by Darcie Chan
“Is that why you begged me to come for a visit? For this little rendezvous?” Emily snorted. “I’m in the middle of a huge renovation. I had subcontractors and supplies scheduled to show up every day, and leaving totally put me behind schedule. You promised you’d never have us visit at the same time.”
“Honey, I know, but it has been ten years,” Josie said. “Ten years since the accident and since you’ve seen each other. I know it was a terrible thing, but this separation of yours has gone on too long.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Emily said. “I can’t believe you would do this to me.”
“You’re sisters. You need each other,” Josie said in a pleading voice. “I know you don’t see it, but you do, and you will.”
“Like hell we do,” Rose said. “And I’ve said everything I intend to say about that night a long time ago. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m leaving while I can still make it home before rush hour.” She went back to the front door and snatched up the suitcase she’d brought inside.
“Rosie, please wait,” Josie said, but Emily blocked her path. Her younger daughter shoved the clothes hangers into her arms before returning upstairs.
Josie fumbled around, clutching at the curved hooks as several of the wire hangers fell around her feet. By the time she got out the front door, Rose was back in her car with the engine running.
“Rose, please Rose!” she called, but her older daughter stepped on the gas and peeled down the street without looking at her. A few moments later, Emily came out the front door carrying a bulging backpack.
“I’m going to Ivy’s. I’ll be leaving in the morning, if the airline will let me change my ticket.” Emily wiped at her eyes and started toward The Bookstop before Josie grabbed her arm.
“Em, please. I’m sorry I upset you. Won’t you stay with me?”
Emily looked into her eyes for a long while. “You don’t get it, Mom,” she finally said. “Rose and me … it’s not going to happen. It’s not something you can fix, and it’s about damn time you stopped trying.”
Josie watched her run over to Ivy’s and through the side door. She made it back inside her own home and had collapsed on the sofa when Ivy knocked softly and let herself in.
“It was a crazy, desperate idea, and you knew it probably wouldn’t work to bring them together like that, but at least you tried,” Ivy said.
“I can’t have them hate each other for the rest of their lives. It’ll be the death of me, and they’ll be so alone,” Josie said. “I’ll never give up on them. I can’t. But I don’t know what else I can do.”
Ivy bent over to hug her and kiss her cheek. “Kid, you need to realize that you’ve done all you can.”
2013
AS TIME PASSED AFTER HER FAILED ATTEMPT TO BRING THE GIRLS together, Josie found comfort in her little home in Mill River. Every room in the house held happy memories of the girls and their growing up. She could close her eyes and remember sitting with them at the kitchen table, sharing a meal or helping with homework. How many movies and holiday specials had they gathered to watch in front of the television in the living room? In the bathroom, she’d given them bubble baths when they were well, sponge baths when they’d had fevers, and lessons on how to apply makeup when they’d become teenagers. And their bedroom had always been her last stop before she herself had retired for the night.
Even during the hard early years, when the girls were young and she was always exhausted, and later, after her relationship with Rose had started to become more confrontational, she had never grown tired of watching their beautiful faces as they slept. She still sometimes paused at their old room on her way to bed. She could almost hear the giggles and whispers of two sisters sharing their dreams.
In the years that she’d been an empty-nester, Josie had continued to build her already successful real estate business. She now employed a dozen salespeople at her brokerage and still handled listings herself. It was a rare treat for her to have any time off, but today, the first Wednesday in March and the day after Mill River’s annual town meeting, Josie stayed home from work. Still wearing her pajamas and robe, she poured a fresh cup of coffee and settled herself on the sofa.
Today, however, she was not staying home to relax or to catch up on sleep or errands. She was expecting an important phone call, and it was not the type of call she wished to receive at work, or anywhere in public for that matter.
She focused her gaze on the phone sitting on the end table closest to her. At the same time, her hand moved to softly, gingerly touch the small lump in her left breast. It had been exactly a week since she’d discovered it in the shower, and beneath her pajamas, the area was now bruised and sore from the needle biopsy she’d endured two days ago.
For those two days, she’d experienced wildly vacillating emotions. Fear and worry dominated, of course, and not only for herself, but also for Rose and Emily. She knew very well that a cancer diagnosis for her would mean that her girls would be at much higher risk of developing it themselves. For that reason, even though her preference would have been to keep any diagnosis of cancer and subsequent treatment to herself, she would have to tell Rose and Emily about it, if the biopsy was positive.
If.
In her mind, she had already rehearsed a thousand times how she would tell them.
There was also the fear of what treatment she might have to endure, and whether it would ultimately be successful. What would happen to her girls if cancer took her life? After watching her suffer through a terrible illness, they would be alone. Permanently alone. Without her being there, goading and encouraging them, the tiny chance of Rose and Emily reconciling at some point would surely drop to zero.
The phone suddenly shrieked on the table next to her. Josie flinched so severely that some of the coffee in her mug sloshed onto her lap.
“Hello?” she said, even though she recognized her doctor’s number in the caller ID window. When she began speaking, Josie just listened, trying to focus on the doctor’s words over the pounding of her heart. When she heard the words “benign” and “fibroadenoma,” she gasped with relief. It seemed that she had been holding her breath, because for several minutes after she hung up the phone, she remained on the sofa, trembling, breathing deeply, and wiping away tears of relief.
The nightmare scenarios and the painful conversations she had envisioned during the past few days slowly, slowly began to fade from the center of her thoughts.
Eager to encourage this, Josie actively sought something else to think about. She began to reflect on the town meeting that had taken place during the prior evening. At the time, with her mind clouded with worry, it had been impossible to feel fully the extraordinary warmth of what had happened. Now, though, bathed in relief, Josie could fully appreciate the love and kindness that had been shown to so many.
The town meeting had started the same as any other she could remember, with Fitz calling the meeting to order, working his way through the votes on town business and the other items on the agenda. But then, Father O’Brien had stepped forward to read a note from Mary McAllister, the old woman who had lived for some seventy years in the big white house overlooking the town. Josie had heard all the rumors about Mary over the years, of course—that she was a witch, or perhaps suffering from some sort of serious illness. Like almost everyone else in attendance, Josie had been moved to tears to hear Mary’s tragic story, to learn about her great generosity. She knew now that her own home, the little house that had miraculously dropped into her lap all those years ago, had in fact been given to her by Mary. The old widow had loved Mill River and its people, and she’d done what she could to help them despite the agoraphobia and severe social anxiety disorder that had kept her isolated in her home.
At the town meeting, Mary had managed to find a way to speak directly to the townspeople from beyond the grave, to express her love for the neighbors she’d cared about for years but had never been able to meet in person. Josie found Mary’s determination and success a
t achieving such a lifelong goal incredibly inspiring. She likened Mary’s longtime struggle to her own lengthy effort to get Rose and Emily to end their estrangement from each other.
Josie blamed herself that something so terrible had happened to ruin her daughters’ once-close relationship. For a few years, after she’d gotten them all settled in Mill River, it had seemed as if everything would be fine, but now, in hindsight, with her family splintered and no reconciliation in sight, she could see that she’d been foolish to believe that. Even worse, Josie realized, was the fact that she was getting older. The same years that etched lines more deeply into her face also widened the chasm between her girls. And, even though it had turned out that she didn’t have breast cancer, she had a new appreciation of her own mortality. She now feared that her life would end without her daughters finding a way back to each other.
Josie thought again of Mary McAllister and how the old woman had set in motion a plan triggered by her death, a plan to achieve her goal to finally communicate with her fellow townspeople. Could she follow Mary’s example to help Rose and Emily?
With her hand covering the gold locket around her neck, Josie rose from the sofa. She would wait a few days before calling Jim Gasaway, just to make sure she had thought through everything, but deep down, she knew what she had to do. Long ago, she had saved her children from a fire. Now, she would make good on her promise to Tony by doing whatever it took to save them again. If, upon her death, the girls hadn’t realized the importance of their relationship, this last-ditch effort to bring about their reconciliation would remind them of the treasure they still had in each other.
“THANK YOU, FRED. I APPRECIATE YOUR BRINGING THE CERTIFICATE by in person,” Ivy said. “You’ve always been there for me.”
Dr. Richardson nodded and hugged her before opening the front door of The Bookstop. “I know you’ve got a rough time ahead of you, my dear, so you call me if you need anything else.”
After the doctor left, Ivy leaned on her cane and looked again at the document she held in her other hand. It was still a shock to see an official death certificate with Josie’s name written at the top and Fred’s signature as the regional medical examiner at the bottom. Her niece’s house next door was dark and quiet, but it still felt as if she could pop through the kitchen door for an impromptu visit any minute. In the coming days, though, as Josie’s wake was planned, as Rose and Emily arrived to pay their final respects to their mother, the fact that she was gone would sink in and become real for all of them.
CHAPTER 31
FROM HIS ROOM, ALEX HAD HEARD BITS OF HIS MOTHER’S conversation with Father O’Brien. He lay on the bed on his stomach with a book open under his chin, but he hadn’t read a word. He’d been surprised by how much the priest had known about how his mother acted, and by Father O’Brien’s complete honesty. The priest had told his mother exactly what he himself longed to be able to say to her, and he’d done it without raising his voice or being intimidated.
Alex was impressed.
He’d thought a lot about his mother and her drinking, especially since the fistfight between his mother and his aunt, and since Aunt Ivy had told him why they didn’t get along. He was still struggling with his own feelings about it. Mostly, he felt sad and sorry for both his mother and his aunt.
As much as it made him feel like a traitor to his mother, he sympathized with his aunt Emily. His grandmother’s death was the first he’d ever faced, and it had been awful. He couldn’t be sure, but he guessed that it had been just as bad for Aunt Emily, or worse, when her boyfriend had been killed. Plus, he was willing to bet Aunt Emily understood exactly how his mother was with alcohol and how awful he felt every time he watched his mother pour a drink.
And yet, his love for his mother was stronger than everything else. Alex knew in his bones that his mother loved him just as much, and he longed for a way to help her stop drinking. If it were only possible to help her separate out the part that needed alcohol so badly, everything would be so much better. But, he didn’t know how to help her. He wasn’t brave enough to confront her, not like Father O’Brien had been, and he was terrified of telling anyone about the situation for fear that he would be taken away from her. Alex sighed and rested his chin on his open book.
I wish she could get out of here, Alex thought, but he knew his mother was effectively trapped either until the end of August or until she and his aunt found his grandmother’s safe-deposit-box key. He scrunched his eyes shut and wished again that he could figure out where the key was. His aunt Emily hadn’t said anything to him about finding it in her own yard, so maybe she was ready to lend him the metal detector.
For a few minutes, Alex lost himself in his fantasy of discovering the key, of presenting it to his mother. The sound of his mother yelling interrupted his daydream. He listened more intently, heard the yelling become crying, and wondered whether he should go try to comfort her, but then the sound of his mother’s phone ringing pierced his thought. He knew by the ringtone—the familiar theme song from Seinfeld—that the caller was his father.
He crept to the doorway of his room, where his mother’s voice carried up the stairs and was most easily heard.
“Things are fine, Sheldon, really. No, we haven’t found—what?”
There was a pause, and Alex knew his mother was trying to keep from crying on the phone.
“You do not need to come up here. He’s fine, and I’m not drinking.”
Another pause.
“And what will you do with Alex in New York? How will you look for jobs with him there? You said yourself—I told you, I’m fine, and so is he. I don’t care if you don’t believe me. Alex going back with you won’t work. I need him here. I need—Sheldon? Sheldon?”
He heard his mother curse, followed by what sounded like her phone hitting the wall.
Alex knew then what was going to happen. His father was coming for him. He didn’t know when, and he didn’t particularly want to ask his mother right now. But, it was clear that his remaining time in Mill River, and his opportunity to find his grandmother’s key, was slipping away.
The familiar thunk of a cork being pried from a wine bottle triggered a fresh wave of frustration. It was only just after noon, but his mother seemed to be preparing to take to the sofa already. His suspicion was confirmed when he heard the floor squeak as she walked from the kitchen into the living room.
Think about the metal detector, Alex told himself as he closed his eyes. Maybe there’s still time. He would read for a little while, until his mother had fallen asleep, and then he’d go next door to see his aunt.
For the first time that day, he focused his attention on his book. It was To Kill a Mockingbird, one of the old books his mother had let him have when they’d first moved in. He’d been reading the books in the house as quickly as he could, and he was halfway done going through the tattered copies in the box from The Bookstop.
Alex found the place in the text where he’d left off. When he turned the page to begin the next chapter, though, he was surprised to see that a number of the passages were highlighted in neon yellow. At first, he ignored the markings. As he devoured the words, though, Alex realized that all of the marked passages had to do with gifts and trinkets that were left for the young protagonist and her brother by the town’s resident recluse. All of the presents had appeared in a knothole in an oak tree on the edge of the recluse’s yard.
An oak tree.
Alex raised his head and looked toward his desk, where the copies of his aunt’s list and the one he had prepared were neatly stacked. He didn’t need to pick them up or read them again to realize that he had somehow forgotten to include the old books from the box in his own inventory or to recall that his mother had highlighted more than half of the items on his spreadsheet and the list he’d gotten from his aunt Emily before she’d given up trying to eliminate certain items as clues. Alex’s hands broke out in a cold sweat, and he began to feel jittery. His mother had a habit of highlighting everyth
ing, and here was a book that had been placed in her house, with passages marked in a way that would catch her attention. Maybe he was onto something.
Alex climbed off the bed and walked to his bedroom window, which faced his aunt Emily’s house. He couldn’t see much of his aunt’s house, though, because the large oak tree, the one from which his aunt had hung the tire swing, rose up past his window, obscuring his view.
He reached over to pick up the book and then closed his eyes, concentrating on recalling certain passages in his grandmother’s letter. “The clues are two different objects. One will reveal the location of the key to my safe-deposit box … and the other is something that will help you obtain it …”
Alex opened his eyes and looked again out the window, into the thick leaves of the oak.
The key was hidden in the tree. The book revealed the location, he was sure of it. Now he needed only to figure out the “object” that his grandmother had promised would help him “obtain it.”
Alex stole downstairs as quietly as he could. He peeked around the corner into the living room, where his mother was stretched out and snoring. Part of him wanted to shake her awake and shout out his revelation, but the other part of him was still enmeshed in the fantasy of finding his grandmother’s key all on his own. Maybe he could have it both ways, by waking her without telling her exactly why, so that she could come watch him find the key.
“Mom?” he said, gently rubbing her arm. “Mom, could you come outside and help me with something? Mom?”
His mother squeezed her eyes tighter closed without opening them. “… so tired, Alex.” Her voice was faint, her words slurred. “Can it wait ’til later?”
“It’s really important, Mom, and I think it’ll make you really happy.” Alex rubbed his mother’s arm again, but the only reply he received was a deep sigh and a soft snore as she turned her face toward the back of the sofa.
Despite his sense of urgency, he knew from experience that any further attempt to rouse her would be useless. So often since his father had lost his job, his mother had collapsed on the sofa, sluggish and heavily intoxicated. He still remembered the first time he saw her do that—the day after his father had arrived home from work early with a box of his belongings. They’d had a huge argument that night, and he’d never heard his parents scream at each other for so long.
