his feet, red-faced and sweaty. “I won’t go. You can’t make me go. I hate the castle!”
“There isn’t a princess in the castle,” Ruth muttered, shooting me a look as if I had deceived her. Jeremy sat in silence, and Beth, who was sitting on my lap, just watched the television, which was on behind Patrick with the volume down low, as he paced and tried to explain.
“We’ve tried everything, Tim,” Patrick said patiently, miserably. “There’s nothing left of it but for you to go to live with Grandfather and Grandmother. They will take very good care of you, and you’ll still have each other. That’s the most important thing, son.”
