Chapter Three
Fortunately, the receptionist at the Taber Inn isn’t a familiar face and doesn’t appear to know who I am, so I check in and head up to the room without the additional headache of small talk. There was a package waiting for me at check-in, which has the name of the lawyer’s office on it.
I’d let them know where I was staying, so they’d dropped it off here before I arrived. After a long shower, a text to let Kevin know I’ve arrived and setting my phone and laptop on to charge, I call the lawyer’s office.
There is no reason why I have to hang around and wait until three tomorrow afternoon. It seems pointless. I want this over and done with. Fortunately, they can accommodate the change. Only saying they must let the other parties know and if it is an issue, they will call back. I’m not sure who the other parties are, but presumably dad left some of his things to other people in his life.
The room is nice enough, cosy and homey, a little chintzy for my tastes like a typical small-town bed-and-breakfast, but the four-poster bed is comfortable. Part of me wishes I’d booked a hotel outside of town, but I’m not a coward, at least, not that much of one.
I try to write to keep my mind occupied, but the words aren’t coming, the characters stubbornly quiet or trapped inside a box in my head. Larry Pruitt sent me several emails since I learnt of my dad’s passing, so I click over to them and read through the information again. I know where the law office is. There are only a handful of them in town. This one is close to dad’s house. We’re meeting to discuss his estate and to do the reading of the will.
For a while, I ponder who the other parties can be. A woman he’d been in a relationship with? There were no other blood relatives, just me. A wave of guilt hits me again. I terrorize myself with thoughts of him dying alone, but there must have been people around who cared about him. Who thinks his daughter is a bitch for staying away? I’ll scandalize them even more when they realise I’m not planning on staying for the funeral.
Kevin tried to talk me out of that. He thought I’d never get closure. I’m not sure I can bring myself to do it, though. I’d feel like a fraud. Looking back at the package I dropped on the bed when I first came in, I take a huge lungful of air. I felt a little claustrophobic and open a window, but it isn’t enough.
Walking around town isn’t an option. I’m under no illusion people won’t recognise me, even though the owner here didn’t. There is one place I can go where I won’t have to face anyone, but that is just as bad as the thought of speaking to people.
Opening the package, I tip out the papers but it’s the keys that my eyes laser in on. Dad’s house. After a solid five-minute pep talk, I snatch up the keys, grab my purse and coat, and head out.
The house hasn’t changed. I always hated the stairs leading up to it, especially when I was trying to sneak in or out, more than a little inebriated. Sitting in the car, I try to gather some strength.
This is the house where my brother died, the house my mom ran from when she could no longer stand the sadness and despair after her beloved son’s suicide, and she followed him into death by jumping off a bridge in East Hartford. Dad hadn’t even noticed she was gone. He was out on the boat long before I left for school. She waited until I left before she got in the car and drove away from us forever.
Like we meant nothing to her.
So much tragedy, so many awful memories. It no longer seems real. Like I’m staring at a house I didn’t spend the first eighteen years of my life in. I can’t sit out here forever. Today should hopefully be the only time I need to be here. I should get it over and done with.
My hands shake as I slot the key into the lock. Stepping over the threshold, I am assaulted by an avalanche of memories. Good and bad. Happy family evening meals, or being yelled at about doing homework. Our two dogs barking and following my brother around. Then, hearing my mom scream when she found my brother, or my parents arguing all the time. And dad’s deafening silence when they were both gone.
The place feels like it’s been empty for a while, even though dad has only been gone a week. I close the door behind me and step beyond the entryway. All the décor, the furniture, even the old rugs on the hardwood floor are the same, a little more threadbare than before. It’s neat as a pin. Nothing out of place, and despite the feeling of emptiness, there is a faint smell of lemons.
There are no unnecessary items adorning the surfaces. Not like when mom was alive. All her trinkets and vases of flowers had gone long before I left for the last time.
The place is a mausoleum.
I wanted to leave this house after mom and Darren were gone. I hated it here. I’d mostly feared my brother’s ghost. I’d never seen his, or any ghost in fact, but being a scared fifteen-year-old, knowing your brother breathed his last in the room next door wasn’t easy.
It was only my friends who got me through that dark time. Dad never tried, too caught up in his own grief to care he still had another child. They were friends I’d distanced myself from when I left, friends I hadn’t bothered to keep in touch with, and didn’t even know where they were or what had happened with their lives. I let myself briefly wonder what happened to Bennett, but push him out just as quickly.
“Shit,” I mutter, dropping the keys into my pocket. I put a hand on the wall to steady myself, getting my bearings. I glance up the stairs, my nose wrinkling at the thought of going up there.
He died in this house, too . It really is a mausoleum. I hate being here.
Little things creep in as I move around the house. His slippers by the fire. His favourite coffee mug was on the counter in the kitchen, a spoon inside, ready and waiting for when he got out of bed to prepare it. I try not to think about buying him that mug. The garden looks well cared for. That isn’t a surprise. Dad spent a lot of time back there. Anything to get out of this house.
He rose at three and left for work, not getting home till well after school let out, then he’d go out to the garden. He fed me, he clothed me, and made sure I had a comfortable place to sleep, but he was no longer a parent to me. No matter how I tried, I couldn’t make him see me.
Shaking out of the melancholy, I brace myself with another firm pep talk, then head upstairs. I’m surprised to see boxes in the hallway outside the bedrooms. Someone has already been in and boxed up his belongings. The enormous sense of relief I feel is overwhelming, even though I have no clue who to thank.
There is no evidence around of who might have done it. I had planned on hiring someone to clear the house. Peering into his room, I see the bed is stripped. There doesn’t appear to be anything in here.
I pass by another open door and only spare a brief glance inside. Darren’s room was emptied and left that way after he died. Mom had been clinging to it all, spending hours sitting on his bed crying. Dad tore it all out and threw it away. He never even let me keep anything, doing it on a night while I was sleeping over at a friend’s house.
Part of me always thought that was what pushed mom over the edge. He’d taken it all away from her, her place to grieve, her place where she could feel close to my brother.
I’d hated him for that. The only thing I had left of my brother was a sweatshirt I’d stolen one day when I snuck out, and it was colder than I thought. I’d stuffed it in my closet when I got home, forgetting all about it. Until everything else was gone, then I went searching for it.
My room was last, at the end of the corridor. The door closed over. I expect he did the same with my stuff. I’d taken everything I wanted when I got in my car and drove away to college.
I was stunned when I opened the door and saw things from my childhood. My bed, still made with the pale blue bedspread, the excessive number of pillows and soft toys. The cork board on the walls with my photographs, a bookshelf with more photo frames and the stones I’d collected, than actual books. My eyes close and a couple of hot tears escape. I’m not sure what to think of this, that he kept my things when he threw away all traces of my brother.
A sound downstairs has my heart galloping out of my chest and I spin around and hurry out into the hallway just as a woman’s voice calls out.
“Elle? Is that you?”
I don’t recognise the voice, but whoever it is, they know me. I come to the top of the stairs and look down to see a woman around my age. She has blonde hair piled up on her head haphazardly and is wearing an old green jacket over jeans and a red top. And she is very pregnant. Recognition suddenly hits me, and fresh tears fill my eyes.
“Dawn?” I whisper, but she hears.
Her head tilts up. My childhood best friend, the girl I did everything with, the girl I texted and called a few times before completely ghosting her after I left Mystic. I don’t know what I am expecting, but the beautiful, huge smile that spreads across her lips is not it.
“Get your perfect ass down here, missy,” she points at the floor by her feet. I head down and her grin only widens. “You haven’t changed a bit.”
“ You have,” I indicate her belly.
“Oh, this,” she rolls her eyes, one hand rubbing over her protruding stomach. “I’m an old hand at this now. This is our third.”
“Wow,” I reach the ground floor. “Congratulations.”
She waves a dismissive hand, then looks me over again. “You okay?”
I decide to be honest. Even though I’ve not seen this woman for years, everything about her is putting me at ease. We were so close growing up. I feel like a complete and utter asshole as sympathy fills her eyes when I shake my head.
“I’d hug you but this,” she points. “Gets in the way of everything.” Looking around, her nose wrinkles. “Saw the New York plates and knew it must be you,” she says, without me having to ask. “We live just up the block and I’m still a nosey jerk, even more of a curtain twitcher in my old age.”
A laugh bubbles out of me, but it fades. “Why are you being so nice to me?” I ask.
“You had your reasons,” she tells me. “I would never hold it against you, Elle. Now,” she claps her hands, and it makes me jump. She always was like a tornado, sucking people into her vortex whether they wanted to be there or not. “I was heading out for my hot chocolate fix because, for some insane reason, I’m not allowed caffeine. So, let’s go.”
“Dawn, I’m not-”
“Nope, no, absolutely not. You are going to face this town. What better way to do it than with me at your side,” she winks. “Grab your shit and let’s get out of here. This place is giving me the willies. ”
With that, she turns and heads out of the front door. I hurry after her when she reaches for the rail to help her down the steps. She waves me off.
“Don’t you start. I’m pregnant, not an invalid. Chop, chop, I’m mid-crave and if you hold me up much longer, I’m likely to rip someone’s head off.”
Okay then. I grab my purse and the keys, lock the house up and follow her down the steps. I offer to drive, but the place she wants to go is a short walk away, and she says it does her good to get off her fat ass and move around.
“I hate to ask,” I start as we walk down the sidewalk to the end of the street.
“Tom Greenwood,” she says, waving her hand at me, showing her wedding and engagement ring. “That boy knocked me up right out of college and we’ve never looked back.” She laughs when my eyes widen. “Don’t worry, I love the big lug. We’re doing great and even though his two other children are terrors sent to drive me mad, we’re happy. At least I will be when this one makes an appearance.”
I’m not sure what else to say but Dawn has no compunction about filling the silence, telling me about her kids, her job at the cafe we’re heading to, hence why she is craving their hot chocolate because she knows they make the best.
She doesn’t ask me any questions, doesn’t look at me with pity or anger, she’s just Dawn. And thank God for that, because being at that house stripped me of everything. I didn’t think I could get through another day here until this ball of sunshine grabbed me by the hand and dragged me back into the present.
“Dawn,” I say as we reach the door to the café.
“You don’t have to say it,” she says softly.
“You don’t even know what I was going to say,” I protest.
“Sure I do, I know you Elle. I always have. The last few years, forget about them. I want to hear all about your career. I’ve read all your books, by the way. Who knew you had such a filthy mind?” she giggles. “In fact, you’re the reason we had our middle child. Now, let’s go, no being maudlin, or apologies, I won’t hear it and I’m pregnant, humour me,” she takes my hand, her head tilts slightly. “Okay?”
After a few moments searching her face for any signs, this is all for show. I nod my head and she leads me inside the café.