Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
January 2025
Airplane to Seattle
P rior to the phone call that had changed everything, Josie had assumed she’d spend the entirety of the five-hour journey half asleep or fully knocked out. But now? Now that they’d learned Bob Steiner was dead? Everything felt jagged and strange. Despite her serious fatigue and her cancer-riddled body, sleep was out of the question. All she could do was sit with her hands clasped and her eyes to the window, watching as the immense country beneath them whipped past in tapestries of brown and white and tan. Beside her, Tara drank a glass of wine a little too fast and ordered another one when she was halfway done.
They’d hardly said more than a few words since they’d boarded the plane. Lucky for them, they were seated in a row without anyone else, giving them more legroom and privacy. But what could Josie say to bring them together? They had to talk about it before they landed in Seattle.
Everything suddenly felt as though it was coming to a head.
Ultimately, Tara broke the silence. “It’s not like we really knew him anymore anyway.”
Josie grimaced and turned to look at Tara. Tara’s lower lip quivered.
“We should have turned around the second we learned he died, though,” Tara said. “Mom is a stranger, too. And she’s grieving. We don’t know her enough to grieve with her. We don’t know either of them enough.”
“I’m sure you’ve been to plenty of funerals for people you didn’t really know,” Josie said.
“But these are our parents,” Tara reminded her, enunciating the word parents like a snotty teenager might. “And it shouldn’t be far from our minds that our mother didn’t bother to grieve her relationship with us—her daughters.”
“We don’t know that she didn’t grieve,” Josie offered.
Tara rolled her eyes. “I never would have left Winnie like that. Ever.”
And then, at the mention of Winnie’s name, Tara burst into tears. Her shoulders shook so violently that she nearly spilled her wine. Josie scrambled through her purse to find a tissue, but Tara didn’t notice. She instead cried into her sleeves, drenching herself.
“I’m just so sorry!” Tara cried now. Her voice was echoing on the plane, and people in different rows were turning to look at them. “I’m so sorry about all of it, Josie! I can’t believe it! I was given this one precious life, and I totally botched it.”
Josie unbuckled herself and moved into the middle seat between them. There, she took Tara’s hand. But Tara still couldn’t look at her.
“You know what? Winnie reached out to me last year,” Tara continued blubbering. “She reached out via text message, called, and even tried to friend me on Facebook. She said she wanted to talk. But I never responded to her!” Tara let out a crazy-sounding laugh, then placed her hand on her mouth. Her eyes were buggy and glassy.
Josie could hardly believe her ears. “I didn’t know that.”
“I haven’t told anyone,” Tara admitted. “I didn’t even tell my grief therapist. I didn’t tell my friends.”
It tore at Josie’s heart to think of Winnie reaching out to Tara and receiving no response.
And then it struck Josie that Winnie and Tara were playing out a pattern their mother Cindy had set for them. The Steiner women were founded on misunderstandings; they were founded on going years without talking.
It was a waste of their precious life. It was horrible that it had taken Josie’s cancer diagnosis for her to realize that.
“I just keep going over it in my mind,” Tara continued. “I still can’t believe Winnie left like that. I still can’t believe I let her go! But I didn’t feel I had a choice. She was so unhappy. She was so angry with me because I wasn’t you. I wasn’t her Aunt Josie. I wasn’t the one she loved the most.”
Josie’s adrenaline spiked. She remembered the year after she left Nantucket to marry Joe and move in with Violet and Leah—2016, she guessed, which was the same year Winnie moved in with Donnie in North Carolina.
“She was only supposed to go for a month,” Tara said now. “She wanted to get to know her dad, stepmom, and little brother. But something happened while she was away. I think she met a boy? I think she really liked being with her dad. I think she really liked being away from me. I don’t know! But before I knew it, Donnie was calling me and telling me he’d enrolled Winnie in the high school by his place. He told me it was bigger and better than Nantucket High School and that a huge percentage of its alma mater went on to Ivy League universities. I started screaming and crying immediately, of course. But then I demanded to talk to Winnie. I wanted to talk some sense into her. But how could I talk sense into her when I sounded so out of my mind? It was probably an easy decision for Winnie. I’m sure she had more freedom and fun than she ever would have had in Nantucket with me.”
“Don’t say that,” Josie said. “You don’t know that!”
Tara blew her nose into one of Josie’s tissues. “It’s true, though, isn’t it? Oh, gosh. I went completely wild when she left. I didn’t take on any new projects for six months. I was mostly at home, watching television, not caring about myself at all. All my life, I’d had you, Josie. And then I had Winnie and Donnie and Nantucket. But suddenly, I had nobody. I didn’t know how to love myself. I still don’t know how to love myself!”
Josie bit her tongue to keep from crying, too. Tara’s face was blotchy and scrunched.
“But you’re back, Josie!” Tara continued. “You’re back, and I don’t want you to go! I need you to stay! Don’t you understand that?”
Josie’s heart was like a stone. Tears drained down her cheeks. Suddenly, Tara turned to put her forehead on Josie’s shoulder and quaked with tears. Josie did her best to calm her down. She even called a flight attendant over to order tea for them both.
But Tara was inconsolable. With their father’s death, everything was coming together in intensity. The list was immense: Winnie leaving Nantucket, Josie leaving and coming back with cancer, their parents leaving, and Donnie cheating. There were piles and piles of painful memories behind them. And now that they were headed to Seattle to see their mother without their father, only more pain awaited them.
After Tara had her tea, she calmed down a little bit. Her eyes were dimly lit, and she couldn’t look at Josie.
But she said, “When Winnie told me she wasn’t going to go to high school in Nantucket, I packed up a lot of her things and mailed them to Donnie’s place. I told her she wasn’t welcome back in Nantucket, not even for Christmas. Can you believe that? I’m worse than Cindy and Bob.”
“You were in pain,” Josie whispered. “Maybe Winnie realizes that now. Maybe that’s why she’s reaching out.”
Tara took a breath. “I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve her empathy. I don’t deserve her kindness.”
Josie squeezed Tara’s hand. “We all deserve second chances. That’s what this trip to Seattle is all about. Remember?”
Tara closed her eyes. Her breathing was ragged.
“How did you get so wise, Josie?”
“Ha.”
Tara shifted so that she fully faced Josie. On the far end of the plane, a baby was crying in a way that made Josie’s heart ache. She’d always had empathy for mothers and fathers on planes. She’d always wondered what it would have been like to be the single most important person in a tiny child’s life.
She’d never been Winnie’s number one, no matter how often Tara believed that.
But she’d loved that girl to pieces.
“I’m not wise,” Josie said. “And I’ve made so many mistakes. You remember how often Winnie reached out to me after I left?”
Tara dropped her gaze.
“You must,” Josie said. “She called me all the time. She wanted to talk about her boy problems, her friends, her school, and puberty. All of it.”
“Because she couldn’t talk to me!” Tara said.
“It’s difficult to talk to our mothers about the important stuff,” Josie reminded her. “I never was able to talk to Mom about anything. Not like you.”
“But I shouldn’t have trusted Mom.” Tara sighed. “Mom left the minute things got tough.”
“We still don’t really know why they left,” Josie said.
“Does it matter?”
“I don’t know,” Josie said. “Maybe not anymore.”
“I know why you left,” Tara said, her eyes widening. “I know I pushed you away during the years after we kicked Donnie out. I know I blamed you for Donnie's cheating. It didn’t make any sense then, and it doesn’t make any sense now. But you were the one who found him with that other woman. And I hated that you found him. I wanted to go on pretending everything between Donnie and me was okay. And it was never okay! Not once!”
Josie’s heart felt squeezed. “I didn’t blame you.”
But this was a lie. When Tara began treating Josie like a stranger in her own home, Josie had been torn up with sorrow. Numerous times, she’d asked Tara if they could talk about it and try to find a way to make peace. But Tara always insisted that everything was fine.
They’d lied and lied and lied and built a huge wall between them.
“I met Joe,” Josie said now. It wasn’t even really a lie. “I met Joe, and he told me that he wanted more children, and I ran away to Manhattan, thinking it was my last shot to have a family of my own.”
“I didn’t know you still wanted children,” Tara whispered.
Josie laughed. “I was, what? Thirty-seven? Thirty-eight? And Joe was in his late forties. Maybe he thought he wanted more children. But when more and more drama came to light with Violet and Leah, Joe looked at me and said, ‘I just can’t do it again.’ He looked exhausted. I understood. I told myself my relationships with my stepdaughters would be enough.”
Tara looked down at her hands. “I’m so sorry that happened.”
“It’s okay. It’s life.” Josie pressed her lips together. “I was never meant to be a mother.”
“You were a mother to Winnie,” Tara reminded her.
Josie closed her eyes and pictured little Winnie—running down the beach as her hair whipped out behind her, screaming with the seagulls.
“We had some good years,” Josie admitted.
Tara raised her shoulders. “You should reach out to her if you want to. I’m sure she’d be happy to hear from you.”
“You’re the one she’s been reaching out to,” Josie reminded her. “Not me.”
“But you said it yourself. It’s a time of forgiveness. Of honesty,” Tara said.
Josie sat in silence for a moment, thinking about the incredible release at the end of this horrific cancer journey. She imagined it like a dark and foggy field. She imagined it like perfect silence.
But then a horrible fear sliced through that imagined silence. I’ll never see Winnie again.
Josie’s love for Winnie still echoed in her heart.
Back in 2016, she should have called Winnie back. She should have convinced her not to move in with her father. She should have reminded her of how much Tara loved her.
Maybe she could have said, Your father is a loser. He’s just trying to get back at your mother for kicking him out.
Maybe it wasn’t even true. Perhaps Donnie really was “healed.” Maybe he was a fine, upstanding member of society.
But Josie hadn’t had the strength to help Winnie or Tara or anyone else but Joe, Violet, and Leah. She’d felt so spread out and stretched thin.
Tara took another haggard breath. “We have a lot of stuff to work out.”
Josie laughed gently. “One thing at a time, I guess?”
“Seattle first,” Tara agreed.
“What are we going to say to Mom?” Josie breathed.
“I don’t know,” Tara said. “This could go so many different directions.”
“Maybe she’ll throw us out of the wake.”
Tara cackled, and tears ran down her cheeks. “Sometimes I don’t know how to carry the weight of all these stories.”
Josie squeezed her arm. “I’m here to carry them with you.”
Tara’s eyes echoed with fatigue and fear. They seemed to ask Josie, But how much longer will you be here?
The plane dinged, and the pilot announced there would be food and more drinks available, that they were thousands and thousands of feet into the air. Josie had read once that it was far easier to cry in airplanes. People did it all the time. She reckoned it had something to do with your body’s fear. You had no control this far up. You had to give it all over to the pilot and the plane's construction.
It suddenly felt obscene that people flew all over the world like this.
“We need food,” Tara insisted, sniffing and going through the menu. “You’re eating something, Josie.” She said it with authority, as a mother might.
Josie laughed and wiped tears from her cheeks. “Anything greasy and cheesy.”
Tara shot her a look. “Plus vegetables.”
“Fine,” Josie groaned. “Vegetables, too. But I’m going to throw them away when you’re not looking.”
Tara raised her eyebrows and gave her a look that reminded Josie of their mother so many years ago, watching over Tara and Josie, demanding things of them, things that, to her, kept them safe.
It remained a mystery why Cindy and Bob had left.
But maybe there were answers at the end of this plane ride. Perhaps there was closure somewhere on the West Coast.