by Kelly Rimmer
“It’s worse than sadness,” I whisper because those words al-
ready imprinted on my heart. “Because by definition, the bur-
den can’t be shared.”
“I’m tired and I’m grieving and I’m sad. I know you feel the
same,” Tim says suddenly. “But if there’s one thing we aren’t,
it’s alone. If those little notes remind you that you aren’t the first
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woman to go through what you’re going through, and if they
remind you that you’re part of a family who would never want
you to feel as isolated as she obviously felt, then you take them.
Even Dad seemed to think they could help you.”
“So, good news,” Ruth tells me on the phone the next night.
“Not only is Maryanne still Maryanne Gallagher, she was also
the third M. Gallagher in the first phone book I tried—she lives
in Fremont.”
“What?”
“I just called her up and explained who I was, and she wants
to meet us. I invited her to Sunday dinner.”
“But…”
“But this is tremendously good news?” Ruth suggests.
“Terrifying,” I laugh weakly. “You just called her? Just like
that?”
“Sure,” Ruth says matter-of-factly. “I said ‘Hello, my name
is Ruth Turner, née Walsh. Did you have a sister called Grace?
Because if you did, I think I’m your niece.’ And she swore in
ways I didn’t know a person could swear. I mean, she didn’t
sound entirely displeased to hear from me, just utterly shocked.
She’s a professor, apparently. At the University of Seattle. I told
her Jez is an academic, too, at Washington U, and that seemed
to shock her more than the call itself.” Ruth laughs, the sound
light and melodic, then says drily, “So pretty sure she did at least
meet Jeremy when we were young.”
“Doesn’t it make you wonder?” I murmur. “Dad raised us all
on his own once Aunt Nina died. That must have been so hard
on him. Grace seemed to think they weren’t fond of one an-
other, but given the circumstances, I can’t understand why this
Maryanne didn’t help with us once Grace died.”
“Yeah. That’s one of the things I want to ask her on Sunday.”
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“I can’t believe you found her,” I say, laughing softly. “Ruth.
You blow my mind sometimes.”
“Well, you should know by now—I’m a problem solver.”
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18
Maryanne
1959
With just two weeks left until my departure, I sunk into some-
thing of a funk. I’d swept the house for those notes twice more
and still couldn’t find any sign of them. Worse still, Patrick was
no closer to figuring out how to keep his children, and I knew
that my departure would mean the family could no longer stay
together.
Day and night, these things were all I could think about. In
fact, I was about to start a third search for Grace’s notes when
I heard someone thumping on the front door. The kids fol-
lowed me as I ran to answer it and were right at my heels when
I opened the door to my father.
“What do you want?” I asked him flatly. He sighed and
reached into his suit jacket to withdraw a piece of paper.
“You know what I want. You’re going back to college soon, are
you not? This has gone on long enough, Maryanne. They’ve had
time to grieve. It’s time for them to get used to their new life.”
“Father, this is cruel,” I whispered, snatching the paper from
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his hand. My vision blurred as I read the notice—a letter of de-
mand from some lawyer I’d never heard of. “So you’re really
going to go ahead with it?”
“Mother and I agree, this is for the best—” Father started to
say, but he didn’t get a chance to finish because I took a step
back, gently shifted the girls out of the way and slammed the
door in his face.
Mr. and Mrs. Francis Gallagher will be petitioning the courts
for custody of their grandchildren, Timothy, Jeremy, Ruth and
Bethany Walsh, based on their father Patrick Walsh’s immoral
character and his inability to provide for and care for them to a
satisfactory degree. It is the opinion of this firm that based on
the evidence supplied by Mr. and Mrs. Gallagher, Mr. Walsh is
unlikely to win judicial support for his ongoing custody of the
children, as the courts favor normal family arrangements and
frown upon single fathers. We advise you to seek independent
legal advice if you do decide to fight this petition, otherwise
please deliver the children to the Gallagher family home by this
Saturday, July twenty-fifth at 10 a.m.
“What does the letter say, Mommy?” Tim asked as I sat on
the lounge weeping.
“Auntie Maryanne,” I corrected him automatically, then I
sobbed again. “It’s hard to explain, Timmy. I’ll let your dad talk
to you about it when he gets home.”
That night I watched Patrick as he read the letter. His face
flushed as his anger rose, but his eyes remained dry. If anything,
he looked frustrated but resigned, and when he reached the end,
he dropped the letter to the table and gave me a miserable look.
“We knew this was coming.”
“It’s still very upsetting,” I whispered.
“I’m out of options, aren’t I?”
I racked my brain for the millionth time, but there was no
solution that solved his problems.
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“I’ll call Ewan and go into work late tomorrow so I’m here
when the kids wake up,” Patrick said suddenly, raising his chin.
“I should be the one to tell them. That’s only right.” He pushed
his chair back and stood. “You’ll have to excuse me, Maryanne.
I need to go to bed.”
I knew he was going to his room to cry. Even if I had doubted
the changes in Patrick’s character over those months, I faced ir-
refutable proof of it that night.
Even in failure, he was taking responsibility. It seemed bit-
terly cruel that just when Patrick Walsh pulled himself together,
my parents were taking his family away.
Once again it was Timmy who understood the coming
changes well before his siblings. Now though, Tim was unable
to hold back his tears, and as Patrick tried to explain what was
happening, Tim wailed in a way I’d never imagined he was ca-
pable of. He finally looked like a child in that moment—like a
terrified, overwhelmed child.
“No!” he kept shouting, stomping his feet, red-faced and
sweaty. “I won’t go. You can’t make me go. I hate the castle!”
“There isn’t a princess in the castle,” Ruth muttered, shoot-
ing me a look as if I had deceived her. Jeremy sat in silence, and Beth, who was sitting on my lap, just watched the television,
which was on behind Patrick with the volume down low, as he
paced and tried to explain.
“We’ve tried everything, Tim,” Patrick said patiently, mis-
erably. “There’s nothing left of it but for you to go to live with
Grandfather and Grandmother. They will take very good care
of you, and you’ll still have each other. That’s the most impor-
tant thing, son.”
“I hate you!” Tim shouted, making up for lost time with the
childish outbursts, it would seem. He ran out into the backyard,
and Jeremy silently stood to follow him, leaving me and Patrick
with the girls. Patrick sighed and ran his hands through his hair.
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“I have to go to work,” he said helplessly.
“It’s okay,” I said, hugging Beth a little closer. “You go. I’ll
try to explain it to them over the day.”
“And…” Patrick hesitated, then asked me reluctantly, “Mary, I
hate to ask this, but could you pack for them, too? I just don’t…”
His voice wobbled, and he swallowed hard. “I just don’t think
I can do it.”
“Of course. I’ll see you tonight.”
I tried my best to explain to the children that Daddy had
done everything he could, but that they needed to live with
their grandparents now. I told them a highly fanciful story about
four wonderful children who went to live in a castle and had
the best adventures ever, but halfway through Tim got up and
went to sit behind the sofa.
I knew what that meant, and it nearly killed me to let him
sit in there and grieve. On top of losing his mother, Tim really
was about to lose his father and his home, and there was noth-
ing I could do to make it better.
Ruth and Jeremy were starting to understand, and they were
sullen and sad, holding one another’s hands as they moved
around the house. And Beth seemed oblivious, but then when
she saw me packing her clothes away, she watched me, an in-
tense look of concentration on her face.
“Mommy?”
“I’m Aunt Maryanne, Beth.”
“Mommy,” she said stubbornly.
“What is it you want, child?” I asked her impatiently.
“Mommy I stay,” Beth said, climbing up onto the bed and
pushing my hands away from the suitcase.
“I’m not…it’s not up to me,” I whispered, and then stupid,
hot tears filled my eyes. I blinked hard and kept on with the
packing. “I can’t do anything about this. There’s just no other
way this can work.”
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“She’s upset because no one wants us,” Tim said from the
doorway. I glanced back at him and found him staring at his
shoes.
“That’s not true, Timmy. Lots of people want you. That’s the
trouble. This is just the best way for you all to stay together.”
“No. The best way for us all to stay together is for you to keep
looking after us. Where are you even going anyway?” Tim said
stubbornly.
I opened my mouth to explain it all to him—that my life
was in California, that my career was the most important thing,
that the world had to change and I could see that change and
most people couldn’t, so I needed to be a part of it. But he was
six weeks shy of five years old. Asking most adults to think of
the big picture beyond themselves was too much—how could I
ask the same thing of a tiny child, and one who’d already seen
such depths of pain?
“You’ll still see Daddy every Sunday,” I said unevenly. “And
Grandmother and Grandfather have that beautiful house, re-
member?”
“I hate the castle. Grandfather is mean. And Grandmother is
mean, too. Why don’t you want to stay?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“I don’t want you to go. And I don’t want to move in with
those people.”
“You have to,” I exclaimed, and a tear trickled over onto my
cheek. Tim looked up at me, confusion and hurt in his gaze.
“There’s just no other way.”
But then I looked from Tim’s miserable gaze to Beth’s huge
blue eyes and I saw Grace in those children and I felt it right
in my gut—the unmistakeable sense of belonging . These chil-
dren were hers, but my sister was gone and they were scared,
and my love and grief for her had somehow grown and evolved
until it was now shaped like love and a fierce protectiveness for
her children.
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It seemed that in the ten short weeks I’d been in their home,
I had inadvertently allowed myself to be dragged into this bro-
ken little family. I was a part of them now, and they were a part
of me.
I couldn’t just walk away and let my parents take these chil-
dren away from their father. The four of them had been through
too much; they had seen too much already that they couldn’t
understand. They needed comfort and cuddles and love and end-
less picture books each night, and sending them into that for-
mal, oppressive atmosphere at my parents’ house would change
them in ways that couldn’t be undone.
Somehow, through all that had happened, I’d been swallowed
whole by my dead sister’s family, and even if I’d wanted to ex-
tract myself, I didn’t have a clue how to start doing so.
Tim slunk away, shoulders downcast. Beth slid off the bed
and waddled after him. Ruth and Jeremy were still watching
cartoons on the television.
I unpacked the suitcases, then I made a call to Professor Cal-
lahan to start the process of blowing apart every little thing I’d
worked so hard to achieve back in California.
Beth
1996
“We still haven’t figured out whether to sell the house or rent
it,” Jeremy says as we all sit around the dining room table on
Sunday night, waiting for the mysterious Maryanne to make an
appearance. This afternoon while Ruth and I cooked the meal,
everyone else busied themselves packing up the rest of the house,
and not surprisingly, the process moved much quicker when a
whole team was there to work.
The house is all but empty now, other than some heavy fur-
niture we’ll probably sell. The kitchen area is last to be cleaned
out, and I’ll start that tomorrow—this will be our last family
meal here. I’m nervous that the tradition will die, especially be-
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cause it’s often been a strain on Tim and Alicia and Jeremy to
travel back here each week.
“The bill from the hospice will come any day now,” Tim
murmurs. “But let’s face it—we can’t hold on to the house for-
ever. Let’s just list it now and get this over and done with.”
“And I still think we need to keep the house,” Ruth coun-
ters. “This place is too special for us to cut our ties with it all
together.”
“Beth?” Jeremy prompts.
“I think that every time you three find yourselves feeling un-
comfortable these days, you deflect your internal discomfort by
raising the subject of what to do with the house,” I say. “I sus-
pect you do this because you know the subject of the house will
cause drama, and the drama will distract you from your own
feelings of loss. Unfortunately, once you start talking about it,
you all panic at the first sign of drama even though you thought
you wanted it, and that’s when you try to handball the topic
to me.” Beside me, Hunter and Ellis both quietly chuckle. My
siblings all stare at me for a moment, then Ruth says wistfully,
“Remember when Beth wanted to be a pop star?”
“That’s right. She wanted to join The Monkees,” Tim laughs.
“With her singing ability, The Monkees was probably the
only band she would have been allowed to join,” Jeremy says
wryly. “You know…on account of them not actually singing
their own songs. Get it?”
“Do you see what you’re doing now?” I say, laughing in spite
of myself. “You’re still nervous, but now you’re deflecting the
nervous energy by making fun of me.”
The doorbell rings. Our laughter immediately fades.
Ruth rises, and we all watch in silence as she walks down the
hallway to the front door. We hear voices as Ruth and Mary-
anne greet one another. They stop on their way back through
to the dining room so that Ruth can introduce Maryanne to
her sons, who are playing Jenga in the family room. And then
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the footsteps come closer, and the silence at the dining table is
broken as Ruth and Maryanne enter the room.
My aunt is short and thin, but even at first glance I see that
she has a flair for the dramatic. She’s wearing a black and crim-
son caftan and a startling array of chunky jewelry—enormous