Everything That Follows

by Meg Little Reilly

  Her first priority was to give Orla another chapter in this story. That would be easy.

  It was the Kyle piece—phase two—that made her nervous.

  Chapter 17

  “You’re cracking them wrong, Dad.” Weeta looked up from her book with a bored glance. She was sitting at the table in Sean’s kitchen, watching him makes eggs on Christmas morning.

  “What are you talking about? This is how people crack eggs.”

  She rolled her eyes. “We did an experiment in science class and I’m telling you, you’re using the surface pressure wrong.”

  Sean kept cracking egg after egg into the bowl, just as he always had. This was his favorite thing in the world: Christmas with Weeta. He only got it every two years and so it felt extra precious when it was his turn. Particularly this year. All of the eggs had already broken this year. Nothing was as it should be, nothing except his daughter. The morning felt thinner and quieter without Kat, who’d been with his family on those mornings for so many years. She usually made the bacon, in the oven, with maple syrup drizzled over it. Sean had forgotten about the bacon. It was still in the fridge.

  Orla walked in, still wrapped up in her scarf and hat. “Is breakfast ready?”

  Sean appreciated the effort she was making to be cheerful.

  “Almost.” Weeta looked up at her grandmother. “Dad’s making eggshell omelets.”

  “Perfect. That’s my favorite kind. Let’s do presents while he cooks!”

  Orla and Weeta went into the living room while Sean finished breakfast. There was a coffee cake from the expensive place in Tisbury, plus eggs, clementines and grocery store eggnog. He’d even bought real pine boughs from the winter farmers market to decorate the table with. It felt a little forced, like overcompensation for their small numbers. But it was necessary.

  Sean had decided he didn’t want Kat there this year. Christmas was sacred and Weeta was sacred, and he couldn’t grant her access to those things until he was completely sure that he could live with their new reality. It wouldn’t have been fair to flounder on this. Getting together and breaking back up was for people without kids. He didn’t have the luxury of anything short of total assurance. So while he felt really bad about not inviting Kat to Christmas, he was also sure it was the right move under the circumstances.

  “Oh-my-God-yes!” Weeta squealed from the other room. “The is exactly the one I wanted. Thank you, Nana!”

  Sean worried about his mother. He had been doing his very best to keep her close, invite her over as much as possible and assure her that he’d figure it all out. But he had no solutions to offer, only fake cheer. Sean worried about his mother’s future more than his own. Orla was too private and stoic to ever cry on Sean’s shoulder, but she was approaching something like depression.

  That was probably the word for it: depression. It was an utterly logical response to the violent way in which Orla’s whole life had been ripped from her. It was also the literal state of her life—every material thing that meant anything to her had fallen away. Her work, her shop...it was all frozen in an ice-packed depression on the beach now. Every day Sean had to drive past the place, which was now just a three-walled garage that stood naked to the elements. The police tape was still wrapped around the perimeter of the property, but it had begun to sag and fade. One of the wooden posts that held up the tape was on its side, buried by snow. It looked so much more hopeless now than it had on the day of the landslide, before the sand and reality settled in.

  “Daddy, we’re hungry!”

  Bing Crosby’s Christmas album was playing in the other room and Sean was reminded of his role as chief officer of cheerfulness. “It’s ready. Let’s eat!”

  They sat down to the full table and poured more coffee. Bing crooned in the background. It was still okay, just the three of them.

  Sean piled steaming eggs onto each plate. “You get extra shells.”

  Weeta laughed and picked at her coffee cake, apparently too old to just shove it into her mouth like she used to.

  A muffled knock came from outside.

  Orla looked up. “Is someone here?”

  Sean put the egg dish down and went to the window. And goddamn it, there was Kat. She was bouncing slightly, looking chilly and impatient. He couldn’t resist feeling a little relieved to see her. She shouldn’t be there, but he was still relieved to see her.

  “I’ll get it. You guys sit,” Sean instructed.

  He went to the door and opened it just enough to peek out at her.

  “Hi!” Kat had an eager, uncomplicated excitement about her. “May I come in?”

  He stepped aside, without quite inviting her.

  “Kat, I thought we decided we weren’t doing this, this year,” Sean whispered.

  “Oh, I...” Her voice trailed off as she looked around. “Oh my God, it’s Christmas.”

  “Did you not know it was Christmas? Are you okay?”

  She looked apologetic, but she didn’t move.

  “Kat, Weeta and my mom are here.”

  Her eyes got wide. “Oh God, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to just barge in. I kind of forgot. I mean, I’m all alone at Erika’s apartment this weekend...she’s with her family, and Hunter’s with his...and I meant to do something to celebrate. I’ve been busy, and I sort of lost track of what day it was.”

  Seeing her wide-eyed and confused like that was validation that he’d done the right thing—and it made him angry to see her there, undermining his choice to keep her away. “You need to go,” he whispered. “This is too confusing for my family.”

  “Oh, but I have some good news! It’s actually better that they’re all here. I, ah...yeah, I can tell everyone at once. It’s even better this way.”

  “No, Kat.”

  “Is that Kat I hear?” Orla appeared in the doorway.

  “Hey, Orla!”

  “C’mon in and have some brunch, love.”

  Sean scratched aggressively at his beard.

  Kat followed Orla to the dining area, but she didn’t sit.

  “Hi, Weeta. I’m sorry to burst in on Christmas, you guys.”

  Sean folded his arms and watched her, afraid of what unstable behavior she might unleash before them.

  Weeta looked around in confusion. “Are you having Christmas with your family?”

  “Ah, yes. I am,” she said, stumbling. “So don’t worry about me. Anyhow, I have some great news. It’s a Christmas present, actually! That’s why I’m here.”

  Orla raised her eyebrows and sipped coffee.

  “I’ve found us—well, you—a new glass shop and studio.”

  Everyone stared.

  Kat smiled. “It’s true. You know that ancient little barn on Winding Hill Road? The one we always say that someone should renovate? It’s yours now.”

  She had lost her mind. Sean was sure of it.

  “I bought it! It’s being repainted this week. They’re going to move the equipment in as soon as the heat shields are up in the back room. Everything should be done in a few months. It’s small, but it’s beautiful.”

  Orla was frozen, her coffee mug suspended at half sip. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

  “I’m saying that I’m giving you this. It’s yours. You can teach glass working there, open another shop...whatever you want! It’s a gift.”

  Weeta’s mouth fell open. “Whoa. Dad, did you know about this?”

  Sean shook his head. He was cautiously angry, sure that this was some kind of mirage destined to create more heartbreak for them later. “I didn’t know about it. What are you saying, Kat? How did you do this?” But he realized the answer even before he was done with the question. It was the money.

  Kat looked back and forth at each expectant face. “I, ah...a distant relative died a few months back and apparently left me some money. I did
n’t even know him. But I guess he was kinda rich. So this really just fell into my lap. It all just happened very quickly.”

  Sean wished for her to stop, to minimize the number of lies that she would tell—the lies she would tell badly—to these people who didn’t deserve lies. He could see that she didn’t enjoy this part, either. She was talking about the money that Hunter’s family offered her for her silence. And if her silence was bought, well then his was too. It made him somehow a party to Kyle’s death, or murder, or whatever really happened that night. And now, because his family was the beneficiary of this money, they were all unwittingly a party to it. But Sean wasn’t going to contradict her. The look on his mother’s face made the lies almost worth it.

  Orla stood up slowly, her eyes filling with tears. “Is this real, Kat?”

  Kat began to cry. She nodded.

  Orla pulled her in and hugged her. She hugged and hugged, and Sean couldn’t remember a time when either of them behaved so unabashedly emotional.

  Weeta began to cry. She looked up at her father for permission to believe it all. He put his hands on her shoulders and did his best to appreciate what was happening.

  The money was ugly, but the rest of it was beautiful. Kat didn’t have to do this. And regardless of its origins, Kat needed this money as much as any of them and wouldn’t have been faulted for keeping it all to herself. It was a selfless act, if a complicated one.

  Orla released Kat and wiped her eyes. “You can’t do this.”

  “It’s already done, Orla. I knew you wouldn’t let me, so it’s already done. It’s yours.”

  “And this rich relative? What’s the story with this?”

  Kat glanced at Sean, missing hardly a beat. “It just happened. I didn’t really believe it myself. But the money was never really mine, so I won’t miss it.” That part was true.

  Orla shook her head. She seemed skeptical about the origins of the money too, but Sean could tell that she wasn’t going to press it. It was a gift that she desperately needed and so she was just going to accept it unquestioningly. As rational as she was, Orla also held closely to the wisdom of not questioning God’s grace when it presented itself. Miracles annulled explanation.

  Weeta kept smiling and watching her father. “This is amazing, Kat. I can’t believe it. Daddy, isn’t this amazing?”

  Sean smiled. “It is amazing, honey. It’s amazing.” He went to Kat and hugged her. It was the closest they’d been in weeks. He wanted to drink in her smell and the feel of her body beneath her coat. Her wet cheek soaked into his shirt. Their lives had gotten so fucked up, but he felt the same about her body in his arms. He didn’t want to let go.

  They came apart and looked at each other, aware of Orla’s and Weeta’s gazes.

  “Thank you,” he said. And he meant it. Seeing her smile before him, and feeling her tears on his chest, he felt the depth of her love for his family, and her capacity for goodness. She’d always been good, but the past few weeks made him question everything. She’d made one very bad choice on that night, but everything she’d done since then had been bigger and braver than he’d ever been. She saved his mother once. And now she was saving them all.

  If morality was measured as a tally, a scoreboard on which points are accrued by the opposing teams of good and evil, then she was surely at a positive balance. That should be enough, Sean thought. That should be enough for him.

  “I have to go,” Kat said.

  “No, stay!” Weeta protested.

  “No, I have to do my Christmas thing. Just wanted to stop by to tell you this.”

  Sean knew she didn’t have any Christmas plans. She’d forgotten about the holiday altogether. But he didn’t ask her to stay. He was almost there, almost sure that she was right for him and his family, that he could live with the weight of the truth...

  But goddamn it, why did she have to go on the boat with Hunter on that night? Why did she always seem to listen to him? Everything would be the same if that night hadn’t happened and they hadn’t made so many poor choices! And as his racing mind picked up steam, Sean became aware of other resentments he held—resentments that predated that night. Like the fact that she insisted on living alone, instead of moving in with him. She was holding him up, and holding up their ability to be a real family. He wanted to marry her eventually, but she wasn’t even ready to live with him. How long was she going to make him wait? What was wrong with her?

  The depth of Sean’s anger surprised him, but he didn’t wish it away. Kat deserved his anger. Because it wasn’t his fault they were in this position. It wasn’t his fault she had to go home to Erika’s empty apartment with no plans on Christmas. It was all Kat’s. Kat had done this to them, and he couldn’t invite her to stay until he stopped feeling so hurt by her selfish, reckless choices.

  “I’ll walk you out,” he said with a hand on her back.

  Kat looked like she was on the verge of tears again, though it was difficult to tell if they were happy or sad tears.

  Orla pulled her in for one more hug. “We love you.”

  “I know,” she sniffed. “I love you guys too.”

  Kat and Sean walked out together, just the two of them, into the dim December morning. It was so quiet, you could almost hear the waves hitting the dock from several blocks away.

  “Really, Kat, thank you,” Sean said when they got outside. “We don’t have to talk about how you did it, but I’m grateful.”

  She nodded, happy but eager to be done with the conversation. “I know you don’t approve, Sean, but everything is just more complicated than that now.”

  “I know.” He did.

  She looked around like there was something else on her mind. “Sean, I’m sorry to ask you this, but...have you seen Ashley lately?”

  “I told you I’m not seeing her.”

  “I know, I know.” She wiped her running nose with a sleeve. “But have you run into her? Do you know what she’s up to?”

  “Yeah, I saw her once at the coffee shop. She still seemed really mad at me. She said something about Island Glass—that she was sorry, I think—but also that it didn’t change anything.”

  “That’s what she said?”

  Sean thought again. “Um, yeah, I think she said ‘it doesn’t really change anything.’ I got the feeling she was talking about that night...or, her theories about that night.”

  Kat nodded quickly and looked around. It seemed like she was in a hurry. “Yeah, well, she’s right, I guess. It doesn’t really change anything about that night.” She pulled her coat zipper up as high as it would go. “Okay, anyway, that’s kinda what I thought.”

  “Kat, are you okay?”

  “Yes, I am. I will be. I just have some things to do.”

  She gave a quick nod and turned from him. Then she mounted an old road bike and skidded away on the icy sidewalk.

  Sean went back inside to find Orla and Weeta digging into breakfast. The room smelled of fresh coffee and burning wood. In a matter of minutes, their appetites had returned and their senses had been restored. The gloomy fog they’d been trying to see each other through had lifted completely. Kat had done all that. With her toxic money, she’d given them back their lives.

  After breakfast, they would pile into Orla’s car, drive out to the little renovated barn that would become her new glassworks studio and envision a future.

  Chapter 18

  “You good?” Erika yelled from the end of the bar.

  Hunter nodded.

  She was consolidating the contents of the cheap liquor bottles, which meant that her afternoon shift was almost over.

  Hunter didn’t want to leave, not because he cared much about getting drunk on that day, but because he couldn’t stand to be alone in his big house.

  Erika walked around and took a seat beside him on a bar stool. They were all alone in the restaurant. With
the holiday traffic gone and January’s long stretch ahead, they’d probably be alone there a lot in the coming weeks.

  “You look good,” she said.

  Hunter smiled. He felt good, in a way. He hadn’t smoked pot or blacked out in three weeks. He hadn’t even had a real hangover in that time. Hunter imagined this was what normal people felt like, people who didn’t have all the time and money in the world to indulge their vices. It wasn’t that he’d quit drinking. He’d just been feeling different ever since the day of the landslide, less desperate for sensorial thrills.

  No one noticed him at the landslide, but Hunter had watched the whole thing from the street. He’d seen Orla rush the falling house, and Kat go after her. He watched them struggle and fall, then cry as it all went down. He’d seen Sean scream after them while two big cops held him back. And he’d felt his heart stop at what looked like Kat running to her death.

  Everyone watching thought they would die, Hunter too. And every day since, he could see that clarion image of Kat’s brush with death, as fresh as when it had happened. It was his most alive moment, his most frightened and helpless too. But it was the aliveness that stayed with him.

  Just hours before the landslide, Hunter had been holding all the small, strong parts of Kat’s naked body. He could still feel the hard angles of her hips and shoulders pressing into him, and the softness of her hair in his hands, as he watched her run toward the cliff. It made him want to survive. Even Kyle’s death hadn’t produced such a loud call to life as Kat’s near-death. And that was why he could sit there at the bar in a tempest of anxiety while also feeling slightly more grateful to still be alive. People die all the time in the most thoughtless ways, but Hunter was still alive, and that suddenly seemed miraculous.