Chapter 12. Alice
ALICE
After getting herself and the boys showered and ready, Alice snuck off to the sunroom. She hoped for a minute to herself before the guests arrived, but when she opened the door, she found Isabel sitting cross-legged on the hanging rattan, arranging a set of cards on her lap.
“I’m sorry,” Alice said. “I didn’t know anyone was back here.”
Isabel quickly gathered the cards. “No, you’re fine,” she said, and smiled as she took off her horn-rimmed glasses.
She looked different from yesterday. Her skin was glowy, her lips red, and the unexpected but charming combination of her dark denim shirt and golden velvet blazer made Alice feel frumpy and conventional in her black leggings and white blouse.
“Part of the waitstaff, are we?” Cait had quipped when they passed each other in the kitchen.
“Are those the tarot cards you were talking about last night?” Alice asked Isabel.
Isabel shuffled the deck. “They are. I do daily check-ins where I pull a single card for a reading. It gives me guidance or insight for the day.”
“Like a psalm.”
“Exactly.”
From somewhere on the other side of the house, James screamed, “I’m it!”—a rallying cry for a game of hide-and-seek.
Alice reached for the handles on the glass-paneled doors. “I’ll close these behind me,” she said as she turned to leave, “so the kids don’t bother you.”
“They’re no bother,” Isabel said. “This room is beautiful, by the way. Maggie said you recently fixed it up.”
Alice looked around the room. She hadn’t done much.
Just snagged the barely used rattan chair and some pillows that Georgia no longer wanted and bought a new light fixture from Target, but the small changes had transformed the space into a cozy nook.
She was proud of how it had turned out, and it was nice of Isabel to notice—neither of her sisters had mentioned it.
“Thanks,” she said.
Isabel smiled. “How long have you been—you’re an interior designer?”
Alice wavered. “Yes, well, sort of. I was never formally trained, so—” She stopped, cringing at herself for blabbering on.
She knew she needed to just embrace the title of interior designer, but she felt like a fraud every time she used it.
When Georgia hired her to revamp her beach bungalow, Alice contemplated turning down the job to save herself the humiliation of failing.
In the end, she agreed because Finn needed braces, and part of her—small but there—thought, Maybe I can do this.
The first time she went to the D&D Building in the city, she expected to be called out and promptly ejected.
But that’s not what happened. She put together a fabric blend for the bungalow’s living room that impressed the designer standing next to her.
“Fabulous,” he’d said. “Mind if I borrow it for a villa in the Maldives? No one will ever know.” Did she mind? She wanted to hug him! The story didn’t translate later that night when she shared it with Kyle.
“He stole it?” he said.
“It wasn’t like that,” she told him. “I was flattered.”
Kyle was skeptical. “If only flattery paid the bills,” he said.
Alice shrugged him off. How could she care about that when an entire world was opening before her?
A world filled with possibility and colors and textures and shapes.
A world that had nothing to do with the PTA or basketball courts or the parish or the endless cycle of laundry and grocery lists and her parents’ doctor appointments.
Since birth, she’d been under the shadows of her overachieving siblings, with their academic distinctions and all-American titles.
Even years after Topher dropped out of college and they barely knew where he was living, their mother would talk about how he was wasting his brilliance.
Alice hadn’t the brilliance to waste in the first place.
The only thing she’d ever felt capable of was taking care of other people—her parents, Kyle, the boys.
The dutiful daughter, then wife, then mother.
And she was good at it. Very good. In those roles, she was able to hide.
She was safe. But she no longer wanted to hide.
And as Isabel now waited for her to answer this seemingly simple question, she considered again how having another child would end it all.
“I suppose I am an interior designer,” she said finally. “I’m applying to a program at Parsons.” She had never stated that out loud, and it was thrilling.
Isabel nodded. Neither the pause nor the mention of going back to school seemed to make a big impression on her either way. She shifted her attention to the framed photos on the coffee table and picked up one of Nora as a child. “Who is this?” she asked.
“My mom,” Alice said. “It’s from outside her family’s house in Cork. Those are her sisters and two brothers with her. We don’t know the exact date, but it was sometime before her father sent the younger ones to the orphanage.”
“Why did her father do that if he was alive?”
“My mom’s mother died shortly after she was born,” Alice said. “They were destitute. She was the youngest of six. The older girls stayed at the house, but my grandfather couldn’t manage a toddler, so the nuns basically raised her, and then she would spend summers back at her family’s house.”
Alice examined the photo. She hadn’t seen her aunts in decades.
After Daniel’s accident, her parents stopped paying for the whole family to visit them in Cork, as they had every summer since Alice was young.
Instead, Nora went alone to spend time with her sisters.
She rarely talked about her childhood. It was terrible.
Maybe that was all Alice would ever know.
When she was younger, Alice and her sisters would imagine they were in an orphanage.
Cait would play the nun, and Alice and Maggie would be the kids who had to beg for toys and eat foul food.
They knew enough to play out of earshot of their mother, but one time she overheard them and came into the room.
“We didn’t ask for toys,” she corrected them emphatically.
“We were to be ‘seen and not heard.’ We didn’t dare ask for a thing. ”
The glass door behind Alice creaked open, and Poppy peeked her head in. “Can I hide in here?” she whispered.
Alice was about to say no, but then Isabel said, “Sure,” so Poppy grabbed a green pillow off the lounge and put it on top of her head as she crouched in the corner behind the potted fig tree. “Do not tell them I’m here,” she commanded.
Isabel made the gesture of zipping her lips.
Before Alice left, she said, “Your cards. Do they help?”
“Some days more than others,” Isabel said, “but that’s life, I guess. I usually ask the deck what I need to know at that moment and then try to interpret whatever card I pick.” She held up the card on top of her pile. “This is the one for today. The Moon. In reverse.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’m sort of new to all this myself,” Isabel said.
“My grandma tried to teach me when I was a kid, but of course I didn’t pay any attention.
” She continued: “The Moon represents things that can’t be seen or are, you know, hidden beneath the surface.
Illusions. Secrets. That sort of thing. But this one was in reverse, so I’m guessing it means the opposite. The truth will be revealed.”
Alice’s skin felt clammy. She shivered.
“Do you want me to do a reading for you?” Isabel asked.
“Oh,” Alice said. “Sure.” She sat on the stool.
“Think about your question.” Isabel shuffled the cards. “Or something you need help with.”
“Do I have to say it out loud?”
“Not at all.”
Alice closed her eyes. Do I have to have this baby?
Isabel fanned the deck out in front of her. “Pick one.”
Alice picked a card and flipped it over.
“Interesting,” Isabel said, and looked up.
“What are you doing?” Poppy asked from behind the pillow.
The question felt like the universe jabbing its finger directly at Alice. How could you have asked that question? What was she doing? She stood. “You know what? You don’t have to read it,” she said to Isabel.
Isabel placed the card back on top of the deck. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“No, no, you didn’t,” Alice assured her. “I just—”
In the corner, Poppy threw the pillow off her head and stood. “They’re not even trying to find me,” she said.
“Maybe your hiding spot is too good,” Isabel said.
Poppy stuck out her bottom lip. My God , Alice thought, the apple does not fall far from the tree. “I’m going to tell them I won, then.” She stormed out of the room. A moment later, they heard her scream, “No tag backs!”
Isabel held the deck in her hand. “One thing,” she said to Alice.
Alice turned. “Yes?”
“What’s a word you would use to describe yourself? Don’t think too hard. Whatever comes to mind first.”
Though she’d been instructed otherwise, Alice found herself quickly trying to find a word to impress Isabel. She went with the first one to stick. “ Reliable ,” she said.
“Reliable,” Isabel repeated.
Alice glanced at the cherry blossoms on one of the green pillows, and another word popped into her mind. “I take that back,” she said. “ Blooming. That’s my word.”
Isabel brightened. “Lovely,” she said. “An active verb.”
Alice smiled, pleased with herself. “Does that have anything to do with the card I picked?”
“No, it’s just a game I like to play,” Isabel said. “Let’s you get straight to the heart of things.”
“I like that,” Alice said, and she did.
On her way back upstairs, Alice returned to the question she’d posed to herself earlier.
Do I have to have this baby?
She held on to the banister.
Of course you do!