When I woke, Erik was gone, a pale gauzy light peeking beneath the curtains. Either I’d slept through the alarm or he had turned it off; probably the latter. We’d both spent the night tossing and turning.
It was early, the kids still asleep. I peeked into the twins’ room, Phoebe on her back, arms outstretched, a strand of hair in her mouth, Hazel curled against the headboard. Even in sleep they were so much themselves, Phoebe outgoing and theatrical like her mom, Hazel more introverted. Like me. I watched them breathe, my love for them so fierce it hurt, then eased the door shut as I headed downstairs toward the smell of coffee.
Erik was at the table in his robe, his back to me, laptop open to pictures of Kelly. I wasn’t surprised. It wasn’t only my life Kelly would upend if she came here and blurted out my secrets, but his. It’s what had kept me awake: Maybe I didn’t deserve happiness, but why should the people I loved continue to be damaged? I kept thinking of how far my mom’s life was from the one she’d wanted. A life of family dinners and babysitting grandchildren and mornings on the porch in the creaky glider with its faded blue-and-yellow-striped cushions. She’d called it her chariot. “My chariot awaits,” she’d say as she headed outside with a mug of coffee, a novel tucked under her arm. It broke me that she had none of this. It was so little to have wanted.
I leaned against the doorframe, pulling my cardigan around myself, and watched as Erik scrolled through a slideshow of images: Kelly in a green halter dress receiving her first Emmy; Kelly with her hair dyed blond, wearing a baseball cap and ripped jeans and walking a dog on a city street; Kelly in a group hug with her costars on Widows. As Belle on Broadway.
“I feel you back there,” Erik said without turning. I could hear the smile in his gravelly voice.
“What are you looking for?” I asked, touching his shoulder as I crossed the room to open the blinds over the sink. The sky was a pale, uncomplicated blue. “Wow,” I said. “I think spring arrived.”
“About time.”
The lawn looked ragged and colorless, strewn with branches, and one of our trash cans had tipped over, but yellow sunlight was winking through the evergreens at the back of the yard. Forever trees, Spencer called them, because they stayed green all year. I poured a mug of coffee and inhaled a deep breath. “So, what’d you find?” I asked, pulling out the chair next to Erik.
“Not much.” He took a gulp of coffee. “I’m not sure what I’m looking for. The critics practically fawn over her, but before Beauty and the Beast…” He shrugged.
“I know,” I said. “There’s only a handful of plays.”
“And none lasted very long.” He moved the cursor. “The reviews are something, though. She’s tough to ignore.”
I gestured toward the laptop. “It’s surreal seeing her like this.” Kelly on the red carpet in a silver lamé dress, eyes dark and dramatic; the night she got her second Emmy. “There was a time when I knew her better than I’ve ever known anyone.”
“The thing is…” Erik scrolled back to the picture gallery. “There’s not a single picture, not one, of her with a family member, boyfriend, even a friend.” He glanced at me. “Doesn’t that seem odd?”
“I don’t know. Does it?”
“Was she a private person when you knew her?”
“Oh my God, no.” She was flamboyant and outrageous, saying and doing whatever it took to get a laugh or provoke a response. Like Annabelle, I thought, not for the first time, and wondered how much of the past six years were about me trying to replicate what I’d lost.
But Kelly? Private? No way. I remembered her lying across the bar at the Bottle and Cork, T-shirt knotted beneath her breasts as some stranger did a belly button shot out of her navel while his buddies cheered. I’d been appalled, and she’d called me Sister Claire the rest of the night.
I told Erik that story. “There’s a thousand incidents like it. Although…” My coffee had cooled enough to take a sip. “For all her…whatever it was…exhibitionism? When she hugged you, it was…she was so stiff, like Spencer almost, like she didn’t want to touch you. ‘Why is that girl so terrified to let anyone get close?’ my mom used to say. She thought Kelly was shut down.”
“Was she?”
“I wouldn’t have said so then. I mean, she’d have no problem blurting out the thing no one else would say, and when she walked into a room, everyone sure as hell knew she was there.” But my mom had been right. She rarely shared anything personal. “For years, she never told me how betrayed she felt when Nick and I began dating,” I told Erik. “Not until our rehearsal dinner, when she joked about the countless times she stood in her brother’s bedroom in tears, asking why, of all people, he had to take her friend. I was floored. I’d had no inkling. But then she turned the whole thing into a sweet anecdote about how Nick took her friend but gave her back something even better, which was a sister…. All night, everyone kept gushing about what a great toast it was, so, I don’t know, it’s like she could only be open in front of an audience. Would you call that private?”
“I’d call it sad.”
“Maybe I didn’t really know her.” I stared at a photo of her in a flame-colored dress that looked more like sculpture, her hair pulled severely back in a high ponytail. “I used to wonder what would have happened if she’d told me she was upset when I started dating Nick. Maybe I wouldn’t have gone out with him, and then…” I shrugged. “I’d have a very different life.”
Erik paused midsip. “Well, I’m glad you have this life.” He set down his mug, concern darting across his eyes. “Though I know you’d undo it all if you could change that one afternoon.”
“And then I wouldn’t have you.” We’d had this conversation before. There was nowhere for it to go.
Light suddenly flooded the room and we both turned as the sun burst over the tree line. “Yikes.” I glanced at my watch. “We need to get the girls.”
“Thing One and Thing Two,” Erik joked. They took forever in the morning, slumping downstairs with their tangled hair, clothes twisted or inside out, and once, in Hazel’s case, with her shoes on the wrong feet. “How could she not know?” I said to Annabelle later.
She just shrugged and said, “She’s your daughter, Claire.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
Annabelle was laughing. “Only that she cares about clothes as much as you do, which means she doesn’t. I can totally see you doing that!”
Your daughter. I felt the familiar stab of guilt.
I began moving around the kitchen, setting out cereal for the girls, gluten-free granola for Spencer. “So, I take it you think that because Kelly’s so private, she won’t say anything about my past?” I was handing Erik things from the fridge.
“Exactly. Call me naïve, but to be that well-known and have nothing of your personal life in the media? That’s not a coincidence, Claire.” He clattered a bunch of spoons onto the counter. “All the times she’s asked how she portrays grief so well and not once has she mentioned Lucy. Except for that one interview where she says Lucy’s her favorite name.”
“Wait. What interview? She said that?”
He looked at me, startled. “Yeah, it was…” His voice trailed off. “Hold on.” He was already at the table, leaning over the computer.
I just stood there. Kelly had mentioned Lucy in an interview? “When was this?” My voice sounded faraway.
“Here.” He swung the computer around to face me. “I’ll go wake the girls.”