Chapter Seventeen. Riley, Present Day
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
RILEY, PRESENT DAY
Sandra Lennox opens her front door, her smile revealing deep dimples. She runs a hand through her salt-and-pepper curls, making them even more unruly. “It’s been a day. Join me in a glass of wine? It’ll be heroic of you, since then I won’t have to drink alone.”
I like her instantly. “I’ve always been selfless that way,” I joke.
I follow her to the kitchen, where something delicious is simmering in a Crock-Pot.
The kitchen looks as inviting as it smells, with its butcher-board counters, deep window seat lined with orange and blue pillows, and copper pans hanging from a ceiling rack.
Sandra turns down the volume on her iPhone, softening Sheryl Crow’s ballad.
“I love your house,” I tell her.
“Thanks! I just bought it last year,” Sandra says. “I used to live in the city, but I guess I’m more of a country girl at heart. Being surrounded by the woods feels so peaceful. I’ve never slept as well as I do here.”
A black lab with a grizzled gray muzzle appears and nudges my thigh. I reach down to stroke his head.
“Hank pretends he’s never been loved or fed before,” Sandra tells me as she uncorks a bottle of Sancerre. “Don’t fall for it.”
“He’s a sweetheart.” I scratch the soft fur behind his ears.
“I adopted him a couple years ago. It’s harder for old dogs to find a home, but I wanted a senior because he’s so calm around my patients. I swear he helps them open up. So we both got lucky.”
“Do you see patients at your house?”
She nods. “Sometimes. I have an office a few miles away, but certain patients prefer a homey environment.”
Sandra pours us each a generous glass, then touches hers to mine.
“Thank you for finding me.” Her voice thickens. “When you called … it was the first time in years anyone had spoken my mother’s name. Decades, really. It’s worse than feeling like she’s forgotten. Sometimes it’s almost as if she never existed.”
I know a little bit of what that’s like, I think. The erasure of my life, the crashing realization that everything I’d built and become was gone in a matter of days, was something I hadn’t yet fully processed or grieved.
I wasn’t a wife any longer. I might not ever become a mother like I’d hoped. Danny made me feel whole. He was my person. Learning the depth of his betrayal didn’t just break my heart. It shattered my ability to trust my own instincts and decimated my sense of self.
I usually fight to keep my thoughts from going down this track; my energy is focused on forward motion. It must be Sandra who is conjuring the emotions I’ve become good at suppressing. She’s a therapist; she inspires confidence.
But I’m not going to share mine with her. I’m not here for myself. I need answers for Betty.
“I’d love to hear more about your mother,” I say.
Sandra sips deeply from her glass and curls up onto the window seat, gesturing for me to do the same.
“She was confined to a psychiatric institution shortly after I was born. My father divorced her soon afterwards and quickly remarried. She died when I was four. Her diagnosis was schizophrenia. Back then, the treatments were nothing like they are today. They often did more harm than good.”
Sandra reaches into her wallet and pulls out a picture. “This is the only photo of her that I have.”
In the sepia-hued image, I see a version of Sandra. The same smile, those curls. Even in the worn, creased picture, Ivy looks vibrant and kind.
“You look just like her,” I say.
Sandra nods. “My father hated that. And my stepmother hated it even more.”
So Sandra was an outsider in her family, too.
“Sometimes I wonder if it was actually severe postpartum depression. Maybe she was misdiagnosed. With the right medication, my mother might still be here.”
Her face twists, like she’s about to burst into tears, then she regains control. “Tell me more about Betty. Is she your grandmother?”
“I’m her caretaker. I haven’t been working with her for long, so I don’t know her very well.”
“Why is she looking for my mother now, after all these years?” Sandra asks.
“Her husband passed away recently. She seems lonely. She really wanted to reconnect with your mom and a few other college friends. She said they were as close as sisters.”
Sandra nods. “There were four of them.”
I blink in surprise. “How do you know that?”
“My mother kept diaries from the time she was a young girl,” Sandra explains.
“I inherited them along with a box of her things. For so many years, I couldn’t bring myself to look through any of it.
” She half smiles. “Ironic, I know. As a mental health professional I’m all about getting people to confront their demons.
I never truly appreciated how much courage that takes.
But I keep her diaries in my nightstand now.
I’ve practically got them memorized. It’s the only way I can feel close to her. ”
Sandra wraps her arms around her knees and suddenly I see her as a girl, grieving the mother she never knew.
Her accomplishments are impressive: Her private practice appears to be thriving, and her Tudor-style home is surrounded by what looks like ten acres of wooded land.
She received an award from the mayor because of her volunteer work with the city’s unhoused population.
But I sense there’s a hole inside her that nothing can fill, just like the one that exists inside me.
“You don’t happen to know how I can find the other women, do you?” I ask. “Assuming they’re still alive.”
Sandra shakes her head. “I’ve never tried. My mother wrote about the girls of the institute all the time, but then her entries abruptly stopped a few weeks before she was sent away to the psychiatric hospital.”
“The institute?”
“Didn’t you know that’s how they met?” Sandra’s eyebrows knit together. “The Trimble Institute was an offshoot of the psych department at Marquis University. It was run by Dr. Silas Trimble back in the sixties. The four of them were volunteers.”
At least I now know the women were real.
“Dr. Trimble’s grandson might know where the other women are,” Sandra tells me. “He tracked me down a couple of years ago. He wanted to write a book about his grandfather’s work. Nice enough guy, but he was a little all over the place.”
“Do you know his first name?” I ask.
She frowns. “Give me a second … it started with an S, too, but it wasn’t Silas.
Steven? No, wait. Samuel. That’s it. He’s local, or at least he was when he reached out to me, so he should be pretty easy to find.
Can you believe he had the nerve to ask me to give him my mother’s diaries?
He wanted to write a book about his grandfather’s work and he thought they’d be a good source of information. ”
A sound comes from her phone—a trio of high staccato notes—and when Sandra looks down at the screen, her dimples pop again.
“There’s a man I’ve been seeing—it’s newish, but promising. He just texted that he finished work and he’s on his way over for dinner. He’s a carpenter and I met him when I hired him to build this bookshelf.”
She gestures to a beautiful set of shelves filled with books that look well-loved. Scattered among the volumes are healthy green plants and colorful knickknacks.
“It’s gorgeous,” I tell her.
She stands up. “I don’t mean to rush you out,” she says. “You’re welcome to stay and meet him.” The last thing I want to do is intrude on Sandra’s date. Plus, I can tell she wants me to go; she wouldn’t have stood up otherwise.
As I drive down the long private road and Sandra’s house recedes in my rearview mirror, I feel the faint stirrings of an emotion it takes me a moment to identify. It’s hope.
Sandra’s early life couldn’t have been easy, but she has channeled her loss into helping others. Into building a legacy of her own.
For the first time, I wonder if there’s a way I can find new meaning in my life, too. If a fresh start could be possible.