Chapter Twenty-four

A man needs such a narrative, a continuous inner narrative, to maintain his identity, his self.

Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

The pub buzzed with activity—a bridesmaids’ party had descended, the women ordering shots of tequila and wearing pink T-shirts with the hashtag #gettinghitched. As if getting married meant this poor girl would be pulling a wagon for the rest of her life.

Colleen felt that old ache again, the one of betrayal, but this time it was for Hallie, and it was a feeling she didn’t want to have, one she didn’t want to indulge. Placing another brick in that wall of protection around her heart, she added some spackling and walked through the screeching girls, each laughing at the other in such high-pitched squeals that Colleen almost put her hands over her ears. Her dad sat at the far end of the bar, his head bent almost forehead to forehead with old Mr. Levin. Colleen knew his story, too: a widower who had lost his wife to lymphoma, who had sat on the same stool for the past twenty-five years, who drank only beer before his wife passed, and then afterward enough whiskey to kill him and need a ride home every night, and now only one shot a night. He twirled his whiskey glass. He nursed it. He sniffed it. He made it last as long as he could, and then he went home.

A doctor, an elegant woman with dark hair—Colleen didn’t know her name—a woman who was new to town and had opened an emergency clinic, sat with the bookshop owner, Mimi, in the middle of the room, laughing and drinking a beer. Colleen waved at Mimi and both women waved in return. Tales of the town filled this pub as surely as tables, chairs and taps.

“Dad.” Colleen said this gently. She didn’t want to startle him. It scared her, the way she felt about Gavin’s vulnerability. If her dad was easily frightened, if he couldn’t find his way, how could she?

“Hello, little lark.” Gavin smiled and kissed her cheek. “When did you get here?”

“Just now. I was upstairs visiting Shane and . . .” Had he meant when did she get into town or when did she arrive at the pub? Never say “remember”; never say “I told you”—Colleen saw the words on the placard in Shane’s apartment.

“Oh, yes,” Gavin said with a nod. The noise level rose as the three-piece fiddle band began playing. Colleen thought again, as she had so many times, that although she’d never been to Ireland, if someone was put to sleep and awoke in this place, they would believe they had been transported to the Emerald Isle. At least as long as no one spoke in a thick southern accent or glanced at the photos on the walls.

As Dad walked away, Beckett approached. Colleen greeted him. “Hey, you. Sorry about last night. Not the best way to end a lovely date.”

“Nothing to be sorry for. How is . . . everyone?” He glanced around the pub.

“Not so great. But how’s the research coming for the historic marker?” She switched subjects quickly.

“Should be done in the next week or so. I thought it might make a good birthday present at your dad’s big party, but it won’t be ready in time.” Beckett approached the bar and ordered a glass of tonic water with lime for himself and Colleen nodded that she wanted the same, as Hallie made her way toward them. She reached their side and put her hand on Colleen’s arm. “We need to talk.”

“I thought you left.”

“I did, but . . .” She placed her hand on her stomach. “But I feel sick. I wanted to run away, find a place to hide, but I can’t. I want to talk to you. I know that doesn’t make sense and you can tell me to . . .”

“I’m here, Hallie.”

Beckett took a few steps back and engaged quickly in a conversation with a man he knew on the next bar stool.

“You are right about Walter.”

“For once, I don’t want to be right.” Colleen nodded but not with the satisfaction she’d thought might come.

“How it starts is how it ends.” Hallie motioned to Hank and he brought her a shot of whiskey. She drank it and slammed the glass to the bar. “Right? How it started, with cheating lies, is how it’s ending. How could I have expected anything less? It’s my own doing.”

“No, Hallie. It’s not your own doing. It’s his. You can see that, right? You didn’t do anything to make him cheat.”

“I’ve always felt that something was . . . wrong between us. Always, but I blamed it on you. Not on you, but on what I did to you. So I worked even harder to make our marriage great. I worked even harder to be a good wife and mother. I worked even harder to be . . . hell, I don’t know, as amazing as you.”

“What are you talking about?” Colleen took her sister’s arm and gently guided her through the crowd, outside to the sidewalk and then to the river’s edge.

Hallie was full on crying by then and Colleen put both hands on her sister’s shoulders. “It’s okay.”

Hallie shook her head. “I’m not like you, Lena. I can’t turn off my emotions. I can’t stop because you say ‘it’s okay.’ I’ve tried to be like you. All my ever-loving life I’ve tried to be like you.” She pointed to the pub. “For God’s sake, you’re Dad’s little lark. I’ve never even had a nickname.”

“Why, Hallie? Why would you want to be anything like me?”

“Because you’re just you.”

“That makes no sense at all.”

“You don’t see it, do you?” Hallie’s voice rose. The mingling couples and families and joggers and amblers all turned their faces toward Hallie and Colleen. But they kept on as though they were alone as they once had been, unraveling life’s mystery, or at least their life’s mystery.

“See what?”

“You’re different, Colleen. You aren’t like the rest of us. You’re a little like Dad, the best of us, and then something more, something almost magical. The way your eyes shine brighter and how you gulp life by the mouthful, how when you put your full attention on someone they only see you, how you laugh and the sound falls through the air.”

“It’s the same as you, Hallie. I’ve always felt that way about you, too.” Colleen couldn’t quell the feelings now; tears filled her own eyes and a breach had been broken or crossed. Everything must be said at that river’s edge.

“No. It’s kind of you to say, but it’s not true.”

“We aren’t the same, of course we aren’t. But you’re amazing. When you aren’t trying to be someone else or . . .”

“Cheating with your fiancé.”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry, Lena. I’m sorrier than I’ve ever been for anything ever. I’ve always suspected that the only reason he stayed with me was because he was caught. He denies it, but he wasn’t going to leave you. He wasn’t. If you hadn’t seen us . . .”

“Well, I did.”

“Ten years. Do you realize you haven’t spoken to me in ten years?”

“I know.”

“And you’re so hard. So . . . hard. Like you’re made of something else now. I hate it so much.” A shudder passed through Hallie’s body.

“I hate it, too.” Colleen spoke the truth. She hated being so cold, but it was all she’d known to do.

“Then quit.” Hallie looked up. “Be Lena. Please. You told me I was obsessed with planning the party so I didn’t have to think about my marriage. And maybe you’re right. But you’re obsessed with your job so you don’t have to think about us—your family here without you.”

“That’s not why. I love what I do and where I get to go and . . .” Colleen was defending something that was both true and not altogether true. Yes, she loved her job. But yes, she’d used it to avoid her family and the pain and the loss.

“All these years, I’ve known the truth about Walter. Deep down I’ve known.” Hallie sat on the soft grass, her legs crossed.

Colleen sat across from her on bent knees, her hands denting the moist grass, mud wet against her shins. “You’ve known?”

“Guessed at best. But, Lena, he’s a good dad. A great man in so many other ways. We have a community and a life and the girls, the precious girls. I needed to believe he was faithful. I needed to believe that having him was worth the price of betraying you.” She looked to Colleen, her eyes now clear and her voice clearer.

“We fool ourselves,” Colleen said. “We fool ourselves to make circumstances tolerable. We fool ourselves to avoid the pain. We fool ourselves to make sure that life can chug along at its slow, grinding, safe pace. I understand. But you deserve everything good and true. So do I. We both do, and Walter Littleton wasn’t and isn’t either of those things.”

“I’ve been at war with myself,” Hallie said, her breath slowing as she calmed down. “One part of me convincing me to stay and that all was well, and the other part begging me to look and be aware.” She shifted on the grass and gazed over Colleen’s shoulder. “Do you have any idea what it is to be battling yourself? It drains you of so much . . . energy.” She looked back at Colleen. “He’s awful, isn’t he?”

“He doesn’t have to be all bad, Hallie. I know the good parts, too, but you have to decide what you can and cannot live with.”

“I know.” Hallie took her sister’s hands. “I love you. You know that, right? I didn’t stop just because you did.”

Colleen felt the thick sadness in her throat and tried to swallow. “I do love you, Hallie, but it’s the trust that I haven’t been able to find.”

“I know.” Hallie’s gaze became unfocused. “My God, my girls will be devastated if I leave him. They think he’s the bee’s knees. Daddy this and Daddy that and Daddy here and Daddy there.”

“He’ll still be their daddy.” Colleen was treading on unfamiliar territory, an unmapped land she didn’t truly understand because she didn’t have her own children, and yet she could have just as well been talking about their own dad.

“You’re the wrong person to complain to, Lena.” Hallie hesitated before she continued. “It feels like I’m losing everything that matters, except my girls. Dad’s disease isn’t a mistake he made. It’s not his fault. Here, between us, this is my fault. It was a mistake that I thought was saving my own heart. I thought I was finding the love of my life, but I’ve never been able to forgive myself. How could I expect you to forgive me? Now what, Lena? Now what do I do?”

“I have no idea.” Colleen closed her eyes. “Except this—do not do what I did.”

Hallie almost smiled. “No, I can’t run away . . .”

“In a way you can. You can leave him. But you have family here, Hallie. A house. A home. Come back to it if you don’t want the internal war of living with Walter.”

The sisters sat quietly then, the voices of others rumbling past, a foghorn sounding far off and a baby crying from a stroller only a few feet away. But they didn’t hear any of this, not with full awareness. They merely sat together in the silence between them, the silence that finally, finally spoke of sisterhood.

“What about you, Lena?”

“What about me?”

“What if you want to stay? What if you want to be here, too?”

“Hallie, if that happens, we’ll figure it out. Don’t use me as an excuse not to end your marriage.”

Hallie took in a gasp as if she’d been hit in the solar plexus. “Yes, I’ve been doing that for far, far too long.”