The Favorite Daughter

by Patti Callahan Henry

  “Dad.”

  He set his hand on her arm. “Just forgive. And state that forgiveness.”

  “You seem to always be blaming me for leaving. What about blaming her for what she did? Can’t you see my side? Don’t you ever get mad at her?” Colleen closed her eyes, tried to center her emotions to right.

  “Of course I did. I struggled with it; I used harsh words I wished I could take back. Hallie had to also forgive me for the things I said to her and Walter, the blame I cast on them.”

  Colleen held up her hand. “I don’t want to hear about it. I’m sorry I brought it up.” She turned away. In a small way she’d been able to pretend Hallie and Walter didn’t exist as part of the family she left. Yes, she knew it was the truest form of denial, but we all do what we can to survive.

  Dad continued over her thoughts. “But what use is that blame to carry around? What use is that?”

  “I don’t carry it around . . . I don’t think. But it hurts to see her, Dad. Can’t you understand that? It hurts to even see her with him.”

  “I know your pain. I do. The loss of someone you love can tear a hole in the soul. But can you not imagine that Hallie must hurt also? She lost you.”

  “She chose to lose me. She made her choice. There might not ever be a way to reconcile. Some things are just too far gone . . .”

  “Just try.”

  Chapter Eight

  I don’t know how much longer I have to know you.

  Lisa Genova, Still Alice

  It wasn’t Dad’s fault that he was able to choose the good parts and overcome the bad ones. He didn’t sit in Colleen’s heart and mind to witness the hell parts. Hallie had been Colleen’s best friend. They were only eighteen months apart in age. Almost Irish twins, their dad had always said, and yet not once had their mother laughed at this joke. Whenever he said it, her laughing mouth went into a line as straight as a stick, and she walked away or changed the subject. She didn’t much like talking about private things, and how often and when they might or might not have had sex to produce two children so close together was embarrassing to the prim Elizabeth.

  A few times she’d seen Dad embrace her to assuage the comment. “I love you, Betty,” he’d say and with his finger under her chin, he’d tip her face up for a kiss.

  He was the only one who was allowed to call her Betty. He was the only one given access to her private thoughts. But that was okay with Colleen and Hallie because they had each other, and then soon, a little brother to pass around and dress and feed until they grew bored of him and their mother gladly folded him into her arms.

  They absorbed their dad’s proclamation seriously—they were twins of a certain sort. It confused them later when Colleen went off to kindergarten and Hallie had to stay home and play alone with Shane. Colleen remembered, even now at thirty-five years old, the desolate feeling of being in school without her sister. She felt half-finished, as if she’d forgotten her arm at home. When it was time to open her Clifford the Big Red Dog lunch box on the first day, she burst into tears. The teacher, the lovely Ms. Hannity, thought her homesick, but she was merely Hallie-sick. Hallie had put a daisy in her little snack baggie. It was the first time ever that she’d eaten lunch without her sister. Who would eat the pickles off her sandwich?

  That very afternoon they’d plotted that either Colleen must act dumb and be held back a grade or Hallie must be very smart and advance a grade. Neither ever happened, but their plan had given them hope after that first afternoon spent separate from each other.

  * * *

  • • •

  The next morning, in her brother’s apartment above the Lark, Colleen sorted through a pile of photos on the kitchen table. The pictures afforded an odd variety of time travel back through Gavin Donohue’s life. Some were black-and-white, some color, some torn and faded and others obviously newly printed. Colleen sifted through them and felt a tremor below her chest: her dad’s life in photos.

  Shane sat across from her, sipping a cup of coffee. It was ten a.m. and he’d just stumbled from bed, his hair matted on the left side and sheet marks on his cheek.

  “Rough night?” she asked him.

  “No, just late. There was a tiebreaker in the dart competition and old Mr. Ballew would not forfeit the title without great agony. How was your night after you left the pub?”

  After spending the afternoon with her father, she’d driven him to the Lark, where she’d spent the early evening.

  “It was great to see so many people—who doesn’t want to run into their prom date and their second grade teacher in a bar?” She grinned. “I got a bit overwhelmed and went back to Dad’s.”

  “Overwhelmed?”

  She shrugged. “All the times I’ve come home over the years, I haven’t really hung out here. I like the Lark when it’s empty—just us, you know? None of my best friends—like Margy, Sara and Kerry—even live here anymore. I haven’t talked to or contacted anyone in ten years.” Colleen shook her head. “Ten years. My God, how did that go so fast?” She paused and stared at her brother as if he had the answer to the dilemma of time. “Anyway, I just wanted to go home and sit on the dock and catch up on work e-mails and edits until Bob brought Dad home.”

  “Do you talk to those girls at all? Your bridesmaids?”

  Colleen shook her head. “At first it was too embarrassing. They called and texted and Kerry even tried to visit me in New York, but I guess people can only be shunned for so long. I thought about trying to get us all together last year, but then realized that they hadn’t called in years and might not want to hear from me at this point.” Colleen pressed at her temples and felt the weird light-headedness that signaled embarrassment, a warning sign that she had inched too close to the past. “Let’s stop talking about this.” She tried to smile at her brother but felt the tremble in her lips. Leaning toward the table of photos, she asked, “So, what’s all this for?”

  “When Hallie gets here, I’ll explain.”

  Colleen yawned, covering her mouth and slumping into a chair. She’d slept the night in her childhood bedroom, if sleeping was what it could be called. She’d tossed and turned on the sagging mattress and when she had faded away, it had been to fragmented images of the life she’d left behind.

  “Lena?”

  “Yes?”

  “Are you okay?”

  She nodded. “I think so. What time is Hallie coming?”

  “About fifteen minutes,” Shane said and walked to the coffeepot to pour another mugful. “I know you’ve asked me to never discuss this with you, to allow our relationship to remain separate, but I have to say something.”

  “Of course you do.”

  “You have to mend this with her. It’s been ten years. They have a beautiful life and a great marriage and two girls—your nieces, by the way, who you will adore if you give them even a second of your time. You can’t pretend they don’t exist.”

  “Did you and Dad plot ahead of time to gang up on me? And did you both conveniently forget about her part in this?”

  “We didn’t forget. We don’t forget. We’ve been here for a decade without you. We’ve had the long nights of regret and misery with Hallie.” He rolled his head around his shoulders, loosening the tension. “She knows how we feel—the way we all are now didn’t come easy. There were years of tension and heartache. But forgiveness and family won out.”

  “Forgiveness.” Colleen felt the sweat on her palms, the uneasiness in her chest. “Why does that word make me feel like I want to crawl out of my skin, Shane? Why does it make me feel like I am falling into the dark place where I’m sleeping in a friend’s basement and drinking vodka like water? It’s just a word.”

  “Maybe because you can’t separate forgiveness from forgetting. Listen, sis, I’m not saying you have to be best friends with her again. I’m not saying you have to trust her. But we’re here for Dad, and a lit
tle grace and kindness might ease the tension for everyone. Being angry and rude doesn’t change a damn thing that happened ten years ago.”

  “I hear you.” Colleen settled back into the seat, feeling something akin to relief, something like exhaling or falling asleep after a long day. She didn’t need to be best friends with Hallie again. She didn’t need to trust her. She just needed to release the fist of anger in her gut, the defensive way her heart added another stone to the wall around her heart at the mere mention of Hallie’s name. “I will try,” she said. “For Dad.”

  Shane raised his mug in a toast to her. “Okay, I’m going to jump in the shower. If Hallie gets here before I’m out, be nice.” He winked at her before shutting the bathroom door.

  When Colleen had awoken that morning, listening to the sounds of her dad in the kitchen preparing his one poached egg and two pieces of bacon, she’d promised herself she would not react to Hallie, not get caught up in the maelstrom of the past. But promising and doing were, of course, not the same damn thing. Then she’d entered the family kitchen to greet her dad, sit with him while he ate and waited for the sheriff, Bob Macken, to come pick him up to go fishing. Shane had worked out a complicated but crafty system of friends who stopped by every day to check on Gavin, eat lunch with him or take him out until it was time to go to the pub.

  As the waterfall sound of the shower came muffled through the bathroom door, Colleen poked around her brother’s apartment. This had once been a room for rent—a cheap bed and bath with a storage room attached. But Shane had fashioned the space into a home. He’d salvaged old hardwood floors from a demolished bank—thick pine with knots as wide as fists. The kitchen cabinets, which he’d found in a dumpster, had been pulled from a remodeled house. She remembered the Christmas when he was covered in sawdust from stripping the paint to expose the beautiful pine underneath.

  The place was small—an L-shaped kitchen and an oval wooden breakfast table open to a square area with one large denim-slipcovered couch, a pine trunk as a coffee table and two easy chairs. A TV hung on the far wall between two windows whose glass panes were divided by white-painted mullions.

  On the east-facing side wall an old stained glass panel, left from when the pub was called McNally’s, hung from a chain over another window. Sunlight slanted through the McNally family crest, creating puddles of red and green and yellow on Shane’s hardwood floors and up the far wall.

  She wandered back to the kitchen table and sat to leaf through the photos. From a glassine envelope she took out two images: Dad as a child standing with an unknown man in a military uniform; then Dad as a young man in a dark suit, sitting on a stone wall alone. Behind was a field of green and undulating hills—his time in Ireland after college, she surmised. Why had Shane gathered all of these photos? For a collage to be displayed at the party?

  Shane emerged from the bathroom wearing worn khakis and a white T-shirt, his wet hair making dark marks on each shoulder. “You approve of the new place?” he asked and spread his hands wide.

  “You’ve done an amazing job with this apartment, little brother.”

  “I’m not done yet,” he said. “I plan on replacing the oven as soon as I can. I found a vintage black Viking on eBay.”

  “How do the ladies in town like it?” Colleen asked.

  “Don’t let them up here much,” Shane said. “You know how it is. Married to the pub, as they say.”

  “Love just mucks you up anyway.”

  “So cynical you are now.” He shook his wet hair so droplets splashed her face and T-shirt.

  She reached to lightly smack his arm, but he dodged her just as he’d learned to do through the years. “I’m not cynical at all. Just a bit more realistic than the girl who left here.”

  “Does that help, Lena?” Shane grew serious, his smile lost and his hands grasping the edges of the chair.

  “Huh?” Colleen knew what he meant, but hoped she could change the subject.

  “Does all your travel help to keep you from becoming mucked up with love?”

  “I love my job. I don’t know that it helps in that way, but I adore discovering new places and absorbing all I can about them, then trying to put my experiences into a story for the people who won’t ever get to travel there. I’ve been to places that make this world seem small.”

  “This world?” He held out his hands to hold Watersend in his palms.

  She laughed. “No! I mean the entire world. When you travel, it seems smaller, all of us connected by water and land. That’s all.” She paused. “No place is small. Not this town, not any place I’ve visited. They’re all connected, and all unique and all the same. No matter where I go, people want to talk about love, relationships, how special their home is. We aren’t so different, really.”

  “I know traveling can be fascinating, but I just wondered if going all over the world keeps you from missing us, from missing Watersend.”

  Colleen weighed the question. “Yes, it does help,” she said just as the click-snap of the front doorknob caused them to turn together.

  The door opened and there stood Hallie. She hadn’t knocked, was obviously accustomed to coming and going in Shane’s apartment. And that quickly, Colleen felt left out. Even if it was her choice to disappear, she felt as though they’d been sneaking around behind her back. She found her hand placed protectively across her stomach, and she had a sudden need to be alone, very alone.

  “Good morning,” Hallie said cheerily, apple cheeked and forced-friendly with cups of Revelator coffee in a cardboard carrier, lifting it high. “You know I hate your coffee, Shane.” She smiled at him and he smiled in return and Colleen watched their easy way.

  “You hate anyone’s coffee but theirs,” Shane said.

  Hallie headed their way with a fake smile. “I’m so excited about the new things I’ve added to the party. We’re doing sparklers and poppers when he walks in. There will be party favors to take home—small bottles of whiskey! Jameson’s agreed to donate. And the fiddle band canceled a big gig to be with us.”

  “Whoa!” Shane laughed and held up his hands. “Great ideas, Ms. Bubbly. But don’t bring that coffee to Colleen when she’s near the photos.”

  “You have coffee near them.” Colleen pouted and pointed at his mug on the breakfast table.

  “I’m not you,” he said with a grin, and Hallie laughed with him as she handed Colleen and Shane the extra coffees.

  “Not funny,” Colleen said, but the edges of her mouth turned up before she took a sip of the scalding drink. Some things didn’t change—yes, she spilled and tripped and broke things. “Thanks for this,” she said and lifted her cup to Hallie. Was it a peace offering? Probably not. It was best not to read into anyone’s motivations; it was best to stick on a smile and get through the tasks at hand.

  “So what’s your great idea?” Hallie dropped her satchel on the floor, not making eye contact with Colleen and asking Shane.

  Colleen looked at her brother. “Those four words of yours—‘I have an idea’—have gotten me into more hot water than anything in my life.”

  “I know. But this time for the good.” Shane straightened and smiled. “We’re going to save his memories. We will be his memory keepers.”

  “Do you know of a treatment? Something new? I know there’s loads of research and . . .” Hallie’s voice rose in a tone Colleen recognized as hopeful. For as little as she knew about her sister now, who she was and how she lived, it was odd to know the tone of Hallie’s voice as clearly and accurately as if she’d typed up her feelings and handed them to Colleen to read.

  Shane shook his head. “Nothing like that. We can hope and we won’t give up, but this idea has to do with his party in two weeks. After meeting with the doctor and reading about this horrific disease I know this much: it steals your memories.”

  “Yes,” Hallie said. “Steals. It’s like a thief. A horrible, evil
thief.” She removed her glasses and set them on top of the photos to press her fingers gently into the corners of her eyes.

  “So we’re going to save them for him.” Shane clapped his hands together like a coach about to describe a winning play. “I’ve spent weeks going through the piles and boxed photos in the attic. Mother was halfway through organizing them when she left us.” Shane took in another breath. “So they’re all in one place, but they’re mixed up. Because Mother and Dad both grew up in Richmond, many of the photos overlap. I’m not sure which ones are his and which are hers. But I don’t think it much matters.”

  “No,” Colleen said. “I don’t think it does. They were together since they were—what? Thirteen years old?” Colleen ran her fingers over the pile of photos. “How did you choose these from all the boxes and envelopes in the attic? This is a labor of love.” She looked at him. “You’re a good son.”

  He shrugged. “He’s a better dad.”

  “Yes,” she agreed. “He is.”

  Colleen sorted through the images that had been so carefully dated and organized while Hallie watched her, not touching any of them but gripping her coffee cup with both hands. A small clip had been attached to each photo with a scrap of paper that told the name of the other person in the photo and the date.

  Shane spoke up. “So what I did was choose the ones with him in the picture.”

  “But if a memory is gone,” Hallie said, “how will a photo help? If it’s gone it’s gone.”

  Colleen chose a labeled photo: Aunt Rosalind, 1979. “How did you know all the dates and names?”

  “Sometimes I would casually ask Dad, but Mother mostly had them in boxes by year and I just figured out the rest myself. If I didn’t know the information”—Shane lifted the glassine envelope from the table—“I didn’t include it. I’ve chosen twenty photos for the book, and that’s where we come in.” Shane said this with a huge smile, the lopsided one that convinced all the girls to believe anything he said.