Chapter 16. Alice
ALICE
Alice closed the front door and turned to her mother and Cait. Could this day get any worse?
“Poor Maggie,” Cait said.
Yes, yes , Alice thought, poor Maggie . And yet, she didn’t want her older sister to forget that the bigger problem was not who’d just left but who was still there. Luke. She was so annoyed at Cait’s willful obliviousness that she could hardly stand to look at her.
“Did we do something?” Nora asked, peering out the window.
“I don’t know,” Alice said. “Did you?” Her tone was harsher than she’d intended, but she wasn’t entirely sure Maggie and Isabel’s fight hadn’t had something to do with their mother.
“Not that I’m aware of,” Nora said.
A server walked by with a platter of deviled eggs. “Can I offer you—”
“No, thank you,” Alice said, and when he presented the platter to her mother, she was more direct. “Can we have a minute, please?”
The server apologized as he backed out of the foyer and into the living room. Alice felt like a jerk. She turned to Cait. “Remind me again why this was necessary?”
Cait ignored her and to their mother said, “You didn’t do anything.”
Alice waited for her sister to elaborate—obviously she knew something that they didn’t—but Cait just stayed quiet and sipped her drink.
“Well,” their mother said eventually, “I’ll have Beth remove Isabel’s place setting, then.” She headed toward the kitchen, back stiff, without looking at Alice.
Oh, sure , Alice thought. Be offended by me because I was short with you. Don’t question Cait for her unwelcome guest or Maggie for her abrupt departure. Lay it all on me!
Alone now in the foyer, Alice turned to Cait. “Do you know what happened with them? Why she left?”
Cait shrugged, and Alice immediately regretted asking the question and giving her sister the power to refuse to answer. She started to walk away, but Cait stopped her. She looked around, then said, “Are you pregnant?”
Alice flinched. “Why are you asking me that? Do I look pregnant?”
“Augustus found a test when the raccoons got into the garbage.”
Oh, God. How could she have been so careless? Of course someone was going to find the test in the damn garbage. “I’m not sure,” she said.
“The test was positive.”
“I don’t know if it’s accurate. I might not be.”
“Are you okay?”
Alice nodded. “Just don’t tell Mom—or anyone, really.”
“I would never do that,” Cait said, slighted.
As Cait made her way to the back patio, Alice sat on the Shaker chair near the grandfather clock under the stairs.
She’d managed to stop obsessing over the pregnancy in the whirlwind of Luke’s arrival and Isabel’s leaving, but now that Cait knew, her dread returned.
This is happening , she thought. It does not matter what you want.
How strange the longing for the early days of her pregnancy with Finn.
Though Topher had just died, and the family was in a state of shock and grief, at least then she knew what she wanted, and she wasn’t afraid of her own body.
On the morning of Topher’s memorial, Alice had invited her sisters to breakfast at Captain’s Diner to make a plan to take care of their parents, especially their mother, who refused to leave the bedroom on most days or even open the drapes to the bay.
Earlier that week, Nora had told Alice she would have joined a convent and spent the rest of her life in prayer if it weren’t for Alice and her sisters.
When Alice asked, “What about Dad?” Nora looked at her as though she didn’t understand the question.
Alice had always thought her parents had a closer relationship with each other than they did with any of their kids, and her mother’s distance from him worried her.
Her mother believed the Larkins’ lawsuit had caused Topher to unravel, and it was an unspoken understanding that she blamed their father for agreeing to settle the case.
Alice had also planned to use the breakfast to tell Maggie and Cait about her pregnancy.
But before she could mention her concerns about their mother or announce her pregnancy, Cait revealed her own surprise.
Bram had proposed and she was planning to say yes and accept a job in London that would start in September.
“You’re moving out of the country in two months?” Alice asked in disbelief.
Cait turned stony. “I’ll take that as a congratulations?”
When Alice got around to telling them her news, the energy at the table was strained. Though her sisters seemed happy for her and the pregnancy, it was clear to Alice that she would be the one left to manage their parents. Maggie was still in college, and now Cait was moving to another continent.
Later that afternoon, they attended the service at Saint Mary’s, where Father Kelly spoke about Topher’s sense of humor and adventurous spirit, his capacity to spin a tale (that was one way to put it), and the tragedy of his untimely death.
Nothing was mentioned about the tragedy of his life itself, Alice remembered.
About his involvement in the accident that took Daniel Larkin’s life.
How he’d dropped out of college before the end of his first year.
Drank himself into oblivion. Grew out his strawberry-blond hair, which everyone loved until he stopped combing it, so it formed uneven dreads.
About how he drove his Jeep across the country, drifting from one menial job to the next.
How he overstayed his welcome on friends’ and friends of friends’ couches—a detail Alice was embarrassed to learn from a childhood neighbor Topher had visited in New Mexico—and grew his hair even longer and wore it in a knot at the top of his head.
How he sent postcards with knock-knock jokes that made Alice laugh despite her concerns he was becoming more distant.
How he made Alice and Kyle a wind chime for their wedding with shells and driftwood he’d collected somewhere along the Pacific seaboard.
Father Kelly called him a wanderer.
On a Sisyphean journey to forget , Alice had thought. Or to forgive himself .
There was no letter to explain or to say goodbye. Only the torn sheet of paper duct-taped to the outside of his bedroom door instructing Maggie to get help. When Alice read the note, she wished she’d been the one to find him.
In the investigation, the detective found a sketch pad on Topher’s desk with a note asking that his body be cremated. Yet another blow to their mother, who’d hoped to bury him at Saint Mary’s.
The request didn’t specify where Topher wanted his ashes scattered, but they all agreed on the bay outside the Folly, where they gathered after the service, just the family and Father Kelly, standing in a semicircle along the shore.
It was late afternoon. The sun hung low and heavy in the bruise-colored sky, and it was chilly for July. Everything was familiar to Alice—the sulfuric stench of low tide, the seagulls pecking the sand for crabs, the lobster buoy for the summer harvest—and yet, utterly surreal.
Father Kelly spoke first. “Let us pray.”
Alice had recited the prayer thousands of times, but words that had once comforted her now seemed suspect, useless. Another way life would be divided into before and after.
Her father opened the canvas sack, and Alice was sickened to see the remains were not the fine soot she’d expected but a gravel of sharp bones. Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return. Everyone, except their mother, who said she just couldn’t, took a handful to scatter.
Because no one else did, Alice stepped forward to go first. In her clenched hand, the ashes felt like the remains of something destroyed.
She brought them to her face, inhaled the smell of incense, then tossed them quickly and without ceremony, where they gathered on a strand of seaweed, then dissolved into the sand and foam.
She took Kyle’s hand. Her longing for more—to be held—assailed her, and for the first time in their relationship, she thought: This loneliness will be with me always.
Maggie followed. The last to see Topher alive and the first to find him dead. Whenever Alice thought about that, she felt an anger toward her brother that nearly obliterated the sadness.
Their father went next. He’d lost several pounds over the week, and his suit hung loose on his shoulders and hips.
What it must feel like to hold your child’s ashes in your hand, to return them to the earth.
Alice shivered, and the anger she felt toward Topher turned into a grief that made her want to howl.
After Cait’s turn, she walked back without saying a word, and they all stood along the base of the seawall watching the tide creep closer, gently turning, as reliable as ever.
Father Kelly passed around a handkerchief to clean the sticky ash from their hands.
Alice wiped her palms on her black pants, streaking her thighs gray.
Her heels sunk into the wet sand. Her belly pressed against her waistband, and the reason brought her comfort.
Their mother let out a sob.
“He’s home,” Father Kelly said. “He’s at peace.”
Alice was sure they were all tired of the meaningless platitudes, even their mother, but they nodded anyway.
Except for Cait. “That must be nice for him,” she said.
Alice had done her best to ignore Cait’s constant display of pain for most of the day, but she’d had enough. “Do you ever not think about yourself when you open your mouth?” she said to her sister.
Cait’s expression hardened. “I’m just saying what we’re all thinking,” she said. Then she turned and marched up the seaworn stairs back toward the house.
No one said anything, and after a moment, they all followed. On the lawn, the geese scattered and honked. Kyle started to chase them off, but Alice reached for his hand and told him to let them be. The sun disappeared into the horizon as the tide carried Topher away.