CHAPTER 47

Maria

Lucy left about eight last night, once I’d convinced her I was fine—which I most certainly was not. Then Julie called at ten-thirty, just to check up on me, she said, but her voice was strange. A little too falsely chipper. She told me she wouldn’t make it to church this morning, but she asked me to come over to her house after mass for brunch with her and Lucy and Ethan. I accepted the invitation. I kept trying to still my mind, telling myself the truth would come out in time and that I couldn’t change it by thinking about it, but despite my efforts, my thoughts raced and I barely slept a wink all night long. I knew something was up. I was not an idiot. I suspected Julie was going to tell me what I’d already guessed: Ross Chapman murdered my child.

The sermon at church this morning was about repentance. Aha, I thought, this sermon is custom designed for me. I was prepared to give the priest all my attention, and yet my mind still wandered. I was glad when mass was over, and I actually ran a yellow light in my rush to get to Julie’s.

I arrived before Lucy and Ethan and let myself in the front door. I heard shouting coming from the kitchen. Shannon’s voice, then Julie’s. I was about to walk into the middle of an argument. Shannon screamed an expletive at her mother, and I cringed. Not an argument, I thought. A down-and-dirty fight.

Julie was yelling about cutting Shannon off from her health insurance if she moved to Colorado with her young man.

“And forget about me paying for college if you ever decide to go,” she yelled. Julie was not a yeller, and I knew she had reached the point of desperation with my granddaughter. “Forget about any monetary support from me, period!” she shouted.

Shannon gave as good as she got, calling her mother manipulative, conniving and cruel before I’d even taken six steps across the living-room floor. She was crying, though. I could hear the tears in her voice. I walked toward the kitchen and quietly observed from the doorway. Julie was at the granite counter using a melon baller on a ripe cantaloupe, going at it as though she was cutting out her daughter’s heart. Shannon paced around the island punching numbers into her cell phone as she hollered ugly words at her mother. I watched the two of them perform the dance I remembered all too well.

Shannon was first to notice me. She closed her phone, dropped her gaze to the floor, then walked past me out of the room.

“Bye, Nana,” she muttered beneath her breath, and I heard the front door open, then slam shut.

Julie set down the melon baller and raised her hand to her forehead. Her eyes were closed and she looked as if she had a headache. I wasn’t sure what to say. What words would have helped me when I was in her position? What words would have gotten through my thick skull?

“What’s going on?” I asked.

Julie wiped her hands on a paper towel, then leaned against the counter, arms folded across her chest. “She insists she’s leaving in a week with Tanner,” she said. “They had a big party here while I was out of town, Mom. Dozens of kids. Alcohol and who knows what else. She and Tanner slept in my bed.”

Petty little things in the big picture, I thought. I felt tired. I thought of Isabel on the bay at midnight with Ned. Of me out in the blueberry lot with Ross. “It’s a never-ending circle,” I said, “and Shannon is doomed to face it with her own child in another seventeen years or so.”

Julie looked at me as though she didn’t understand a word I’d spoken.

We heard the front door open, and in a moment, Lucy and Ethan came into the kitchen. Ethan didn’t even acknowledge me as he walked over to Julie for an embrace. Julie shut her eyes tightly as she held him. Then she backed away, her hands on either side of his face.

“How are you?” She looked into his eyes, and I knew there was something strong growing between the two of them. I’d suspected it at the barbecue, but now I knew it for sure.

Lucy put her arm around my waist. “Did you tell her?” she asked Julie, who shook her head.

“Tell me what?” I asked. “What’s going on?”

Ethan looked at me. “My father killed himself last night,” he said.

My God. I wasn’t sure if I’d said those words out loud or to myself. That was not what I’d expected to hear. I felt light-headed, and Ethan grabbed a chair from beneath the kitchen table and slipped it under me. I held his arm as I sat down, then I looked into his red-rimmed eyes. “I’m so sorry, Ethan,” I said.

He nodded.

“You sit, too,” Julie said to him, and he didn’t argue as she led him to a chair. He looked as numb as I felt.

“He confessed, Mom,” Julie said. “You were right. Isabel had written that note to him. After he read it, he told Ned not to meet her on the platform that night so that he could meet her himself to try to convince her not to tell Daddy about…about you and Mr. Chapman. He said it was an accident, that Izzy lost her balance and he tried to grab her arm to keep her from falling. He didn’t realize that she’d hit her head. He didn’t know until the next day that she drowned.”

“At least that’s what he claimed,” Ethan said, rubbing his eyes.

“Poor old soul,” I said. If I’d agreed to see Ross, might I have prevented his suicide? That was something I could never know. I looked at Ethan. I wanted to lift a bit of his sorrow. “Your father was as flawed as any human that ever walked the earth,” I said, “but I believe him. I don’t think he was capable of premeditated murder, especially not of a girl he believed was his daughter.” The thought of Isabel’s last minutes came to me again, as it did too often, and I brushed it away. I would deal with that later. Not here. Not now. “The person I feel the worst about is poor George Lewis,” I added.

Julie suddenly started to cry. Ethan got to his feet and pulled her gently into his arms again, and I felt grateful to him for coming back into her life the way he had. Despite my earlier misgivings about the two of them getting together, I liked seeing the comfortable intimacy between them and I was glad something good had come out of this mess. But although Ethan was sweet in his attempt to comfort her, Julie was inconsolable. She couldn’t seem to stop crying. Ethan looked past her at me. “She’s always felt as though everyone blamed her for Isabel’s death,” he explained.

Oh no, I thought. Was that my fault? I stood up and moved next to the two of them.

“Sweetheart,” I said, rubbing Julie’s back. “I never blamed you.” That wasn’t precisely the truth. In the beginning, I did blame her, but it was a short-lived anger. I knew in my heart she’d never meant to hurt her sister. My anger toward her had evolved into a grief that had consumed me for a long time. It never occurred to me to take back the cruel things I’d said to Julie in the hours and days after we lost Isabel. Julie had seemed fine to my grief-blinded eyes. I saw now how she’d suffered, and I also saw my opportunity to address the mother-daughter strife that seemed to plague our family.

“Julie,” I said, “if anyone besides Ross is to blame for Isabel’s death, it’s me.”

Julie was quick to shake her head. Pulling away from Ethan, she brushed the tears from her face with her hands. “No, Mom,” she said. “Don’t even think that.”

“It’s the truth,” I said. “I pushed Isabel away from me by trying to hold on to her too tightly.” I looked hard into my daughter’s face. “Do you hear me, Julie?” I asked. “Do you? I don’t want to see you make that same mistake with Shannon.”

CHAPTER 48

Julie

I had prepared plenty of food—melon and strawberries, bagels and cream cheese, scrambled eggs and sausage—but none of us ate more than a bite. We sat in the dining room, since it was too hot to eat on the porch. The eggs and sausage grew cold as we talked, as we washed the air clear of things never before said. If I’d only had the courage to talk to my mother decades ago about Isabel, my suffering—and I am sure hers, as well—would have been far less. Instead, I grew into adulthood nursing my guilt, still holding on to a twelve-year-old’s version of all that had happened. Why had we spent forty years tiptoeing around the elephant in the room? Did we think it would go away, that if we starved it by ignoring it, it would shrink until it was skinny enough to slip out the door? I vowed to never again make that mistake. Bringing things out in the open when they happened could be painful, but it was like getting a vaccination: the needle stung, but that was nothing compared to getting the disease.

After brunch, Ethan went upstairs to my room for a nap. His daughter, Abby, and her husband and baby were coming over later and together, we would make the arrangements for Ethan’s father.

Lucy left after helping Mom and me clean up a bit; she had a ZydaChicks rehearsal to go to. My mother stayed with me a while longer, though. Once the kitchen was clean, she sat with me on the sofa in the living room, holding my hand. Or maybe I was holding hers. Either way, I liked the way it felt.

“There’s one other thing we never talk about,” I said to her after we’d sat that way for a few minutes. “Something I never tell you.”

“What’s that, Julie?” she asked.

“How much I love you,” I said. “I always told you that when I was a kid, and then somewhere along the line, I got out of the habit.You’re going to hear it from me a lot from now on.”

“I knew it even when you didn’t say it,” she said. “But it would be wonderful to hear.”

“Also,” I was on a roll, “I think you’re smart and beautiful and vibrant. And I feel lucky to have you as my mother.” I couldn’t believe how good it felt to get those words out! “I hope I’m just like you when I’m your age.”