by Kelly Rimmer
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difficult moments…which of course, are the moments when a
family grows closer.” I don’t want to be childish about this, but
I can’t help the bitterness in my voice as I mutter, “But sure I’ll go home, if that’ll make you feel better.”
Tim gives me an irritated look.
“You’ve read the first two notes you found.”
“You know I have.”
“So you realize then that it’s looking likely that you’re suf-
fering from the same affliction that our mother battled, and we
can’t rule out the possibility that she actually died by suicide. And you’re wondering why I’m trying to protect you from stress?”
“I want to be here. I need to be here.”
Tim sighs, then throws his hands in the air.
“Fine.”
Ellis finally drags his boys in, promising to pick up pizza for
dinner on their way home. Ruth hugs them all and promises
she’ll kiss them all good-night when she gets home.
I plant a peck on Hunter’s cheek, touch Noah’s chin with the
tip of my finger and say good-night to my family.
And then we all mount the stairs again, ready to face what-
ever ugly truth is waiting for us.
The hours begin to drag. My siblings and I work in silence
sometimes, broken only when one of us finds a note, or some
random memorabilia that we want to share. The stack of canvases
on the table is soon halved as we match new notes to paintings
and move them to the floor, but the sun has dipped low. Soon
the light fades, and we’re working by the glow of the yellow
bulbs that hang from the ceiling beams.
“I can’t stay much longer,” Tim sighs. “I’ve got rounds at seven
tomorrow morning, then a full day of consults. Plus, I promised
Alicia I’d be home by nine.”
“What’s the deal with her anyway? Did she have a personality
transplant?” Jeremy asks suddenly. Tim stills, then frowns at him.
“Jez. Seriously.”
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“Not complaining,” Jeremy says, raising his hands. “Today
was just a pretty stark transformation from the woman who
wouldn’t even help us with Dad not so long ago.”
“If you must know, asshole, we’ve talked through a whole
heap of shit in therapy.” I forgot how sweary Tim gets when
he’s tired. During his residency, my straightlaced brother had
a veritable potty mouth. “One of the things that’s come up is
that this family is so close knit she’s always felt like an unwel-
come outsider.”
“We’re close, but we’re hardly freakishly close,” Ruth says.
“How many other families do you know that still meet up
every week for dinner?” Tim says pointedly.
“Well, we don’t really meet every week,” Ruth says defen-
sively. “I mean, if you’re on shift or Jez is overseas…”
“But unless I’m on shift or Jez is overseas, we’re here every sin-
gle week. We’re close, Ruth. That’s not a bad thing at all,” Tim
says. “It’s just been hard for Alicia to find her place with us. She
said when she tried to pitch in with Dad, you two were always
finding problems with whatever she did to help, and sometimes
at family dinners, she’d come along and find the three of you
barely spoke to her at all.” His words falls like a stone into the space between us. Ruth and I share a wince. I had no idea that
Alicia even realized how much we didn’t like her, and it never
occurred to me that she would have cared either way. She al-
ways seems so bulletproof. “Once we talked about it, I think
she realized she was being unfair, and today was the first time
in ages I can remember her actually relaxing at a family dinner.”
Tim motions between me and Ruth with a paintbrush. “Surely
your husbands have felt the same at some point?”
Now Ruth, Jeremy and I are all sharing guilty glances.
“Uh, sure,” Ruth says, unconvincingly. Tim frowns.
“Maybe Alicia wasn’t being unfair,” I admit carefully. “We
don’t really have much in common with her, and I guess we’ve
probably been a bit hard on her.”
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Tim’s frown deepens.
“She said you two were always all about babies.” He points
at Ruth. “You raising the boys—” his accusing finger points
to me next “—and you trying to get pregnant, and now with
Noah. She said she felt excluded because we don’t want kids.”
I cringe because there’s definitely some truth in that. I know
from experience that motherhood is an exclusive club—and any
woman on the outside, by choice or by circumstance, knows all
too well what it feels like to have her membership application
to the Mommy-social-group declined. The worst thing about
this conversation is that I remember how awful it felt to be on
the outside when Hunter and I were trying to have a baby. It
just never occurred to me that Alicia was on the outside, too.
“That’s why me and Fleur broke up,” Jeremy says suddenly.
Ruth, Tim and I gape at him.
“Because of me and Ruth?” I gasp, instantly sick with guilt. I
might not have found much affection for Alicia, but I loved Fleur and I loved her for Jeremy. The idea that Ruth and I might have
scared her off is heartbreaking.
“Oh. No, sorry. You were always much nicer to her than you
are to Alicia.”
Tim scowls again.
“What exactly have you two been doing to my wife that I
haven’t noticed? If you had any idea how much we’ve fought
about this the past few years…”
“We never intentionally excluded her,” Ruth groans. “And
now that you’ve told us she felt like we did, we’ll both make an
effort to include her more. Right, Beth?”
“Absolutely,” I say. “Jeremy, back to Fleur. What’s the story?”
“I meant that we broke up because of kids. Specifically, she
wants them. Post-haste,” Jeremy adds, grimacing. “I couldn’t
see how a kid could possibly fit into my travel schedule. She
said since we both wanted kids we should try for a baby now
and figure the logistics out later if we actually managed to have
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one. We fought about it for a year and then she decided she was
getting too old to wait for me to realize she was right.”
“You said you two grew apart,” Ruth says with a frown.
“Meh.” Jeremy shrugs. When he’s self-conscious, he has this
way of trying to appear too casual, and that’s how I know that
he’s still pretty sore over all of this. “It was probably more like
we were ripped apart because a giant hypothetical baby came
&n
bsp; between us.”
“Do you actually want kids?” Ruth demands. Jeremy shrugs
again, but then says, “Yeah. Probably.”
Ruth and I share a look.
“Fleur was the best girlfriend you’ve ever had. You need to
get her back before it’s too late,” I tell him.
“Tim, do you think having two exceedingly bossy sisters has
damaged you in any way?” Jeremy sighs.
“I think it prepared me well for having an exceedingly bossy
wife, actually.”
“See, you’d both be lost without us,” Ruth snorts, then waves
her arm around the room. “Have any of you noticed that we’re
actually making some progress? We’re probably at as good a
place as any to call it for the night.”
She’s right—the mess has finally taken shape. Furniture and
baskets and boxes are all at one end; trash and paperwork sit in
three huge piles at the other. But much of the floor is now vis-
ible, and we can move around freely as we sort.
“I’ll come back and keep working on it tomorrow,” I say. A
series of meaningful glances flick between my siblings.
“And what happens if you find the notes and there’s no satis-
fying answer? What if there aren’t other notes to find? Or what
if you find the notes and you don’t like the answer?” Jeremy asks.
I feel myself slump even considering those possibilities.
“I don’t know,” I admit.
“I’ll meet you back here tomorrow night and we’ll keep look-
ing together,” Ruth says. I open my mouth to protest, but she
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holds up a hand. “Look, I get it. This is personal to all of us, but
you’re identifying with her in a way the rest of us can’t. That’s
exactly why you shouldn’t tackle this on your own.”
“Ruth’s right,” Tim murmurs, then his gaze softens. “There’s
not much we can do to make your situation better, but we can
be here to support you with this. Please, promise me you’ll let
us. I don’t know if I can be here every night to search with you,
but if you do find the notes, I’ll find a way to be here to read
them with you.”
“Me too,” Jez says quietly.
I look around the concerned gazes of my siblings, and my
eyes fill with tears.
“Okay,” I promise unevenly. “Ruth and I will keep looking,
but when we find them all, we’ll read them together.”
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15
Maryanne
1959
My heart was thundering against the wall of my chest as I walked
from the driveway to Grace and Patrick’s front door that night.
Over seven hours had passed since the time Grace and I were
due to meet in that alley. I had hung the last of my hope on the
remote possibility that Grace might have found her own way
home. I’d almost convinced myself that we’d inadvertently had
some communication confusion somewhere along the line.
I paused at the door, and for the first time in years, I offered
up a prayer.
Please, God. Please let her be inside.
I drew in a deep breath and pushed the door open to find
Mrs. Hills sitting on the couch watching the television, wear-
ing a deep-set scowl.
“Where is she?” Mrs. Hills bit out as she struggled to her
feet, only to wave her cane vaguely in my direction. “She said
three o’clock! It’s nearly nine-thirty! My husband had to make
his own dinner and he is furious! ”
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“Grace isn’t here?” I whispered.
“No, she’s certainly not!” Mrs. Hills said, raising her voice
just a little, then glancing toward the boys’ bedroom guiltily.
She dropped it to a whisper before she finished, “And neither is
he, the useless lout he is. He’ll stumble in drunk sooner or later, mark my words.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Hills,” I said. When Mrs. Hills started walk-
ing toward the door and I realized she intended to leave me
alone with the children, I panicked. “Oh, please don’t leave. I
have to —”
“Young lady, I have been here all day with those children. I
am exhausted. If you think I’m staying here for one more second,
you have another thing coming.”
The door slammed behind her, and I found myself standing
alone in Grace’s living room. Panic once again began to claw
at my throat but I had to hold myself together because I had no
idea when Patrick would walk through that door. I needed a
plan to keep looking for Grace, but I also needed to come up
with some kind of story to tell her husband, because I knew that
if I told him the truth, he’d have no qualms in handing me over
to the police.
“Momma?” a tiny voice said behind me. I spun around to face
the entrance to the sunroom, and there in the doorway stood
Beth. She was clutching a teddy bear, wearing a green night-
gown and diaper, and her little cheeks were rosy red.
She was utterly adorable, and I was absolutely terrified of her.
“No, not Momma,” I croaked, shaking my head. “It’s Aunt
Maryanne.”
“Where Momma?” Beth asked me. She dropped the teddy
bear to rub sleepily at her eyes, and my chest started to feel tight.
Gone, Bethany. She’s gone and maybe she’s never coming back to us. I waved her vaguely back towards her room, trying to school my
features to hide my fear.
“Go back to bed. Everything is fine.”
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“Want Momma,” Beth said, dropping her hands from her
eyes to give me a stubborn, determined glare.
“Soon,” I lied, and then I spoke far too curtly, “Now go back
to bed!”
I’d had zero experience with small children. I didn’t need to
know how to interact with them, given I had no intention of
ever being responsible for the care of my own. I was so naive
that when Beth’s eyes widened and she opened her mouth to
wail, I was actually shocked by her reaction.
“Momma!” she cried, and I looked frantically around the
room, trying to figure out what to do to make her be quiet
before she woke the other children. I rushed to her, but this
only scared her more, and the volume of her cry grew louder.
I scooped her up in my arms and stepped out of the bedroom,
pulling the door closed so Ruth wouldn’t wake up, and then I
walked briskly to sit on the brown upholstered couch.
“Listen,” I said desperately. “Listen to Aunt Maryanne, Beth-
any. Mommy isn’t here right now and you’re just going to have
to be brave because…well…” It hit me then—really hit me—
just how much we all might have lost. “Oh, God. I just don’t
know what to do.”
My voice broke, and Beth hesitated mid-sob. She was sitting
on my lap, but she leaned away from me, so that she could stare
back at me. There were still heavy tears in those huge blue eyes,
but something had changed. Now Beth seemed almost curious.
I saw my sister in that face. I saw Grace’s innocence and op-
timism, and I simply could not bear it because what if Grace was
dead and this poor child had lost her mother because of me? I
closed my eyes, and the tables were turned, because now it was
me battling sobs.
But little Bethany Walsh knew just what to do. She wrapped
her arms around my neck and her chubby little hand clumsily
patted between my shoulder blades. She dropped her head onto
my shoulder, and she soothed me with a whispered, “Shhh…”
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At first, I saw Beth’s natural inclination to comfort me as
proof of failure on Grace’s part. I wondered if Grace had cried
in front of her children so many times that even her toddler
knew how to react.
But then Beth’s arms contracted around my neck, and I had
a sudden, startling shift of perspective. If the world needed any-
thing in those days, it was people who could empathize—peo-
ple who cared. And it was easy to judge Grace, but it was also
apparent that Grace had been harder on herself than anyone.
Somehow, she’d taught a toddler to emulate the very best traits
known to humanity. Beth couldn’t speak fluently or read or
drive a car, but that child already knew how to recognize pain
and to respond to it with kindness. Something my own mother
was yet to master. Something I myself had never really been
good at. This child’s easy compassion for my pain was a small
miracle in the darkest hour.
And as I recognized the remarkable nature of Beth’s comfort
to me, I finally let myself wonder if Grace had, without even
knowing it, taught her children her very last and most impor-
tant lesson.
The front door opened several hours later. I was still on the
couch, facing away from the door. Beth was curled up asleep
on my lap now because every time I moved she woke up. Even
so, I knew it wasn’t Grace …mostly because I could smell Pat-
rick long before I saw him.
“What’s for dinner?” he slurred, walking unsteadily toward
the small kitchen. His tone was rough, and the yeasty stench of