“I’m never going to get to sleep.”
I knew she was awake still—Monday too—but I’m relieved to hear Mab’s voice in the dark.
“Muh,” I say. Me neither.
“It is not accurate to say you are never going to get to sleep,” Monday says, “because people who do not sleep go insane or die, and you are not insane or dead.”
“Not until they stop sleeping.” I don’t know why Mab bothers arguing with her. “So the fact that we are sane and alive now just means that we’ve slept in the past, not that we will in the future.”
This is the kind of logic Monday usually likes, but now it sends her into a panic.
“You cannot be insane or dead! How will I survive alone?”
Mab sighs. “One night’s not going to kill us.”
But Monday can’t take that chance. “Hush little baby do not you cry,” she sings. “Two is going to buy you a hook and eye.”
“That’s not right.” My Voice has that one saved because it applies in so many conversations.
“Please stop,” Mab begs, but she’s laughing, maybe at Monday for concluding all that stands between us and madness is a good night’s sleep and all that stands between us and a good night’s sleep is a lullaby. Or maybe at herself for imagining she can head off this lullaby before three more verses at least.
“And if that hook and eye will not hook, Two is going to let you borrow a book,” Monday sings in the third person. Actually, come to think of it, that song is always in the third person.
“It’s okay to be worried”—my Voice has this one saved as well—“but there is no immediate cause for concern.”
“And if that book is overdue, Two is going to hit you with her shoe.”
“And angry,” Mab adds. “It’s okay to be worried and angry—when we have such good reason to be worried and angry—without having our ears assaulted.”
“Because keeping books beyond their due date is not nice, therefore when you do you have to pay the price.”
“Truth or dare?” my Voice says, and Monday stops mid-inhale.
“I’m too tired,” Mab whines.
“Lie!” Monday declares. We have upped the Truth or Dare stakes by merging it with Two Truths and a Lie. “You just said you could not sleep.”
“Just because you can’t sleep doesn’t mean you’re not tired. When you can’t sleep you’re more tired.”
“Truth or dare, Mab?” my Voice clarifies.
We play this game like comfort food, like other sisters drink mugs of cocoa or gorge themselves on mac and cheese and chocolate-chip cookies.
“Dare,” Mab tries, pointlessly.
“I dare you to stick your foot in the toilet.” My Voice has had that saved for years.
“Germs!” Monday shrieks. Every time. “I dare you to wash your feet in the bathtub with warm water and soap for at least one hundred and twenty seconds and then wash your hands that washed your feet for another one hundred and twenty seconds.”
So, “Truth.” Mab changes her mind. As she always must.
I type. “What did you think of River?”
“Asshole,” Mab says instantly.
I would like to say “asshole.” Saying “asshole” seems like it would make you feel better. Whereas typing it—or tapping the folder of curse words I’ve saved and titled “I Swear”—is completely unsatisfying. My Voice is such an asshole.
“Lie,” Monday pronounces.
“Truth,” my Voice insists.
“You did not even meet him, Three. He was nice.”
“Yeah, right,” says Mab.
“He was. He was polite. He was not angry I was blocking his way out of the bathroom even though there are many germs there. I would become alarmed if someone tried to trap me in a bathroom.”
“Duh,” I say, my one word you don’t need triplet-sense to understand.
“Plus he answered all of my questions.”
“Lie,” Mab says, and I giggle. “No one could ever answer all of your questions.”
“I am not playing right now,” Monday says. “I am making the point that River Templeton answered all my questions I asked him on the way out of the bathroom. And also he cannot be blamed because he was not even here when what happened happened because he was not alive yet.”
“Point,” I type.
“Exactly, Monday, that is the point. He wasn’t here. We were all here. We were all living with the consequences of what his family did. And where were they? Safely elsewhere. They protected themselves. They protected him. They kept their distance. And now look at him. He’s attractive, intelligent, fully mobile—”
“Truth or dare, Mab?” my Voice interrupts.
“It is my turn,” Monday says.
“Attractive?” my Voice presses Mab, but she ignores me.
Monday has turned on the light and is kneeling up in bed to look at herself in the mirror over the bureau. “I was born here, and I am attractive.”
“Lie.” The Voice is not great for comic timing, so it takes its opportunities when they come.
Monday knows she’s being teased, but Mab reassures her anyway. “It’s not that he’s attractive and we’re not. It’s that he’s whole.” And we’re not, she does not add. Does not need to add.
“Is the reason you said River Templeton is an asshole because he stole my library,” Monday asks, “and now I have to write a retraction postcard announcing that the library is not re-relocating to the library after all?”
I smile at Mab, and she smiles back. “Truth or dare?” she asks me.
“Truth.” It is my only option really.
“Is River Templeton an asshole because he stole Monday’s library”—Mab turns the light back off—“or is there another reason?”
I tap the picture of the adult woman. “Nora,” my Voice says but leaves the rest unspoken. What about her lawsuit? I shouldn’t say hers. She wouldn’t like it. It’s all of ours. It’s what she’s doing for us all, not “us all” her progeny, “us all” her entire town. This has been her obsession—you might say addiction—but also her solace for almost two decades. And though we don’t know what the Templetons’ reemergence into our lives means, we can be certain Nora will think it is very bad news.
We three lie in separate beds in the dark, considering our mother.
Finally Monday says, “Do me.”
“Truth or dare?” Mab asks, unnecessarily. Monday always chooses truth. For one thing, she’d rather die than stick her foot in a toilet. She might die if you tried to make her stick her foot in a toilet. But mostly, she thinks she’s incapable of telling a lie. This makes her feel like she’s winning the game.
“Truth.”
“What will we do when Mama finds out they’re back?”
“She cannot find out,” Monday says.
“Lie.” Mab sounds resigned, exhausted. “She’s going to find out.”
“It is not a lie, but it might be incorrect,” Monday admits. “It is more accurate to say we cannot be the ones to tell her.”
Monday tells her first thing the next morning. The coffee has not even cooled enough to sip before she blurts out, “We have a new student at school, and he is living in my library, and that means the library cannot move there, and that means my extra-large postcard was a lie, and his name is River Templeton, and his father is Nathan Templeton, and his grandfather is Duke Templeton, and it is not a different Duke Templeton but the exact same one.”
Nora’s expression passes from confusion to laughing because she’s sure she’s being teased to anger to horror, like a magician flipping over one card after another after another. She lands on the saddest face I’ve ever seen. “My Duke Templeton?” she whispers finally, the opposite of how Monday says “My library,” desperate to disavow ownership rather than claim it. She looks at Mab for confirmation because sometimes Monday doesn’t realize when someone’s kidding or lying or being sarcastic. Mab has to look away from our mother’s broken face, but she nods at her shoes.
Nora squeezes her earlobes for some reason then drops her hands to her chest. “Christ,” she says and doesn’t say anything more, and neither does anyone else until finally, what feels like an hour later, she says to, I guess, all of us, “Why?”
Mab shrugs, and Monday shrugs, and I make a motion with my hand that means what a shrug means. We do not know.
“They canceled tutoring” is all Mab can offer.
But Nora nods. “Like when someone dies.”
Mab and I exchange glances. It’s not that we don’t have the same question Nora does—Why?—it’s that that question is overwhelmed by the ones it presages. Nora is worried about what possible reason the Templetons have for being here. We are worried about our mother.
She sits, pale and not closing her mouth all the way. Her eyes are scary, somewhere else, like her mind is whirling away from us. She keeps shaking her head no, seeming about to speak, changing her mind. She leaves for work without another word.
But over scrambled eggs and summer squash for dinner, Nora is new, smile tight and bright, hopeful, which is not a thing we ever see her be, so it would be strange regardless. As it is, it’s alarming. Creepy. When she speaks, what she says, finally, beaming and to all three of us at once, is “You can find out.”
“What can we find out?” Monday asks, but I can see Mab feeling the same sinking feeling I am.
“The kid knows something,” Nora says. “Everything maybe. But maybe he doesn’t know he knows, or maybe he knows but he doesn’t know we don’t know, or he doesn’t know he isn’t supposed to know or isn’t supposed to tell.”
“I do not know,” Monday says. What our mother’s talking about, she means.
But Nora doesn’t get it. She’s grinning like the villain in act two of a superhero movie. “No, but you can find out. You can find everything.”
The next morning, I get up and go to church, seeking not salvation but alone time, which is nearly as elusive and just as holy. Mab and Monday rose not long after the sun and left before Nora even got me out of bed. Sometimes this eats at me. Sometimes them together without me seems as cruel as if my own legs went walking off and I had to wait for them here. But it’s hard to be forever one of three or half of two, a third of triplets, a dependent daughter. These solo Saturday mornings are my only time alone, so they’re painful but they’re also precious, and I’m grateful as a nun to be on my way somewhere as well.
Before bed last night, we made a reluctant plan. Nora’s probably wrong that we’ll be able to find out anything never mind everything, but she’s even less likely to be able to let this go. Mab and Monday will go to the library this morning to see what they can learn there. I’ll go to yoga and do the same.
Everyone at Pastor Jeff’s Saturday-morning yoga class is there for enlightenment, but not the spiritual kind. Whatever gossip there is in Bourne, it gets discussed at Yoga for Seniors. Mostly his students lie in savasana and whisper loudly mat to mat while Pastor Jeff demonstrates a variety of dogs from the dais. If anyone in town knows anything new about the Templetons, church will be the place to find out.
I get Nora’s rancor toward Omar for his epic dropping of the mayoral ball once upon a time, but he deserves props too. On my way this morning, I find curb cuts at every intersection, wide, smooth pavement over every inch of sidewalk, extra-long reds at the stoplights. Nora’s point is let’s not lionize people for cleaning up messes they made themselves—especially if they’re not so much cleaning them up as straightening a little and shoving what can’t be mended into a closet or under the sofa and hoping no one notices—but in fact, at least as long as I’ve known him, Omar has quietly been doing a hard job well.
It’s early still, drizzling, but fresh air and agency are an intoxicating combination. Tom fashioned rain gear for my chair long ago—an elaborate tangle of poncho, glove, and plastic bag—and being outside and unchaperoned is so lovely, I don’t mind getting a little wet. The smell is mossy and cool at the back of my nose. The world looks spit shined: green washed and water slick. The raindrops feel good on my skin. Nora got me dressed but let me go without socks and shoes—I’m not walking, after all—and the wind in my toes rivals the wind in my hair as far as the feel of freedom goes. Some of the kids in my class who can’t move their legs also can’t feel them, so though I sometimes have pain, I am grateful to have feeling at all. I wave good morning to the few early risers I pass, and they wave peaceably back.
When I get to the church, it’s cool and dry inside and Saturday-morning loud. Pastor Jeff’s dog is downward. Everyone else’s is abuzz. Busybody Dog. Pooh has traded her wheelchair for her mat but isn’t stretching anything. Instead she’s telling everyone what Mab reported about River. Donna Anvers is telling about the moving vans. Mrs. Radcliffe and Mr. Beechman are telling what happened at school. Everyone is talking about the Templetons, but no one knows anything, which is itself noteworthy. Aside from enrolling the kid in school, the Templetons are lying low. Or else in wait.
Pastor Jeff comes up to standing, lowers his hands to heart center, takes a deep inhale, and, without opening his eyes, calls, “Mirabel Mitchell. You are not a senior.”
True. Not that I can do much yoga anyway.
“So stop spying on my yogis for your mother,” he adds on the way to his toes.
Maybe it’s years of doctoring the widest range of patients, maybe it’s years of ministering the widest range of parishioners, maybe his mind is focused from all the yoga, but it’s hard to hide things from Pastor Jeff. Plus he knows my mother almost as well as I do.
When he finds me skulking near the chancel after class, his first question isn’t a question. “You can only chase your own demons, you know.” Strange advice from a pastor. “You can’t chase your mother’s.”
I don’t need to plead the fifth to plead the fifth, but I make my face look as innocent as possible.
Because Pastor Jeff has to doctor during the week and lead services on Sundays, Saturday is his only day off, and he usually starts it, after yoga, at our house for breakfast. He and Nora don’t talk shop over the weekend, and my mother doesn’t let him preach to her, but she does like to feed him. All those pastries have to go somewhere. So after he puts all the mats away, he wanders back toward home with me. For a while, we’re both quiet. Then he asks his second question, an actual question at least, if at first it seems like a subject change.
“Did I ever tell you my mother was almost a nun?”
Pastor Jeff’s parents met in Mississippi during Freedom Summer. He doesn’t talk about that time much—he wasn’t born yet, after all—but we know all about it anyway from Mab’s ninth-grade history class. Mrs. Shriver said Pastor Jeff was descended from royalty, that his parents, whose only relation to Bourne was raising a son who later moved here, were the most monumental thing that ever happened to this town. And that’s saying something.
“She saw injustice and felt called to help, and she’d been told all her life the path to righteousness was God. She was beloved at church, and love feels holy. Is holy. But mostly, she wanted to be a teacher, and every teacher she’d ever had to that point was a nun. So that was her plan: graduate high school, go to college, become a nun.”
“What happened?” my Voice asks.
“She met my dad. Learned there were other ways to be beloved and other kinds of holy. Learned there were as many paths to righteousness and as many ways to serve as there are fights against injustice.”
I wait, but he doesn’t say anything else, so I type, “Point?”
He winks. “Not all teachers are nuns.”
I consider this. “Point?” my Voice repeats.
“Just because your mother’s cause is just and right, doesn’t mean you have to fight her fight. And if you do, it doesn’t mean you have to fight her way.”
“If you knew something, you’d tell me, right?” Nora’s waiting at the door for us and plows right in. “You wouldn’t keep it from me so I don’t start yelling like a crazy lady?”
“You are a crazy lady, Nora.”
“Exactly. So there’s no need to lie.”
“Lying is against the code,” says Pastor Jeff.
“What code?”
“Medical ethics, religious leader, take your pick.”
“I went to yoga,” my Voice tries to reassure her. “No one knows anything. Maybe there’s nothing to know.”
“I don’t need yoga.” She snorts. “I know why the Templetons are back.”
Pastor Jeff has filled his mouth with pineapple scone but raises his eyebrows at her.
“They’re here to bury evidence.” She gives a little shudder. It’s glee.
He humors her through crumbs. “Evidence?”
“Something we’re close to finding. Something that would break the lawsuit wide open.”
His eyebrows turn to waggle at me. Your mama’s nuts, they say. I grin at him.
“If they’ve come in person, it must mean they’re scared. If they’re scared—finally, after all this time—it must be because we’re closing in. We’ve always had a critical mass of people signed on to the suit. We’ve always had tons of evidence. So far, they’ve been able to spin it as circumstantial or inadmissible or unreliable or biased or fabricated or ambiguous. So now we must be close to something they know they can’t deny, something they won’t be able to get dismissed. Something that could really hurt them. Point is, they never come in person. They must be worried.”
Nora’s so charged she’s trembling, shimmering at the edges, not so far gone as optimistic, but something’s changed, at least it’s starting to, and it’s been so long since anything has. Maybe they know something we don’t and they’re here to hide it before we find it, but at least that means it exists. Maybe their being here at all is evidence they’re hiding something, the smoking gun she searches for like the Holy Grail.
Pastor Jeff swallows his mouthful and echoes my thoughts. “Maybe.”
She rolls her eyes. “You’re not a Zen priest, you know.”
“I do,” he intones, exactly like a Zen priest.
“You can pass judgment.”
“I could if I had any basis for one.”
“Jesus, Jeff—”
“You’re right, Nora,” he interrupts because he knows it’s time to stop teasing when he’s driven her to blasphemy. “It could be the lawsuit. It could be there’s evidence you’re about to uncover, and they’re here to better bury it. It could be Russell and the firm have got them scared finally. Maybe. But I think it would be prudent not to get your hopes up.”
“I don’t give a shit about prudent, Jeff.”
“I noticed.” He smiles at me from inside his coffee. “Maybe you’re on to something. Or maybe they’re going to find whatever they’re looking for before you do. Or maybe there’s nothing to find.”
“Of course there’s something to find,” Nora scoffs. “We’re not pretending they fucked us. They did fuck us.”
This. This is Nora’s religion. I have solo Saturday mornings. Pastor Jeff has God, the Catholic Church, and any number of other denominations he borrows from liberally in order to meet his congregants’ needs and practices. Nora’s faith is just as fervently held, just as life guiding and path determining, and for the same reason: she believes in her soul it will save her.
And this is her central tenet: They did fuck us. Therefore there must be evidence of this fact somewhere. Therefore she has only to find it. Then justice will be served, the wicked unmasked and punished, the good and faithful rewarded for their patience and fidelity.
Why else do people believe in God?