Chapter 6
Anne
Chris called the night of the funeral. “Anne. How are you?”
The sound of his familiar voice made my eyes well up.
All my grief, all my confusion, all the words I’d swallowed and stuffed away all day, burst out.
“I’m fine. Well, not fine, obviously. I mean, my dad just died.
” I stifled a groan. Me and my stupid mouth.
“Which you know. Since I’m here. It’s just so unfair.
Dad was only fifty-seven. Fifty-eight? I don’t even know.
I’m a terrible daughter. But he wasn’t that old. He didn’t deserve to die.”
“No one deserves to die,” Chris said. Because he treated patients—children—who died all the time.
I swallowed. “You’re right. I only meant…”
“He could have had risk factors you didn’t know about,” Chris said.
“Yeah, like climbing on roofs.” But I couldn’t be mad at Dad. Dad was gone. It was easier, safer, to be angry with Joe. I snuffled. “That’s what he was doing when he had the heart attack. He was up repairing a roof and he fell.”
“Well. That was his job,” Chris said reasonably.
“I just…I can’t believe he’s dead.”
“It’s normal to feel a sense of shock when you lose someone you care about,” Chris said in his bedside manner when what I really needed was a hug. Or a bracing slap. Or a muzzle. “You need to remember that life goes on, and so will you.”
“But I miss him,” I said. “I missed you, too. I miss you.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.”
You’re still not here for me.
But that wasn’t fair, either. Chris couldn’t abandon his patients. And if he seemed the teensiest bit detached, well, he was a doctor. He was used to compartmentalizing. He couldn’t do his job if he lost it over every tragic death.
“How was the service?” he asked.
I mopped my streaming eyes. “Well, I didn’t throw myself on top of Dad’s casket, begging to be buried with him. So that was good.”
There was silence.
“Probably because Dad didn’t have a casket. He was cremated.” Shut up, shut up. “Did I tell you that already?”
“You mentioned it, yes.”
Right. Oversharing was my thing, not his.
I took a deep breath, forcing myself to edit my thoughts, to give him only the best parts of myself, to distill my day into short, curated sentences like status updates, the way I did when we went out together with his friends.
The light from the stained glass windows in colored splinters on the floor.
The lilacs trembling in the shadow of the pines.
Joe’s hard arm around my shoulders, pulling me into the comforting warmth of his body…
I crumpled a tissue in my fist. “We had a bagpiper.”
“Sounds very picturesque,” Chris said indulgently.
I thought of the tourists’ cell phones flashing in the sun.
Chris’s family used to rent a vacation home on Mackinac.
We might have been childhood sweethearts, like Anne Shirley and Gilbert Blythe.
Not that I’d spent much time with the flatlander kids—the trolls, we called them, since they came from under the bridge.
“It was.” I pulled the old flannel shirt closer, taking comfort in its warmth. “Dad would have loved it.”
“How’s your mother?”
“Okay.” I settled against the wooden headboard, trying not to feel like I was on a psychiatrist’s couch. “She won’t really say. Oh, and I colored my hair. Battle-ready red. The bathroom looked like the set of the Red Wedding.”
“You colored your hair,” Chris repeated, ignoring the Game of Thrones reference. I’d watched the series without him, bingeing on my couch while he stemmed the real tide of death at the hospital.
All that red… I sucked in my breath. Was there blood when Dad fell? Was that why Mom was upset? But he died from a heart attack.
I batted the intrusive thought away.
“Do you want to see?” I shifted again, the shirt falling open as I curled my legs under me, switching the call to video.
Chris’s face popped up on the screen. I angled my phone so he could see me.
And the rainbow mountain of plush animals behind me on the bed.
My open suitcase was in the background. My clothes were scattered on the floor.
“Very bright,” Chris said.
I made a face. “Is that like ‘picturesque’?”
He smiled. “Your students will love it.” Which didn’t answer my question.
“Did you get my flight info?” I asked.
“Yeah. Tell you what, why don’t you Uber to my apartment? You can let yourself in, and I’ll be home as soon as I can.”
He wasn’t coming to the airport. Disappointment needled my heart. Still…Home, he’d said. As if I belonged, as if we belonged together. “Sure.”
“I might be late.”
I understood. If something came up, if someone needed him at the hospital, my feelings couldn’t be allowed to matter. “The thing is…” I heard myself say, “I might stay a couple more days.”
“Is everything all right?”
“Everything’s fine,” I lied. “It’s only…This could be my chance to make things right with Mom.” A reset. A fresh start. I was good at those. At starting, not following through.
“Anne, you can’t fix your father’s death.”
“No, but I can be here for her. I feel guilty I didn’t spend more time with Dad before…” I gulped. “Before.”
“You have to do what you think is best.”
“What do you think?” I pressed. Was I looking for permission to leave? Or encouragement to stay?
“I think time is a luxury not everyone can afford. Once I have a diagnosis and a treatment plan in place, any time I spend with someone is time I could be caring for another patient.”
A chill chased up the back of my arms. That someone…Did he mean me?
It was as if a window had opened onto our relationship and a cold wind blew through.
—
The next morning, there were tiny gaps in the living room, as painful and noticeable as missing teeth. Dad’s boots by the porch door, gone. The bowl on the kitchen counter (a pinch pot I’d made in fourth grade) that had held the jumbled contents of his pockets, empty.
I refilled my father’s coffee mug—i turn wood into things. what’s your superpower?—feeling myself slip back to those early days of the pandemic, when the world I knew had been upended.
My mother blew through the house like a wind off the lake, rattling everything in her wake. “You better start packing. You’re going to be late.”
The refrain of my childhood.
“I was thinking I might change my flight. Go home Wednesday, maybe.”
She shook out the blanket on the couch before refolding it.
Which my brain took as some sort of signal to fill the silence. “I already talked to Chris. It doesn’t make any difference to him. He has to work anyway.” My mother should understand that. She worked all the time.
A sharp look over the blanket. “Don’t you have to teach tomorrow?”
I cradled the warmth in my hands for comfort. I hated dumping on Sarah. But she was my friend as well as my boss. She would understand I needed to be home right now. “My students can get along without me for a couple of days.”
My mother snorted. “Better hope the school doesn’t know that.”
“Always so encouraging. Thanks, Mom.”
“Don’t get your panties in a twist. I just meant good jobs aren’t easy to come by.”
Certainly not on the island.
My mother picked up Dad’s pile of sudoku puzzle books from the floor beside his chair and dropped it in the recycling bin.
A spasm gripped me, grief or irritation. “Could you stop that?” I asked.
“What?”
“Throwing all Dad’s stuff away.” As if she couldn’t wait to clear his presence from our lives.
She looked down at the green metal thermos in her hands. “What else should I do with it?”
“You could keep it. To…to honor his memory.”
“I don’t need a bunch of stuff around the house to remember your father.”
“Maybe I do.”
“You don’t live here anymore.”
I winced. True or not, the words stung. “I could still help. We could sort through his things together.” Maybe I could save him—the things he’d touched and used and loved—from her.
“I don’t need your help.”
My heart burned. I was her only daughter. I was all she had. And she was all I had left. “Maybe I need you.”
My mother’s gaze met mine for a long moment. A twitch passed across her face, a…softening? I held my breath. I wanted desperately to turn the page, start a new chapter in our relationship.
“I love you, Anne,” she said finally. “But it’s time for you to grow up.”