Chapter 6. Cait
CAIT
Hours after they landed at JFK, picked up the car rental, and devoured a round of McDonald’s fries and chocolate milkshakes, Cait and the twins arrived at the Folly. As soon as they pulled into the driveway, the twins erupted into an argument over who could say hello to their grandparents first.
“You can say hello together,” Cait shouted as she parked the car. The twins quieted. They’d been traveling for fourteen hours, and her head throbbed from drinking on the plane. She wished she could bypass the greetings that awaited, collapse onto her childhood bed, and—for the love of God—sleep.
It was just after five but already dark and snowy, the house lit up from within.
The stairs to the wraparound porch were decorated with snow-covered pumpkins and bright yellow mums. Despite everything that had happened there, the house was still more home to her than any place she’d ever lived.
Her father had always assumed the property would be passed down to one of the four, but after Topher died and Cait moved to London, that possibility became less of a reality.
Maggie had no use for a five-bedroom house on the Long Island shore, and although Alice might have made the most sense, she and Kyle couldn’t afford the taxes and upkeep.
What would happen to the house after her parents passed wasn’t a question anyone discussed, but Cait couldn’t bear it leaving the family.
The land was probably worth more than the house itself, and she knew that whoever bought it would tear it down to build one of those awful McMansions going up around the village.
She shuddered at the thought, switched off the car, and checked her phone for the hundredth time since they’d landed—still dead.
“Is that Papa?” Poppy asked, pointing toward the house.
Augustus pressed his face to the window. “He’s holding a gun!”
Cait looked up, but because the window was fogged, all she saw was a blur. She squinted. “No, he’s holding a—”
“It is a gun!”
“Is it real?”
Cait rolled down the window. “What the hell is he doing?”
“Mummy!” the twins yelled, forever united in their willingness to call her out on any minor language transgression.
“Stay here.” Cait opened the door and closed it to the sound of the twins’ protest. She walked around the car, and her father emerged from the garden on the south side of the house with his old 12-gauge hunting shotgun broken open and slung over his shoulder.
“Dad?” she said. “What’s with the shotgun? ”
“There’s a gaze of rabid raccoons. Alice just spotted one in the trash.”
“So call animal control.”
“What are they going to do that I can’t do myself?” He let out a hearty laugh. He was a few months away from eighty but looked nearly a decade younger. He always said his excellent health came from spending so much time outdoors, which he certainly did.
She was about to tell him to put the shotgun away, when Poppy figured out how to undo the lock and flung open her door. She and Augustus charged out of the car.
“There they are!” her father said.
“Wait!” Cait grabbed their hands, wrenching them back, and turned to her father. “Put that away.”
He removed the shotgun from his shoulder, showed her the empty chambers, and snapped it shut.
As a kid, Cait was the only one of her siblings willing to join their father on winter weekends to hunt ducks in the marshlands near Freeport.
When they’d do the spring turkey hunting season, she was known for mimicking the best gobbles to lure the turkeys to the clearings for the hunters.
He used to store the shotgun on pegs over the fireplace in the kitchen, but he hadn’t been hunting in years, as far as she knew, and the last time she’d seen the gun, it was on the top shelf of the cottage coat closet next to a rotted box of shells.
“All safe now,” he said, and rested the shotgun against the lattice under the porch as though it were a piece of firewood.
Cait released the twins’ hands, and they hugged their grandfather.
“Let me guess who is who,” he said, playing the game that delighted them to no end.
Poppy hopped on her tippy toes. “I’m—”
“Augustus!”
“No, I’m Augustus.”
Her father snapped his fingers. “Wrong every time!”
Inside the house, Cait breathed in the familiar combination of piney turpentine from her mother’s painting studio and the lingering hint of tobacco from her grandfather’s pipe that had defined her childhood.
Her last visit, six years ago, was in the spring, and she and Bram fought so incessantly that she’d wanted to leave almost as soon as they’d arrived.
Pretending her marriage wasn’t falling apart—especially while pregnant with twins—was even more exhausting with an audience.
Here now, she realized maybe she’d stayed away for too long. And for what?
It was on that last trip that Cait first consciously noted the ease with which her parents interacted with each other.
The way her father brought her mother a cup of tea or her mother fussed over whether he’d be warm enough when he left to go fishing.
After decades together, they still cared for each other like newlyweds.
The observation was bittersweet—the only reason she’d noticed it was because her own marriage was so very different.
“He’s my best friend, your father,” Nora used to say to Cait and her siblings when they were younger.
For years, Cait would roll her eyes at this, but she’d learned that she was wrong.
Friendship was probably the most important thing.
In the kitchen, she found her mother and Alice sitting at the wooden island, snacking on Tayto Cheese and Onion crisps.
Every time Father Kelly went to Ireland, he’d fill a bag with treats to bring home to Nora—Irish brown bread, sausages, and rashers.
She had a special cabinet where she kept all her favorite biscuits that she couldn’t get in the States—Mikado, Coconut Creams, and Custard Creams.
Cait had seen her parents in October when they’d joined her and the twins in the Cotswolds, but she hadn’t seen Alice since her last visit home, and she was struck by how her sister seemed so—well, maybe she was just tired.
Alice looked more like their mother in every way.
Petite stature, coppery hair, and freckled skin.
By the time she pulled up a stool, Cait was recounting the story of Poppy nearly flushing her phone down the toilet on the airplane, somehow managing to turn it into a funny anecdote.
“You’re not mad anymore?” Poppy asked her.
“No, sweetheart,” Cait said. “Of course not.” Though, of course, she was . She wouldn’t be able to buy a replacement phone until Friday when the stores were open again, with hordes of people searching for Black Friday sales. She tapped Poppy on the nose. “Go find your brother.”
As her father reported details about tracking the raccoon, Cait poured a glass of pinot noir; she had to stop herself from wincing at its sour taste.
She was about to ask about Maggie when James swung open the door to the back porch, and her youngest sister appeared with someone Cait didn’t recognize.
The woman’s cheeks were rosy, and her bright smile made it seem like she’d been laughing.
She was pretty. Cait determined this swiftly, maybe even competitively.
So this must be Isabel, the woman Maggie had told her about months ago.
Kind of dykey in her Patagonia fleece, but Cait supposed that was a good thing—certainly better than a closeted Boston Brahmin decked out in Brooks Brothers.
Cait had never met Sarah, but she’d seen enough pictures to get the vibe.
James ran up to the twins. “I’m four years older than you,” he declared, then grabbed their hands, and they all ran downstairs to check out their grandfather’s trains.
Maggie whispered into Cait’s ear as they hugged. “You haven’t answered any of my texts or calls.”
“I’m sorry,” Cait said. “It’s been a crazy few weeks.”
“Why?”
“Later,” Cait said, and turned to introduce herself to Isabel.
They all gathered around the island again. Cait grabbed her glass of wine and sat on a stool. She was morbidly curious to see how her mother would respond to Isabel and felt bad that she hadn’t responded to Maggie’s texts.
“Isabel’s a new teacher at Grove,” her mother explained.
“I’m there to finish my play,” Isabel said. “I’m teaching one workshop for now, but hopefully, it’ll become more permanent.”
Isabel glanced at Maggie when she said this, but Maggie was scrolling through her phone like a teenager.
“A play,” her father said. “What’s it about?”
“Eleanor Roosevelt.”
“She was Irish, you know,” Nora said.
“I do,” Isabel said. “My grandmother was a seamstress at the White House and worked for her. The play is about one afternoon when she read her tarot.”
Cait hip-checked Maggie, and Maggie quickly stuffed her phone into her back pocket.
“What did the reading reveal?” Alice asked.
“Well, the cards help you learn more about your past, present, and future. You ask the deck a question, and the reader interprets whatever card’s drawn. In the play, Eleanor asks the deck whether her husband is having an affair with Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd.”
“Oh,” Nora said.
“It’s funny,” Maggie said hurriedly. She turned to Isabel. “Don’t you think?”
Isabel considered this. “I’m not sure funny is the word I’d use, but I guess there are some funny parts?”
Cait was about to ask more about the story, but her father interrupted her.
He clapped his hands. “Who’s getting the pizza?”
Cait understood he was trying to prevent the conversation from going too far into the pagan practice of tarot readings and upsetting her mother, but it was rude. “I’d love to hear more later,” she said to Isabel.
“Sure,” Isabel said.