Chapter 31. Cait #2
After bundling up, Maggie and Isabel followed the kids outside, and Kyle came in to take Nora to the parish for the food drive.
“We need to get going,” he said. “Father Kelly is expecting us.”
Alone now, Cait and Alice navigated around each other, clearing the table and washing the dishes.
Cait tried to wait to hear whatever problem Alice had with her decision to move back home, but finally, her patience worn, she crammed the syrup bottle into the crowded fridge alongside last night’s leftovers and turned to Alice at the sink.
“If you have something to say to me, I’d prefer you just come out and say it.”
Alice turned.
“I thought you wanted me here to help?” Cait continued. “Isn’t that what you’ve been on me about all these years?”
Alice wrapped a dish towel around the faucet. “Not everything is about you.”
“Okay,” Cait said, trying to compose herself. “Then what is it about?”
Alice sighed. “I’m just worried about Finn. And Dad.”
“Oh,” Cait said. “Yeah. Well, you’re not the only one.”
“Do you really know what you’re signing up for returning home and staying with them?”
So this wasn’t entirely not about her. “As much as I can,” Cait admitted.
“And Luke? I mean, you’re not doing this to be closer to him?”
The only question Nora had asked when Cait checked if it was okay for them to move into the house was “How soon can you come?” Cait had hoped her intentions would be obvious to her sisters as well.
That they would understand that she wanted to be a more hands-on daughter.
To help their parents. To find a more sustainable work-life balance.
That she missed them, all of them, even Alice.
That she wanted the twins to grow up knowing their family.
That she dreaded the Folly being sold off to some developer from the city who’d arrive the next day with a bulldozer.
But considering how she’d behaved all these years, she supposed it made sense that Alice had some misgivings.
“Alice,” she said quietly, and looked at her. “I’m doing this because I want to come home.”
Alice nodded. She seemed to believe her. “So what’s happening with Luke? Are you together?”
“We’re friends,” Cait said. “At least for now.”
Alice thought about this for a moment. “There’s something I want to show you before Mom and Dad get back.”
“What is it?”
Alice didn’t answer. Instead, she opened the back door and called for Maggie, then asked Isabel to watch the kids.
Isabel paused mid-throw and turned to the kids on the lawn. “Hey, everyone,” she announced. “I’m in charge! Time to eat broccoli and do your homework.”
Maggie came into the kitchen and kicked off her snow boots. “What’s up?”
“Follow me,” Alice said to them both.
Alice led them upstairs and into their parents’ room, which was dark with the shades drawn and smelled of their mother’s rose perfume.
Cait switched on the lamp on the nightstand and watched as Alice opened the closet doors and reached for a shoebox on the top shelf.
She placed the box on the bed and opened the lid to reveal a pile of yellowed envelopes addressed to The Ryan Family .
“They’re cards,” Alice explained. “From when Topher died. I found them yesterday when I was helping Mom get dressed.”
Cait and Maggie looked at each other, trying to work out what they were missing.
“And?” Cait asked finally.
Alice continued. “Mrs. Larkin sent one, and Mom never opened it.”
Now Cait was even more confused. “I thought she never reached out?”
“I guess it was sometime later.”
Cait leafed through the pile. She recognized the names on the return addresses—families from town or Saint Mary’s, a few of their father’s colleagues.
“Why didn’t she open it?”
“I don’t know,” Alice said. “I don’t think she even knows. She doesn’t want the cards anymore. They’re making her miserable, but she doesn’t feel like she can move them herself. Last night, when I fell asleep, all I could think about was this unopened card sitting here, stuck in time.”
As they looked for the card, they stopped to read a few that had already been opened—to themselves and sometimes aloud.
Most were generic sympathy cards— I’m sorry for your loss , You’re in our prayers , that sort of thing.
Cait shared a note from Topher’s lacrosse coach.
It was the only one they read that directly acknowledged their brother’s struggles— I know he was trying to get his life back on track.
Was he? Maggie read another from their aunt Brigid in Ireland.
In the card, she referred to Topher by his full name—Christopher John—and called their mother Baby sister .
Maggie was the one to finally find Mrs. Larkin’s card. She handed it to Cait deferentially.
Cait took a deep breath. “Should we open it?” The card was specifically addressed to their mother. “What if it’s an angry rant? I don’t want to read that.”
“I don’t either,” Alice said.
“Just open it,” Maggie said.
Cait unsealed the small, green envelope. She held up the front of the card, a picture of a field of yellow-petaled flowers, and read the note to herself and then aloud.
Dear Nora,
I know from experience that there are no words to bring you comfort. So I offer here what I can: my sorrow.
If I could offer more, I would.
Yours,
Connie
No one said a word as Cait returned the card to the box.
Alice passed a tissue to Maggie, then turned to them both. “Do you ever think about who we would be if none of this had ever happened?” she asked.
Maggie wiped the tears from her face and stood, irritated.
“Of course,” she said. “But maybe we’d be exactly the same.
Maybe we’ve always been this way. We’ll never know.
” She seemed upset in a way Cait didn’t fully understand.
Maggie picked up the card, then continued.
“I mean, Mom let this sit in her closet and haunt her for years when she could’ve just faced it and maybe even found some healing in it.
Instead, she hid it away, stuffed it down, you know?
Like we all do, like Topher did, until”—she slapped her hands together—“everything implodes.”
Cait and Alice flinched at the loud clap, then exchanged glances. They looked at their younger sister.
Maggie sat on the bed again. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m just so tired of blaming everything on the past.”
“I am, too,” Alice said.
Cait wasn’t sure what to say. She knew she was the cause of the most recent “implosion,” but she also wanted to defend their mother.
Nora had probably held on to the cards because she couldn’t bear the guilt of letting the wound heal, and Cait could understand that.
But she suspected this was something her sisters already knew. “I’m sorry for yesterday,” she said.
“It’s okay,” Maggie said.
“It’s not,” Cait insisted. “I was terrible.”
“You were,” Alice agreed. Cait readied herself for more, but then Alice surprised her. “You inspired me, though. Your directness. It helped me tell Kyle I’m not going through with the pregnancy.” Then she turned to Maggie. “I’m pregnant and having an abortion.”
Maggie sat up. “You’re what and you’re doing what?”
“You didn’t know?” Cait said.
Maggie turned to Alice. “Are you okay? What do you mean you’re not going through with it? What about Kyle?”
Alice grabbed another tissue and removed her glasses to dab her eyes. “I’m not keeping—” She stopped. “It? The baby?” She blew her nose. “What’s the right language to use?”
“Whatever language you want,” Maggie said. “I can’t believe this was all going on and you didn’t tell me. What can I do?”
Well, that’s a better way to respond , Cait thought, regretting her reaction in the kitchen last night.
“Nothing,” Alice said. “I just want to get it over with.”
“I’ll go with you,” Maggie said. “When is it?”
“It’s okay. Kyle’s coming. We’re going on Monday.”
“I’m staying another week,” Cait said. “I can take care of Finn while you’re there.”
“That would be really helpful actually,” Alice said. “I don’t know if this will last, but right now, all I feel is relief. Like I’ve been given my life back. I didn’t realize how much I liked my life the way it was until this happened.”
Outside, they could hear the kids playing in the backyard.
Cait held Mrs. Larkin’s card and rested against the pillows on her parents’ bed. “Should we share this with Mom?”
“Maybe,” Alice said. “Or maybe not? She kept that thing for thirteen years. If she wanted to read it, she’d have done it already.”
“Let’s at least take the box out of here,” Maggie suggested. “Then we can figure out what to do with all the cards.”
“I can take them back to my house,” Alice said. “Store them in the basement.”
“I say we burn them,” Cait said, standing up. “Torch them all.”
“That’s too permanent,” Maggie said. “She might change her mind.”
Alice grabbed a handful of cards from the box. “We might want to reread them at some point, too.”
“Why?” Cait asked. “Why would we ever want to reread these?”
“To remember he was here?” Alice said. “That he existed? That he was part of the world beyond us?”
No one said anything to that.
Finally, Maggie spoke. “And maybe the kids would want to read them someday? Get to know their uncle.”
“Is this how they would get to know him?” Cait said.
“How about we keep the ones that mean something,” Alice said, “and burn the ‘thoughts and prayers’ cards? Mom said that she didn’t want them anymore.”
Cait and Maggie agreed, and they spent some time sorting the cards that mattered from the burn pile.
Downstairs was quiet thanks to Isabel, who was still outside with the kids.
On the fireplace hearth, Cait formed a tepee with a handful of twigs and tossed a lit match into its center.
Soon, the fire warmed the kitchen, and the smell of burning oak reminded her of winter evenings when she was younger.
Maggie reached for the envelopes in the box. “Are we sure about this?”
“No,” Alice said.
Cait peered outside again. The kids were sledding down the small hill by the garden.
The sun shone brightly in the blue sky, but she could see from Poppy’s red cheeks that it was still cold out.
“Well, we don’t have much time,” she said.
“The house will be full of maniacs begging for hot chocolate in a minute.”
“We should do it,” Maggie said, and when Cait and Alice nodded, she tossed a handful into the fire.
Cait watched the envelopes burn. There was something beautiful in their destruction, a transformation. She imagined them carried away with the smoke, eventually falling back to nourish the ground around the house for the next generation of Ryans to walk upon.
Mrs. Larkin’s card was safe in her pocket.
She would let her mother know that it was there whenever she was ready.
She turned to her sisters. She would not get sentimental.
They wouldn’t like it, and there was no need anyway.
She didn’t have to say aloud what they all now understood: it was time to start letting go.
She used the brass fire poker to stuff the rest of the cards between the logs until they all burned to a gray soot. They heard honking and, when they looked out the window, saw Isabel and the kids chasing the geese on the lawn.
“That’s probably not a good idea,” Cait said. She grabbed the fire poker again, and they all headed outside.
“Be careful,” Alice yelled. “They’re vicious!” None of the kids—or Isabel—seemed to hear her. She turned to Maggie. “Does Isabel know they’ll fight back?”
“The geese or the children?” Maggie asked.
“They’re fine,” Cait said as the geese retreated. “We used to do that.”
“But Dad stood by with a golf club,” Alice said.
Cait laughed. “Better than a shotgun.” She held up the poker. “Besides, I have this.”
“These are the great-great-great-grandkids of the geese we used to harass,” Alice said. “They return home every year to nest.”
“Remember when one of them went after Topher?” Cait said. “He had to run into the bay to get away.”
Alice laughed. “That was me!”
“Was it?”
“Maybe it wasn’t? Now I don’t remember.”
“It’s all a blur.”
Maggie sighed and stuffed her hands into her pockets. “I don’t remember it at all.”
“I remember it as Topher,” Cait said.
“It probably was.”
The kids resumed their chase, but they were far enough away that the geese, with their yearlings in the mix, didn’t put up a fight.
Instead, they made a big flap of their wings and honked at one another, as if trying to decide whether to stay or leave.
Then the loudest of them took charge, and the rest of the flock lifted off the ground and ascended into the air, still bickering.
They circled the Folly in a wide loop before assembling into a V formation and soaring over the snow-covered lawn and the dark blue water, heading to wherever they were going next.