WHEN I RETURNED home, it was as if I had been absent for years. After traveling through Chris’s life, I felt so changed, I was afraid my daughters wouldn’t recognize me.
I kept going over it in my head for three days straight. But not because I was looking for inconsistencies or omissions. It was clear Barbara had spent a long time waiting and getting ready for that moment. But to me it seemed like a different story—sometimes Chris’s story, sometimes Barbara’s, sometimes both of theirs. I wasn’t really in that story.
Barbara had asked me if I wanted to go inside the mill, but I wasn’t ready yet. If it was a gift from Chris to everyone, I should “unwrap” it with Olivia and Ruby. Besides, I felt like it was a special place for the two of them, for Chris and Barbara. Secret. Forbidden. The only way to break that perception was to go in there holding my daughters’ hands.
And so, June 13, Ruby’s first birthday, I took them. It had been exactly thirteen months since Chris’s death.
“Honey, I have something to tell you,” I said to Olivia. “And I’m going to tell you because I know you’re a big girl.”
“Of course, Mommy. I’m a very big girl.”
“Oli . . . Would you be able to take care of two ponies instead of just one?”
Olivia was so overwhelmed with emotion, she didn’t know how to answer.
“Panda is yours too. For you and your sister. Panda and Sunset belong to both of you, for you to take care of. Always.”
Olivia started crying.
“Why am I crying, Mommy? I’m happy . . .”
“Because you’re really excited. Sometimes you cry from joy.”
“Of course, my love, it’s really good.”
We went with the ponies to the mill. Olivia on Panda and Ruby on Sunset, held up by Barbara. On the way I cried, imagining Chris experiencing that moment with his three girls. Four in this case, I thought, looking at Barbara. She was his girl too. And against all odds, I smiled without stopping my tears. I felt reconciled, I didn’t know if with Chris or with Barbara, but I didn’t care, I felt good. Olivia saw my tears.
“Are you crying from joy too, Mommy?”
“Now I am, Oli.”
“Is it your first time too?”
“No, I’ve cried from joy once or twice before. When you were born, for example.”
“Oh sure,” she said. Then she pointed at something: “Look, the pretty mill.”
“You know it?”
“Of course, we’ve come here lots of times when we’re riding ponies. I told you before.”
It was true. Once she told me that on the farm there was a mill and that Barbara had explained to her what it was used for before. I had seen it too on several occasions, from the ferry, Mark’s boat or Kissing Tree Mountain. And I always had the same reaction as my daughter: Look, the pretty mill.
I didn’t tell her it was ours, that her father had left it for us. Too many emotions for one day. And I didn’t know if I wanted her to start asking questions. It wasn’t a day for questions.
“Wow, it’s all new!” Olivia exclaimed as she entered the mill and walked up the spiral staircase, counting the steps, of course. Though at that moment, those numbers seemed to me like a blessing. Olivia blessing every corner of the mill with her innocence and light.
Then we reached the attic. The door. And I saw the lock. Instinctively, my hand grasped the chain around my neck where the Master Key hung. Finally. I know it’s impossible, but I think I felt it vibrate. A current of energy. An imaginary magnetic field. The law of attraction between two objects. Two people. As if the only thing that had brought me there had been that key hanging around my neck.
Barbara took charge of the situation immediately. “Oops, there’s nowhere else to go from up here; let’s go downstairs, Oli.” She took Ruby in her arms and grabbed Olivia’s hand and took them downstairs to show them where they would sleep every time they came to the mill.
“So we can stay and sleep here?” Olivia asked, ecstatic.
“Of course, anytime you want.”
“And Panda and Sunset too?”
“Of course, Panda and Sunset too. But outside, waiting for you to come out, to take you wherever you want.
“And Pony can stay outside too?”
“No, Pony can’t stay outside.”
I mixed up the keys. I first stuck in the one for the attic in the house instead of the Master Key. They were the same size, but one of them had a big glob of red paint on it, round enough that you could tell it apart by touch. I laughed. That was a very tender moment for me. A moment of absolute climax broken by a slight slipup. Or maybe it wasn’t a slipup. Maybe what I understood was that both keys opened the same thing: the same lock, bought at the same place, guarding the same thing, with the same purpose. My island. My world. The big difference was that the door the Master Key opened didn’t lead to confinement; it led to a window. My window on the island. On the world. A place of personal realization to do whatever I wanted. A place in singular. A place where I could be myself, just me.
I looked at my feet as I entered—because I knew Chris would have made me go in with my eyes closed—and I sat on the floor in the middle of the room. White oak floorboards. My favorite. I stroked them. A tear fell onto the wood. I traced it with my hand. It took me a while to look up and contemplate the panoramic view from the enormous window. The beach, the dunes, the choppy sea. I realized just then that the beach before my eyes was the one from my recurring nightmares. My unconscious hadn’t wanted to torment me; it had simply given me a clue I didn’t know how to read.
Then I saw something: a dollar. It was in the center of the window, stuck to the glass with Scotch tape. I got up and went over. On it, in Chris’s handwriting, were the words:
Let’s start saving for our next dream.
I love you, C.
I cried again, and though all my emotions were still as turbulent as the sea and my thoughts as disordered as the sand on the beach, I understood that I, too, had been preparing myself for that moment for a long time, because I was surprised at my ability to put everything in its place. I was happy that thirteen months had passed. I needed thirteen months to face the secret/lie/mystery of Chris. I didn’t try to understand it at all or judge it or classify it or figure out if it was good or bad. I limited myself to assimilating it and accepting its history as true. I felt relieved. A weight had been lifted off me. The weight of guilt, of wondering what I’d done wrong. I didn’t want to get lost in analyzing it or trying to discover if all I’d been told was true. Among other things because there were lots of parts I didn’t like, that hurt me. It was a tale with a marvelous beginning and a tragic end, with dark and bittersweet parts, and if I didn’t watch out, I could get lost in its twists and turns and spend another year suffering.
Laughter, the sound of games and a phrase of Barbara’s brought that line of thinking to an end. I didn’t know how much time had passed.
“Come on, Olivia, let’s take a photo of Pony on the pony.”
“No, not that, not that! Not Shesnotapony!” Olivia screamed.
“Yes, come on, you’ll see how fun it is,” Barbara insisted.
She’s in trouble now, I said to myself. I stood up and looked out the window in time to see Barbara scoop Pony up in her arms.
“Come on, Pony, up you go,” she said, putting the little creature on top of Panda.
That wasn’t what tugged at my heart. It was Olivia’s scandalized cry blending with uncontrollable cackling. It was that she managed to tolerate Pony coming over to her, touching her and even sitting on her most prized possession. The gift from her father’s last trip: Panda.
Then she rode around the mill, toward me, as if she knew that I was peeking out—that indestructible connection—and said to me, “Look, Mommy, Shesnotapony on the pony.”
She began to shriek and laugh again.
And I stopped crying and laughed along with her.