Chapter 24
April had come and gone with the typical mud season Maine was known for, the inn's driveway a mess of ruts and puddles, guests tracking in half the yard despite the mats Kate laid everywhere.
Now, with the first week of May ending, spring had finally taken hold with tentative green leaves and the promise of tourists returning to enjoy the warmer climate.
Kate scrubbed mud from the entryway floor to the kitchen when her phone rang. Tom, at the stove, turned to look at her. “Are you going to answer?”
Kate didn't want to answer, her hands were filthy and she had reservations to confirm for Mother's Day brunch. But something made her grab it on the third ring.
“Katherine.”
Kate knew something was wrong the moment she heard Lillian's voice.
For most of her life, she'd been able to read people by tone alone, guests trying to hide complaints, Pop reaching for a memory he couldn't quite catch, Dani winding herself up into a storm.
Lillian had been the exception. Every word she spoke came out polished and controlled, like someone dictating a letter to a courtroom.
But today, there was a faint give in her voice, a thinness that made Kate straighten where she stood.
“I need to speak with all of you,” Lillian said.
Kate pressed her muddy palm against the counter, leaving a smear she'd have to clean later. Outside, she could hear Ben's hammer, steady, rhythmic, fixing shutters that had been loose since the last nor'easter. “Okay. When?”
There was the briefest pause, and Kate could almost imagine Lillian gathering whatever strength she had left.
“Mother's Day Sunday. After dinner. All four of you.”
Kate blinked. “Mother's Day?” This Sunday. Five days away. Mother's Day at the inn was chaos, twenty-three guests already booked for brunch, every table reserved, roses to order, special menu to prepare. They'd all be exhausted by evening.
“Yes. It has to be then.” Lillian swallowed, and for the first time Kate could remember, the sound carried vulnerability. “There are things I can't delay any longer.”
The urgency in her voice made Kate's stomach clench. Five days. Whatever Lillian needed to say couldn't wait longer than five days.
“Are you… is this medical? Should we come sooner?”
“No.” The word came out sharp, more like the Lillian she knew. Then, softer: “No, Katherine. Mother's Day. It has to be Mother's Day. Please.”
The specificity of it, the insistence of that particular day, told Kate everything. This was about her mother. Had to be.
“Fine, I’ll let the others know.”
A soft exhale, relief, fatigue, maybe both. “Four o'clock. After your brunch service.”
She knew their schedule. Of course she did.
“That’s fine,” Kate repeated.
“Thank you, Katherine.”
The line clicked off.
Kate lowered the phone slowly, letting the silence settle around her. The refrigerator hummed in the corner. A seagull cried somewhere outside. Nothing else moved, but the call still felt like it had shifted the whole house off its foundation.
“I assume that was Lillian?” Tom asked.
Kate nodded but didn’t say a word. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the photograph she'd found just yesterday while searching for tablecloths in the attic.
It had been tucked inside her mother's recipe box, hidden between the index cards for apple pie and blueberry muffins.
The edges were worn from being handled. Her mother, thin and obviously dying but smiling softly.
And beside her, Lillian. Touching her shoulder.
Looking at her with an expression Kate didn't have a name for. Regret? Love? Both?
The photo shouldn't exist. Not in the world Kate thought she knew.
The date on the back, written in her mother's careful script: Two weeks before the end. She came back.
Kate stared at it until a floorboard creaked behind her.
“Why do you look like you've seen a ghost?” James asked, appearing in the doorway, his running shoes still untied, laptop tucked under his arm like always.
“Family meeting,” Kate said, closing her hand around the photograph before slipping it back into her pocket. “Family meeting. Now.”
“Bad news?”
“I don't know yet.”
James's face shifted from casual to concerned. “I'll get Dani.”
“Why am I thinking this isn’t good news?” Tom asked.
Dani bounced down the stairs followed by James. “Sorry, I was on the phone with a friend from New York. What’s going on?”
They settled into chairs at the kitchen table, but Kate didn't sit. She couldn't. If she stopped moving, she might think too hard about what five days meant. Why Lillian couldn't wait a week, or two.
“Lillian called,” she said. “She wants to talk to us after the brunch on Mother's Day. Sunday at four o’clock. All of us.”
Dani laughed. “This Sunday? We have so much to do on that day. We'll be exhausted. Why would she pick then to talk when she can talk to us any other day?”
“Because it's Mother's Day,” Tom said tightly, understanding immediately. “Because she's making a point.”
“Or because she's dying and wants to be thought of as some matriarchal authority before she’s gone,” James said quietly, already typing on his laptop.
“Five days' notice? She's not giving us time to find excuses.” He turned the screen toward them.
“Pancreatic cancer, stage four. Average life expectancy after diagnosis is…”
“Stop,” Dani said sharply, interrupting him. “Just stop.”
James closed the laptop. “Sorry. I process through research.”
Kate nodded. “She sounded… different. Weaker. She said please and thank you.”
That stopped them all. Lillian Whitfield didn't say please and rarely said thank you. She commanded, she decreed, she occasionally condescended to request. But please and thank you?
“She knows about the brunch,” Kate added. “Said to come at four, after we’re done.”
“She's been keeping tabs on us,” Tom said, and it wasn't a question.
“Five days,” Dani whispered. “She's giving us five days to prepare for... what? A goodbye? A confession? An apology?”
“Maybe all of it,” Kate said, thinking of the photograph in her pocket.
Dani's eyes grew glassy. “I hate this. I hate that she waited until the last possible moment. Why couldn't she have come back when Mom was sick? When Pop still knew us? When there was time to fix things?”
“Maybe she tried,” Kate said quietly.
They all looked at her.
Kate pulled out the photograph, set it on the table. Her siblings leaned in, Tom picking it up first.
“Is that...?”
“Mom and Lillian. Two weeks before Mom died.”
“That's impossible,” Dani said, snatching the photo. “She never came. We would have known.”
“Would we?” Kate asked. “We were all so angry. Maybe Mom didn't tell us.”
James took the photo next, studying it with his analytical eye. “Look at Mom's face. She's happy. Not just peaceful, but happy.”
They sat with that for a moment, recalibrating everything they thought they knew.
“Whatever she wants to tell us,” Tom said finally, “I bet you anything it's going to change things.”
“Everything's already changed,” James pointed out. “Pop's gone, mentally. The inn's failing. We're all back here pretending we know how to be a family.”
“We're not pretending,” Dani said defensively. “We're trying.”
“Five days,” Kate repeated, bringing them back to the immediate problem.
“We need to be ready. The brunch will be chaos, we'll all be running on fumes, and then we have to sit through whatever Lillian needs to say. What I don’t want is for her to think we’re divided at all.
She needs to accept we’re on the same page and in agreement with… ”
Tom laughed. “With what? We’ve hardly ever agreed on anything.”
Kate smiled. “I’m aware, but just for this situation, can we all pretend?
We don’t have a clue what she wants, but I can promise you it won’t be something we’ll be happy about.
I have a feeling this is some final goodbye looking for absolution.
What we need to do is only promise to discuss amongst the four of us, privately.
Don’t agree to anything, and when we do, we do it together. ”
“Together,” Tom said, and for once it didn't sound like he was planning an escape route.
“Together,” the others echoed.
For a moment, no one moved. Then a smell began to creep into the kitchen, something burning.
“Oh no,” Tom jumped up. “I was making eggs.”
They rushed to the stove where Tom's attempt at scrambled eggs had become a smoking black mass welded to the pan.
“How?” Dani demanded. “How do you burn eggs that badly?”
“I got distracted thinking about Sarah,” Tom answered.
“Tom, you've been distracted your whole life and you've never created charcoal eggs before.”
James grabbed the fire extinguisher. “Should I?”
“No!” Kate grabbed the pan, rushed it to the sink. “Open the windows. If guests smell this they’ll think we should call the fire department.”
They scattered to open windows, Tom apologizing, Dani laughing despite everything, James documenting the disaster with his phone “for posterity.”
Ben appeared in the doorway, drawn by the smoke. “Everything okay?”
“Tom tried to cook,” everyone said simultaneously.
Ben surveyed the scene, the smoking pan, the four siblings frantically waving dish towels at the smoke detector, the photograph still sitting on the table.
“Pizza for lunch?” he suggested mildly.
“Pizza,” they agreed.
As the smoke cleared and they settled back around the table, Ben called in a pizza order.
“I’m glad we’re getting together right now. We need to talk over how Sunday’s going to go,” Tom said, back in lawyer mode. “Who's handling what on Sunday?”
“I've got the kitchen covered,” Kate said. “Marcy and I can handle service.”
“I'll manage the front of house,” Dani added, already making notes on her tablet. “Keep guests happy, keep things moving.”
“I'll handle checkout and technical issues,” James offered.
“And I'll be backup for whoever needs it,” Tom said.