Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
January 2025
Seattle
I t had been a long time since Josie slept this hard. Maybe it was because of the jet lag, or perhaps it was yet another result of cancer, but after Josie collapsed in the guest room at her mother and father’s place, she slept for nearly twelve hours and awoke to another day of rain. Someone, presumably Tara, had put Josie’s suitcase in the guest bedroom, and Josie scrambled through her belongings to find her medicine and take what she needed. Tara had also put a glass of water on the end table by her bed. She’d thought of everything.
What had happened since Josie went to sleep? Josie was suddenly frightened. She’d left Tara alone with the monster who was their mother.
At least their father wasn’t here.
Don’t be cruel, Josie , she thought. He was dead. And he should be pitied because he never really knew how to love.
But she was still heavy with relief that he wasn’t here.
Josie crept down the hall to use the bathroom and put her wig back on. When she left, she heard the radio playing downstairs and soft, muttering voices. Slowly, she shifted downstairs to find her mother and Tara, both in pajamas, drinking coffee and watching the rain. Neither of them was speaking, and neither of them had noticed Josie yet, either.
Josie took a moment to really see what was before her. Tara looked as exhausted as Josie felt, with big bags under her eyes and her hair in wild curls. Their mother wasn’t wearing any makeup, and she looked tiny and brittle. A few slices of toast were in the toaster, but neither of them had gotten up to retrieve them when they’d popped up. They were lost in thought.
Had Cindy told Tara everything yet? Josie tried to gauge the temperature in the room and decided Cindy had. She’d have to interrogate Tara later. She didn’t want to force Cindy through the narrative all over again—not during the week she’d lost her life partner and love.
Josie took a hesitant step, and Tara flung up to help her, nearly spilling her coffee.
“Hi! Good morning!” Tara looked at Josie as though Tara herself had spent the past twelve hours drowning. “How did you sleep?”
Cindy was on her feet, too, wringing her hands and hurrying to the coffee pot.
“You want a cup?” Cindy asked. “It’s from this coffee roaster in Capitol Hill. Fancy place.”
“I’ll just have tea,” Josie said, “or water.”
“Why don’t you sit down,” Tara said. “Would you like some toast? Eggs?”
“I can make anything,” Cindy agreed, doting on Josie in a way that suggested Cindy knew all about Josie’s cancer. But Josie guessed that wasn’t a surprise. Josie looked like she was on the brink of dying; she felt like it, too. It was written all over her face.
Her mother knew.
Tara shot Josie a look that meant I’m sorry. She knows .
Josie raised her shoulders and walked to the kitchen table to sit on the other side of Tara. Tara brewed a cup of tea and set it in front of Josie while Cindy set about sweeping butter and jam over a piece of toast and putting it on a plate for Josie. Josie couldn’t remember being doted on by her mother like this—not even when she’d been very small.
Cindy sat down across from Josie and gave her a look of rapt attention. It was clear she wanted to know more about Josie’s cancer. But Josie wasn’t so keen on talking about it this early in the morning, so she filled her mouth with tea and watched the rain.
The three Steiner women fell into a period of silence that lasted nearly forty minutes.
Cindy’s phone rang and rattled them. It was a horrible ringtone, brash and alien, and Cindy muttered that she needed to change it as she hurried into the living room. “Hello, Cindy Steiner speaking.”
Josie and Tara gave one another a meaningful look.
“So?” Josie whispered.
Tara nodded. “I know everything.”
Josie breathed a sigh—but was it a sigh of relief? Or sorrow? Or grief? She didn’t know.
“And can you forgive her?” Josie asked.
Tara hesitated. “Maybe I can.”
Josie felt a gush of love for her sister. This was what she wanted before she had to go.
And here, surrounded by their father’s things, drinking coffee and tea with their mother in a kitchen they’d never known, it was becoming increasingly clear to Josie that she was no longer required—nor really wanted—on planet Earth. She’d done what she’d come here to do. Her stepdaughters were adults; they had lives of their own; their father, Joe, had even remarried last year, offering up a fresh and cancer-free woman for Leah and Violet to be friends with. Josie was exhausted down to her bones. She loved Tara, though. She needed Tara to be safe and secure, and she needed to be loved before Josie left.
Maybe she’ll even fall in love with Johan , Josie thought. Perhaps she’ll be happier than ever before.
Cindy came into the kitchen with some news. “I have to sign a few documents down at the funeral home. After that, I think I’ll go down and visit him.”
It was clear she meant she wanted to visit Bob at the cemetery.
“I’d like it if you two met me at the gravesite,” Cindy said. “But please don’t feel pressured.”
Tara looked sickly pale as though she wanted to protest.
But Josie spoke for both of them before she could. “I want to go.”
Tara rolled her eyes so that their mother couldn’t see. “Okay. Let’s go.”
It wasn’t till a half hour later that Cindy left Tara and Josie alone in the kitchen. With the twenty minutes or so they had before they had to get ready, Tara summed up the dramatic story of Cindy, Bob, and Josie’s real father, Philip, whom she’d never heard of.
Josie wasn’t entirely surprised. It wasn’t the kind of news that rattled her.
But she burned with a question. “Where did Philip go?”
Tara had worked herself up, and it looked as though she was about to cry again.
“I mean,” Josie continued, “if Philip was hanging around, threatening Bob and Cindy in November of 2001, why didn’t he approach me?”
Tara shook her head. “Do you have any memories of older men approaching you back then?”
Josie grimaced and looked at her spider-like hands. She traced her memories through that life-altering autumn and early winter through images of picking Tara up at university, learning about Tara’s pregnancy and finding their childhood home locked up and empty.
“I would have remembered meeting my dad,” Josie said.
“We need to ask Mom,” Tara said. “She owes us the truth. Especially you.”
Josie and Tara went upstairs, changed into jeans and big fuzzy sweaters, and headed out to their rental car to meet their mother at the cemetery where their father was buried. Josie suddenly felt ridiculous for having made Tara get the convertible, and she turned on the heat as soon as they got comfortable and tried to warm her hands on the vents.
“Do you still think of Bob as your dad?” Tara asked as they snaked through the glossy gray roads.
Josie sighed. “I guess so. He’s the only one I ever knew.”
“It’s strange, isn’t it? Nantucket gossip is so powerful. It’s Nantucket’s main energy source, especially through the winters. But how come we never knew Bob wasn’t your dad?”
“I think people were frightened of him,” Josie offered quietly. “They knew not to spread his dirty secrets where he didn’t want them to go.”
Tara nodded.
“I still can’t believe he didn’t kick Mom out when she told him,” Josie offered. “Do you think that means he really loved her?”
“I think he loved her,” Tara said thoughtfully. “But I also think he was frightened of being alone.”
“Aren’t we all?” Josie asked.
Tara smiled sadly. “We’ve both been alone too much.”
“And now Mom will know what it’s like, I guess.”
Tara’s face fell.
But already, they were turning into the parking lot beside the cemetery. The rain hadn’t let up, and as they headed to the big iron gate, they unfurled their umbrellas and tucked themselves close together for warmth. Their mother was waiting for them at the top of the lane in a big raincoat that proved she knew the intricacies of Washington rain. She wasn’t a Nantucket woman any longer.
Josie walked slowly, her arm laced through Tara’s. Cindy seemed anxious to get to the burial plot, as though Bob would say something about how tardy they were. Maybe Cindy would never be able to break out of that pattern. She’d always think Bob was going to be angry with her about something.
Josie’s husband, Joe, hadn’t been like her father. But then again, Joe hadn’t loved Josie very long. So who had won? Cindy and Bob? Or Josie and Joe?
Maybe it wasn’t a competition, Josie thought, smiling to herself.
Bob Steiner was buried three rows from a big black fence and directly next to a friend of his named Steve, who’d passed away three years ago.
“It’s good Steve and Bob are together,” Cindy said as she knelt to touch the dirt over his plot lovingly. “They were always up to no good.”
Josie decided not to ask what that meant. Whatever Bob and Steve had done out west was none of her business.
Cindy continued to gaze down at the burial plot. There wouldn’t be a gravestone for another six weeks, she told her daughters. Cindy sounded filled with regret, as though he should have had a gravestone by now.
“That’s how these things go,” Tara said. “You can’t beat yourself up about it.”
Cindy bowed her head, and her raincoat hood fell. Rain dotted her hair.
“Tara told you, didn’t she, Josie?” Cindy asked, still looking down at the dirt.
Josie made a soft noise in her throat. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could stand out here in the chill. She was okay with dying; she’d made her peace with it. But she didn’t want to die because she’d spent too long at Bob Steiner’s grave.
“She told me,” Josie said.
“Good,” Cindy said. She got to her feet and turned to give Josie a look that startled her. She set her jaw. “I want to tell you how sorry I am. I want to ask for your forgiveness.”
Josie was caught off guard. Leading up to their trip to Seattle, she’d only wanted Tara and Cindy to forgive one another. She hadn’t needed anything from Cindy herself.
“The way we brought you up wasn’t right,” Cindy said, her voice wavering. “When I first realized how he was going to treat you, my darling daughter, I should have left him. But I was weak. I’m still so weak.”
Josie’s arms hung at her sides. The rain pattered strangely on the umbrella over her, and Tara had begun to shiver.
Josie wasn’t sure what came over her after that. But suddenly, she heard herself say, “You should come back to Nantucket with us.”
Cindy’s eyes widened, but she remained quiet.
“I don’t know how much Tara has told you,” Josie said, “but I’ve gone through many treatments, and I’m exhausted. I want nothing to do with all that poison, and I want to live out the rest of my life in peace, no matter how much longer that is.”
Beside her, Tara’s shaking abruptly stopped, and she twisted around to glare at Josie. Cindy remained captivated.
“I want to do everything on my own terms,” Josie offered. “I’ve been dealt a terrible hand, maybe. But I’ve had a beautiful life. I’ve had love. And our life back in Nantucket is truly gorgeous. I hope you’ll come back with us and…” Josie wanted to say wait with me for the end, but it felt too dramatic.
Suddenly, Tara snarled, “She’s been offered an experimental treatment plan in Nantucket, Mom! And she’s refusing it! Because she’s selfish! Because she doesn’t understand how precious any of this is!”
Tara spun around and burst away from Bob’s burial plot, leaving Josie in the rain. Tara’s cries echoed across the foggy gravesite.
Josie watched her go. Tears filled her eyes and made the world even blurrier. But suddenly, she felt something draped around her. It was her mother’s raincoat.
“I’ll talk to her,” Cindy whispered, then ran off, leaving Josie alone in her raincoat. Cindy was already drenched by the time she got to the edge of the cemetery.
As Josie approached her mother and sister, their cries and argumentative words echoed.
“But honey, if she’s in such tremendous pain, doesn’t she have the right to—”
Tara interrupted Cindy, saying, “She doesn’t have the right to bring me back into her life just to die on me!”
“Well, I don’t understand why you two lost touch to begin with,” Cindy called back. “I thought you were always there for each other. I thought—”
“Mom, this is really rich coming from you,” Tara spat. “Need I remind you what you did?”
“I’ll apologize till I’m blue in the face,” Cindy cried. “I know I was wrong. I know I never should have left you. I know, I know, I know.” She wept into her hands.
Josie reached them, sidled past them, and got into their rental car without a word. But what she wanted to say was, This is my life. It’s my decision and has nothing to do with you.
The rainfall increased, and her mother and sister were unable to continue. Soon enough, Tara was weeping and driving them back to their mother’s place, huffing over the steering wheel in such a way that Josie thought they were going to get into an accident. Tara refused to look or speak to Josie.
Back at home, Tara stormed upstairs and left Josie and Cindy in the calm gray light of the living room. Cindy made tea and pulled out a package of cookies, saying, “People brought me too much food. I’m in my sixties and have no appetite.”
“I don’t have an appetite, either,” Josie admitted. “It’s like I can’t enjoy anything I used to enjoy.”
Cindy sighed and looked down at the untouched package. “For what it’s worth, I don’t want you to go, either. But I don’t want to spend our last months fighting. I want you to go wherever you’re going next with fond memories of me. And I want to hold this new chapter in my heart for the rest of my days.”
Josie reached across the sofa and squeezed her mother’s hand.
Maybe this was what she’d come to Seattle for.