Secrets of a (Somewhat) Sunny Girl

by Karen Booth

  “I have a Tarte Tatin for dessert,” Amy announced when it was clear that no one could possibly eat another bite of her magnificent Julia Child moment. “The apples are almost ready. I just need to put on the puff pastry.”

  Eamon leaned back and rubbed his flat belly. “Good thing I don't need to do anything tomorrow. Except maybe try to write some songs.” Try being the operative word. By his own admission, he'd been anything but prolific since he'd come to New York.

  “Okay, Eamon. I'm glad you brought this up. Is it true that Katherine is Sunny Girl?” Amy asked.

  Eamon put his arm around me and kissed my temple. “One hundred percent true.”

  I was filled with a stupid sense of pride. “Told you so.”

  Amy did not seem convinced. “Huh.”

  “That surprise you?” Eamon asked. “I love your sister very much. I loved her all those years ago, too. I had to write a song about her.”

  “It only surprises me because she was anything but sunny when we were growing up.”

  “Can I help with dessert?” I asked, wanting to change the subject.

  “Yeah. That'd be great. We'll let the guys get back to their music.”

  Luke bussed the dishes first, then Amy and I went to work, unfolding the thawed pastry dough and cutting it into a circle for the baking dish. We were interrupted by her cellphone ringing and buzzing across the counter. Amy wiped her hands clean and picked it up. “Oh, crap. It's Dad." She looked over at the work-in-progress. “I’ll let it go to voicemail."

  “What if there's something wrong?”

  “Shit.”

  I took the phone from her. “I’ll talk to him. You get that thing in the oven.”

  Whenever my dad called, I went through a bizarre progression of feelings—excitement and dread, guilt and love. Amy and I adored our dad, but things had not been easy over the years. It wasn't that we felt like he owed us anything for the many times we'd swept in to help him. It was more that it bothered us when he acted as if none of it had ever happened.

  “Dad, hi, it's Katherine. Amy can't talk right now. She's cooking.”

  “Oh, okay. It's nice to hear your voice, Katie-boo.” My Dad was the only person who'd ever called me by that name. My mother had thought it was idiotic. I liked it purely for sentimentality's sake. “Are you over at her apartment? What's she making?”

  I gave him the rundown of the evening and the menu, adding in as many Food Network descriptors as I could.

  “Great,” he said. “How's work?”

  This was starting to feel like small talk, but that was typical for Dad. “Work is great. I have a new boss and he's kind of a handful, but I'm dealing with it. Otherwise, I'm just busy. Getting used to life at home without Amy. That's taken some adjustment, but I'm getting there.”

  She glanced over at me and rolled her eyes.

  “You two have always been so close. You had to know it would take some getting used to.”

  “Of course. It's just the little things. Like how quiet the apartment can be.” I made the chatterbox gesture with my hands. Amy nodded in agreement and started digging around in the fridge.

  “When someone's gone, it's the little things that you'll miss the most.” Dad was being sentimental. I could hear it in his voice. “With your mom, it was the way she used to hum when she was cooking dinner. It got faster and more intense depending on how elaborate the meal was. Thanksgiving, you'd have thought she was conducting a Philharmonic orchestra in there.”

  I laughed, which felt good. I couldn't count the number of phone conversations that ended up with one of us crying or at least in a dour mood. “That's cute.”

  “Remember when we learned to cook after she passed away?”

  “Mrs. Abelman came over and taught us.”

  “She offered to bring us meals every day, but I knew we had to learn for ourselves.”

  In truth, I learned to cook and Dad watched. He was an old-fashioned guy—his dad had never cooked, so it was a foreign concept to him. I was prepared to help in any way I could. There was a lot of responsibility on my shoulders, but more than anything, I was desperate to find a way to redeem myself. Was I really that evil, awful girl that Grandma Price thought I was? Being a hard worker seemed like the best way to prove I wasn't.

  “I don't think I ever want to eat baked chicken again,” I said.

  Dad chuckled. “True, true.” He cleared his throat. “Well, I called to talk to Amy about something, but I need to tell you something, too. There's a new lady in my life, Katherine. I've been waiting to tell you because I wasn't sure whether it was serious or not, but it is.”

  “Oh, my gosh, Dad. That's wonderful.” I clapped my hand over the phone and whispered to Amy, “He has a girlfriend.” To my knowledge, Dad hadn't dated anyone in the last twenty years.

  Amy's eyes got shifty. “You didn't know that?”

  “What? You did?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  I choked back a grumble. “Dad, you told Amy?”

  “Just this morning. She called me on her way to the gym. Just to chat. I was going to call you next.”

  “Okay. Well, who's your girlfriend?”

  “Her name's Julia. We met at the post office of all places. She moved to Connecticut three years ago, but her husband was diagnosed with cancer right after that, and he passed away. So we're both widowers, which is nice.”

  “Sure.” I wandered away from the kitchen now that Amy had turned on her stand mixer to make whipped cream.

  “There was a long line at the post office that day. And we got to talking. The next thing I knew, I was asking her to coffee.”

  So sweet. I smiled wide and leaned against the corner of the wall in the living room as Luke breezed past me, apparently on his way to help Amy in the kitchen. Eamon looked up from an album cover he was studying and gazed at me with his adorable appreciative stare.

  “Good for you, Dad.”

  “It's been six months now. I thought it was time to tell you girls.”

  “I have someone new in my life, too. Well, it's someone I knew before. From when I lived in Ireland.” Now I really had Eamon's attention. He set aside the album cover on the table then took a long draw of his wine, not taking his eyes off me.

  “Is this the musician Amy was telling me about?” Dad asked.

  “She told you?”

  “You know your sister. She has a mouth like a sieve. Everything comes out eventually.”

  Eamon rose from the sofa and wound his way over, placing a kiss on my cheek then pointing down the hall toward the bathroom. Being near him still brought about that flutter in my chest. Would that feeling ever go away?

  “So, tell me about your guy,” Dad said. “I don't think I can pronounce his name.”

  “It's Aim-un, but spelled with an E-A. He's staying with me right now. He just finished a tour of the US and he's busy working on material for a new album."

  "Do you love him?"

  My dad was not beating around the bush. “I do love him. Very much.”

  “Does that mean I'll be marrying off both daughters soon?”

  “We're taking it one step at a time right now. We spent a lot of time away from each other. We're still getting reacquainted.”

  Eamon emerged from the bathroom, and sauntered over to me. He brushed my arm with the back of his hand, looking into my eyes. I could hardly stand up straight and it wasn't even like he'd touched my skin—this was all through a wool cardigan.

  “Do you think he'd like to come for Thanksgiving? Up here? To Connecticut?”

  “Really? We haven't done Thanksgiving at home in years.” For a long time, it was easier for Dad to come into the city and for Amy and I to host at our apartment. She and I shared the cooking duties, I'd sleep on the couch, and let Dad have my bed. We celebrated the holiday without feeling like the ghost of my mother was in attendance. It wasn't that we didn't want Mom there. We merely wanted to keep things light.

  “I know, I know. And I would other
wise say that would be fine, but Julia has dogs and it's very hard for her to leave them. She doesn't like to put them in a kennel.”

  I pulled the phone away from my ear and muted it. “My Dad wants to know if you want to come to Connecticut for Thanksgiving.”

  “Yeah. Absolutely.” Eamon answered with zero deliberation, his face lighting up, which made me infinitely happy. “Fiona will be with us though,” he added.

  I took Amy’s phone off mute. “Dad, can Eamon bring his daughter? We could put a blow-up mattress on the floor in my room.” Thinking about going home and bringing Eamon made me both excited and unsettled. He was going to know that things were weird the instant he walked into that house. I was going to have to tell him everything and pray that he didn't think less of me.

  “Does that mean you'll come?” Dad asked.

  “Yes, Dad. We'll come.” I smiled at Eamon, overcome with how much this meant to me.

  “I thought it’d be nice to have everyone here. Amy and Luke. You and Eamon.”

  “You already asked Amy?”

  “This morning. I thought I'd ask her first. You're a tougher nut to crack.”

  “Dad, don't say that.” Although why I didn't want him to say that was a mystery. He wasn't wrong. “I always want to spend Thanksgiving with you.”

  “You also don't like change. I know that, too.”

  “Well, we're looking forward to coming up. We'll take the train. It'll be a big adventure.”

  Amy walked by. “Dessert's ready. Tell Dad I'll call him back.”

  “Gotta go, Dad. Duty calls.”

  He laughed. “Love you, honey.”

  “Love you, too.” I hung up Amy's phone, making a mental note to give her crap about Dad later. She'd had plenty of opportunity to tell me about his new girlfriend and Thanksgiving. I joined everyone at the table and we all dug in. One bite of the gooey apple and caramel concoction and my resentment over the phone call evaporated. “Ames. This is phenomenal.”

  “It is,” Eamon agreed, going in for another bite.

  The wine started to flow again, especially after dessert, when we chatted about Thanksgiving. Eamon said he'd book the train tickets for everyone—his treat, and Luke said he'd book a car to pick us up at the station. It was all sewn up then. Ready or not, I was not only headed home, I was bringing Eamon with me.

  He rubbed his belly for what must've been the twentieth time. “Amy, fantastic meal. Well done.”

  I took that as our cue to head out. It was late anyway, nearly eleven. Eamon requested an Uber and we said our goodbyes. In the car back into the city, Eamon and I held hands, both of us staring out the window in a food-induced stupor.

  “My dad's excited to meet you and Fiona,” I said.

  “Can’t wait to meet him.” He squeezed my hand. “It means a lot that you'll take me there, Katherine. It means a great deal.”

  I smiled at him. “It means a lot to me that you'll come. You'll love my dad. He's the sweetest guy.”

  I turned back and rested my head against the window. My dad really was incredibly kind and generous. Even with his occasional flakiness, we never questioned that he loved us. He never got mad. His temperament was almost always even. He'd even been that way when ten year-old me finally worked up the nerve to tell him about Mom and Gordon.

  “Daddy, do you know Gordon from the flower shop? The delivery man?” I asked when Dad came into my room to check on me. I’d been deathly ill all day, Sunday. I swallowed hard, which hurt. My throat was dry and felt like an oven.

  “I suppose I do. I think I met him once.”

  “Mom sometimes has him stay over at our house. When you're out of town. Or sometimes she takes us to his house and we sit in the living room and watch TV while she goes into the bedroom with him.”

  That was the moment when I truly saw just how lovely my dad's eyes were—the most beautiful pale shade of blue. “Has this been going on for a long time?”

  “He's been coming over since you got the job from Apex Hardware. But Amy and I saw her kiss him at the flower shop way before that.”

  “I see.”

  “You aren't going to get a divorce are you? Please don't get a divorce. Maybe you can talk to Mom and tell her to stop? Amy and I don’t like him. He's not funny and he's not even that nice to us, either.”

  He held his finger to his lips and glanced over his shoulder at my bedroom door. Mom had gone to church by herself that day, but he knew she'd be home soon. “It's okay, honey. I don't want you to give this another thought, okay? Everything will be just fine. I'll take care of it. I promise.”

  “Really?” Dad had always been a softie, wanting to eradicate any problem that arose. Still, that had seemed a little too perfect an answer.

  “Yes, really. You just concentrate on getting better, okay?” He leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead. “Everything will be just fine.”

  Little did I know that fewer than twenty-four hours later, my mother would be dead.

  Chapter Fifteen

  We took the train from Penn Station to Old Saybrook. Eamon had booked the five of us in business class, and paid for the tickets. An early wedding gift, he'd said, with a smile and a shrug of his skinny shoulders. I wasn't sure he could be any sweeter.

  He and I held hands and watched out the windows as the snowy landscape chugged past. It was not common to have any snow this early in the winter, but the weather had been all kinds of wonky and much of the Northeast had been hit hard. Some parts of Connecticut and Massachusetts had more than eight inches. Normally this time of year, you got nothing more than mud.

  Fiona, who had been living with us for two days, sat across from Eamon and me, riding backwards. She'd occasionally pop up onto her knees and look out the window, especially if Eamon told her there was something special to see like birds or water. Otherwise, she drew pictures of horses and sang to herself. Her voice was already nearly as beautiful as her dad's. Someday, it might be even more so. Luke and Amy napped in the row behind us, fingers twined.

  We transferred at Old Saybrook, lugging our suitcases behind us, and we rode to the end of the line, Hoop Hole Hill Road, where Luke had a driver with a minivan pick us up. Between the five of us and our luggage it would've been too much for Dad’s car. He'd bought a Prius a few years back, after Amy and I expressed concern about him not having reliable transportation in the winter. He'd gone for years not using his car at all. After Mom had died, we were the excuse. He refused to drive us anywhere. He was too worried it would traumatize us. On the rare occasion we were invited to a sleepover at another girl's house, we had to ask for a ride.

  But Amy and I were not invited to many sleepovers. Right after Mom's death, we became the poor Fuller girls, worthy of pity and sorry looks, not parties or celebrations. We made people uncomfortable. Amy and I saw it on faces everywhere we went and we didn't fully understand it, but we could feel it. Months after Mom's death, the rumors started. She'd been drunk. She was on drugs. She'd been trying to kill all three of us. Most of it was lies, but there were only so many times you could deny something so ugly before people started to think you were covering it up. And of course, Amy and I both knew there was some ugliness in there. We just didn't want to talk about it. If anyone ever wondered why we'd both been so desperate to get the hell out of Chester when we got older, that was the biggest reason.

  Fiona sat between Eamon and me in the last row of the van. He put his arm around her, and around me at the same time, rubbing my shoulder gently. He seemed to know when things were weighing on me, which was both a blessing and a curse. He was so quick to comfort. I never had to ask. But he was equally fast with the questions.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  Do you have about a million years for me to explain? “I’m good. I just want us to have a nice Thanksgiving.”

  “I’ve never had an American Thanksgiving,” Fiona said, kicking her legs. “And I don't feel right about us killing a turkey. They're lovely birds. They have nice feathers.”
>
  Eamon laughed and leaned down to press a kiss to Fiona's head. “We won't be killing the turkey ourselves. And I promise you, however lovely turkeys are, you'll find them equally delicious.”

  She gazed up at him. “I don't know, Dad. I might just live on mashed potatoes.”

  “I’d expect nothing less of a good Irish girl.”

  The driver took the turn onto our road. The houses in this part of town were farther apart, set off the road, all just as old and modest as ours—shutters and windows like soldiers lined up in a row. Amy and I had always loved these generous yards when we were kids. We could roam for days. The summers here had been especially lovely, especially before we'd lost Mom, running across the mossy lawn in bare feet and playing tag. Even when you got an acorn to the arch of your foot, you didn't care. You were free. Of course, our lemonade stands never saw much business, too little traffic in our corner of the world, but we sat there anyway, baking in the sun in folding chairs, drinking up our wares and bemoaning our lack of profits.

  Despite the good memories, pulling up to the old house made my stomach churn, a clear indication of how much my past was not my past. It was as much a part of my minute-to-minute life as breathing. It didn't take much to remind me of it. It was deeply woven into what and who I was.

  Dad came bounding outside and the screen door smacked loudly against the frame when he let go of it. He had a smile so wide on his face that I nearly questioned whether it was really him. The new girlfriend, Julia, was right behind him, along with her two dogs—a yellow Lab and a Huskie. Julia wasn't moving particularly fast, but Dad had mentioned her hip bothered her, so hopefully that was the problem, not us.

  “My girls are home.” His voice was bursting with relieved and happy notes. Yes, it was hard for Amy and me to come back. But maybe we had put it off for too long. It hadn't been fair of us to leave him here by himself just because he was doing better, because he wasn't drinking.