Fixing Delilah

by Sarah Ockler

  The words send a familiar rush through my chest, but this time, it’s the rush of something leaving. I feel the tide of it rise up inside as I delete his number from my contacts, pushing out against me until it reaches my fingertips and floats out into nothingness. Whatever happens when we return from Red Falls, that girl—the one waiting under the street lamp at midnight to sneak off to the woods and forget—she’s gone.

  “You all packed up?” Mom asks, joining me in my summer bedroom.

  “Mostly.” I shrug, watching a seagull dive across the lawn in front of the window. Mom tucks a section of hair behind my ear, and I find myself doing that old rock and a hard place thing with her again—the dance we’ve so perfected this year. Things are better, and I hope in time, forgiveness will come on all sides. But isn’t that enough? Will it ever be enough?

  “Delilah, I know you’re still processing everything that happened,” she says. “It’s a lot to think about. I’m not expecting you to just get over it. You need time—as long as it takes.” She rests her hand on my knee.

  “It hasn’t even hit me yet,” I say. “Not really. Sometimes I try to think about it, and it’s so unreal that my brain tells me it’s only a movie. A story. Not my life.”

  “I understand. But I want things… I want everything to be out in the open now. No more secrets.” Mom nods, talking faster but softly. “If you have any questions about your father or me or our family, ask. I mean that. I might not have the answers, but I promise I’ll be straightforward with you.”

  I take a deep breath. “Mom, does Casey Conroy know about me?”

  “I haven’t been in touch with Casey since that night,” she says. “And I doubt my mother would’ve tracked him down after she found out. I don’t think he knows about you, Delilah. I guess I always knew that you’d learn the truth about your father, whether I told you or not. As hard as that was for me to accept, I also wanted it to be your decision to tell him or not. If you decide that you want to look for him, we can contact—”

  I shake my head. “I don’t want to think about it yet. It’s still too soon.” My chest tightens, but I fight it. I don’t want to go back to the dark places—the sadness I wallowed in for days following Mom’s confession.

  “I’m not asking you to make any decisions about your father right now,” Mom says. “Whatever you want to do—if anything—I’ll support. I just want you to—”

  “Mom, what was Stephanie like?” I ask. “I mean, before she got sick.” Things are different now. I feel like she’ll tell me.

  Mom smiles. “You look like her, you know. Same mischievous grin. Same eyes. We all get it from Nana, but you look especially like your aunt, even when you were little. Megan and I used to say that a piece of her lived on in you. Sometimes when I see you a certain way, like in a mirror or through the window, I see her. Especially here in the lake house.”

  “Were you close? Was she funny? Was she smart?”

  Mom nods, her face illuminated by the memories. “She was beautiful, Delilah. Alive. Impulsive. A little reckless, kind of like you. I always admired that about her. And about you—truly. It just conflicts with my mothering instincts.”

  I smile. “Yeah, I kind of get that now.”

  “Yes. Well, Stephie was really special, Del. Everyone fell in love with her—you couldn’t help it. It almost killed my father when she started unraveling, and by then, Rachel and I were already away at college, starting new lives in new places. We didn’t see it happening right away. But before, Stephie was the light in our lives—like a bright, bright star. People always say things like that when someone dies, don’t they?”

  “I guess.” I never knew anyone who died like that—not someone close to me. Just Papa, and I don’t remember what they said about him at the funeral because the fight erupted, overshadowing all else.

  “They do. But with Steph, it was true.”

  “I wish I knew her.”

  “Me, too, Delilah. You know, she almost died once before, when she was about five. She fell into the lake. I was supposed to be watching her, but Rachel and I were arguing on the dock. All of a sudden, Stephanie was just gone. The silence was deafening. I was only nine or ten myself, but I will never, ever forget the fear in my heart when I realized what happened.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I jumped off the dock and grabbed her, but she wasn’t breathing. We ran to the house. Jack was there. He took her from my arms and laid her in the grass and started CPR. It was like the whole world stopped, waiting for her to cough. Then she did. It was over. Jack never mentioned it again—not even to my mother. Stephie didn’t talk about it, either. It was like she knew how serious it was. How lucky… after that, Rachel and I promised each other we’d never let anything happen to her.”

  Mom’s eyes go far away as she finds her way back through the tangles of her past.

  “When she died,” she continues, “I took some comfort in the fact that after the accident at the lake, we brought her back. She was supposed to die that day, but we got to sneak in another fourteen years with her. I know we don’t talk about her, but my God, Delilah. I miss my sister every day. Every single day.”

  Mom takes a deep breath and pulls me close to her, folding herself around me. As her tears soak into my hair, the truth of it hits me like a flash storm over Red Falls Lake. Above every role in her life—Claire Hannaford Speaking, Rachel’s and Stephanie’s sister, Casey’s grief-induced fling, Nana’s and Papa’s daughter, my mother—she’s a human being, just like me. Frail and faulty and flawed, capable of making the most heinous mistakes and inflicting the most severe pain.

  But equally capable of the greatest love.

  I wrap my arms around her and hold very still, grateful somehow for the twisted, rock- and root-strewn paths that brought us here.

  “You’re probably wondering about this Mr. Devlin character,” she says. It’s strange to hear her call him that—a character—as though he exists only in the pages of a novel and never as the man I’ve come to know, however mistakenly, as my father. It shocks me now to realize that in the weeks since I learned the truth, I wasn’t wondering about him—not in the way Mom’s playful tone implies. It was as though my heart made room for two truths that night—one real, the other safe and familiar and desirable—and even as Mom spoke the words that Thomas wasn’t my father, even as I screamed at her and ran out of the house, part of me went on believing that he was. Believing that wherever he was, all of the joys in my life he’d witnessed and shared—all of the disappointments he’d somehow seen. Believing that through them all, he’d reached out and rubbed my back and told me I’d be okay, even if I couldn’t hear his words or feel his protective hands on my shoulders. So many years ago, when my mother first gave me the article about his death and told me about their brief encounter in Philadelphia, I believed her then, too. I believed her then, first. Thomas has been with me a long time, and like the memory of anyone we love, a few nights without him isn’t going to erase him from my life. Nothing is.

  “I met him at the bar in Philadelphia—just like I told you,” she says. “He asked me why I peeled the labels from the beer bottles before I drank them.”

  “You still do that,” I say, remembering the last time I saw her drink one at DKI’s company picnic.

  “I know. I don’t like how they feel. Anyway, he noticed, and we started chatting. We talked all night long, hanging out until the bar closed. In all this time, until you found those pictures in the closet, he was the only person I ever really talked to about my sister’s death. It was only a couple of weeks after her funeral. It was so much easier with him—a total stranger—than it was with my own family.

  “There was a moment—a flash, really—where it could have gone another way, but we let it go. He had an early morning flight back to London and on to Afghanistan… if I had known his fate that night, I might have tried to… I don’t know, Del. I guess we never know what life is going to hand us. We kissed and walked away. I didn
’t tell Rachel about him at first, even when I learned about what happened in Afghanistan. I still felt so guilty about Casey and so messed up about Stephanie.

  “I saved the newspaper article about his death,” she says, tracing the lines of one hand with the other. “I wanted to remember him. Not long after I learned I was pregnant, I found the clipping on my desk, and it happened from there. All I had to do was stretch the truth just a little, and no one would have to be hurt by what happened between Casey and me. Especially not my child. It’s funny—I let Thomas walk away that night because I knew it wouldn’t turn into anything. I never expected that he’d become such a part of our history.”

  He may not be my biological father, but Thomas Devlin was a real person, a man who lived and died for what he loved. A man who shared a few moments with my mother and who maybe, in some small way, is still connected to me on that same giant cosmic rubber band that keeps stretching and twisting and snapping us all back together when we least expect it. In that way, I’ll always consider him a part of me, and me of him, even more than Casey. And maybe somehow Thomas knows about me, too. Maybe he really is watching over me, smiling, telling us that we’re going to be okay. The daughter that was almost his. The woman with the hazel eyes.

  I study the creases and curves of my mother’s face as she looks at me, her story over for now. I know it’s illogical, but before this summer, it always seemed that my mother sprang forth into this life fully grown, fully clothed, fully armed with her arsenal of logic and reason, unscathed by life’s garden-variety heartaches. All the time I was busy resenting her, I never considered that she was ever young or starry-eyed. That before I came into her life, my mother had an entire age of happiness and sadness and elation and fear and wonder. Layers on layers on layers, all part of the history of us.

  “So…” Mom stretches, putting her arm around my shoulders. “How’s Patrick?”

  “What?” My heart speeds up. “I don’t know. What do you mean? Why are you asking me about Patrick? What did he say?”

  Mom smiles and waits for my neurosis to pass. “Rachel tells me I don’t have to worry. That everything will work out amazing with you two, so say the cards. What do you think?”

  My face burns under her gaze, but I smile. I can’t help it. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Of course you don’t. Come on, Delilah. I’m not blind. I’ve seen the way you two look at each other.” She cups my chin in her hand.

  “You have?”

  “Yes. Just promise me one thing.”

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  “If you want to see him, no matter where he lives or where you live or what time it is, use the front door, okay? No more windows.”

  I laugh. “Deal.”

  “All right. Finish packing and come downstairs,” she says, patting my knee. “Patrick and Jack will be here soon. Rachel and I have some news for everyone.”

  News?

  News can only mean one thing.

  They sold the house.

  From the bottom dresser drawer, empty now of all my summer things, I remove the diary of Stephanie Hannaford. Seeing Casey’s name again as I flip through the pages, I know that if I reread it, it will be as a brand-new story, every sentence illuminated by the light of Mom’s confession. If I read it carefully, Stephanie’s memories might tell me more about my biological father; about the kind of person he was before her death. The kind of person he would have remained if his life had turned out like it was supposed to.

  I think of Stephanie’s grave again and my heart hurts to have missed the chance to know her in this lifetime. But, if Stephanie had lived, Casey and Mom wouldn’t have had their moment, and I wouldn’t have been conceived. In that way, we weren’t supposed to know each other in this lifetime.

  If I was meant to find the diary, then the universe has fulfilled that promise. I found it. I read it. And now it must go back to the house, kept safe with the history of all who’ve lived here until the universe decides that someone else should discover it. I close the latch and run my hands over the faded gold rose on the cover one last time before placing the diary back beneath the floor in the closet. Over the hole, I snap into place the board I knocked loose that first week, inserting four nails and hammering it back down, swift and certain.

  I lay my hand flat against the wood for a moment, the last I’ll have in this room before it’s time to say farewell to the house on Maple Terrace forever.

  “Good-bye, Aunt Stephanie,” I whisper. A breeze blows through the open window, billowing the curtains out over the bed, and when I look up at the sunlight, I see the red cardinal, perched on the ledge outside the window. He watches me for a moment, and then, without fanfare, turns and glides away.

  Chapter thirty-four

  Downstairs, as I look around at the half-packed boxes of Mom’s computer accessories and dry cleaning bags of pantsuits and the remaining spoons and forks we saved for our last few meals, I feel an emptiness in me. Tomorrow is the last time I’ll see this house. The last time I’ll watch the roosters dance over the kitchen sink or the ants scurry from under the stove. The last time I’ll make any memories in my grandparents’ home.

  Jack and Patrick are here, and Mom and Rachel assemble us all outside for their big announcement. From the front lawn, I look up at the house—really look at it—for the first time since our arrival in June. I know the third step on the porch still creaks. The shutters, under the weight of their new paint and some possibly missing hardware which may or may not be my fault, aren’t one hundred percent level. And there’s no guarantee that the gutters will stay clean or the paint won’t peel again or the newly remodeled sunroom will keep the cardinals out.

  But those shutters were painted and hung with love. The flower beds have been replanted. The trees and honeysuckle vines were trimmed and the carpets steam-cleaned and the windows reflect the sky and the entire house radiates like a gold beacon in the warm yellow of the sun, high on the hill above Red Falls Lake. Like the women that have called it home for hundreds of years, the house on Maple Terrace is beautiful. Within its creaks and cracks and flaws, it holds the memories, hopes, and dreams of all of us. Today, our summer of work has come together—the shutters and the gutters and the painting and the flowers—and I know. I know that it was worth it.

  We arrived in Vermont expecting to fix up the old lake house. But in the end, it was the house that fixed us. I knew in my head that we’d never see it again—the place that reunited the Hannaford women. But my heart had different ideas. Crazy ones, faraway ones, like maybe, somehow, we could spend one more summer here. One more Fourth of July at the Sugarbush Festival. One more week washing windows and taking down shutters. One more season sipping lattes with Em and listening to Patrick sing at Luna’s.

  “You guys, look at this place!” Rachel says, her pale pink Save 2nd Base—Get a Mammogram T-shirt clinging to her body in the heat. “Look at what we accomplished this summer!” She puts her arm around Jack.

  “She’s a true beauty,” Jack says. “I’ve worked on lots of remodels, but this one, man. I’m really gonna miss ’er.”

  I take a deep breath, honeysuckle overflowing in the late summer air.

  “Well,” Mom says, “after three months of hard work and a lot of tears, Rachel and I have some really excellent news for everyone.”

  Patrick squeezes my hand as I steady myself for the news I’ve waited for all summer. The news I couldn’t hear soon enough when we first arrived. The news I’d give anything to put on pause now, just for a few more days.

  Mom speedwalks across the grass to the front end of the driveway. There’s a sign staked into the lawn on iron post, wrapped in a white canvas tarp. It seems strange that she’d post a FOR SALE sign if they’ve already accepted a private offer, but it’s probably just another one of those weird historic town ordinances. I shield my eyes from the sun as Mom tugs off the canvas to reveal a simple wooden sign swinging gently on its post.

  FUT
URE SITE OF:

  Three Sisters Bed & Breakfast

  A Hannaford Family Guest Home

  “We wanted to tell you guys first,” Rachel says. “We’ll start accepting reservations next summer. The news will be announced officially in tomorrow’s Bee.”

  Who needs the Red Falls’ Bee? Once the neighbors see the sign, we’re inundated with visitors and phone calls, everyone wanting a tour, wanting to know more, wanting to bring coffee cake. Hours later, when it’s just us and Emily and Patrick and Jack sitting around the kitchen table for our final meal together, it’s the first chance I have to ask my questions. To balance my excitement at the romantic idea of it all with the unlikely reality of Mom giving up corporate life.

  “I’m great at my job, Del,” Mom says. “For years, it’s been my priority.”

  “Right,” I say. “I don’t think they’ll let you go.”

  “A born project manager like you?” Jack asks. “I wouldn’t let you go. If half the sites we worked on were run like this remodel, I’d come home with a few less headaches. Just the ones the kid here gives me.”

  Patrick throws a cherry tomato at his father, but Mom presses on. “I’ve been buried in project spreadsheets and other people’s marketing plans for too long. I love my work, but it’s stressful. I’m dependent on the cell phone, dependent on the computer, dependent on… well, other things I no longer want in my life. It took me the whole summer to figure it out, but now I’m one hundred percent sure. I’m ready for a change.”

  “But Mom, running a B and B is a huge change. It’s like a hotel, right? And a restaurant. And a museum. And you have to work with people—in person, not on e-mail.” Emily, who rushed over as soon as she heard the neighbors gossiping at Luna’s about the news, kicks me under the table.

  “It’s still a business,” Mom says. “And that I can do. With my management and marketing skills, and Rachel’s creative energy and way with people and food, we can make this work. I’ve looked at the numbers, Del. The tourist industry up here is on the cusp right now. Rachel and I have already met with the bank and the Chamber of Commerce. We’ve got some money saved, and your grandmother was smart with hers. With the assets from her estate, we can afford the risk.”