Chapter Three

Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.

Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past

She felt the air punched from her chest as Philippe held up that article, showing her words that had meant one thing when she’d written them and now meant something altogether new. She flopped onto the couch and he sat next to her, pulling her close. He didn’t ask, but he didn’t have to, because Colleen started to talk, to flatly tell the story she’d never spoken out loud, not once in ten years, the story of her wedding day.

“Holy shit.” Philippe’s voice held tenderness and compassion despite the profanity. “That really happened?”

“It really did.” Colleen was dry-eyed. She’d once assumed that if she ever poured out the story, she would fall apart, but maybe the narrative had dried out; maybe it’d lost its power.

“And then,” Colleen said, “she married him.”

“Damn.” Philippe shook his head. “No wonder you don’t like to get too close to anyone.” He grinned, but Colleen didn’t find the offhand joke funny. Not one bit. “Sorry, bad timing. So then what happened?”

Colleen found herself telling the rest of what she knew, what she’d heard from her brother, her parents, or worse, what had been in the texts, e-mails and voice mails from Hallie. Never, not once, had Colleen answered any of them. “I left. No, more accurately, I ran. I grabbed my already packed suitcase and drove away. Hallie is the one who sauntered into the bridal room and told everyone the wedding was off.”

“Did she tell everyone why?” Philippe asked in a low voice.

“I have no idea. Then Walter announced in the packed church that I had left the scene—no explanation why, just that I had run.” Colleen shook her head and felt oddly disconnected to the story, as if she were telling Philippe something she’d read in the newsfeed on her computer. “So then my parents had everyone over to our house anyway, because the food and drink had already been prepared under a big white tent in our backyard. The tent Hallie picked out with daisy chains, just like we’d made as kids, falling from the posts.” Colleen shrugged. “Not that I blame Mother and Dad—you can’t waste good food and liquor, I guess. It was a party without a bride and groom. At least Hallie and Walter had the good sense to stay away, or so my brother told me.”

“Then they married?”

“Yes. The betrayal goes on and on. They tried to do it quietly—going to the justice of the peace in Watersend six months later—but nothing is quiet in a small town. First comes cheating, then comes marriage, then comes two babies in a baby carriage.”

“I’m so sorry, love. What about your parents? I mean, weren’t they livid with your sister? It seems like she broke up the family.”

“If they were angry, and I’m sure they were at some point or on some level, they never told me. But then again, I didn’t speak to anyone at home for a long, long while. When I finally did, they were just glad to hear from me and it wasn’t a subject I would talk about. I’ve made it clear that I never, and I mean never, want to hear about Hallie or Walter or talk about them . . . so I’m not exactly sure what their feelings are about it.”

“No wonder you don’t want to go home.”

“That’s the thing, though.” Colleen stood, her heart racing with this first telling of the sordid tale. “I do want to go home. I just don’t want to see her, or Walter, or their offspring. But I do want to go home. I’ve been there a few times over the years, but there’s always been this complicated scheduling nightmare of who comes and goes so I can avoid . . .”

Philippe stood and pulled her against him, brushed her hair away from her face. “Although I know the answer to this question, I’ll ask anyway—would you like me to go with you?”

Colleen smiled.

He nodded, his mouth in a tight line. “You know, it’s amazing that you can tell that tale without crying.”

“It is, isn’t it?” Colleen said as she touched his cheek. “Listen, you’re so sweet for coming by with my favorite croissant and listening. I’ve never told it before and your kindness allowed me to let it out. Thank you. I promise I’ll call when I return, but I can’t focus on anything else but getting to South Carolina right now.” Colleen kissed him and walked him to the door. “I have to book a flight now.”

“You’re always on the next plane out. Is that how it’s always going to be?”

“I don’t know.” She propped the door open with her foot.

He shook his head. “Someday, Colleen Donohue, I believe you’re going to have to feel something.” And with that he was gone, his shadow retreating down the dark stairwell, his back straight and his hand waving over his shoulder.

Feel something? Damn, she’d felt plenty, she wanted to tell him. Plenty enough to last a lifetime. Feeling things was overrated at best. She gently closed the door and went straight back to the computer, chose a flight, entered her credit card number and slumped into the couch to text her brother with the information.

“Whoa,” she exhaled into her empty apartment. She’d told the story; she’d said it out loud; and now, like the aftershocks of an earthquake, Colleen felt the fracture lines inside her chest. There was an ache and need for her family that flowed over her with a panicked sense of lost time.

When you return home, she’d written in the article, take with you everything you’ve seen and learned.

But how could she do that?

This was a question most women would ask their mothers, but two years ago they’d lost a youthful fifty-eight-year-old Elizabeth Donohue to a silent killer—a brain aneurism that had sent her crashing to the family’s dock while she was dragging a crab trap out of the water in preparation for a lawn party that evening. Dad had been cleaning the picnic table. Teamwork, they always said, was an important ingredient in a marriage.

As the Irish said, two shorten the road.

Dad had raced to his wife, but it had been too late. It had been too late the millisecond it happened. Elizabeth was gone, the rope still in her hand, a smile on her face and guests on their way for fresh crab.

Shane had called Colleen that time, also. His voice shattered in grief, he’d told her, “I already bought you a plane ticket home.”

Colleen had been late, arriving only two hours before the funeral; a late season snowstorm had socked the Northeast and canceled most flights. When she landed, there was no one to pick her up so she’d called a cab and told the driver to take her directly to the church where the funeral service was being held, the same one where she’d once expected to be married. She’d texted Shane. I’ll meet you at St. Paul’s. Keep Hallie away from me.

“Lena,” her brother had phoned to say in a whisper, Hallie obviously near. “You can’t avoid her. It’s our mother’s funeral.”

“I can. I will. I’m here for Mother, and for Dad. And of course for you. But not her. Not Hallie.”

“She wants to talk to you.”

“No.” Colleen had closed her eyes so tightly that bright confetti burst in the darkness.

Somehow she’d managed to avoid her sister for a full two days, during the house visits, funeral and burial. Of course she’d glimpsed Hallie across the room with Walter, who kept her welded to his side, protective or possessive, who could say?

During this time, remembered arguments between Colleen and her mother had come to mind, one after the other in unrelenting succession, causing Colleen to feel both sick and nostalgic. Regret, that was what death brought in its disorienting wake. Why hadn’t she been closer to her mother? Why hadn’t her mother been closer to her? Why had they argued about everything from how she fixed her curly hair to her decision to become a writer? Why did they argue more than Hallie and Mother? Death, she realized, also brought a litany of why why why, like a whining child.

Colleen had finally stopped the never-ending reel of questions. That was part of life’s abrupt ending—there would never be answers. Nothing would be resolved.

There had been loving moments together, of course there had been. When Colleen’s mother had rubbed her back as she coughed with the flu, when she’d kissed Colleen good night and brushed her hair off her forehead—little moments that added up to a quiet conviction that there was love present and available. Yet there was also always the quieter conviction that Mother loved the others better, that Hallie was the favorite Donohue daughter. Dad would adamantly deny this accusation and then collect Colleen in his arms and spin her around, saying, “Who wouldn’t love everything you are?”

Colleen still didn’t like to think about the day of the funeral. The deep sorrow pressing on her, the knowledge that whatever she felt she was missing from her mother she would never know or have, the weight of who they all used to be and would never be again: a complete family.

This trip home would have to be different. If the siblings were going to help their dad, they couldn’t ignore each other. But she damn sure wasn’t going to run to Watersend with open arms and magnanimous forgiveness. Cautiously polite would be Colleen’s goal—all for Dad.

Memories had originally kept Colleen away, and now that her dad might be losing his, she would return.