Plain, real magic.
The kind that could change everything.
TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS BEFORE
THE TRIO’S TOWER
The tower was Mark’s idea, to begin with.
That summer the Enrights had moved from San Francisco to Rockport, and one of Mark’s first orders of business in their new town was to buy The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas from the Sandpiper Bookshop on Main.
Ms. Haynes from his old school had recommended the book.
“It might be a tad old for you,” she’d said, “but I think you’ll have fun.”
Which, of course, had only made Mark want to read it more. Sure, there were words he didn’t understand and long, winding passages he skipped, but the real meat of the story, and the illustration of three brave men declaring “One for all, and all for one!”—that had kept him riveted. It had first made him realize that he, John, and Pat could form their own brigade.
“We’re the trio,” he told John. “The three of us can face whatever missions come our way.”
Mark was full of vision—a painter of colors, words, and adventures alike.
“What missions are coming our way?” John asked, skeptical.
“We’ll make them up,” said Mark. “We can hold meetings in the tower. It can be our place, just ours.”
This part, at least, John understood. Their parents didn’t go up those spiral stairs—neither their silent, stolid father, nor their constantly angered mother. They remained below, brewing arguments and resentment. Things were especially bad in the summer, when the winds stilled and the house overheated. The summer made their father quieter and their mother angrier. Downstairs were shouts and scoldings, unpredictable outbursts.
The tower, though? It was untouchable.
“It could be our place,” John said, thinking it over. “Not a lot of made-up adventures, though, huh? We could do practical things.”
“Like what?”
“Study for tests.”
Mark made a face. “It’s summer.”
“Well, you can work on your paintings, and I can study.”
“But … it’s summer.”
“I’m studying ahead.”
John was full of plans—plenty of which he hadn’t shared with his brothers. Plans for how he would study so hard that one day he’d get out of this house, away from Mom’s raging and Dad’s indifference, away from the too-tiny streets and chattering mouths at Ramsey’s Diner. He’d leave here for the east coast, where he’d get into a prestigious Boston school. That’s why he studied, even though it was summer, and even though he was “only” twelve. You could never study too much, or too early. Not when you had a goal in mind.
When the brothers told Patrick about the plan, his eyes got wide as full moons.
“The tower’s creepy,” he said.
“We’ll make it nice,” said Mark, coaxingly. “It won’t be creepy if the three of us are there. Anyway, there are all those old books, from the last owner. Could be money hidden in some of them.”
Patrick considered before saying, “It would be a good place to spy. From the window, way up high?”
“Spy?” John scoffed. “There’s nothing to spy on in Rockport, Pat.”
“How would you know if you haven’t tried?”
With that challenge, Patrick took off from the hallway, ascending the spiral stairs in an all-stops-out run.
Mark and John shared a look, shaking their heads.
“Weird kid,” said John.
Mark agreed. Patrick was full of energy—often frenetic, zipping from one interest to the next. He had strange ideas and so much life, Mark sometimes worried there was too much of it, and that it would get him into trouble one day.
For now, though, he was just a kid. He deserved the chance to run upstairs, especially when that meant the Enright brothers would be together. They had to stick together, like Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. No one else in this town, parents included, were on their side. They were the trio, and if they had each other’s backs, they’d be okay.
“YOU GUYS!” Patrick called. “It’s still creepy, but … it’s kind of cool up here too.”
Mark and John exchanged a smirk and then they, too, set up the spiral stairs.
So the Trio’s Tower was occupied for the first time. It was an auspicious beginning for the Enright brothers. But, like many youthful beginnings, it reached a less optimistic end.
If, twenty-eight years later, you were to ask why …
You might not get any real answers.
JANUARY TWENTY-FIRST
THIRTY-FOUR Eileen
The sun was shining.
Emmet wasn’t known for clear winter skies—for clear skies, period—and until now, the new year had been gray. This morning, though, the clouds had cleared, and a strong sun beamed down from a crystalline sky. If Eileen believed in good omens, she’d take this to be one: hopeful weather on her first day of AA.
The meeting had been everything she’d expected. The introductory “Hi, Insert-Name-Here.” The linoleum in a church basement. The awkwardness. The bad and/or sad stories. The sobriety chips.
The meeting had also been nothing like she’d expected. For instance, there was Finny, her sponsor, who was a gray-haired, flannel-wearing ex–rock climber who told Eileen she was “rad” for showing up. There was the tray of homemade green tea mochi, brought in by a two-year-sober chef. There was the fact that, when Eileen had introduced herself, no one had judgmentally asked her how old she was. And how, after the meeting, when Eileen had walked out of Prince of Peace Lutheran’s basement and into the sun, she got an urge she thought had died two years ago.
She wanted to paint this shockingly sunny day.
Eileen drove home in the Caravan, thinking about something she’d told Murphy in the graveyard the day after Christmas: “If you need help, it’s okay to ask.”
It was simple advice.
So how had Eileen not taken it herself, until today?
Maybe because asking for help felt like extracting her own teeth, Novocain-free.
She was doing it, though. New year, new Eileen.
She snorted to herself, making a turn at a four-way stop. She was beginning to sound like Claire’s patron saint, Harper Everly.
Only, no. Because, unlike Harper, Eileen planned for failure. In fact, she guessed she probably would fail a lot this year. The only difference from last year was that she wouldn’t fail alone.
A lot of things had changed since Rockport. For one, Eileen knew the whole story. Mom had told the truth.
Knowing that truth didn’t instantly heal the sore spot under Eileen’s skin—the one that had formed years ago. It had carved out a space in her heart, though. Because teenage Leslie Clark hadn’t asked for any of this. Life had happened to her, at her, in a bad way. She hadn’t had a family to make it better. She hadn’t had sisters, the way Eileen did.
Eileen was beginning to see that Mom had been doing the best she could. A young single mother, raising three kids on minimum wage, paying off her dead husband’s medical bills. A mom with a dark secret, but not the secret Eileen had assumed. She’d done the best she could with what life had given her. And really, wasn’t that all any person could do?
Including Eileen.
It wasn’t that Eileen was well now, or cured. When it came to the Jack Daniel’s and her darkest thoughts, Eileen wasn’t sure there was a “cure,” in the real sense of the word. Amelioration, maybe. That was AA. That was the prospect of the Myrtle Waugh Fellowship.
Eileen wasn’t well, but for the first time in a long time, she thought that maybe, one day, she might be. For today, the thought was enough. As was this fact: She was Mark Enright’s daughter, and he hadn’t been a killer. He’d been the father of her memories. He’d been the one with the citrusy scent and swishy bangs. He’d been the artist, the same one who had sat with her at a kitchen table and made finger-painted animals.
She had Mark Enright’s blood in her veins. It was the blo
od of brothers, some broken, some reclusive, some beaten down. It was the blood of mothers, some absent and some monstrous. The blood of fathers, some quiet and some dead. The blood of sisters, running hot and contentious, warm and loving. Enrights, Clarks, Sullivans, and other ancestors with stories Eileen would never know—they were part of her, but none of them determined who she was.
And now art wasn’t something to be feared. Art could be a way out.
Claire had made that possible, and while Eileen hadn’t decided about the fellowship yet, she did mean to drive to Eugene in two weeks’ time, for the interview.
She was doing the best she could.
Eileen pulled the Caravan into the carport and parked. When she came around to the house, she found Claire sitting on the front porch, wearing her peacoat and messy hair bun. Sun slanted across her face, drawing thick shadows of evergreen branches on her cheeks.
Eileen stopped for a moment, watching her. She and Claire, they’d been close. They’d shared secrets and fought battles, side by side. Then they’d lost the threads that had been holding them together. Maybe those threads were ripped out for good.
Maybe, too, there was another pattern to be stitched.
Claire was a living portrait in the sun and shadows—someone Eileen wanted to paint. She’d call the piece Exceller, and she’d mean it in the most unironic way.
Eileen breathed in deep and walked forward.
“Hey,” she said, reaching the porch. “Weird weather, huh?”
THIRTY-FIVE Claire
At the same time Eileen was driving home from AA, Claire was composing a text to Ainsley St. John.
She used a phone she’d bought from a woman on Craigslist two weeks ago. It was nowhere near as nice as her last one, but these days Claire cared less about battery life and video quality.
Ainsley had written plenty of times since her YALE, BABY! text.
Once to say, Hey, you alive?
Another to say, Happy New Year, hope you’re well.
A third to say, Worried about you, girl. I’ve decided on Yale, hope I’ll see you there.
Claire knew she’d been a bad friend. At first she hadn’t responded because she hadn’t known how. Then she hadn’t because she no longer had a working phone. And then she hadn’t because there’d been too much happening: school starting back up, and a return to the jewelry business, and—the biggest change—spending time with her sisters at night.
Claire didn’t shut her bedroom door that often these days. Instead, after school and on the weekends, the sisters gathered in the den to watch an awful reality show, or—Claire’s choice—Jeopardy!
Sometimes, they just talked.
It was new, and it was nice. It was also another poor excuse for why Claire hadn’t found the chance to write Ainsley back.
Now, on the twenty-first of January, she knew it was time. She’d spent a full month in silence. That had to end.
And oh, the possible texts she could send:
I inherited a house from my long-lost uncle.
Or,
I uncovered way more family secrets than any seventeen-year-old has a right to know.
Or,
I was busy having a crisis about my identity.
Or,
I’ve become disillusioned by the college application process.
Or,
The truth is, I’ve fantasized about meeting you for months, and I know it sounds crazy, and you have a girlfriend, but I thought you could be my first kiss.
Instead, Claire wrote, Turns out I didn’t get in. I’m so happy for you, though. Best wishes, girl. <3
It felt disingenuous. It even felt a little cold. It also felt right. Claire sent the text while sitting on the porch, warming her face in the rare January sun. Then she shut off the phone—a symbolic move.
She closed her eyes, listening to the rustle of wind in the evergreens, breathing in the scent of grass and sunbathed concrete. She listened as a juddering vehicle pulled up the driveway. Then the engine cut. Claire only opened her eyes when a voice said, “Hey. Weird weather, huh?”
“Weird weather,” Claire agreed. She motioned across the porch to a white-and-green-checkered lawn chair.
Eileen sat, stretching out her spider-long legs and knocking together the heels of her combat boots.
“Where were you?” Claire asked.
“AA.”
Claire thought at first that she was joking. Eileen did have a sick sense of humor.
Then she saw it in Eileen’s eyes: the light.
“Oh,” she said. “Wow. That’s … Leenie, that’s … Good for you.”
“Turns out I should tell people. You know, accountability. That’s pretty big there.”
Claire was remembering two years’ worth of Eileen shutting herself in that garage, the late-night passes in the hallway and the biting sweet stench of Eileen’s breath. The dull eyes, the monosyllabism. She was especially remembering a sentence that could not be unyelled: Better to be a bitch than a burned-out drunk like you.
For all their recent nights of TV-watching and talking, Claire hadn’t addressed that.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured, when the memories had ceased their parade. “Leenie, what I said at the house, on Christmas Eve? I’m sorry.”
“Well. You weren’t wrong.”
Claire studied her sister’s sharp-cheeked profile. With every passing day they’d spent together, Claire had better understood a truth: You couldn’t easily make up two lost years, and the words, both spoken and unspoken, contained therein.
She wondered if it was a good time to bring up the news. Eileen didn’t seem upset, so Claire decided she might as well.
“Mr. Knutsen called the house. He left a message about you missing an appointment?”
Claire braced herself, waiting for Eileen to lose her temper and call Claire a goddamn snoop.
Instead she said, “Yeah, I’ve been trying to figure that shit out. I know Mom said it was our decision, that we didn’t need to consult her, or whatever. But I don’t want to deal yet.”
“Deal with what?”
Eileen shrugged. “The paperwork, I guess. The legal stuff. Like, what’s the point? Until you and Murph inherit, we can’t sell.”
Claire studied her hands. “Maybe there’s a loophole or something.”
“Well, if there were, would you want to sell it?”
Claire considered before saying, “I’m not sure. It’s a house, it’s not Dad. Knowing everything we do, though … selling seems wrong. Like maybe it’s something Dad wouldn’t want. Him, or Patrick, or John.”
Dad. To Claire he was only a fuzzy memory of broad shoulders and a deep laugh. Of a chocolatey cure to a scraped knee. The stories that Cathy, Kerry, and Mom had told seemed foreign to Claire, distant from the dead father and absent mother she’d known. Leslie and Mark may as well have been Wendy and Peter Pan—fairy-tale characters.
“Whoa,” said Eileen. “So, really? No sale? What about the money?”
Claire realized that Eileen was trying to be funny. She’d missed this side of her sister, however infuriating it could be. She’d missed Eileen’s humor, even her jabs.
“I guess money’s not as important anymore,” Claire said. “No college education to fund.”
“Bullshit,” said Eileen, humor suddenly gone. “You’re college material, Claire. Just not for those snobby-ass institutions. You apply next year to colleges you’ll get into. Hell, you’ll get scholarships. U of O would probably offer a full ride.”
Claire looked out on their neighborhood, a stretch of vinyl-sided ranches and crumbling, weed-choked sidewalks. She’d been so singularly focused on getting off this street, she wondered if she’d lost sight of the good on the periphery. Like state schools. Like sisters.
Lately, she’d been trying to focus on what she’d blurred out before. Hard as it was, she hadn’t been making plans. Hadn’t been looking for golden moments. Hadn’t been watching Harper Everly. She’d just been living, taking it in.<
br />
“Leenie,” she said, softly. “Are you going to the interview?”
She’d given Eileen everything when they’d returned to Emmet: the artwork she’d submitted, the application, the letter with the interview information.
“Yeah,” said Eileen. “I think so.”
“Then you’ll do the program?”
“I don’t know. I might try. I think I need it.”
Claire’s intestines knotted into a bow. “Well, that’s good.”
Eileen eyed her, saying nothing.
“What?” Claire asked, at last.
“You know, the thing about Eugene … I couldn’t afford the room and board. It’d be a lot easier with a roommate. A rich one, with her own business.”
Claire exhaled. “Not funny.”
“I’m not being funny. I’m saying you should come. What else are you going to do when you graduate? And you can do your business anywhere, right?”
“Murphy, though.”
“We’ll talk to her. It’s, like, an hour away. We can visit her easy. Anyway, she marches to the beat of her own drum, you know?”
Claire laughed shortly. “I know.”
“And Mom, she’s …”
“More here,” said Claire. “Yeah.”
It was true. Mom’s shifts weren’t any shorter, and a tension remained between her and her daughters—syllables that died on the tongue and hugs not quite seen through. But this past week she’d woken the sisters up with breakfast. No gourmet feast, just toasted Pop-Tarts for Eileen and Murphy and a cup of yogurt, no gluten, for Claire. That was something.
“There’s one condition,” Eileen said abruptly.
“Huh?”
“On moving to Eugene. You can’t be whining about how it’s not the Ivy League.”
Claire laughed a little—at the Ivy League, at herself. “I’m not obsessed anymore, believe it or not.”
Eileen looked doubtful.
“I mean it. I know it sounds cheesy, but … I’ve been thinking maybe you can find happiness anywhere. Doesn’t have to be Yale.”
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