By the time Eva, Gabe, and I left the Program Center, Annabelle and Scott were already in the van. The Tribune guy was interviewing Erik. I waved, and he signaled that he’d call later. I didn’t see Kelly, and though I’d suspected we probably wouldn’t talk, I had hoped. I had wanted so much to know something—anything—about Lucy.
“You sure we can’t walk you to your car?” Eva said as she and Gabe were about to get in the van.
“I’m fine,” I lied. It was a pretty night, a little chilly, but bright with stars and a full moon. It was still officially summer, though it felt like autumn, smelled like autumn.
“You’re not coming to the party?” Christine looked up from the clipboard on which she’d been checking off names as people boarded the van. “But you have to!”
“I was hoping Claire would be my ride.” Kelly seemed to appear from nowhere, her hair haloed in the lights of the Program Center.
Eva squeezed my hand as she climbed on the bus.
“But there’s room for you both—” Christine stopped as Kelly flashed the pack of cigarettes in her palm. “Gotcha,” Christine laughed. And then, “But no playing hooky.” She waved her pen at Kelly. “We need you at the party.”
“You don’t really have to give me a ride,” Kelly said as we started up the lighted path to the parking lot. “I just wanted to apologize. When I heard Eva say Lucy’s name—” She stopped, breathing heavily. “Good Lord, is this path straight uphill?”
It was. Below us through the trees, the Ten Chimneys van circled the drive, then began making its way up the narrow road.
“Anyway, Eva told me what happened and I feel awful. I meant it when I said I didn’t want to make waves for you.”
“I know,” I said. “Thank you, I guess.”
She touched my wrist. “I’m glad you came tonight.” And then a sad smile crossed her face. “My big debut as a director.” She pronounced debut as “day-but,” a joke from high school.
I smiled. “Your big ‘day-but’ was a hit.”
We were silent then, staring down as we picked our way over the uneven path.
“I’ve been remembering a lot of stuff,” she said after a minute. “Like how your dad loved Frank Sinatra and always played ‘New York, New York’ for me. Or how when your mom came home from the restaurant, she’d go straight to the piano and start playing in the dark.”
“And if you tried talking to her, she’d just smile with her eyes closed like you weren’t there and keep playing. It used to bug the hell out of me.”
“I loved it. It’s like, that was her time and no one could fuck with it. Does she still play?”
I swallowed. “Not so much.” After all the other losses my mom had endured—me, Lucy, Nick and Kelly, the house—I’m not sure why this, her no longer having a piano, felt like such a deep wound.
We reached the flat expanse of parking lot and stopped. Annabelle’s SUV was a few spaces away, her mother’s rosary dangling from the rearview mirror. I felt a tissue-paper-thin sadness tear inside me.
“Your artwork is amazing,” Kelly said then. We were standing at my car while she finished her cigarette.
“You saw it?” But why wouldn’t she have once Eva explained about Lucy Claire? Everything was on the gallery website.
“I bought Light.”
“But that was going for—” An astronomical amount, I started to say, but it probably wasn’t astronomical at all to Kelly. For some reason this made me laugh.
“Exactly.” She grinned, then blew a smoke ring up to the trees. Wrinkles fanned out from her eyes. It was so strange: an older Kelly.
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Every collage is about her. But that one especially.”
“That’s why I bought it.”
I nodded. Ask her about Lucy, I told myself. That’s all I cared about. But just as I blurted, “I know you said you wouldn’t talk about—,” Kelly said, “She knows you’re an artist.”
“What?”
“And she knows you loved her.”
Everything in me went still.
“Nick made sure of that. Andrea too.” She studied me for a moment, brow furrowed, then reached into her pocket for a phone, tapped the screen, and handed it to me.
And there she was. My daughter. Lucy. Sixteen years old. My hands were shaking so badly, Kelly had to take the phone and hold it for me. I couldn’t move or breathe. I wanted to memorize every detail. Her pale blue formal dress, her tanned shoulders, her dad’s smile, my long brown hair. I’d always pictured her blond, like she’d been as a baby. She had freckles. A tiny gap in her teeth. She was glancing shyly at the boy next to her. “Trevor,” Kelly said. “Her boyfriend. He’s a nice kid.”
“She’s beautiful,” I whispered, touching a finger to the edge of the screen.
“And funny and smart. She runs cross-country. Eva says you’re a runner too.”
It was a short drive to Alfred and Lynn’s house. I understood without either of us saying anything that we were finished talking about Lucy. That Kelly had given me as much as she could without betraying her brother. She asked about my collages, how long I’d been doing them, and I told her what I’d told almost no one, that I’d begun them in the hospital, and working on them and running were the only things that made sense to me for years. I asked if she was eager to get home, and she was, though she was a little “spooked” about flying on the anniversary of 9/11. I told her how frightened I’d been that day for her. It was easy talking, and I wished it were a longer drive. I thought too of all the times I’d given her rides. To school and parties and my parents’ restaurant. To auditions in Philly and to and from the Wilmington train station when she was at Yale. How was I now driving her to the home of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne in Genesee Depot, Wisconsin? It felt impossible. And improbable.
Without warning, my mind spun back to the morning, to Eva and Gabe, and how improbable that had been too. It was the kind of timing that belonged to a play, perfectly orchestrated and rehearsed, because just one minute either way and everything could have been different. But maybe our lives were always like this, chance upon chance upon chance. Although I couldn’t know it that night, it’s why we would get the kids back. Not because of the lawyers or because of anything Erik said to Annabelle or even because she had a change of heart. We’d get them back because of Eva and Gabe breaking up, and Annabelle shattering into a hundred pieces. She wouldn’t have the energy or the will to keep fighting with Erik. We’d get them back because it would be easier for her to not have the kids as she talked endlessly with Eva and did damage control in her marriage.
At the Lunts’ Swedish manor house, light spilled from the windows and across the courtyard. I pulled in behind the van, and we watched the guests disembark. Eva turned and waved to us.
“She’s great,” Kelly said, extracting a cigarette from her pack, then sliding it back in.
“Go ahead.” I nodded at the cigarettes. “You might not get another chance for a while.”
Her face opened in surprise. “I can’t smoke in your car! You’re a runner, for God’s sake.”
But I wasn’t ready for her to go. “Hey, I broke the law to come see you tonight, so a little smoke…” I shrugged.
“You did, didn’t you? Break the law?” She glanced away, tilting her head up as if to better see the stars out the passenger window. “Eva mentioned the PFA.” She opened her mouth to say something else, then paused and turned to me. “I’m so so sorry about Annabelle taking your kids. I wanted to say that earlier. I’m probably one of the few people, besides my brother and your mom, who knows what that would do to you.” She held up the cigarette. “You sure about this?”
I nodded.
Another van pulled up to the manor. There was something whimsical about the house, like a drawing from a children’s book. A hodgepodge of additions jutted out at odd angles, and six of the estate’s ten chimneys, all different heights and styles, poked up almost comically.
“I can’t believe you can come here whenever you want,” Kelly said. “Or is it like the beach and you just take it for granted?” We used to laugh and roll our eyes at the tourists who’d get so excited about seeing the ocean.
But Ten Chimneys wasn’t like the beach at all. I thought of how Erik had brought it up on our first date, and how I’d mentioned Kelly to him that night. It felt as if this moment had somehow been preordained all those years ago. Ten Chimneys was also where I’d married Erik and, in the years after, where the six of us—me and Erik, Annabelle and Scott, Gabe and Eva—had attended dozens of dinners and parties and plays. It was where every year on May 26, we’d brought the kids with us to celebrate “Ten Chimneys Day” with a lavish Lunt-style picnic on the lawn. And now it was where Kelly and I had reconciled, if that’s what this was, and where I’d seen my daughter’s picture. She knows you loved her.
I would never take any of that for granted. But even without those things, there was something magical about this place where two people had believed they could create the life they dreamed of. And not just believed it; they’d done it. And then shared that life with all the people they loved. “If you get to go to Ten Chimneys, you must have done something right,” the actress Carol Channing had remarked. Sometimes when I saw the quote, which was on everything—mugs, magnets, T-shirts, tote bags—I felt such panicked disbelief. How had I ended up at Ten Chimneys?
What had I done right?
“I told your husband,” Kelly said, lowering the window and exhaling a long plume of smoke, “that if I’d known you were here, I never would have come.”
“He told me,” I said. “It was stupid not to contact you, Kel.” Kel. The name slipped out, like a wineglass shattering on the floor.
But all she said was, “I’m glad you didn’t contact me.” She turned toward the window and tapped the ash from her cigarette outside. “I’m glad I came.”
“Well, you did an amazing job. The show tonight, your debut—”
“I wasn’t talking about Ten Chimneys.”
And then, before I could answer, she opened the door, tossed her cigarette to the gravel, and ground it out with the toe of her shoe. “I better get in there,” she said, and gave my arm a quick squeeze.