I stopped at a pay phone on the way to Grace’s house the next day and dialed the number my friend provided. The call was short and simple—all of three minutes from start to finish. I gave him a false name and pretended to be seeking the procedure for myself. He didn’t give a name at all—only instructions.
I had to wait for him alone on a road downtown at noon on Friday. I was to come alone and bring cash, sanitary pads and a large bottle of disinfectant. The procedure would take two hours, and he would return “me” back to the same spot. I asked him what his training was, and he explained to me, in a thick accent I couldn’t place, that he’d been a doctor back in Europe and he’d done thousands of these procedures.
“Why aren’t you registered to practice medicine here?”
“English not good enough yet. I learning.”
“How do I know I can trust you?”
“Is very safe,” he told me, his tone curt and dismissive.
“But where will you take me?”
“Police watch all the time. Clinic location is secret.”
“Will it hurt—?”
“You want abortion, you come to the city on Friday. Is no skin off my nose if you don’t.”
Then he hung up. I scrawled the address down on the paper and continued to Grace’s house.
“We still need one hundred and twenty dollars,” I told Grace miserably when I was finished explaining. “Do you have any money?”
She sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “I could ask Patrick to ask his boss for an advance.”
“Could he do that?”
“We’ve done it before. We just finished paying the last one off, actually, a few months back. I would have to explain to Patrick why I need the money, though.”
“Gracie, can you really not just tell him the truth?” I asked her hesitantly. “It’s so unfair that you have to deal with this alone. He’s the one who got you pregnant.”
“I didn’t have to go back to his bed,” she said weakly. “It wasn’t like he forced me.” She straightened, then pursed her lips. “He won’t like it. I know he won’t. He wouldn’t even agree to use rubbers. I know he’s not going to agree to this. But it’s me who has to pay the cost if I follow through with this pregnancy, so it should be up to me what happens next, right?”
“I’m right with you there. I just think that he should help you deal with the situation he created.”
We sat in silence for a moment. In the backyard I could hear Ruth bossing Jeremy around, Jeremy getting angry and Tim playing mediator. Grace glanced toward the window a few times but didn’t rise from her chair.
“I can’t think of any other way,” I admitted eventually. “I do think you need to ask Patrick for the money.”
“It’ll be so hard to convince him to ask Ewan for money again,” Grace said, rubbing her forehead. “It was such a struggle for us to pay the loan back last time. I just don’t know...”
“I’ll pay it back for you,” I said, brightening. “I could send you what I have left over for the next few months. That’ll sort it out.”
Grace gave me a sad look.
“I can’t let you do that. You’ve done enough already.”
“If that’s the way we get the money, Grace, then tell him you need the money to help me, and tell him I’ll pay you back. At least think about it. You don’t have a lot of time.”
I was already feeling jittery when I pulled into Grace’s street on Friday morning. I couldn’t stand the thought of breakfast, nor could I stand my mother’s delight at my lack of appetite. She commended me on my decision to eat less, predictably noting that it might be easier for me to find a husband if I lost a little weight. Of all the days for her to make such a comment. I was so angry with Patrick Walsh that just bringing his image to mind was enough to make me shake, and by the minute, my resolve to avoid marriage was only growing stronger.
The children were in the yard again that day. Jeremy was throwing a ball at the other children, in a version of dodgeball that was slightly too mean to be innocent. There was no sign of Grace, so I parked the car at the curb and walked up the path toward the front door. The children noticed me as I reached the porch.
“You’re back again,” Tim stated helpfully. “Mom isn’t in the laundry today. She’s in her bedroom.”
“Thank you,” I said stiffly, and I waved the children away and made my way to the porch. The front door was open just a crack, so I knocked then let myself inside.
“Grace?” I called as I let myself into the house.
“I’m in here!” she called back. I followed the sound of her voice and found her sitting at a dresser in one of the small bedrooms. She looked so much better than the previous day, her hair styled into a low bouffant, with the ends curled upward. She was even wearing a little makeup, and a pair of costume earrings I remembered Mother gave her for her birthday one year. Her swing dress was navy with big white polka dots and a matching white belt, and although her shoes were worn, they were pretty—navy pumps with a big buckle on the side.
Grace looked beautiful, but it wasn’t just her outfit—when she met my eyes in the mirror, relief had relaxed the tension from her features. I was still nervous for her and for what we were about to do, but the renewed calm in my sister’s eyes was enough to reassure me that we were doing the right thing. Grace didn’t just want to end this pregnancy. She needed to do so.
“Are you ready?” I asked her. She stood and smoothed her dress over her hips.
“I’ll just run next door and get Mrs. Hills to come and watch the children.”
While Grace went to the neighbor’s house, I let myself out the back door to stand on the ramp and watch the children play. The game of dodgeball had ended, and now the boys were riding tricycles, while the girls played with some wooden blocks. Even Beth was better dressed today, wearing a floral pinafore, her hair woven into a braid.
Grace returned with Mrs. Hills, who seemed to be as old as the hills. She used a cane and had a severe expression on her face, suggesting that although she might not have known the details of what was going on, she was certain we were up to no good. Grace gave her a series of instructions, directed her to the sandwiches already prepared for the children’s lunch and then kissed each child on their forehead.
“Where are you going?” Jeremy asked, blinking up at her with a confused frown.
“I’m just going out for lunch with Aunty Maryanne.”
“Me, too?” Ruth asked hopefully. Grace flushed a little, even as she laughed and ruffled up Ruth’s hair.
“No, silly. It’s a grown-up lunch. But we’ll play tea parties when I get home.”
“Momma,” Beth said, throwing her arms around Grace’s leg. Grace bent down and picked her up, then kissed her cheek.
“Its Mrs. Hills’s turn to look after you, okay, darling? I’ll be back in a few hours. You be brave.”
Beth blinked her big blue eyes, trying to hold back the tears. Grace kissed her one last time, then firmly handed her to Mrs. Hills, then all but bolted for the car.
“Do you have everything? Did you get the extra cash?” I asked her. She patted her handbag and nodded.
“He wasn’t happy about it,” she sighed. “We had a screaming argument. It was awful. And you know my husband will never forgive you now that he thinks we helped you commit a mortal sin.”
“Gracie, I love you to death, but I don’t care even one bit what your husband thinks of me,” I snorted. Grace gave me a sad look, then glanced over her shoulder and walked a little faster.
“Let’s get out of here. I’ve never left them all behind before. I’m a bit scared someone’s going to cry.”
“They’ll be fine for a few hours.”
“It wasn’t them I was talking about,” Grace sighed, and then we both laughed.
“You seem better today,” I told her.
“It’s funny what a bit of hope can do for a person,” she murmured.
I was proud then, that I had become the kind of woman who lived what I believed. Wasn’t this what it was all about? Helping others to live the life they chose, and not the life society dictated for them? Helping women to reach their full potential, and not to stay subjugated into the roles their husbands assumed they would adopt.
The roads were clear—we’d hit the sweet spot between the morning peak and the lunchtime rush. I drove in silence for a while, and then Grace asked me quietly, “You think I’m doing the right thing, don’t you?”
“I think you know better than absolutely anyone else what’s best for you, and it’s strong of you to seek it.”
She flashed me the closest thing to a beam I’d seen since my arrival back in Washington State.
“Tell me what your life is like down there,” she said, adjusting her legs against the buttery leather of Dad’s “weekend” car.
“I work hard. My jobs take up a lot of my week. But I fit in a lot of fun around that—clubs and dancing and talking with professors and the other students about exciting ideas,” I said. “I feel like I’m right where I belong.”
“That’s lovely, Mary,” she said, smiling at me with an odd sadness in her gaze.
I signaled to change lanes and move around a slow truck, then glanced at her and prompted, “Do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Feel like you’re where you belong.”
Grace picked at a knot in the fabric of her dress and avoided my gaze as she pondered this question, but she looked out the window while she answered it.
“We’re very different, Maryanne. You’re destined for bigger and better things than I ever was. I never had it in me to swim upstream the way you do. I was always going to marry young, have a bunch of children and see out my days wiping noses and changing dirty diapers.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“Dad would say this is the ultimate honor for a woman. To be a wife and mother, I mean.”
“Dad would also say that a woman pursuing a career is the beginning of the end of society. Dad says a lot of things that he thinks are fact but that are, in fact, uninformed opinion,” I muttered.
“Will you ever get married?”
“Never.”
“Have you ever been in love?”
“I’ve met some lovely boys, but I’ve never been in love.”
“Well, how can you say you won’t marry if you’ve never even felt love? It’s love that led me to marry.”
“Love is a feeling. I value my thoughts far above my feelings,” I said. “If I were to fall in love, I’d do my absolute best to override that emotion with sensible decision-making. I don’t plan on becoming any man’s property.”
“I wish you would fall in love. I wish you’d love a man the way I love Patrick. I know you only see his flaws, but I still see his potential, and I know that one day he’s going to be a great man,” she sighed. “And for all of his faults, and I know he has many, I still love my place in his life. I know you two don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things, but if you could see each other the way I see you, I just know you’d love each other.”
“I don’t want to find a place in a man’s life at all. I just want to be in charge of my own life.”
“You have such a unique way of viewing the world, sister.”
“There are plenty of women who feel as I do,” I assured her. “And they are finding the strength to speak out, more and more every day. A hundred years from now things will be very different.”
She gave me a weak smile, then turned to look out the window again. After a while she reached across and took my hand and squeezed it. Hard.
“I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you for this. I feel like I was headed for a head-on collision with disaster, but you jumped in and intervened and now I’m going to walk away unscathed.”
“Tell me about what it’s like for you when you had the children. Do you think you’re just prone to the ‘baby blues’ more than others?”
“I don’t know what it is. But whenever I’ve been pregnant and had a child, I feel like an ungodly fog descends on me, and it takes me at least a year to claw my way out. Having Beth nearly killed me, and feeling like that with another baby? I wouldn’t survive it.” She drew in a sharp breath, then admitted very quietly, “I’ve been a terrible mother, Maryanne.”
“Don’t say that,” I protested. “Why on earth would you think such a thing?”
“I let them down all the time when they were small. You have no idea how dreadful I was in the early days after each birth. Some days with the twins, I’d forget to feed one...probably both. Tim is four years old and he knows how to organize lunches now, because I’ve been through this twice since he was born, and he’s had to grow up too fast. In the summer I let Beth crawl around some days without a diaper because I couldn’t be bothered to change her. I had days where I cried from the minute I woke up until the minute I went to sleep. The misery just felt endless, even when I’d done this before and I knew it would pass if I just held on.”
“Didn’t you have friends to help? I know Mother and Father haven’t been good to you lately, but surely there were others you could call.”
She sighed and shook her head.
“I know it doesn’t make any sense at all, but the sadder I get, the less I’m able to reach out and so all of my friends drifted away. It’s like I curl up into a miserable ball, even when I know that doing so makes everything else worse.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about this?”
“I tried. I sat down to write you last year after Beth, but I was mortified to admit how awful things were,” she murmured.
“Are you really telling me you’d cry all of the time? What was Patrick doing during all of this?”
“He took me to the doctor once, but the doctor just said I needed to be stronger. Patrick didn’t understand—I’m convinced he thought I wasn’t trying hard enough. He just wanted me to handle myself better.”
“So you were on your own, depressed for months on end, with no relief?” I surmised grimly, thinking that the next time I saw my brother-in-law, we were going to have words.
“Well, I have found an outlet recently. I’ve been writing these notes to myself. It probably sounds a little silly, but just sitting down and scrawling my thoughts out on paper has helped me a bit since Beth. Even today I wrote one before we left...about what we’re doing today. About how grateful I am to you.”
“You wrote a confession letter and named me in it, then left it in the house for Patrick to find?” I gasped. Grace laughed softly.
“Maryanne, I’ve been doing this for over a year and he’s never even come close to finding my notes. I keep them in the last place he’d ever think to look for them, believe me. And they help me so much, I do think it’s worth the risk. It’s like jotting those words down on paper gives me the chance to see them with fresh eyes, and sometimes once they’re out, the bad thoughts aren’t as big as they seem when they’re locked up in my mind.”
I was still unnerved, if a little relieved to hear this “note” wasn’t sitting out in the open somewhere. And I knew she was probably getting nervous about the procedure as the city drew nearer, but I decided that later, when it was all over, I’d ask her to destroy that note. I couldn’t risk my part in this coming out somewhere down the line—I wasn’t at all ashamed of what we were doing, but the risk to my career was simply too great.
“Have you thought about what happens after this?” I asked her instead. “How you’ll make sure you don’t end up in this position again?”
“I just don’t know. I’ll be sure stay out of Patrick’s bed for a long while after this. And...well, we did manage to avoid a pregnancy for some months just by...” She paused, then flushed furiously as she muttered, “Well, we found a way anyway.”
“Was he pulling out?” I asked her.
“Maryanne!” she gasped. “Don’t talk about these things.”
“Oh, Gracie, there’s no shame in it. Pulling out works some of the time, but if you really don’t want another baby, then maybe you need to get yourself a diaphragm. Or better yet, find a doctor who will give you a hysterectomy. Then you know you don’t have to worry about it anymore.”
“Patrick always wanted a big family,” Grace said softly.
“Patrick gets you pregnant and leaves you to deal with the aftermath.”
“Maybe if some more time passes and Beth and the kids grow up some more...then maybe I’d be able to cope with another baby when one comes.”
“Do you even want more children, Grace?”
“What I want doesn’t matter,” she laughed softly, slightly confused, more than a little bitter. “Babies don’t come when you want them.”
“You shouldn’t have to keep having pregnancy after pregnancy until it kills you.”
“I just have to hope that’s not my destiny.”
“You control your destiny. That’s why we’re doing this today, because you know what you want and you have every right to make it happen for yourself.”
“Maybe,” she murmured. I sighed and pulled the car over to park beside a clothing store. When I flicked the ignition off, neither one of us moved.
“What time is it?” Grace asked me. I glanced down at my watch and butterflies rose in my stomach.
“We have ten minutes to walk to the meeting point.”
Grace breathed in, then exhaled.
“Okay.”
“Are you scared?” I asked.
“Kind of. Mostly, I just wish you could come with me.”
“Me, too,” I said softly, but then I felt compelled to reassure her. “But everything is going to be fine, Grace. You’ll see. A few hours from now we’ll be home and it will all be over.”
Grace and I walked slowly on our way to the meeting point, striding so close that our arms kept colliding. A heavy cloud cover had come over, casting shadows down onto the footpath, and the air felt charged with danger as we neared our destination. I could hear Grace’s breathing was heavier than it should be, and when I glanced at her, she was positively green. I wanted to promise her that everything was going to be fine. Women had abortions every day. I wasn’t sure why I couldn’t say what I needed to in order to reassure her. It felt like the words were stuck in my throat, and no matter how I tried, I couldn’t convince myself to say them. Maybe it was because, despite my bravado, I knew on some level that there was a very real chance that everything wouldn’t be fine.
When we reached the mouth of the alley, we slowed to a stop, and we stood in complete silence for a long moment. Grace wrapped her arms around her waist, took a sharp breath in then exhaled slowly.
“You’ll wait here, won’t you?” she whispered, her gaze desperately searching mine. “Out of sight so he doesn’t get upset with me. But I’ll feel a bit better if I know you’re here.”
“Of course,” I promised. I actually had every intention of following the car, but I didn’t want to promise her that I’d be right behind her, because I knew that keeping up with him was a long shot in the busy city traffic.
Grace drew in another deep breath, then threw her arms around me. I hugged her back, my arms locked tight, feeling somehow that I could keep her safe just by embracing her with all of my strength.
But then in the distance, I heard a clock strike twelve, and we both knew she had to go. The alley was clear for now, but the man was due any minute. Grace disentangled herself from me, took a step back and offered a wan smile.
“I’ll see you at two o’clock.”
“Two o’clock sharp,” I promised.
“I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you for this.”
“Knowing you’re well will be repayment enough.”
“I love you, Mary.”
“And I love you, too, sister. See you soon.”
Grace nodded and turned and walked into the road, disappearing into the shadows and the dismal gray of a city road at noon on an overcast day.
I did as promised. I lurked just beyond the top of the alley, standing in front of a restaurant with a book in my hand. I hoped it looked as though I was waiting for someone to join me for a lunch date. Only a few minutes passed before I saw a faded lemon Ford emerge from the alley. A man was in the driver’s seat and at first, I thought it must be a different car because I couldn’t see Grace in the back. Only when he passed did I see the blanket over the backseat, and the unmistakable shape of someone beneath it.
I closed the book and walked briskly to my car. As the Ford waited for a break in the busy traffic, I opened the car door with shaking hands and slipped inside. On first attempt, the engine stalled, and I swore and shook a little harder as I tried again. Finally, the car spluttered to life, just as the Ford passed. I wanted to look calm. I couldn’t afford to panic and drive erratically and rouse suspicion. Dad’s car was already eye-catching enough—a near-new aqua Chevrolet Bel Air.
So my instincts were to pull out without indicating and to gun the engine to catch up with the man, but I waited until another car passed, and then in the smallest of gaps, slipped into the traffic behind it. For several blocks I managed to hang just a car or two behind the yellow Ford, and my heart rate was starting to settle and I was actually starting to think I’d be able to follow him all the way to wherever he was going.
Then a traffic light turned amber, and just as I prepared to flatten my foot to race through it, the car in front of me stopped dead.
I sat behind that car as the light turned red, watching as the lemon Ford carrying my sister disappeared from view.
It’s no exaggeration to say that it was the longest afternoon of my life. By two o’clock I felt like I’d been waiting weeks instead of hours. I was already at the alley, tapping my toe impatiently against the concrete of the footpath, glancing toward the sky that was darkening ominously. I had a blister forming in my right heel and I’d been sweating so much that my nylon dress was clinging to me all over. I bought a sandwich at a nearby deli, but it now sat untouched in a nearby bin. I was hungry enough to feel a little light-headed, but I’d raised the food to my lips a few times, only to find my stomach was turning over so violently I couldn’t manage a single bite.
By two-fifteen, I was pacing between a stack of trash bins and the roller door of a garage. I jumped at every sound, and when a car finally turned into the alley, my knees went weak with relief. But it wasn’t the yellow Ford. It was an olive-green Chevy, and the driver gave me an odd look at my rapidly fading smile, then drove right past me.
By two forty-five, I could feel myself hyperventilating. She was forty-five minutes late and there was no longer any avoiding the “what-ifs,” but once I opened that floodgate in my mind, I was quickly overwhelmed. I sank onto the curb and forced myself to take some deep breaths because I wasn’t going to help anyone if I actually passed out.
By three o’clock, I’d returned to my father’s car and found the tattered piece of paper with the unregistered doctor’s phone number on it, and I was frantically looking for a pay phone in the blocks around the road, no longer trying to stay calm, and no longer trying to look inconspicuous.
I finally found a pay phone. It took me six attempts to dial the number because my hands were shaking so violently. The busy signal echoed in my ear, so I tried again, and again, and then I ran back to the road again, and I checked at the car in case she’d found her way there somehow, and then I ran back to the pay phone and tried again.
I repeated this cycle over and over, trying to convince myself that any minute now the call would connect and the “doctor” would give me a very reasonable explanation for the delay or that Grace herself would wander around a corner and tell me she’d simply gotten lost.
Grace is fine. I kept telling myself she was definitely fine. She had to be—she had four children at home who desperately needed her. I desperately needed her. The universe wouldn’t be so cruel as to have her harmed when I was only trying to help.
When I ran out of change, I managed to convince the attendant at the deli that I’d had a family emergency, and he let me use a phone in his apartment upstairs. I sweated as I raced through the entries in the telephone book, calling hospitals, praying someone had information about my sister. My attempts at conversation were embarrassingly unclear because I was so flustered I could barely explain what I needed.
“Grace Walsh...but maybe she’s not admitted under that name. Maybe she’s just been dropped off injured and you don’t know who she is yet. Have you had any unidentified women admitted this afternoon...? Do you have a women’s ward? Could you ask them?” And then finally, when I grew still more desperate, “I don’t know what you call the wards but I know you have places where women go. The women who’ve had failed abortions. Could you please check there?”
“We have two,” the clerk said curtly. “The sepsis ward, or the palliative care ward?”
“Oh, God. Check both.”
When my calls turned up nothing, I had started driving from emergency room to emergency room. One hospital did have a Jane Doe recently admitted and I waited half an hour to see her, but she turned out to be a stranger.
In the early hours, all I could think about was Grace. I was terrified for her—frantic only at the thought that she might be hurt...or worse. But as evening became night, a new realization was starting to dawn, popping up in my thoughts every now and again, then bursting like a bubble. It was becoming unlikely Grace wasn’t coming home unscathed, and there was something new at stake for me personally. I hated myself for even thinking about the consequences for myself when I didn’t even know what had become of my sister, but I had to be a realistic.
I arranged that abortion for Grace. She’d begged me to, and she’d wanted to go ahead with the procedure desperately, but that didn’t change the reality that I had broken the law.
And if Grace had been seriously injured, or worse...then maybe I was criminally responsible for her fate. If Betsy Umbridge’s boyfriend could spend two years in prison for arranging an abortion that had gone exactly according to plan, what would happen to me if Grace was injured...or never came home at all?
I retreat to the bathroom to wash my face, and when I return to the table, everyone falls silent.
“I think you guys probably need to talk,” Ellis speaks first, motioning vaguely toward the four of us siblings.
“I’ll handle the cleanup,” Alicia offers. There’s a moment of stunned silence. Ruth’s jaw actually drops.
“Seriously?” I blurt, and Tim glares at me. He’s always been something of a leader in this tribe—and I’ve always been the most compliant member of our family. I’ve angered him more today than I have in decades, and I hate it.
“Thanks, honey,” Tim says pointedly to Alicia. “That would be a huge help.”
“Noah and I will take Patrick back to the nursing home,” Hunter offers cautiously. “If you’ll all be okay here.” His gaze is on me, again asking me a silent question. I nod, then look away.
“And I’ll take the boys back into the living room to watch another movie,” Ellis says.
Our spouses scramble away. Ruth excuses herself and all but sprints to the kitchen, returning with a bottle of wine and three glasses. I reluctantly, awkwardly, explain to my brothers and sister about the hidden cavity in the bottom of the wooden chest. By the time I finish, they’re all staring at me, slack-jawed.
“So...wait,” Jeremy says, holding up a hand toward me. “Mom didn’t die in a car accident?”
“I don’t think so,” I whisper.
“And you think she died in 1958?” Tim frowns, then shakes his head. “That doesn’t seem right. She was definitely still alive when I started school.”
“Us, too,” Ruth says. They all stare at me.
“I’m just telling you what it says, guys,” I say weakly. “It’s not my fault it’s confusing.”
“Jesus Christ,” Tim exhales, pinching the bridge of his nose. “What the hell are we supposed to do with all of this?”
“I didn’t bring the photo album so I can’t show you the death certificate. But the notes and the artwork are upstairs.”
“Good. Let’s see them.”
I divert past Dad’s room to retrieve the clipboard while the other three walk upstairs. By the time I catch up, they’re all staring around the mess. My brothers are visibly horrified.
“You said there were paintings,” Jeremy says stiffly, glaring at Ruth. “You forgot to mention it’s an absolute fucking disaster zone up here.”
“I told you it was a mess. I didn’t realize I had to qualify that with an exact description,” Ruth snaps. Tim hesitantly picks up a basket, then grimaces and sets it back down again. “What’s in there?”
“Empty paint tubes, what looks like it used to be an apple core and I think maybe a whisk.”
“It’s all random. Just like that,” I tell them. “There doesn’t seem to be any pattern to the mess.”
“Let’s see these notes you found,” Ruth prompts. I pass the clipboard to my nearest sibling, which happens to be Tim, and then I motion toward the dark canvas.
“The date on that canvas matches this first note,” I say. Tim skims the page, then swallows and raises his gaze to the ceiling. Jeremy takes the clipboard next, and he and Ruth read it together.
“That’s a suicide note, right? She talks about ‘mortal sin.’ That’s suicide?”
“Everything is a mortal sin,” Ruth scoffs, then sobers. “But yeah. That doesn’t sound great.”
“How do you even know she wrote these?” Tim asks. I lift the page to show him the other note, the one that refers to us and to Dad, and he exhales as he reads it. “Right. And downstairs, that stuff with Dad and you. What’s going on there?”
“I was asking him about Grace because of these. And the death certificate.”
“I meant why did he tell you to read these?”
“I think because he heard me and Beth talking earlier,” Ruth says. “Lisa thinks she has postpartum depression.” I look at her incredulously.
“No, Ruth, go right ahead and tell everyone my personal medical information. I don’t mind at all,” I say bitterly.
“I knew something was going on with you,” Jeremy says, tilting his head at me. “Are you okay?”
“I—” I want to protest and to assure my siblings that they don’t need to worry about me, but this time I don’t. “I don’t know. But reading that—” I point to the note in Tim’s hand “—I can’t help but wonder if there’s a genetic component.”
Tim hands the second note to Jeremy, and Ruth steps closer to him to read along.
“I just need to know,” I admit, throat tight. “I just need to know what happened to her. If she...”
“You should have told us about this,” Tim says abruptly. At my pointed look, he runs his hand through his hair, then says in exasperation, “All of this, Beth! The stuff you found in Dad’s chest. These notes. Christ. And the depression.”
“I don’t get it,” Ruth sighs, looking up from the note. “Why on earth didn’t you tell us? This is...a lot.”
“I didn’t know how to explain,” I say weakly. “I was worried you’d try to take over. I was worried you’d worry about me. It was overwhelming. Maybe I wasn’t thinking straight.”
“I get it,” Jez sighs. “A few bits of paper and suddenly I’m questioning the entire way we’ve understood our upbringing.” He points toward the clipboard, then adds, “I mean...this refers to Dad, but she isn’t talking about the Dad we know. Right?”
“We don’t even know if they’re real,” Ruth protests. “You can’t let two random bits of paper—two unsigned bits of paper—make you question anything. Especially not the way you see Dad. That’s completely unfair.”
“It’s not just the notes,” Tim says heavily, glancing at me. “The death certificate Beth found raises questions, too. Why would he tell us she died in a car accident if she didn’t?”
“It would be unforgivably disloyal to judge a man who can’t defend himself, based on any of this,” Ruth snaps. “He’s so confused, and there could be a perfectly reasonable explanation he just can’t share.”
“Such as?” Jeremy says incredulously. Ruth opens her mouth to snap a reply back at him, but Tim cuts them both off.
“Squabbling isn’t going to help, is it? The only hope we have of understanding this is if we find the rest of the notes.”
“Well, that I can agree on,” Ruth murmurs. Jeremy nods, too, and then they all look at me, and it suddenly occurs to me that we are, at last, a united force.
I wanted the truth, but maybe I didn’t have the strength to find it until I had allies. Now, realizing that we’ll be a team, I’m less afraid of what we’ll discover up here, and simply determined to find it.
“Okay, boys, this is what we’re going to do,” Ruth announces, snapping on her project manager voice. “You two are going to handle the big items—boxes, baskets, furniture and so on. Empty them over here, and then take them up to that end of the attic.”
“We’re starting this today?” Tim asks, but he’s already rolling back the sleeves on his shirt.
“I don’t have anywhere to be. Do you?” Ruth says.
“The second note was in a pile of junk food wrappers,” I tell them. “So check everywhere. Listening to what Dad said downstairs earlier, I think he probably planned to throw these notes away once he finished the paintings. So they might already be scrunched up, like the second one was, or even just dumped in some random place among the chaos.”
“Got it.” Tim mock-salutes us. Ruth turns to me.
“You and I will sort through the smaller pieces of trash. We’ll make two piles—a keep pile, a toss pile. Jez, in between helping Tim, you can ferry the trash down to the dumpster.”
“We won’t get this whole space done today,” Jeremy warns us. “Not unless we work till midnight.”
“We don’t actually need to get the whole space cleared out.” Ruth shrugs. “We just need to see if there are any more notes.”
Jeremy finds a third note under a discarded plate by one of the windows, the back smeared with paint. He reads it silently, and then offers it to me and Ruth.
“Is it like the others?” I ask, staring at his hand hesitantly.
“Yeah.”
“Does the date match a canvas?” Tim calls from the other end of the room. Jeremy takes the note as he checks the canvases on the table, then nods.
“Put it with the clipboard, then, because we’re probably going to find more,” Ruth murmurs, returning to her sorting. “I’ll read them in order when we’re done.”
“Beth?” Jeremy checks, and I nod.
“Yeah. I want to do that, too.”
We have three notes now, three out of thirteen, assuming there’s one for each canvas. Jeremy sorts carefully through the pile of Dad’s canvases, then removes the relevant three and rests them on the floor. He pauses at the unique canvas.
“You said this looks like the ring you found.”
“I’m sure of that much, at least,” I tell him.
“And he said downstairs the others are of the curve of her stomach,” Ruth says quietly. Jeremy picks up one of the other canvases and we all stare at it. Before, when I was looking at this series of canvases, it was difficult to know what to focus on—they are busy, with layers of different colors and materials. Now that Dad’s given us a clue, it’s easy to recognize the shape of a pregnant woman’s belly and I can’t believe I missed it the first time.
“These are beautiful,” Jeremy says suddenly. He looks up at us, his gaze brimming with emotion. “I’m not really a fan of art, but there’s so much emotion here. I can feel the sadness. His regret. Her isolation.”
“The theory is that with Dad’s kind of dementia, as the language centers atrophy, the visual centers of the brain overcompensate. I read a paper where a woman who was in decline like Dad described the way her imagination went into overdrive when she got sick,” Tim says. “Neurologists think we can learn a lot about how the brain works from cases like Dad’s—” He makes a sound of triumph, then lifts a note up out of a basket. “There’s a splash of paint on it, but it’s legible. It’s another of the early ones,” he tells us as he carefully puts it in place on the clipboard, and Jeremy removes another canvas to the floor.
We get distracted for a while after that, when Ruth uncovers her Grade 4 report card, and we all chuckle at her teacher’s comments about how she was stubbornly determined to rule over her peers rather than to learn. Jeremy finds a copy of a long-forgotten photo of a camping trip we all took to Gardner Cave when we were preteens—the trip that sparked his love of geology. Tim then finds what looks suspiciously like mouse droppings, and we decide to take a break, swarming downstairs around hot cocoas. Hunter reappears, with Noah in tow.
“Sorry it took me so long,” he murmurs, embracing me from behind as I linger at the kitchen countertop with my siblings. I didn’t even realize he was coming back—he’s been gone so long I just assumed he’d just taken Noah straight home. “It took a while for your dad to settle back in at the nursing home. His oxygen saturation was far too low. The nurses had to call the doctor to adjust his medication.”
“I shouldn’t have upset him,” I say, throat tight.
“He’s dying, Beth,” Tim sighs. “Look, I know I was harsh earlier about you raising your voice at him, but like I keep trying to tell you, we’re past the point where any of these things will make much difference.”
“I do know that,” I mutter. When I think about the future, it’s all a blur. I have no idea how much longer we have with Dad—I get that the end is looming, and that’s why we had to move him into the hospice. But I don’t dare ask about the time frame. I’m certain Tim has an idea, but I just can’t bear to know if we’re talking days, weeks, or months.
“I assume you want to stay, honey. I just came back so you can feed Noah,” Hunter says quietly. “Maybe Jez can drop you home when you’re done here?”
I check in with my brother, who nods, so I curl up in Dad’s armchair to feed the baby. Through the window I’m watching Ellis and the boys, who are back out in the cold, throwing the football—their faces red as raspberries now; the joy in their expressions as they play together is such a contrast to the heaviness inside the house.
Tim approaches as I’m burping the baby. He perches on the armrest of the chair opposite me, and says very quietly, “I’ve been thinking. Especially about what you said earlier.”
“I said a lot of things earlier.”
“About Dad. About...what’s coming for all of us. About your postpartum depression.” His tone is gentle, his gaze soft on my face. “Look, I’m a surgeon. I don’t know much about mental health—just the basics. But I do remember colleagues talking about postpartum depression when it was added to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders a few years back. I know just enough to know this is a big deal. You need to go home with Hunter and leave upstairs to me and Jez and Ruth.”
“Tim, you’ve known for like two hours that I might have this condition, right?”
“Right. I mean, I suspected something was going on, but it didn’t occur to me it was this serious.”
“Okay, fine. I just need to point out the utter hypocrisy in you telling me what I can and can’t handle when you didn’t even know I was unwell three hours ago.”
Tim opens his mouth, then closes it. His lips are pursed now. My brother is frustrated. Good. So am I.
“I’m just worried about you.”
“Good. Thanks. I appreciate that.” I hand him Noah, and then straighten my clothing as I shake my head. “I knew that when someone had a mental illness, they have to deal with the stigma, but it’s even worse than that. As soon as anyone suspects you’re mentally ill, they start treating you like you’re fragile—like you could shatter if you’re exposed to stress or even just a loud noise. And at the time in your life when you need emotional support more than ever, people try to force you out of the difficult moments...which of course, are the moments when a family grows closer.” I don’t want to be childish about this, but I can’t help the bitterness in my voice as I mutter, “But sure I’ll go home, if that’ll make you feel better.”
Tim gives me an irritated look.
“You’ve read the first two notes you found.”
“You know I have.”
“So you realize then that it’s looking likely that you’re suffering from the same affliction that our mother battled, and we can’t rule out the possibility that she actually died by suicide. And you’re wondering why I’m trying to protect you from stress?”
“I want to be here. I need to be here.”
Tim sighs, then throws his hands in the air.
“Fine.”
Ellis finally drags his boys in, promising to pick up pizza for dinner on their way home. Ruth hugs them all and promises she’ll kiss them all good-night when she gets home.
I plant a peck on Hunter’s cheek, touch Noah’s chin with the tip of my finger and say good-night to my family.
And then we all mount the stairs again, ready to face whatever ugly truth is waiting for us.
The hours begin to drag. My siblings and I work in silence sometimes, broken only when one of us finds a note, or some random memorabilia that we want to share. The stack of canvases on the table is soon halved as we match new notes to paintings and move them to the floor, but the sun has dipped low. Soon the light fades, and we’re working by the glow of the yellow bulbs that hang from the ceiling beams.
“I can’t stay much longer,” Tim sighs. “I’ve got rounds at seven tomorrow morning, then a full day of consults. Plus, I promised Alicia I’d be home by nine.”
“What’s the deal with her anyway? Did she have a personality transplant?” Jeremy asks suddenly. Tim stills, then frowns at him.
“Jez. Seriously.”
“Not complaining,” Jeremy says, raising his hands. “Today was just a pretty stark transformation from the woman who wouldn’t even help us with Dad not so long ago.”
“If you must know, asshole, we’ve talked through a whole heap of shit in therapy.” I forgot how sweary Tim gets when he’s tired. During his residency, my straightlaced brother had a veritable potty mouth. “One of the things that’s come up is that this family is so close-knit she’s always felt like an unwelcome outsider.”
“We’re close, but we’re hardly freakishly close,” Ruth says.
“How many other families do you know that still meet up every week for dinner?” Tim says pointedly.
“Well, we don’t really meet every week,” Ruth says defensively. “I mean, if you’re on shift or Jez is overseas...”
“But unless I’m on shift or Jez is overseas, we’re here every single week. We’re close, Ruth. That’s not a bad thing at all,” Tim says. “It’s just been hard for Alicia to find her place with us. She said when she tried to pitch in with Dad, you two were always finding problems with whatever she did to help, and sometimes at family dinners, she’d come along and find the three of you barely spoke to her at all.” His words falls like a stone into the space between us. Ruth and I share a wince. I had no idea that Alicia even realized how much we didn’t like her, and it never occurred to me that she would have cared either way. She always seems so bulletproof. “Once we talked about it, I think she realized she was being unfair, and today was the first time in ages I can remember her actually relaxing at a family dinner.” Tim motions between me and Ruth with a paintbrush. “Surely your husbands have felt the same at some point?”
Now Ruth, Jeremy and I are all sharing guilty glances.
“Uh, sure,” Ruth says, unconvincingly. Tim frowns.
“Maybe Alicia wasn’t being unfair,” I admit carefully. “We don’t really have much in common with her, and I guess we’ve probably been a bit hard on her.”
Tim’s frown deepens.
“She said you two were always all about babies.” He points at Ruth. “You raising the boys—” his accusing finger points to me next “—and you trying to get pregnant, and now with Noah. She said she felt excluded because we don’t want kids.”
I cringe because there’s definitely some truth in that. I know from experience that motherhood is an exclusive club—and any woman on the outside, by choice or by circumstance, knows all too well what it feels like to have her membership application to the Mommy-social-group declined. The worst thing about this conversation is that I remember how awful it felt to be on the outside when Hunter and I were trying to have a baby. It just never occurred to me that Alicia was on the outside, too.
“That’s why me and Fleur broke up,” Jeremy says suddenly. Ruth, Tim and I gape at him.
“Because of me and Ruth?” I gasp, instantly sick with guilt. I might not have found much affection for Alicia, but I loved Fleur and I loved her for Jeremy. The idea that Ruth and I might have scared her off is heartbreaking.
“Oh. No, sorry. You were always much nicer to her than you are to Alicia.”
Tim scowls again.
“What exactly have you two been doing to my wife that I haven’t noticed? If you had any idea how much we’ve fought about this the past few years...”
“We never intentionally excluded her,” Ruth groans. “And now that you’ve told us she felt like we did, we’ll both make an effort to include her more. Right, Beth?”
“Absolutely,” I say. “Jeremy, back to Fleur. What’s the story?”
“I meant that we broke up because of kids. Specifically, she wants them. Posthaste,” Jeremy adds, grimacing. “I couldn’t see how a kid could possibly fit into my travel schedule. She said since we both wanted kids we should try for a baby now and figure the logistics out later if we actually managed to have one. We fought about it for a year and then she decided she was getting too old to wait for me to realize she was right.”
“You said you two grew apart,” Ruth says with a frown.
“Meh.” Jeremy shrugs. When he’s self-conscious, he has this way of trying to appear too casual, and that’s how I know that he’s still pretty sore over all of this. “It was probably more like we were ripped apart because a giant hypothetical baby came between us.”
“Do you actually want kids?” Ruth demands.
Jeremy shrugs again, but then says, “Yeah. Probably.”
Ruth and I share a look.
“Fleur was the best girlfriend you’ve ever had. You need to get her back before it’s too late,” I tell him.
“Tim, do you think having two exceedingly bossy sisters has damaged you in any way?” Jeremy sighs.
“I think it prepared me well for having an exceedingly bossy wife, actually.”
“See, you’d both be lost without us,” Ruth snorts, then waves her arm around the room. “Have any of you noticed that we’re actually making some progress? We’re probably at as good a place as any to call it for the night.”
She’s right—the mess has finally taken shape. Furniture and baskets and boxes are all at one end; trash and paperwork sit in three huge piles at the other. But much of the floor is now visible, and we can move around freely as we sort.
“I’ll come back and keep working on it tomorrow,” I say. A series of meaningful glances flick between my siblings.
“And what happens if you find the notes and there’s no satisfying answer? What if there aren’t other notes to find? Or what if you find the notes and you don’t like the answer?” Jeremy asks. I feel myself slump even considering those possibilities.
“I don’t know,” I admit.
“I’ll meet you back here tomorrow night and we’ll keep looking together,” Ruth says. I open my mouth to protest, but she holds up a hand. “Look, I get it. This is personal to all of us, but you’re identifying with her in a way the rest of us can’t. That’s exactly why you shouldn’t tackle this on your own.”
“Ruth’s right,” Tim murmurs, then his gaze softens. “There’s not much we can do to make your situation better, but we can be here to support you with this. Please, promise me you’ll let us. I don’t know if I can be here every night to search with you, but if you do find the notes, I’ll find a way to be here to read them with you.”
“Me, too,” Jez says quietly.
I look around the concerned gazes of my siblings, and my eyes fill with tears.
“Okay,” I promise unevenly. “Ruth and I will keep looking, but when we find them all, we’ll read them together.”