My parents seemed to assume there would be a truce among us all for Grace’s sake, because when Patrick and I piled out of the car with the children for the funeral service, they both came to help us take our seats in the cathedral. For once in my life I didn’t have it in me to make a scene.
Her funeral service was excruciatingly long because Father insisted that the priest send her off with the full Requiem Mass. I distracted the children with candy, and I was proud of them for patiently sitting around me, especially Beth. She seemed to understand that something momentous was happening, even if she couldn’t really fathom what it was.
And then we all piled into Patrick’s car, and drove to the cemetery. There wasn’t so much as a breeze that day, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. As we drove in near silence, I thought about how such an awful occasion shouldn’t be allowed to take place on such a beautiful day. But life has no rhyme or reason sometimes, and when it all boils down, we really are at the mercy of fate.
There was quite a crowd around that gravesite, mostly Mother and Father’s friends and executives from the bank who probably didn’t know Grace well enough to care, but they certainly knew Father well enough to make the trip. Patrick’s aunt Nina was there, and she held herself up against her walker beside the children. Mr. and Mrs. Hills were there, too, and Ewan stood within the circle of a small collection of people I vaguely recognized as Patrick’s colleagues.
It was all dreadfully sad, and as they lowered my sister into the ground, I wondered how on earth I was supposed to carry on with my life knowing the role I’d played in her death. My guilt came and went in waves—some days I’d feel certain that it was all my fault, and if I’d just found some other option for her or refused to help her, things would have been okay. Other days I convinced myself that one way or another, Grace was going to end her pregnancy, and it was hardly my fault there were no safe alternatives. There at her graveside the day of her funeral, I felt for the very first time a balancing in those two extremes.
Grace was gone, and I’d certainly played a role in that. But I was only helping her to do what she felt she so desperately needed to do, and she had seemed quite sure that if she had gone ahead with the pregnancy, we’d have been burying her anyway. This was the start of me making peace with her loss, and when these thoughts struck me, I finally started to cry.
The priest was reading bible verses now and talking about “everlasting peace” and Grace’s new home of heaven. This, the children seemed to understand, and I saw the shift in them. Timmy especially held himself so stiffly, refusing to spill the tears in his eyes. That beautiful boy stood there in one of my mother’s expensive outfits, his hair freshly combed, with the weight of the world on his shoulders. When I looked past him, I saw that Patrick was doing much the same, clenching his jaw in order to keep the tears at bay. I crouched next to Tim, ignoring my mother’s questioning look, and I caught his shoulders in my hands.
“You can cry, Tim. You don’t have to be brave.”
“But...” He looked from the grave to his siblings and then back to me helplessly. “I want to be a big boy for...”
“Big boys cry sometimes,” I promised him. Tim glanced up at Patrick skeptically, and Patrick looked down at us, frowning. “In fact, sometimes even men cry. This is very unfair and it’s very hard, so it’s okay to feel sad and scared, especially when you’re with your family.”
Patrick swallowed, then closed his eyes. Two heavy tears ran down his cheeks. When Tim looked up and saw his father crying his little face crumpled. He turned back to me, threw his arms around my neck and started to sob. Soon Ruth and Jeremy were crying, too, and I sat on the grass so I could hold the three of them at once. The priest kept looking over at us, and Mother was still staring at us as if we were tarnishing the precious formality of the funeral service by openly grieving the deceased. But we didn’t do anything really scandalous until Patrick also dropped to sit cross-legged on the grass, too.
“Come here,” he choked, and the twins and Tim ran at their father, the four of them sobbing audibly against the backdrop to the priest’s ongoing monologue.
“Momma,” Beth said, and she climbed onto my lap and wrapped her arms around my neck, then patted my back ever so gently. “Momma sad.”
I’d suspected it the previous day, but here at the worst possible time was undeniable proof that Beth really was confusing me up with Grace. I knew that at least in this I had nothing to feel guilty about, but I did feel very guilty indeed. What if someone heard and assumed that I’d encouraged her to do such a thing?
“Yes,” I said, for the purposes of anyone who might have overheard her. “It is sad that Momma is in heaven.”
“So very sad,” Mrs. Hills agreed behind us. “It’s all so very sad.”
The wake was held back at my mother and father’s house—also known now by the children as “the castle”—and my parents’ caterers had set out enough food and top-shelf liquor to fell an elephant. I helped myself to a generous glass of sherry, but when I glanced at Patrick, he was sipping water.
It was a dull function—more perfunctory than celebratory of my sister’s life—and I could see the children were all bored and exhausted after the emotional moments at the cemetery. It wasn’t long before Patrick and I exchanged a glance, and then by mutual, unspoken agreement, we made our farewells and left. All four children had fallen asleep before we were even out of Father’s street, leaning into one another in a way that made my heart ache.
“You didn’t drink today,” I remarked to Patrick.
“Your parents would have loved it if I drank myself into a stupor,” he said, dragging a heavy hand over his face. “I still don’t know how I stop them from taking the kids, but I figure a good place to start is to get my act together.”
“Good,” I said, nodding. “That’s good.”
There was a pause, then Patrick added, “If you have any other ideas, now would be a good time to share them.”
“I don’t know if today is the day to talk about this,” I admitted. I was utterly exhausted, already hoping the conversation would fade so I could nap as Patrick drove home.
“I don’t have the luxury of time, Maryanne. If you have ideas, spit them out.”
I sighed and sat back up, then rubbed at my temples.
“I think the first obstacle is childcare. Timmy will go to school in a few months, but there’s the matter of the little ones to worry about, and your work hours are much longer than a school day anyway. But if we can figure out a solution for childcare, then that’s surely half the battle.”
“I was thinking I’d ask Mrs. Hills,” Patrick said. I coughed delicately.
“She’s not going to be able to help.”
“How do you know?”
“I already suggested it.” I cleared my throat again. “She was most unenthused about the idea.”
“Okay. Then I was thinking about asking Aunt Nina to move down here.”
“Your aunt Nina?” I repeated, horrified. “Patrick, no. That isn’t going to work, either.”
“I know she’s frail, but—”
“She’s more than frail. She couldn’t even stand up long enough for the graveside ceremony.”
“And she’s lived in her house for sixty years,” Patrick admitted, sighing. “Dragging her out of her home in Bellevue might literally kill her. The problem is that anything else is going to cost money I don’t have yet. It’s going to take me a while to catch up on the bills even after I’m back at work next week.”
I closed my eyes, then swallowed the lump in my throat. I still hadn’t found Grace’s notes, and I knew that I couldn’t leave until I did. I could almost feel my escape to California slipping through my fingers.
“I’ll call my supervisor and ask for leave until the end of the semester.”
“How long is that?”
“Six weeks. I could stay six more weeks to care for the kids. You can try to catch up on your bills, and we can try to find a long-term solution for the kids.”
“And if your parents come for the children in the meantime?”
“Then we find a lawyer.”
“With what money?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I guess we have to hope they see sense before it gets that far.”
“Mommy?”
“I’m Aunt Maryanne, Beth.”
I had no baseline against which to compare her speech, but Beth seemed to be quite eloquent for such a tiny child. Still, she either couldn’t wrap her mouth around the words “Aunt Maryanne,” or my slight physical resemblance to my sister was just too much for her. Maybe it was some combination of both. All I knew was, every single time she called me Mommy I corrected her, and every single time I corrected her, she’d give me an odd look and ignore me.
“Mommy, drink,” she said, and she took my hand and led me through to the kitchen, where she stared at me expectantly. I sighed and poured some water into a cup, then watched as she drank it. Beth passed the cup back and turned to leave the room.
“Uh-uh, Beth,” I scolded. “Now, what do you say?”
“Thank you, Mommy.”
“Thank you, Aunt Maryanne,” I corrected. She toddled out of the room as if I hadn’t spoken, and I watched her go, frowning as I tried to figure out exactly what to do about the confusion. In the weeks since we buried Grace, I’d tried firmly correcting Beth. I’d tried patience. I’d even accidentally snapped at her a few times, because although I wanted to be compassionate and her circumstances were heartbreaking, I was grieving, too. I had just lost my sister, and my own life was hanging in the balance, because somewhere in that house, my sister had left the death warrant to my career. Some days, it was a battle to keep a level head, and the constant reminder from Beth that her mother was gone was almost too much to bear.
“Mommy!” Ruth screeched then, tearing into the kitchen at a lightning-fast pace with Jeremy on her heels. “Jeremy hit me!”
“Auntie Maryanne!” I exclaimed, and Ruth and Jeremy both came to an abrupt stop. “My name is Aunt Maryanne. Mommy is gone and she’s never coming back and you have to stop calling me that!”
The twins stared up at me with wide, rapidly moistening eyes, and then Ruth burst into noisy sobs. Jeremy threw his arms around her and Tim came barreling in from the backyard.
“Why is everyone crying?” he asked with some exasperation. And in that moment I felt like the child, because Tim had this parental way about him that was both disturbing and adorable for a four-and-a-half-year-old.
“They keep calling me Mommy,” I said, my tone both defensive and uneven. Tim frowned at me as he joined Jeremy to console Ruth.
“You’re not my mom,” he said, suddenly grumpy. “But she’s not here, and they miss her, and you look just like her. Why do you have to be so mean?”
I guess that’s when it really started—when I finally stopped resisting the mantle the smallest of the children seemed determined to thrust upon my shoulders. Maybe I just gave in. Maybe I decided it wasn’t doing any harm.
And maybe I let them call me Mommy because I knew deep down that but for me, their mommy would still be there with them.
Patrick and I had both become so sick of waiting for an awful phone call from my parents that after a few weeks, we unplugged the phone altogether. Still, I knew that sooner or later they’d just come to the doorstep if they were ready to make a serious play for custody of the children. And besides, instead of warily watching the phone, now I warily watched the driveway.
Over the weeks after the funeral, I was genuinely run off my feet. I felt sure I’d checked every possible space in the house for Grace’s notes, so I started way back at the beginning, doing a second pass of every nook and cranny. When I wasn’t frantically searching, I made dozens of phone calls to day-care centers all over the city, only to discover that finding a solution to Patrick’s problem was harder than I had anticipated. Childcare was far more expensive than I’d ever realized, but even if money wasn’t an issue, the hours on offer were much shorter than his workday. How on earth would Patrick manage to get to work for his 6 a.m. start if the day-care centers didn’t open until eight? And how would he juggle picking the children up at 5 p.m., when he worked on job sites all over the city?
I didn’t have the heart to tell him that my search was proving utterly fruitless, mostly because he was doing everything right. It was rare for Patrick to be late home from work in those days. He was always bursting through the door right when he said he would, covered in sawdust and dirt, making a beeline for wherever the children happened to be—usually bathed and in their pajamas, often snuggled around me as I read them a story. Those kids had such a voracious appetite to be read to, especially Beth. Some nights I’d read her a dozen picture books before I finally got them into bed, and we were walking to the library several times a week because I got so sick of reading the same books over and over.
Still, I made a point to extract myself very quickly from the circle of that little family once Patrick came home, retreating to “my” bedroom to read. It wasn’t always easy—Beth had taken to me more and more, and some nights she’d cling to my legs or cry when I tried to say good-night. However, I was well aware that my time with my nieces and nephews would soon come to an end, so I made a point of quickly handing over responsibility to Patrick despite protests from Beth or anyone else. I’d walk to my room with my spine stiff, leaving that domestic bubble to go back to my own life in limbo.
But one night, as I went to bolt for the bedroom, Patrick called after me.
“Do you have to rush off?”
If he’d hinted for me to linger anytime over the weeks since Grace’s death, I’d have been irritated at still more demands on my time. But this was New Patrick. This was the man who thanked me constantly, and who washed up his own dishes from dinner, and who noticed that Ruth needed new underwear and who tried very hard to catch up on his bills, even though that meant no money for whiskey. I wasn’t sure I liked New Patrick, but I didn’t dislike him, either, and I was conscious of a growing respect for the man.
“Is something wrong?” I asked him.
“Not really. Just felt like a chat.”
The house felt like a completely different place without the stampede of little feet thundering against the floorboards or the television blaring too loudly, or the endless cycle of happy play that turned to raucous roughhousing that turned to the inevitable tears. The younger children all napped during the day, but rarely at the same time, and so I wasn’t sure how I felt about being out of my room during the quiet hours. But then Patrick flashed me a tired grin and asked, “I’m guessing you cooked enough for fifty or sixty people, like you usually do?”
I laughed weakly.
“Yes, there’s plenty there. Unfortunately, it’s not very good.”
“Maryanne, have I ever once complained about your cooking?”
“You have not,” I conceded. “But you’ll notice I don’t ever linger to watch you eat.”
“I’m the last person on this planet who would ever criticize someone else’s cooking skills.”
So we sat opposite one another at the dining room table with steaming bowls of the stew I’d made, and the silence was something like companionable. Patrick dove into the meal as if he hadn’t eaten in weeks, and only when the bowl was half-empty did he pause long enough to say, “If things at work keep going well for me, I’m getting a promotion.”
“Really?”
“Ewan said today he’d let me shadow him as foreman...to learn how to manage jobs myself so he can expand the business. It means a lot more responsibility—but also eventually, it’ll mean more money. A lot more money, if I do a good job, and maybe one day I’ll even be able to go out on my own. And once I finish training and my wages go up, I’ll be able to fix up this house and afford proper day care and who knows what else. Anything else me and the kids need, really. I just never thought Ewan would trust me with an opportunity like this but he said...” Patrick hesitated, then cleared his throat and gave me a surprisingly bashful smile. “He said that he’s been waiting for years for me to show some initiative, because he desperately needs another foreman.”
Something about that smile endeared Patrick to me in a way I’d never experienced before with him. It took me a minute to grasp what it was. He had always been a little brash, a little too charming for his own good—but those awful months had humbled him. The sensitive side I’d seen hints of in the early days after Grace’s death was now on full display, and it was a beautiful thing to see.
“My goodness. Congratulations, Patrick. That’s fantastic.”
“It is,” he said, but then he hesitated. “Even if it complicates my situation even more.”
“Oh?”
“Well, you’re going to leave us soon, and besides, this new job will mean even longer hours—”
To my surprise, Patrick’s voice broke. I stared at him, stricken, as the pride in his eyes faded and gave way to the gleam of unshed tears. He cleared his throat again, and a heavy silence fell upon us. I didn’t know what to say.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “But you have to admit, it’s hopeless.”
“Patrick,” I whispered, reaching across to rest my hand over his.
“I won’t turn the job down. I can’t—it will mean a better future for these kids. But I’ve been calling childcare centers and...”
“I have, too. I know,” I said heavily.
“One of the lads at work said maybe the wives could help, that maybe we could set up a roster system and the kids could go from house to house each day. But you know what Jeremy is like. He’s such a handful since Gracie died and an arrangement like that is surely going to end in tears. And when Tim starts school next year, how on earth am I going to handle getting him to school and the kids to a different house each day, and make my early start? And then what if I get home late? And what about dinners?”
He sighed heavily and ran his hand over his hair in exasperation.
“I just keep thinking there’s got to be a way, but maybe there isn’t.”
“I know,” I admitted. “I’ve been trying to figure it out, too. It’s just not fair.”
“This really isn’t your problem. You’ve done so much for me already. I wouldn’t have even made it this far without you.”
“Patrick,” I said, my own voice rough around the edges now. “Thank you. I’m sure you noticed that caring for the kids is hardly my strength, but I’ve done my best and—”
“They adore you,” he interrupted me. “You’ve been such a good influence on them as they grieved. I’m sure you’ve noticed the little ones have taken to calling you Mommy.”
I hadn’t realized he’d heard them saying that. I felt myself flush with a muddled kind of guilt.
“I’ve been discouraging them. But Bethany is still a bit confused, and the others are just mimicking her.”
“It’s understandable. They’ve bonded with you so well. You’ll be an incredible mother one day.” He paused, then cleared his throat awkwardly. “When you’re ready, I guess.”
I winced, shaking my head.
“No. I don’t want children of my own. I’m more than happy to be a devoted aunt.”
“So you won’t marry, then?”
“No,” I laughed softly. “Absolutely not.”
“I don’t understand you, Maryanne,” Patrick laughed quietly. “You’ve always seemed so determined to break all of the rules.”
“You do understand me, then. Because breaking all of the rules is exactly what I’m determined to do.”
“What’s so wrong with marriage and kids?”
“Nothing, if they were options instead of the default. I want more for my life than to be someone’s housekeeper. I want a career and I want to see other women have the option to make choices, too, instead of operating as breeding machines for entitled men.”
Patrick winced, and then I winced, too, and the quiet sense of “we’re in this together” somehow evaporated. There was a long, strained pause before Patrick pushed his chair back from the table.
“I guess you better get to bed.”
“I guess I should, too.”
I’m lying in bed the day after Dad’s funeral, trying to will myself to get up and get dressed, when Hunter brings me the cordless handset. He’s been off work since Dad passed, but he’s got to go back into the office today, and he’s already in his suit.
“It’s Ruth,” he tells me, and I give him a surprised look as I take the phone.
“Hi there. Everything okay?”
“Not really. I miss Dad and I hate feeling like this.”
“Me, too,” I say, softening.
“I’m taking today off. Want to meet me at Dad’s place to do some more cleaning?” She clears her throat, then adds, “And...bring Noah?”
“Oh, I don’t know—”
“I’ll help with him, Beth. I just could really do with some squishy baby cuddles today. Please?”
I meet Ruth at Dad’s house midmorning, and as promised, she takes Noah right off my hands. She sets up the playpen in a clear space in the attic, and we work at bringing the boxes and baskets to the dumpster and sorting through the rest of the loose trash. We swap memories of Dad as we work, and ponder all of our questions about Grace.
“I just keep thinking all of this would be easier if she was here. I think that’s why I’m so stuck on understanding what really happened to her,” I admit. “I have been fixated on these things.”
“You’re looking for closure, Beth. That’s all it is.”
“It’s called rumination,” I tell her, sighing. “Repeatedly pondering a concept or thought without completion. Obsessing on ideas. It’s classic behavior from someone who’s depressed and I should have seen it for what it was.”
“Right, Beth, we’re going to stop talking about should haves and just talk about moving forward. Everything is awful right now—we just lost Dad, you’ve got postpartum depression and all of this confusion with Grace and these notes isn’t helping. We can’t do much about Dad, except give it time. But you can think about therapy and medication, and you and I and the boys can clean out this attic.”
“Practical, as always.” I give Ruth a sad smile. She throws a paint rag at me playfully. “Do you have memories of Grace?”
“Yeah. I do,” she says softly. “I remember lots of random things. Her reading us stories, mostly. And she wasn’t a great cook, so we were forever eating her dreadfully bland eggs. Oh—and Jeremy and I were desperately jealous because we thought you were her favorite. You were always sneaking into her bed at night and she’d let you stay there, but if we tried it, she’d carry us right back to our own beds.”
“You were...what...three when she died?” I say, thinking for the first time in a week about that perplexing death certificate. “And I would have been two. It’s extraordinarily young for us to have retained permanent memories.”
“I know you think the certificate says it was 1958, but you really must have read it wrong. I know we were older than three.” Ruth shrugs. “I remember her taking us to our first day of elementary school in 1960.”
I sigh.
“I can check that death certificate when I get home, but I’m pretty sure I read 1958.”
“Is it handwritten?”
“Parts of it, yes.”
“Maybe the handwriting is poor. She must have died in 1961 or maybe even later.”
“It would have to be pretty awful handwriting for me to read 1961 as 1958,” I laugh weakly. Ruth shrugs.
“Look, we were very young, but I do trust my memory. She definitely took me and Jeremy for our first day of school, and she can’t very well have done that if she’d been dead two years by that point. Right?”
“Right,” I sigh. Besides, if Grace did die in 1961, that means I was four when she died, and it makes a little more sense that I’d have memories of her.
We get back to work cleaning and sorting, and we’re making great progress. Ruth finds several notes in a pile under one of the tables, and then I find another scrunched up in a clean, empty paint can. I leave Ruth and Noah and pick up some treats from the bakery a few streets over that Dad used to love, and when I get back, she has my son giggling hysterically as she pulls funny faces.
It’s adorable, and I watch from the door for a while, not wanting to disturb them.
“Get in here,” Ruth calls when she realizes I’m there, and I cautiously approach. When I come into view, a huge, joyous smile crosses Noah’s face, and I feel something soft and warm inside...something close to affection. I scoop him up and hug him close to my chest, and I suddenly get what Ruth meant when she said she needed squishy baby cuddles.
Whether or not I’m providing Noah everything he needs is still in question, but in this moment, he’s providing me with something new. I feel a flush of love and gratitude for my son as my arms close around him—the warmth of his body against mine, the softness of him in my arms—these things are a magnificent focal point for my thoughts, and I’m startled by a real sense of purpose for my life.
Dad is gone, but life must go on for the rest of us, and despite everything, a baby like Noah is the perfect representation of the way life works in cycles.
By late afternoon most of the loose trash has been dealt with. I never thought I’d miss the chaotic mess up here, but there’s something particularly sad about watching the “to-sort” pile shrink until it’s just a handful of wrappers, especially since there’s still an unmatched canvas on the table.
“Maybe we’ve accidentally thrown the last note out,” Ruth says.
“God,” I sigh. “Wouldn’t that be disappointing?”
We sit together to sort through the last of the trash, and soon we’ve cleared it all, without finding any more notes.
“We can check through the ‘to-keep’ pile again,” Ruth suggests. I flip quickly through the notes, checking the dates against canvases, just in case we’ve missed counting one.
“We’re definitely missing the note that goes with that really dark one,” I say, holding up the bleakest of the canvases. “But the date is April fourteenth...maybe the canvas just represents her death. Maybe there isn’t even a note to find.”
“Maybe,” Ruth sighs.
We hear the faintest ring downstairs, and Ruth grimaces as she climbs to her feet from the floor.
“Told you it was hard to hear,” I say lightly as she passes, and she rolls her eyes at me as she sprints downstairs. I stare at that last, bleak canvas...and then at the clipboard, lined with notes. I pick up the clipboard and run my gaze again over that first note.
I know this desolate wasteland. I recognize the subtext of desperation and isolation. Read them, Dad said. She would have helped you.
I’ve been desperately curious about the notes, and the only reason I’ve managed to wait this long to read them all is that I promised my siblings we’d do it together. Even so, I haven’t felt ready to read them. Not until now.
“Temptation getting to be too much?” Ruth asks me quietly as she steps back into the attic. I startle, and give her a guilty glance.
“I wasn’t going to read them without you guys. Who was on the phone?”
“Jez. He was just checking in, but I told him we’ve finished. He’s going to call Tim and they’ll meet us here tonight to read them together.”
I meet her gaze.
“Good. I think I’m ready.”
She nods.
“Yeah, Beth. It’s time.”
Tim, Ruth, Jeremy, Hunter, Ellis and I gather around Dad’s dining table that evening, passing yellowed pages around like a production line. If I wasn’t already exhausted, seeing life through Grace Walsh’s eyes would have wrecked me. I have felt alone, and I have felt lost and isolated, but even my experiences over these past few months don’t compare to the life she describes.
Ruth and I are crying long before we get to the end, and at one point she drops a note onto the table and pulls me into a hug so tight, her muscles shake.
“Are you sure you can deal with this right now?” she chokes. I nod, squeeze her back and reach for the next one. I know I’m not the only one feeling strangely guilty, like I’m betraying Dad’s memory.
“This isn’t the Dad I knew,” Ruth and Jez say again and again as we peek into Grace’s world.
“Something doesn’t add up,” Tim keeps muttering.
But all we can do is keep reading. And by the time we reach the bottom of the pile, we’re all in pieces. Maybe we should have waited longer before we tackled this—Dad’s loss is still so raw—but by the same token, we won’t move on until we put these questions to bed.
Hunter is at the end of our little production line, and when he finishes the last note I blurt, “Do you all agree...it sounds a lot like she took her own life?”
Tim hesitates.
“There’s no way to be sure, is there?” my sister says cautiously.
“Oh, come on, Ruth,” I groan. “She couldn’t stand the idea of going through the depression again and she took herself back to the bridge, only this time she went through with it.”
“Probably,” Ruth says, but then she gives me a sharp look. “But we can’t be sure. Do you really think Dad would have lied to us for all of these years if she killed herself?”
“Yes,” I say immediately. “That’s exactly why he would have lied. Especially if he blamed himself. And given the things he said before he died, and the fact that we know he read these notes, we can be pretty sure he did blame himself.”
“There’s a lot to process in all of this,” Jeremy murmurs.
“So this note says that Mom had a sister. This Maryanne she talks about,” Tim says suddenly, glancing around us all.
“Seems so odd that we might have an aunt out there somewhere and Dad never thought to tell us about her,” Ruth says, tilting her head.
“Doesn’t seem odd to me,” Jeremy shrugs, motioning towards the notes. “It’s pretty obvious they didn’t get on.”
“Dad called me Maryanne a few times in those last weeks when he was really confused,” I say, throat tight. “Remember that last day? When he apologized to me? He was calling me Maryanne.”
Tim reaches across to squeeze my hand.
“You know, guys...we could...”
“Track her down?” I finish for him when no one else does. My throat is suddenly dry.
“It’s probably not going to be easy,” Jeremy says. “We know her maiden name was Gallagher like Mom’s, but Maryanne is probably married by now and probably has a new surname.”
“Leave it with me,” Ruth offers. “I can at least try to find her.”
“Can I...keep the notes?” I ask hesitantly. I feel heat on my cheeks as the moment stretches, with my siblings and husband all staring at me, each obviously waiting for someone else to talk me out of it. Ruth speaks first.
“Honey, obsessing on those notes is not going to help you—”
“Or maybe it will help me a lot,” I interrupt her. I don’t even know if this is true. I just feel like I want to read through them again, to feel her close to me again. I’m painting a new picture in my mind of the Grace I’ve always remembered.
Despite her depression. Despite her misery. She made me feel loved and she made me feel safe. Maybe I can do that for Noah, too.
Hunter gives me a thoughtful look, then asks quietly, “What was it she wrote about loneliness?”
“It’s worse than sadness,” I whisper because those words already imprinted on my heart. “Because by definition, the burden can’t be shared.”
“I’m tired and I’m grieving and I’m sad. I know you feel the same,” Tim says suddenly. “But if there’s one thing we aren’t, it’s alone. If those little notes remind you that you aren’t the first woman to go through what you’re going through, and if they remind you that you’re part of a family who would never want you to feel as isolated as she obviously felt, then you take them. Even Dad seemed to think they could help you.”
“So, good news,” Ruth tells me on the phone the next night. “Not only is Maryanne still Maryanne Gallagher, she was also the third M. Gallagher in the first phone book I tried—she lives in Fremont.”
“What?”
“I just called her up and explained who I was, and she wants to meet us. I invited her to Sunday dinner.”
“But...”
“But this is tremendously good news?” Ruth suggests.
“Terrifying,” I laugh weakly. “You just called her? Just like that?”
“Sure,” Ruth says matter-of-factly. “I said ‘Hello, my name is Ruth Turner, née Walsh. Did you have a sister called Grace? Because if you did, I think I’m your niece.’ And she swore in ways I didn’t know a person could swear. I mean, she didn’t sound entirely displeased to hear from me, just utterly shocked. She’s a professor, apparently. At the University of Seattle. I told her Jez is an academic, too, at Washington U, and that seemed to shock her more than the call itself.” Ruth laughs, the sound light and melodic, then says drily, “So pretty sure she did at least meet Jeremy when we were young.”
“Doesn’t it make you wonder?” I murmur. “Dad raised us all on his own once Aunt Nina died. That must have been so hard on him. Grace seemed to think they weren’t fond of one another, but given the circumstances, I can’t understand why this Maryanne didn’t help with us once Grace died.”
“Yeah. That’s one of the things I want to ask her on Sunday.”
“I can’t believe you found her,” I say, laughing softly. “Ruth. You blow my mind sometimes.”
“Well, you should know by now—I’m a problem solver.”