Dr. Matthews took two steps toward the door. “I’ll be back. Meanwhile, I’m sending a social worker to come talk to you. A chaplain if you’d like one.”
“A chaplain?” Shane asked.
“Yes, if you’d like. We have an interdenominational chaplain on-site. He’s quite comforting and . . .”
“No, thank you.” Shane walked with the doctor to the door, where he then said something Colleen couldn’t hear before the door swished shut behind her. The three of them stood alone with their dad.
“We will not leave him alone.” Hallie rolled her shoulders back and exhaled before speaking with more force than usual. “Someone will always be here talking to him until he comes back. Until he wakes up. I can’t bear the thought of him being alone on that water, running out of gas, floating on the waves.”
Colleen sank to a seat. “I won’t leave him.”
“Lena.” Shane came to her side, placed his hand on her shoulder. “You need your wrist X-rayed, and you must get some food. I know you hid it from the doctor, but your suffering won’t wake him up.”
“I will not leave him.”
“Okay . . .” Shane said. “I won’t either.”
“They won’t let us all stay in here.” Hallie began to pace the tiny room in a four-foot square, walking an outline. “Only two at a time they told me.”
“I don’t see them coming to remove us.” Colleen placed her hand on the end of the bed, hanging on to it like a life preserver.
“But you can’t have food or drink in here, in ICU.” Hallie looked directly at Colleen. “Go get food now. And water. If you pass out you’re no good to any of us.”
Hallie was right of course. Colleen felt dizzy and untethered, the throbbing in her wrist telling her it was more than just a sprain. She needed food—how long had it been since she’d eaten? It was ten at night now, so at least twenty-four hours. Colleen took a few steps toward the door and then ran back to kiss her dad’s flaming cheek. “I’ll be right back. You stay right here and don’t move.”
It was something her dad had said to her a thousand times, or maybe more, as he walked away to speak to a customer or grab a box from the back of the pub. He’d set Colleen on a bar stool next to a friend or neighbor. I’ll be right back. You stay right here and don’t move.
And she never had. She’d always waited there, her legs swinging off the stool, knowing he would return.
* * *
• • •
Colleen emerged from her visit to the ER downstairs with a cast on her arm and wrist, a bag of fluids in her veins for dehydration and a prescription for pain pills that she refused to take, not wanting to miss a moment with her dad. The night brought fitful sleep sitting straight in hard chairs, taking turns by Dad’s side. Only one at a time during the night, they were told. The other two stretched out on the vinyl couch in the waiting area, where more than fifteen minutes of sleep could be had at one stretch.
When Colleen dozed off for more than two minutes, she dreamed of heat and thirst, of broken bones. She felt the waves beneath the boat, a slow rolling that brought the hospital cafeteria cheeseburger to rise up in the back of her throat. She prayed. She prayed to the One whom Dad believed watched over them. His god lived in and on the river; he lived in everything everywhere.
Once—Colleen wasn’t sure what time it was—when she was alone with Shane, he placed his arm over her shoulder and pulled her close. “Mother must have forgiven Dad. They had such a beautiful life.”
“She must have, yes.” Colleen rested on her brother’s shoulder, her broken wrist throbbing against the hard cast. “But I don’t think she ever forgave me.”
“For what?”
“For being the daughter of another woman. I think she wanted to, and I think she tried, but I’m not sure she ever did.”
“Oh, Lena. I don’t think that’s true.”
“Well, whether it is or isn’t, I know where you’re going with this: you want me to forgive Hallie. And I do. And I will. It will be a forgiving that has to happen in new ways every day. We have to find a way to trust each other in even the smallest things.”
He squeezed her tight and for a few moments they both fell asleep.
Colleen was startled from sleep when Gavin departed. He woke Colleen when he left them, and later no one could ever convince her otherwise. She didn’t tell anyone about the sensation of his hand on her forehead, about his voice saying he loved her, about the pungent aroma of the river washing over her. She sat bolt upright on that sticky vinyl couch, hearing the code blue call on the intercom, and she didn’t need to be told her dad was gone.
When they came to tell her, she was already bent over onto her knees, Shane by her side, and they were both weeping, already weeping. It was his heart, they told the Donohue siblings. It couldn’t survive the harm done that day by the seawater coursing through his veins and into the cells of his heart muscle.
Hallie joined Shane and Colleen, and then the chaplain, the one they’d never requested, and the social worker and the doctor. The siblings didn’t see or notice anyone but one another as they were hustled into a private room.
“We’ll never even know what his last words were,” Hallie said, her hands twisting the Kleenex she held into a knot.
“It only matters what his last words were to you. Or me. Or Colleen,” Shane said.
“‘Do not settle for the mediocre to avoid pain.’” Colleen recited the words her dad had said to her.
“What?” Hallie looked up.
“That’s one of the last things he said to me.”
Hallie propped her hand onto the side table. “I have no idea of the last thing he said to me. No idea.” Then she groaned. “How am I to tell the girls about this? They are already facing enough loss and change.” Her voice cracked and Colleen found herself wrapping her arms around her sister, pulling her close.
“‘Don’t forget the fiddle player,’” Shane said. “Those were his last words to me after I took him home. I guess he meant to tip him, but there wasn’t even a fiddle player that night.”
“It was Colleen, his other love,” Hallie said. “The fiddle player. Remember? He said she was playing the fiddle when he first saw her.”
“Oh . . . yes.” Shane sat back in a padded chair in a posture of defeat, spine bowed and shoulders slumped.
Hallie blew her nose and wiped her face. “What if he was calling for us? Crying out for us on the ocean? What if he . . .”
Colleen stood. “You’re making this worse. I can’t bear to think of him in misery. I can’t bear to think of him gone. I can’t.” She shoved open the door and burst into the hallway, running past the beeping rooms and hushed nurses’ station, shoving open the door to the emergency stairwell and taking those stairs two by two as she held on to the railing, until she blew outside. She took in long deep gulps of the air her dad would never breathe again, that of his beloved Lowcountry.
Colleen sank onto a wooden bench in the hospital garden and stared in a trance at the tiny manufactured waterfall that cascaded over fake rocks covered in mildew and moss.
It wasn’t supposed to end this way—before his party, and before they’d given him the memory book. Before she’d chosen her last words and held his hand. It wasn’t supposed to end this way.
Did anything ever end the way we wanted it to end?
With a shattered champagne bottle? Or a stroke? Or an Alzheimer’s-induced delusion?
With a jolt, she sat upright. Had he done it on purpose? Deliberately taken his life, with the sea in his veins, by powering his boat as far as he could toward the other side of the ocean, the other side of his memory?
He couldn’t have.
Or he could have.
What had the social worker said about closure—that it was a myth?
Colleen must admit that she had no idea of her dad’s intentions
. This was a man she knew with all her heart and somehow didn’t know at all. Perhaps some things weren’t ever meant to be known; perhaps questions were all anyone was ever truly left with.
Chapter Thirty-three
Time is veiled eternity.
John O’Donohue, Anam Cara
ONE DAY BEFORE THE PARTY . . .
Far off, a clang of metal on wood, a boat coming into the dock, startled Colleen awake in her childhood bedroom, her heart pumping fast and hard in fear. Dad—he was back. He’d known where he was going; he knew what to do and how to do it. It had all been a bad dream: the search; the hospital; his failing body.
Colleen bolted upright and a searing pain shot through her wrist; a thick weight held her arm to the bed, and when she looked she saw why: a bright blue cast.
It hadn’t been a dream at all.
A shudder of grief took her breath and she stood, steadied herself with a hand on the bedpost and shook her head free of confusion. A pain pill—Hallie had convinced her to take one when they’d finally left the hospital. They’d arrived home and her brother and sister had tucked her into bed as though she were a child. Beckett had been there, too, with soft words and a cup of chamomile tea. She’d tried to drink it, but then willingly succumbed to the cottony haze of Percocet.
Now the sunburn on her shoulders and collarbones stung like a horde of bees had set themselves on her in sleep. Her body couldn’t decide whether to cry or flop back to bed or run screaming into the living room, where she heard the rise and fall of voices—her brother, her sister, the little girls and one other voice . . . Walter’s. She didn’t glance in the mirror, she didn’t brush her teeth or hair; she bolted from the bedroom and rushed into the living room.
“Get out!” She pointed at Walter, who sat on the couch as though he belonged there. She had thought losing him was the worst thing? What a joke. It was the best thing.
He sat there in faded khaki shorts and a stained construction T-shirt, his hair curly and his sense of ownership grievous. Colleen stood in front of him before he’d even turned to her.
“Lena.”
“Don’t put my name in your mouth. Get out.”
“Are you okay? My God, you’re so sunburned.”
Colleen touched the skin on her face, felt its heat. “You need to leave right now.” She hadn’t even looked at her brother and sister, at her nieces.
“Lena, please—the girls.” That was Hallie’s voice, but Colleen didn’t acknowledge it. Instead she turned to her nieces, quiet and holding their magic wands, snuggled together in one chair, frightened and wide-eyed.
“My magic ones. Will you do Aunt Lena a favor and run to the bedroom and grab my magic wand?” She tried to smile at them, but smiling didn’t feel like something she would do for a long, long time.
“You just want us to leave so you can be mad at Daddy,” Sadie said.
“Yes, that’s true.” Colleen turned back to Walter.
“Please don’t,” Hallie interjected.
But the girls ran off, holding hands and skirting past Colleen, who kissed their cheeks.
Colleen lowered her voice. “This is family business. And you aren’t family.”
Walter stood, his true self a dark cloud. How had she only seen the charming Walter? How had she not seen what was so evident to her now—how his personality changed in a quick flash as soon as his daughters were gone from the room?
“I am their father. This is my family, too. Just because I’m not yours doesn’t mean I’m not part of the family. Someday, Lena, you will get over your anger. It’s not attractive.”
Colleen stared at him, her stomach lurching, and her grief a stone in her chest, her wrist throbbing. She lifted her other hand, the one without the cast, and slapped him hard and fast across the face. The sound, skin on skin, reverberated as Walter let out a strained grunt and raised his fists in automatic defense.
Colleen stepped back, unsure of what he was capable of doing in anger. “What you did to me—it might have been the best thing you could have done, but if I’d seen then what I know now, if I’d really known, I would never have left my sister with you but instead continued to love her, which might have allowed her to leave you a long time ago.”
Hallie burst from her chair and stood between Walter and Colleen. “Stop. Follow me now.” She motioned for Walter and Colleen to leave the living room, to follow her into the kitchen. Which they both did.
Hallie’s cheeks were as red as the sunburn on Colleen’s shoulders. “Walter, she’s right. It’s best that you’re not here right now. We can discuss this another time, but you need to leave. Okay?”
Walter spun around to face Colleen, his lips almost drawn back from his teeth in rage. My God, had she really wasted all these years wanting and missing this man? What a waste of time and energy.
“It would have never worked with us, Lena. You know that.” He glanced at Hallie, weighing the words he might not want her to hear. “She is a better fit. We get each other. You would have wanted more than I could ever give to you. Look at you traveling the world, always doing something new. You wouldn’t have been happy here with me. Couldn’t you have just left us to be happy?”
“That should have been my choice, Walter. Mine.” She glanced at Hallie, who had tears running down her face, her hand held over her chest in a protective move.
“What?” Hallie asked. “You chose me because I don’t want as much as Lena does? You think I’m . . . easier to handle, to deal with? What the hell, Walter?”
“No. No.” He took a step toward Hallie as she took two back. “I love you. You know that.”
Colleen slammed her hand on the kitchen table. “Look what you’ve done to her. What you’ve done to us. Now leave.”
Walter looked at Hallie, holding his hand on the growing red mark on his cheek. “Hallie, I’m their father. I’m your husband. I will not just disappear.”
Hallie stepped closer to Walter, holding her hands in a tight knot in front of her. “Right now you will leave. Our dad, our precious dad, is lying in a morgue and all you can think about is defending your rights as a family member. All you can think about is telling my sister why it was better that you married me and cheated on me instead of her. You have no empathy. No heart. Right now you will disappear.”
Walter passed his gaze from one sibling to another and yet did exactly as they’d told him to do. He left.
Hallie and Colleen looked at each other, but neither spoke a word. There was altogether too much and too little left to be said. They returned to the living room, where Colleen collapsed into a chair and brought her cast to her lap as Shane brought her a glass of orange juice and another pain pill. “I’m sorry.” She spoke the words robotically, speaking to both siblings but looking at neither. “I couldn’t have him in this room with this grief.”
“Thank you,” Hallie said. “Honestly, thank you.”
“Lena,” Shane said very quietly, “Mr. Lister dropped off the will a couple hours ago.”
“Dad’s lawyer. The one who does all the pub business?”
“Yes. It seems he also did the will and estate for Dad.”
“And?”
“There’s nothing stunning in it. Everything he owns is split between the three of us, and the pub is mine to manage. We can figure that out later, but the one thing that is urgent is this—he asks for cremation and that his ashes be scattered in the river. Our river.” Shane motioned to the back window where they could each see the water. “I’d never heard him state this belief out loud, but he wrote that the Irish believe that where you are buried, that is where you will one day resurrect again. And he wants to be in the river.”
“Not with Mother in the cemetery?” Hallie’s voice was low and quiet.
“I don’t think it’s about not being with her,” Colleen said and paused to guzzle large gulps of the orange juice, brush
her hand across her face, clearing her thoughts. “He spent his life with her. It seems obvious that the water is where he forever wants to be.”
Hallie shook her head, her hair falling across her face. “It’s too awful to understand. I can’t understand.” She looked between her brother and sister as the girls reentered the room, Sadie holding out the wand and handing it to Colleen. “Do you think he took his life?” Hallie asked in a quiet whisper.
“What does that mean?” Rosie asked, and her eyes scanned the faces of the adults.
Shane held out his hand. “Not now, Hallie. We have to fulfill his wishes, notify the rest of the family and organize a memorial. We have to get through this together.”
“Together,” Colleen said and twirled the wand. “Well, sadly, because there is a party already planned, it can now be his memorial.”
Hallie shuddered. “So many people will show up for that, and I won’t have enough food or drink . . .” She trailed off. “I need to hire more people.”
Shane rested his hand on her shoulder. “I’m going to tell Hank to take it from here. He will find servers and bartenders, food and drink. You stop now, Hallie. Just stop.”
Rosie moved next to Colleen, slipped under her arm and rested her head against her chest. “I miss Grandy.”
“Yes, love, we all do.” Colleen drew her niece closer and felt warm wet tears sear across her sunburned cheeks.
Chapter Thirty-four
In the end, we’ll all become stories.
Margaret Atwood, Moral Disorder
DAY OF THE PARTY . . .
The day before Gavin’s memorial had passed in surreal hours of visits by friends and family, of decisions made and an obituary written by Colleen. They notified the entire guest list about the change—how a celebration was now a memorial at Dad’s sacred place. As Colleen surveyed the scene of the gathering in full swing, she figured that if there was anyone in town who hadn’t shown up, she didn’t know who it could be.
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