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One Year Later
It was remarkable that Abby agreed to come to the funeral. Countless of Nicole’s phone calls had been unanswered over the previous year. Abby had pushed herself through university, achieved excellent grades, nabbed a good-looking boyfriend in the business school, and generally set up her life elsewhere. Her mother, her father, and her little brother seemed nothing to her any longer.
“Your Aunt Tracy really loved you,” Nicole said now, as they prepared New England clam chowder for the upcoming fifty-some houseguests, who would all arrive at Aunt Tracy’s house after the funeral.
Abby was twenty and wore her long hair in waves down her back. The black dress she’d selected for the occasion seemed like something that could have doubled at a fraternity party. Nicole wasn’t in the position to scold her.
“Yeah, well, I really loved Aunt Tracy, too,” Abby replied as she sliced onions with delicate precision. “Hence why I’m here.”
Why did everything she said come out in a specific tone and so sarcastically? Nicole walked on eggshells.
“Do you know when your brother is planning on joining us?”
“He’s getting dropped off at the funeral home,” Abby said. “Remember?”
Nicole hardly did. Aunt Tracy’s death had created a crater in her brain, which had disallowed her from forming new memories. She’d missed trash day, had absolutely no comprehension of what television shows she’d recently watched, and had very nearly forgotten to get her Aunt Tracy’s burial clothes up to the funeral home, a fact that still made her burn with sorrow and embarrassment.
Aunt Tracy’s death had been so sudden and horrible. In a sense, it enraged Heather, Nicole, and Casey that their Aunt Tracy hadn’t gotten more frequent check-ups. When the doctor had finally found the breast cancer, it had been stage four and terminal. Since that fateful day, only two months before, Heather, Nicole, and Casey had all gone for mammograms. All were clear, for now.
Heather appeared in Aunt Tracy’s kitchen. Her sapphire eyes flashed, heavy with tears. She fell against Nicole and shook with sorrow. From the foyer came the sound of Kristine and Bella’s voices. Heather had only just arrived from the airport, where she’d picked them up. Max was currently away on his work expedition.
“I hate this,” Heather breathed into Nicole’s shoulder.
Aunt Tracy had never had children of her own. Multiple guests at the wake later in the day said, “She loved you three girls more than you could possibly know,” and, “You fulfilled her life more than she ever thought possible,” and “How grateful she was for the love you brought into her life.”
Throughout these conversations, Abby sat, surly, in the corner, alongside Nate, who played a game on his phone despite Nicole having asked him not to. By contrast, Kristine and Bella were active in speaking with multiple friends of the family. Heather continued to weep on Casey’s shoulder. Always, she was the overly emotional one. It’s why she’d taken to writing books, Nicole supposed.
Later that night, Nicole returned to the apartment she’d recently rented for herself on the outskirts of Portland. Abby and Nate had both informed her of their plans to stay at friends’ places. Nicole blinked at the pull-out couch she’d purchased especially for them, grateful she hadn’t made it up yet. It would have been too sad to put it away.
Heather texted her and Casey in their group chat.
HEATHER: I think we did well, considering. It was a beautiful service and a beautiful wake.
CASEY: Thank you for making the clam chowder, Nic. It was delicious.
NICOLE: You two okay tonight?
HEATHER: I’ve got my girls right here with me. They’re taking care of me.
CASEY: Melody is making me hot cocoa :)
Nicole’s heart shattered. Through tear-filled eyes, she wrote:
NICOLE: That’s so good to hear. I love you two. We carry Mom and Aunt Tracy with us. Forever.
She lay back on her bed, still fully clothed in her funeral outfit. She wondered what Abby would do when she passed. Would she bother to bring an outfit to the funeral home? Would she make clam chowder? Would she show up at all?
Nicole brought up her social media and hunted for the photos of Michael, Michelle, and their new baby, which she could reach through mutual friends. They’d had a healthy baby boy, whom they had named Gavin. He had chubby cheeks. In some photos, Michelle had put him in a ridiculous outfit featuring suspenders. What did a baby need suspenders for? It’s not like he could walk around.
During these moments, Nicole realized the density of her loneliness.
Maybe she could work. She removed her black dress and slipped on a pair of sweats and a sweatshirt. She had begun a new marketing job three months before, which had allowed her to move out of Casey’s place. As Nate was now at school himself, it made things easier and harder at the same time.
Although Nicole had been grateful to find a new position at a new firm, she found it difficult to hide the fact that she still hated marketing just as much as she had before, perhaps even more. Now, as she dragged up her current project, it felt as though her organs shriveled up.
She had no one— nothing except this stupid marketing project and a million dark nights, all to herself.
For not the first time in recent memory, Nicole found herself thinking about the other half of the family. Years before, when she, Heather, and Casey had been very small, their father, Adam Keating, and their mother, Jane Harvey, had parted ways. Casey, Nicole, and Heather had understood that their father had been too depressed to care for them.
Through their life in Portland, the three Harvey sisters had declared Bar Harbor’s side of the family a no-go territory. “We don’t need them. Dad abandoned us and Mom brought us here,” Casey had said when they’d talked about it before. “We’ve built our lives here. Why would we ever return to the past?”
Still, every month since their father’s passing, a small portion of the earnings of a place called Keating Inn and Acadia Eatery had entered their bank accounts. This money had allowed the three of them to go to college; it had been there during times of great strife; it had ultimately contributed to Nicole’s ability to find her own place again after living for ten months at Casey’s.
But Nicole knew very little about the place.
She typed “Keating Inn Bar Harbor” into the search bar. This resulted in a number of reviews, magazine articles, and photographs, which illustrated a particularly beautiful mansion-turned-inn, which sat on four acres of land, between Frenchman Bay, Bar Harbor’s downtown area, and the Acadia Mountains. Nicole’s heart surged with interest. She felt she’d never seen anything more beautiful.
One article written the previous year discussed the owner and operator, Joseph Keating.
“Years ago, Joe Keating opened the Keating Inn and Acadia Eatery with his brother, Adam. At the time, they owned and operated a number of other properties across Bar Harbor and the rest of Mount Desert Island— but circumstances whittled them down to just this. Now, with his brother, Adam, gone for decades, Joe admits the Keating Inn and Acadia Eatery are some of the great loves of his life, as they represent an era when he had his brother by his side, operating as his partner and dearest friend,” the magazine article read.
Nicole’s heart jumped into her throat. She flicked down the page and ogled an old photograph of her Uncle Joe and her father, Adam. The photo was from perhaps the seventies. They both wore overly-tight, overly-short shorts, as was the style at the time, along with University of Maine sweatshirts. Adam had his arm flung around Joe’s shoulder. They were terribly handsome, and their smiles echoed their optimism. Nobody could have guessed that only a few years later, Adam would take his own life.
Nicole wasn’t entirely sure why she did it. Perhaps it was the aching loneliness she felt. Perhaps it was curiosity. But she found an email for the Keating Inn and scribed a note which read:
Dear Joseph Keating,
My name is Nicole. My father was Adam Keating and my mother was Jane Harvey. I’ve lived since my toddler years in Portland, always receiving that check, month after month, from the Keating Inn. I wanted to reach out and thank you for that, for always having my sisters’ and my back, even from a distance.
And more than that, I just wanted to say, well, hi. I hope you’re well at that beautiful inn of yours, tucked there between the mountains and the sea. I cannot imagine a more beautiful location.
Perhaps Uncle Joe was a night owl, much like Nicole herself, as he returned her email only twenty minutes later. Nicole felt giddy.
Nicole,
I am so pleased to hear from you after all these years. I remember you as a tiny little thing with a bright patch of dark brown hair, much like your sister, Casey’s. I’ve thought of the three of you often over the years. I spotted Heather’s name on a number of children’s books and put a selection of them in the Keating Inn library. I know very little of you and Casey, as you’re not so much in the public eye, but I pray you’re happy and well.
Know that you’re always welcome here at the Keating Inn. It’s partially yours, after all.
Nicole’s heart thudded against her ribcage. She leaned back and re-read the message.
Uncle Joe was her last remaining family member, besides her sisters, her daughter, and her son. Why was she suddenly drawn toward him? What could he offer her that the others couldn’t?
Still, after the previous two years she’d had, her soul called out for something else. Something more. Hurriedly, she wrote back that she’d find a weekend to come down to meet him. She would keep the meeting from her sisters, as she knew it would feel like a betrayal.
“Why would you need anyone else?” She knew this would be Heather’s first question.
And Nicole wouldn’t be able to explain just how horrifically lonely she felt. Her husband’s affair had sent a crack through her relationships with her daughter and son. And she wanted to turn inward, to think, to understand how her life had gone so wrong. Maybe Uncle Joe would have answers. Or maybe he would just have a quiet room by the sea, where she could dream.