Chapter 45 - Kate
KATE
For death remembered should be like a mirror.
Kate is running hard. It is all she can think to do.
Sitting still certainly doesn’t work. But this pounding in rhythm along the old seawall, stretching her muscles, her heart racing, at least stops her from hitting something.
She is sad and angry and, most of all, frustrated.
Furious with the frustration of not being able to conquer what she feels now, and unable to subsume the eruption of pain from the past. Her parents’ deaths, her failed marriage, the weight of carrying this, and bringing up the girls.
Those teenage years. Doug running off to be Dougie.
She, hanging on, keeping up the pretense of calm, not wanting to scare the girls with her rage and fear.
Then Alice and the cruel joke of the same disease stalking her.
The loss of Alice was the hardest to bear.
She was still unable to understand why one sister lived and one had died.
Kate stops and leans over, hands on her thighs, panting.
She recalls Linda’s words: It is like asking, why isn’t the sun the moon?
It just isn’t. This does help. As her breath slows, something eases.
There really is no reason why someone dies and someone lives.
For the first time, she feels the logjam of her guilt shifting.
Beyond tears, Kate spins on her heel and turns for home.
Her renewed movement builds momentum, dislodging her guilt further and allowing her grief to flow.
And now she thinks of Bardy. The man she likes so much.
A man who, in some way or another, seems to see in color.
A good man. But never destined to be her man.
She wishes she had held out, not let him in. Then it would be easier.
The closer she gets to home, the more Kate feels like she is now running back over trodden ground.
No longer running away but returning to something.
She knows exactly what she wants to paint.
Has the bones of the painting already. She can see the finish of it in her mind as clearly as the sweep of the creek in front of her, which is taking her home.
For the first time, she understands what Alice said: “Katie, you need to show what no one else sees.”
It is a story she is going to tell. It was always going to be that.
But it will also evoke all that she feels in that liminal space between sea and sky.
For it is there that she now knows she can find her sister and paint her own pain.
For once, not turning away. This will be for a sister who left before saying goodbye.
That was Alice’s gift. Kate’s gift will be this painting.
Doing what her sister told her to: “Paint how you see the world, Katie.”
Now she is ready to acknowledge her deepest grief. She realizes that by expressing it, she will find hope. She thinks this is something her sister had always understood.
A final gift from Alice.
As she turns onto the path that leads to her cottage, she can see the end of a car poking out from her driveway. She recognizes it at once.
Linda has come to see her.