Chapter 3
Anne
“What are you doing?” my mother demanded.
I straightened from the sink, pushing my oozing hair out of my eyes. “Coloring my hair.”
“Your hair and everything else.”
My gaze flitted around the bathroom, taking in for the first time the red dye spattering the white tiled floor and staining the porcelain sink. “I’ll clean up,” I promised.
My mother shook her head. “There’s no time. We’ll be late to the wake. Honestly, Anne, I wish you’d think before you start something.”
I did think. I thought all the time. Just not, apparently, about the right things at the right time.
Finding the box of red-hot hair color under the bathroom sink—left over from my teens—had seemed like a sign from the universe or a message from my dad.
Be brave. Be bold. Be happy. Not Make a mess re-creating a crime scene in your mother’s bathroom.
My hair was still damp when we arrived at the parish hall basement.
The cold struck through to my scalp. The air was thick with the smell of drying coats, beeswax, and bad coffee.
My parents’ neighbors and friends milled around, saying the kinds of things people apparently said in the face of death.
“He was a great guy.” “We’re going to miss him.
” My father wasn’t much of a churchgoer, but everybody loved him.
Photographs (Dad, twinkling from under the brim of his Detroit Lions cap; Dad, uncomfortable in a suit on his wedding day; Dad, posing with me and a fish as big as I was) covered the long folding table, surrounded by plates of brownies, lemon bars, and chocolate chip cookies—the ladies of the Altar Guild paying tribute to his memory with baked goods. Burnt offerings.
I glanced hastily away from the wooden box that held Dad’s cremated remains, a bubble of hysterical laughter rising in my throat.
Anne of Green Gables was an orphan, I reminded myself. So was Heidi. Jane Eyre. Most of the Disney princesses.
But in real life, being an orphan—well, half an orphan—sucked. I missed my dad so much, his quiet, solid presence, his unquestioning support. There was an empty space where he should be, in the room. In my heart. Without him, I felt untethered, a balloon drifting in the void.
“Annie, darling.” I was enveloped in strong, soft arms and a cloud of patchouli.
Zoe Heller, who had married my old English teacher and now worked for Mom.
I looked hopefully around for her wife. Mrs. Powell had challenged and encouraged me, proofread my college applications and written recommendation letters.
“Anne.” My former teacher smiled kindly. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
I gulped. But before I could frame a reply, another neighbor spoke up.
“We haven’t seen you around here in a while,” Mrs. Johnson said. Half judgment, half statement of fact.
As if I would miss my father’s wake. “Um, no. Thank you for coming,” I said, using the phrase I’d found online (“best reply to condolences,” according to Google).
Zoe squeezed me again. “It must be such a comfort to dear Maddie, having you home.”
Over her shoulder, I watched my mother drop a half-empty Styrofoam cup into a black plastic trash bag. She didn’t seem in need of my comfort. She’d consistently rejected it, in fact. But maybe keeping busy was how she dealt with grief. How she dealt with everything.
“…a terrible loss for you,” Mrs. Johnson was saying. “God must have needed a carpenter in heaven.”
“He has Jesus.”
Her eyes widened. Crap. I recognized that look, the kind I’d been receiving all my life. Mrs. Powell pressed her lips together. A hot flush swept my face.
I disentangled from Zoe. “Excuse me,” I mumbled, and escaped to the bathroom.
I did my business and then lingered, texting Chris, hiding out from the looks and the whispers. “It must be such a comfort to dear Maddie, having you home.” Ha.
I ran warm water over my hands, staring at my reflection in the mirror.
Against my bright red hair, my face was starkly white.
My supposedly waterproof mascara had collected in sad black smudges under my eyes, making me look more a manic raccoon than the person I’d tried so hard to become—a responsible high school teacher, a fully functioning adult.
“You can do this,” I told my reflection bracingly. “Get back out there. Fake it.” Which sounded ominously like the sort of dating advice my college roommate used to give me our freshman year.
I wiped my eyes and dried my hands on my black skirt and went out to help my mother bus the refreshment table. At least if I were clearing cups, keeping the urns filled with coffee and hot water, I wouldn’t have to listen to any more meaningless words of sympathy.
Someone was already with her. My eyes narrowed. Joe Miller. Of course.
He was dressed as if he’d come straight from work, in jeans and scuffed boots.
At some point, he’d ditched the faded Red Wings cap and the jacket, so that his thick brown hair fell over his forehead.
His shoulders were a lot broader than they’d been at fifteen.
As I watched, he said something to my mother that made the hard line of her mouth soften in a smile.
Jealousy stabbed me, sharp and shameful.
“Anne!”
I turned to see Daanis—my playmate, my partner in crime, my very best friend since kindergarten—coming toward me with her arms outstretched and sagged in relief. With Daanis, I could be myself. When she hugged me, we fit together the way we always had.
Except…her hard, round little belly pressed against me.
“You’re pregnant again!” I exclaimed and then bit my tongue. Not something you blurted to a woman with a bump, not even your best friend.
But she nodded, beaming.
“When? How?” I demanded.
“The baby’s due in August.” Her dark eyes sparkled with laughter. “Your boyfriend is the doctor. He can explain it to you.”
I hugged her again. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You weren’t here.”
My heart hiccupped. We weren’t as close as we had been.
When her daughter, Rose, was born two years ago, I’d been barred from visiting because of the pandemic.
But I’d stood outside her window with a bouquet of pink balloons.
And when I went back to Chicago, we’d FaceTimed every day.
Well, almost every day. Daanis was busy with her baby, and I was worrying about Chris and trying desperately to connect with my students on Zoom.
“I came for Christmas,” I reminded her. The last time I’d seen Dad. I swallowed the lump in my throat.
Chris had spent the holidays with his parents.
“It’s not that you’re not welcome,” Chris had said when he revealed his plans. “It’s just…”
That his mother did not like me.
“We’re not engaged,” I’d said, finishing his sentence to mask my hurt. Not even officially living together.
Couldn’t blame that on his mother, either. It was the pandemic’s fault.
Although sometimes I wondered if Chris liked living apart.
If he needed an occasional respite from my socks on the floor, my dishes in the sink, the scribbled-on notes and receipts I left scattered around.
Which…You know what? It was fine. Sometimes it was a relief for me, too, not to jump up to clean every little thing the second I was done.
But I spent the nights he wasn’t at the hospital in his Lincoln Park apartment. He kept a toothbrush and boxers at my place. Moving in together was only a matter of time. Of timing.
Chris had had the grace to look embarrassed. “We’ve always been just family for the holidays. After the last two years, I owe my mother that much.”
“I understand,” I’d assured him with superhuman poise.
“We’ll be together New Year’s.”
“New Year’s Eve,” I clarified.
“Just the two of us.” He kissed me softly, rewarding me for not making a fuss. “I can’t wait.”
And so I’d rushed through the visit with my parents, skipping out on Mom when she went into the shop to fill online orders for fudge, begging off Dad’s invitation to go snowshoeing to catch an earlier flight back to Chicago.
I’d stopped by Daanis’s house to drop off presents.
But I hadn’t truly made time for her. I hadn’t made time for any of them.
Regret burned my eyeballs.
“I barely knew myself at Christmastime,” Daanis was saying.
That she was pregnant, she meant.
I nodded, my throat unexpectedly thick. We used to share everything, our hopes and dreams, our fears and feelings, what mean thing Sabrina had said in the lunchroom, what annoying thing Joe had done that day.
I knew about her first kiss (Zack, in seventh grade).
I called her when I lost my V-card (to a guy in my Studies in Fiction class, who spent the rest of the quarter ducking his head every time he passed my desk).
Life on the island sometimes seemed a world away.
But we still texted. She would have told me if her period was even a day late.
Or so I’d thought.
“I love your hair color,” she said. “Like high school!”
I touched the ends self-consciously. “I found an old box under the sink.”
“I guessed.” She regarded me in the old way, like my best friend, intuiting all the things I couldn’t find words for. “I’m so sorry about your dad. How’s Maddie holding up?”
“Oh.” I shrugged. “You know Mom.”
And that was the thing. She did. She knew me. She squeezed my arm. “You let me know if you need anything. Or if she does.”
I glanced toward the coffee service. Somehow Joe had persuaded my mother to sit down in one of the basement’s molded plastic chairs, a paper plate of cookies on her knee, a glass of water at her elbow.
“You want a drink?” I asked abruptly.
“I can’t,” Daanis said with regret.
Right. No alcohol. “I meant…” I flapped my hand toward the big silver urns. “Coffee? Tea? Water?”
“I have to pee every five minutes as it is.” Daanis smiled in apology. “Plus, I promised Zack I’d be home in time to kiss Rose good night.”
“Okay. Well.” I stood there, feeling oddly displaced. “Thanks for coming.”
“I love you, too,” Daanis said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
At the funeral.