Chapter Nine
A couple of days after Astrid and her mother left for the world cruise, she sent Chase a text letting him know they’d arrived in Australia, and all was well. He hadn’t heard from her in the week since, which he supposed was on purpose.
Deep in thought, he didn’t hear Tristen, his assistant, enter his office with the morning mail. Included was a large manila envelope. He reached for it and recognized the return label was from the Seattle funeral home. The very one in which he’d made his mother’s burial arrangements.
He started to toss it in the garbage but stopped.
It was thick. Thinking it might contain some overlooked paperwork, he set it aside and then later added it to his briefcase to take home.
The only one in the office who knew anything about his mother’s death was his father.
None of his staff was privy to his personal information. He didn’t want or need their sympathy.
—
Later that evening, Chase pulled the manila envelope from his briefcase, resenting the fact that something more might be required of him. To his surprise, sympathy cards spilled onto the kitchen countertop. Even more shocking was how many of them there were.
Chase picked up the first one and saw that it was in a child’s handwriting.
You were the best Sunday school teacher ever.
His mother attended church. That was almost laughable.
Chase couldn’t make himself stop reading the cards. One after another, all strangers, until he reached one with Maisy’s name on it, along with that of Eileen Gallagher. Maisy’s mother? Possibly the grandmother she’d mentioned.
His anger was immediate. Before he could think better of it, he searched until he found her contact information. He pushed the buttons so hard he nearly flipped the phone out of his hand.
“Hello?” she answered, sounding tentative.
“Why did you attend my mother’s services?” he demanded, his voice trembling with outrage. Not giving her time to respond, he said, “What business was this of yours?”
“Chase?”
“Who else do you think this is?”
“You’re right,” she said in a calming voice, “it wasn’t any of my business. I’d never met your mother and—”
“My point exactly,” he reiterated, barely able to contain his anger.
She didn’t say anything until the silence became uncomfortable.
“Answer me,” he insisted.
“I will, but first you answer me—are you angry because I was at her services, or because you weren’t?”
“No,” he nearly shouted.
“Are you sure?” she demanded.
“No,” he shouted back before he realized what he’d said.
No one talked to him the way Maisy Gallagher did, and he didn’t like it.
This woman confused him more than anyone he’d ever encountered.
She had no idea of how lost he’d been when his mother had disappeared from his life.
With her gone, his father became adrift himself, caught up in his own grief.
As a result, Simon had abandoned Chase to a series of nannies and housekeepers until he was old enough to be sent to a boarding school.
Only a boy, he’d often cried himself to sleep, feeling truly alone in a world that felt stark and empty.
“Are you finished yelling at me?” she asked, breaking into his thoughts.
Chase didn’t realize he’d been shouting quite so loud.
It took him a moment to understand he wasn’t angry with Maisy as much as himself.
These cards, the genuine sense of loss conveyed in the comments, unsettled him.
According to these cards, his mother had been a good friend, a mentor, and an AA sponsor.
These notes proved that he knew next to nothing about the woman who’d been his mother.
Worse, he had scorned every overture she’d made to reach him over the years, wanting nothing to do with her.
Her first attempt came when he was living on the East Coast in a boarding school.
He held on to that letter for a long time before he hardened his heart and tore it up.
Over the years, there’d been intermittent attempts, all of which he’d ignored.
He told himself he wanted nothing to do with her.
What he really wanted, he acknowledged now, was to hurt her as badly as she’d hurt him, only to discover that he’d hurt and cheated himself just as much.
Taking in a deep, calming breath, he spoke again. “I apologize…I’m at a loss here.”
“A loss?” she asked.
“The funeral home mailed me an envelope filled with all the sympathy cards. I assumed Michelle didn’t have a friend in the world. Clearly, I was wrong.”
“And shocked,” Maisy added.
“True.” His hand relaxed. He’d been holding the phone so tightly that his fingers ached. “I still don’t understand what prompted you to attend.”
He could almost feel her smile coming over the line. “I went because I was afraid there wouldn’t be anyone there to mourn her. It was presumptuous, I know.”
This woman. He’d never met anyone like her. He didn’t understand why she would care about the funeral for a woman she’d never known. “Tell me about her services.”
“What would you like to know?”
“Whatever you can tell me. How many attended? Did you talk to anyone? If so, what did they have to say?”
Maisy continued speaking for several minutes, filling in details that utterly shocked him.
His mother was loved, treasured, an active participant in her sobriety, helping others obtain the same sense of peace she’d found.
He couldn’t have been more shocked if Michelle had walked through the front door and stood directly in front of him.
“Pastor Jameson, the minister who led the celebration of life, knew her well and was clearly fond of her. Several people from her AA group spoke.” She repeated what Sandy and Gwen had shared and the people she’d met later at the wake.
“Grams decided we should attend that afterward.” Maisy paused and laughed softly.
“She’s always on the lookout for good funeral recipes. ”
“What the…?”
“Never mind, it isn’t important.”
“So, it was your grandmother who went with you?” He reached for the sympathy card and read the name: “Eileen Gallagher.”
“That’s her. The luncheon was held in the church basement and every table was filled. Your mother had quite an impact on the community and her church. I so wish you had been there, Chase. It seems your mother was an amazing woman.”
Chase felt sick at heart. “Tell me more.”
“In the eulogy, Pastor Jameson quoted a verse from the book of Joel. I wish I could remember it verbatim. It’s the part that says God would restore the years the locusts had eaten.”
“Locusts? What has that got to do with anything?” He was oblivious to any connection between his mother’s life and pesky bugs.
“From everything you told me, your mother had wasted years drowning herself in alcohol. Once she had sobriety, she became a new woman, and the years lost in addiction were restored tenfold in the help, inspiration, and charity work she did for others. She was deeply loved.”
Chase hardly knew what to think. “That’s apparent from the cards I read.”
He would never have known any of this if not for Maisy, he understood.
The sense of loss was profound. His mind whirled with regret.
Michelle had tried to reach him by phone several times in the last year.
He refused her calls at the office, and he’d blocked her from his personal cell phone and social media.
When she’d written, he’d tossed her letters, refusing to read them.
After all her attempts came silence, a silence he welcomed, wanting nothing more to do with her.
“Chase?”
“Sorry,” he said, when he realized his silence had dragged on. “Thank you, Maisy. I apologize for yelling at you.”
“No apology necessary. By the way…”
“Yes?”
“Did you ever pay it forward like I asked?”
“Not yet,” he said, grinning now. “But I have an idea of what I’m going to do. I figured the check I wrote to the country club wasn’t what you had in mind. Am I right?”
“Yes. But you say you have an idea?”
“I do.”
“Tell me,” she urged. “I want to hear about it.”
He hesitated and knew this was not the time or the place. “I will after I’ve followed through,” he promised.
“Soon, though, right?” She sounded both pleased and anxious.
“Soon,” he reiterated. And when she did hear, it would be big.