Secrets of a (Somewhat) Sunny Girl

by Karen Booth

  An especially loud cacophony of laughter found its way upstairs. “Sounds like we're missing out on the fun.”

  “We'd better get down there or we'll never hear the end of it.”

  Even after staying up too late playing charades, I woke on Thanksgiving morning just before seven. Maybe it was my conscience that decided to shake me from my sleep, like a child impossibly excited for Christmas morning. I couldn't remember ever feeling like this, aside from the time I spent in Ireland. My heart was so unburdened it was like being a new person.

  I snuggled closer to Eamon, taking his arm and draping it around my waist. “Good morning,” I whispered into his neck.

  He hitched a leg over mine and tugged me even closer. “Morning.”

  “Did you sleep well?”

  “So well that I still am. Sleeping.” He kept his eyes closed.

  “Sorry.” I smiled and rolled to my back, looking around my room. Most vestiges of the old me had disappeared. Amy’s kitten posters had been taken down long ago. The aquarium we never took great care of was probably residing in the attic, knowing my dad. Still, there were little things that would always be familiar—the smudge of pink nail polish on the light switch plate or the worn spot on the floor where Amy used to dance while singing into a hairbrush. Those could be my reminders of childhood now. I could reframe it all. Life had gone on after that terrible day. And it hadn't all been terrible. Eamon came after that.

  And now Fiona, who flopped over on her bed, her eyes popping open. As I often did with her dad, we had a wordless conversation with eyebrows and mouths. She hated that air mattress. I could see it on her face. I patted my leg and she took my cue, scrambling out of bed. Her bare feet across the wood floors made another familiar sound. She climbed up on our bed and began the process of wedging herself between her father and me.

  “Fiona. What in the world are you doing?” Eamon rolled to his back and rubbed his eyes.

  She and I laughed conspiratorially. “I’m getting into this big comfy bed with you and Katherine. Now scoot over. Please.”

  Eamon grumbled while I relinquished the biggest swath of territory and pulled back the covers so Fiona could climb underneath.

  “It's so cozy.” She wiggled like a worm under the blankets.

  “Your feet are freezing,” Eamon said.

  “Let me move them, then.”

  Next thing I knew, her icy toes brushed my calf. “Hey. Why do I get the ice cube feet?”

  “Dad complained first.”

  “Are these the rules of snuggling?”

  She cozied up next to me. “I never thought about the rules. I think we should devise them.”

  “We wouldn't want any confusion later.”

  “Precisely. There are three of us in this bed. Things could definitely get confusing.”

  I looked into her eyes, the blue-gray of a stormy summer sky. I'd fallen so in love with her that my chest got tight every time I looked at her. “Where do we start?”

  “Everyone must keep their freezing feet to themselves,” Eamon chimed in.

  Fiona turned back to her dad. “That's impossible. You’re too tall. My feet will naturally run into your knees.”

  “Especially since he has such knobby ones,” I added.

  Eamon popped up on to his elbow. “I feel attacked.”

  “You're outnumbered. Two girls, one boy.” Fiona was lightning fast with her answers.

  “Even if the numbers were in my favor, I would never pick on someone's knees.”

  “Katherine, I think Dad wants you to say you're sorry.”

  He slid me one of his cocky half-grins. “An apology would be appreciated, yes.”

  “I’m very sorry. It was not my intention to body shame your bony knees.”

  “No more goofing around. What are some real rules?” Fiona asked. “I think that you get to have as much of the bed as you can cover with your body. Like King of the Hill.”

  “That sounds cutthroat,” I said. “What happens if I get pushed to the edge and roll out onto the floor?”

  “You climb back up on the bed and claim the empty space, of course.”

  “My goodness, Katherine,” Eamon said. “That should have been perfectly self-explanatory.”

  “It wasn't. It also doesn't sound particularly restful.”

  “Oh, it isn’t,” Fiona said. “But this is snuggling, not sleeping. They are two very different things.”

  “And what is this?” Eamon threw back the covers and tickled Fiona without mercy.

  Her wiry legs and arms flailed as her giggles and yelps filled the room with happy noise. I recoiled to avoid the inventible smack of a wayward hand or elbow.

  “Stop, Daddy, stop,” Fiona gasped.

  He obliged, but laughter kept tumbling out of her. Eamon had a permanent grin painted on his face.

  “Tickling is not part of snuggling, Daddy. Someone could get hurt.”

  “Got it. I'll refrain from it until I’ve learned all the rules.”

  “Who's hungry?” I asked.

  “I am,””Fiona answered. “But are we allowed to eat on Thanksgiving morning? Or do we wait until the big meal so we can stuff ourselves?”

  “We have to eat now. We're going to need our strength to cook all that food.”

  “Will Amy and Luke come to breakfast?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “Maybe you should go ask them.”

  Fiona scrabbled over the top of me and climbed out of bed.

  “Knock quietly,” Eamon said. “And don't open the door if there’s no answer.”

  “Really. You act as though I have no manners.” Fiona marched out of the room.

  Eamon and I quickly drifted back together.

  “How are you feeling this morning?” he asked. “Everything okay after yesterday? I know it was hard on you, but I'm so glad you told me. I don't like having secrets between us.”

  I nodded. “I know it's better this way. It was just hard. I was so worried it would change the way you see me. Knowing my past.”

  “It does change it, but not in a bad way. It only lets me see that we still have a lot to learn about each other. But that doesn't bother me. We have time. Right?”

  “Yes. We do.” I gazed into his eyes and brushed his hair from the side of his face. “I just need until the wedding is over. Then we can talk about our future. I don't want to overshadow Amy and you know how she is. She'll likely throw a temper tantrum if there's even the slightest rumbling of someone else trying to take her spotlight.”

  “We could get engaged and not tell anyone.”

  “Weren't you just saying you don't like secrets?”

  Out in the hall, I could hear Luke's and Amy's voices. Fiona was, of course, talking a million miles a minute, even faster than Amy.

  “But this would be different. It would be our secret.”

  I reached down and took his hand in mine. “The minute you and I decide to get married, I'm going to want to call Amy and tell her everything. If I wait, she'll know it the second I finally tell her. And she'd never forgive me.”

  Eamon drew in a deep breath through his nose and nodded. “Makes sense.”

  “Are you disappointed?”

  He shrugged. “Well, yeah. Of course. But I can wait. I've already waited plenty long. What's a few more weeks? I just have one stipulation though.”

  “What's that?”

  “You'd better not expect a proposal from me the minute Amy and Luke exchange their vows. I still want to surprise you. You won't know when it's coming.”

  I smiled wide. “That sounds wonderful.”

  Fiona burst into our room. “Amy wants me to tell you that coffee is on and if you don't get your butts downstairs in five minutes, you'll have to wait for the second pot.”

  I laughed and shook my head. “On our way.”

  Eamon proceeded downstairs in his gray t-shirt and blue plaid pajama pants, but I grabbed an old sweatshirt and some slippers before catching up to him.

  The kit
chen was already full of the most amazing morning smells—coffee and bacon, which Luke was tending on the stove while Eamon sipped coffee and chatted with him. Amy had put cinnamon rolls in the oven. Dad and Julia were sitting at the table with Fiona, who was still working out the rules of snuggling.

  Amy walked over to me. “We should probably make up a cooking schedule for today, don't you think?”

  “Yes. That oven is so tiny. We're going to have to get creative.”

  Fiona, Dad, and Julia all burst out laughing. Fiona was keening so hard she nearly fell out of her chair.

  “Let's go sort this out in Dad's office,”Amy said.

  “Perfect.” I followed her through the living room, where Dad already had the TV on and tuned to the station that would be playing the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.

  Amy began rifling through the stacks of newspapers on Dad's desk. “Lord only knows how long it will take me to find a pad of paper and a pen.”

  I held out my arms. “Here. Hand me a stack.”

  “Why does he keep all of this crap?”

  “He swears he's only keeping the important stuff.” I turned to put the papers on an old TV tray Dad was using as a table. I laid them on top of a pile of magazines, but half of them toppled over to the floor.

  “Bingo. An actual notepad,” Amy said.

  For a second, I considered leaving the papers on the floor, but Dad liked his mess tidy. I crouched down and saw a face that stopped me dead in my tracks. “Oh my God. Amy.” I couldn't pick it up. I didn't want to touch it.

  “What?”

  “He's dead.”

  “Who is?”

  I straightened, leaving the paper on the floor. “Him. Oh my God, I can't even look at him.” Except that I couldn't tear my eyes away from the black and white photograph of Gordon Stewart, the man who our mother had claimed to love. The man who our mother had said was family to Amy.

  Ever brave, Amy plucked the newspaper from the floor and read, shaking her head slowly from side to side. “Wow. Lung cancer.”

  “I didn't know he still lived here.”

  Amy scanned the page. “It says that he moved back five years ago to be closer to his brother. He had no other family, apparently.”

  Just hearing the details of his life made me ill. Or maybe it was guilt. There was a part of me that wished the man had never existed, but how horrible was that? He was dead now. Gone. Just like Mom.

  “Is it bad that it makes me sick to my stomach to think about how much time we spent around him?” Amy asked. “I love Mom, but that's one thing I can't forgive her for.”

  “No, it's not bad. I was thinking the same exact thing.” Thank God I had Amy in all of this. I could explain the crap out of what had happened to us, but she'd had to live it, too. She understood how bizarre it all was. “It was weird. Most people sneak around when they have an affair, but not her.”

  “I will never forget the morning he wore Dad's robe. That was so messed up.”

  My stomach clenched as another unwelcome memory flooded my brain—it wasn't just the flecks of blue and black in the old stoneware plates my mom loved. It wasn't just the camel color of dad's velour robe. It was the smell of coffee and orange juice and maple syrup hanging in the air and the way it blended with that baked aroma of the furnace working too hard to heat the house. The sound of bacon sizzling and popping in fat in the cast iron pan. The soft nubby feel of my flannel nightgown against my thighs as I wrung my hands in my lap under the table and wished that I could close my eyes and make him disappear and never, ever come back. Ever. And worst of all, the knowledge that Amy was feeling the same exact thing I was. It hadn't merely radiated off her, it was like there was an invisible channel between us, with muddy sickening water that looked and smelled like death flowing back and forth. At that moment, I wanted more than anything to shield Amy from all of it. I was ten. I could take it. She was eight. She was innocent.

  “So that's it then, huh?” Amy asked. “That chapter is really closed now.” She folded the paper in half and then in half again.

  “What are you doing with that? You aren't keeping it, are you?”

  “Oh, hell no. I'm tossing it in the fireplace. Where it belongs.”

  “Smart. That's smart.” I trailed her into the living room and after we scouted out the kitchen to make sure Dad wasn't about to walk in, I pulled back the old brass screen in front of the fireplace.

  Amy grabbed one of those long matches from the mantle and kneeled down on the brick hearth. With a single strike, it sparked into flame. The newspaper caught fire right away and Amy tossed it on top of the ashes from last night. She put her arm around my shoulders as we watched the flames erase the memory of a man neither of us had ever wanted in our lives. It didn't take long for it to all be gone, and the fire snuffed itself out.

  I put the screen back in place. “Feel better?”

  Amy nodded. “Yeah. I do.”

  “What are you two doing?” Dad's voice came from behind us.

  Amy looked at me and we both agreed without a word that he didn't need to know. “Just getting rid of some trash,” she said. “Those cinnamon rolls ready yet?”

  “You set the timer. I don't know how I should know,” he answered.

  “I’ll go grab the notepad you found.””I traipsed back into Dad's office. Should I have stopped her from burning the obituary? Out of respect? How messed up was the idea of that? I wasn't sure what was going through my head—what was done was done. Gordon Stewart was gone now. Amy and I could get on with the rest of our lives with as clean a slate as the universe was ever going to give us.

  Chapter Twenty

  My first day back at work after Thanksgiving was blissfully uneventful. Miles was taking a few extra days off, spending them at his villa in Anguilla with his kids, his new wife and his ex-wife. How very modern of him. Summer and I had rolled our eyes about it more than once. He was such a pretentious, pompous ass.

  After work, I came home and made dinner for three. It was just spaghetti, but Fiona loved it and even helped me in the kitchen. Even if that was as close as I ever got to domesticity, it felt like a win. I loved taking care of her and Eamon. There was no bad history here—only happy days ahead.

  Eamon and Fiona were watching TV and I was tidying up the kitchen when I got a call from Amy.

  “Did you get a letter today? From Bill Stewart? In Connecticut?”

  I cradled the phone between my shoulder and ear, wiping my hands dry on a towel. “No. Why? Is something wrong?” That name…Bill Stewart. Did I even know who that was?

  “I don't know. I mean I'm not sure what it means.” She was distressed. I could hear it. Amy did not get this worked up about anything other than maybe wedding stuff.

  “What does it say?”

  “It's about Gordon.” She whispered his name like she was daring to say Voldemort out loud. “Actually, it's from him.”

  The blood in my veins went cold. “I don't understand. He's dead. How can you get a letter from a dead person?”

  “I guess he wrote it when he was sick and knew that he was dying? He, um… I don't even know how to say this.” She was on the verge of tears. Paper rustled in the background. She must have had the letter right there, reading it.

  I wanted to console her, but my mind was moving so fast I could hardly keep up. This was one thing I had not bargained on. A letter? What in the hell could he have said to her in a letter? And why was she getting it now? Weeks after his death?

  “He says I was his only family other than his brother. He left me stuff in his will. What the hell does that mean, Katherine? His family?”

  My mouth fell open, frozen. From beyond the grave, he was messing up our lives, again. I wanted to hide from it, but I couldn't. Amy needed me. “Take a deep breath. I'm coming over right now.”

  “Yes, please. Hurry.”

  I hung up the phone, still disbelieving what she'd just told me.

  “What's wrong?” Eamon looked over from the TV. As soon
as he saw my face, he got up from the couch and headed straight for me.

  “Amy got a letter. From the man my mom had the affair with.”

  “Wait. I thought he was dead.”

  I explained the rest, the words sounding no better when I said them aloud. “She's really upset and I told her I would come over.” I was about to walk into a buzz saw, but what choice did I have? “I had to. She's my sister. She needs me.”

  Eamon nodded and took my hand. “Yeah. Of course. We should call for a car. I don't want you taking the subway out to Brooklyn at night.”

  “It's fine. It might be good for me to have the time to think.”

  “Will you take a car back then?”

  “I will.”

  “What are you going to say to her?”

  That was the sixty-four thousand-dollar question. “I don't know what I can do other than tell her the truth.”

  I grabbed my coat and my purse, kissed Eamon and Fiona goodbye, and hurried down to the subway station. I'd always sort of liked riding the subway—the rocking back and forth was oddly soothing to me. Those carrot orange and goldenrod molded plastic seats let me know I was at home. Of course, taking the train tonight was only prolonging the inevitable. A car would've been much faster this time of day, but the truth was that I needed time to think.

  Memories, mostly bad, began to rifle through my head again, the stuff I'd thought I could finally set aside. Things like the first time we were taken over to his house. I was six and Amy was only four, but I remembered it like it had been tattooed on my brain. We were parked on his couch in front of the television. Mom had brought a DVD with her, The Little Mermaid, a movie we'd watched one hundred times. The sound was turned up to what seemed like an unusual level, but neither of us said a thing. Amy and I had no clue what was going on, so we did as we were told and sat there while the adults disappeared down the hall.

  I looked over at Amy during the first scene in Ursula's lair, watching her in profile, cast in blue from the light of the TV. She had the most adorable little nose, her eyes wide as she was transfixed by the story, mumbling the words to herself. Even then, it felt like I understood how innocent we were, and that something bad was happening. I tried to chalk it up to the movie. Ursula had always made me nervous anyway. I was always the kid who wanted to fast-forward over the bad parts.