Chapter Twenty-Nine
Kelly begins each day with a predawn hike along the woodland trail to the lake. At the beginning of the summer, she was always out here before five. Some mornings, she still is.
But on the heels of a late night and tequila, she slept a little later than usual. It’s nearly six when she steps out the kitchen door in her sneakers and workout clothes, stainless-steel coffee go-cup in hand.
It’s like walking into a steam room after the air-conditioned house. The sun has yet to rise, and the temperature might have fallen a bit overnight, but the air is oppressive.
She checked the forecast before bed. Tonight’s low is expected to drop into the fifties—hard to grasp at the moment, but she’s lived here long enough to believe it, especially with thunderstorms rolling in on a Canadian cold front this afternoon.
That may put a damper on the beach day she planned with Talia and her family. Midge is working but said she’ll try to get back here in time for dinner.
Tonight, for better or worse, there will be no Linden, who has tickets to a concert, and no Nap.
Kelly sets out across the lawn, sweat already beading on her face. She strips off her hoodie, tying the sleeves around her waist.
The balmy air is scented with dewy grass and mossy earth. Early birds twitter in towering branches as she reaches the path that was once a walkway linking the mansion to its outbuildings.
Back then, it wound past stables, a carriage house, storage sheds, a greenhouse, even a mansard-roofed Victorian playhouse built to scale for the youngest Winterfield children.
She’s seen it all in old photographs in the family albums and at the Historical Preservation Society.
They helped her restoration team map out the property, guiding them to the sites where the structures had been located.
Splintered wood, bricks, and shards of glass, buried in rocky soil and weeds.
It’s all been reconstructed.
All but the pool.
She’d been prepared to restore it to the lovely oasis she’d seen in vintage photos, with a diving well and an intricate mosaic border.
The pool was surrounded by lounge chairs, potted plants, and cabanas, and bordered by a brick colonnade.
Beneath each of its four arches, a statue of a Greek water god stood atop a stone pedestal.
In Kelly’s childhood, the pool was a deep, weed-ridden chasm of broken tile and cracked concrete, cordoned off and posted with Warning signs.
The statues were long gone, and the colonnade had been reduced to rubble.
Only the pedestals remained, etched with the names of the carved gods that once stood there: Poseidon, Oceanus, Hydros, and Ceto.
Each of the girls claimed her own pedestal. Kelly was Poseidon, Talia was Oceanus, Midge was Hydros, and Caroline was Ceto.
Kelly had the colonnade rebuilt from the original bricks, and the pedestals remain.
She debated replacing the statues and decided against it even before the pool work halted.
It didn’t seem right. When she looks at the pedestals, she will forever see four young girls perched atop them, laughing and talking, carefree in the sunshine.
After the skeleton was discovered, Kelly was tempted to forgo the hikes and avoid the area altogether.
“I wouldn’t blame you,” Midge said, when Kelly mentioned that to her and Talia. “It’s not easy for any of us to deal with, but you’re the one who has to live in the shadow of that burial spot.”
“It might get better in time,” Talia said. “Then again, what do I know? I couldn’t even deal with being in Mulberry Bay after Caroline was gone. I’m the one who ran away.”
“So did I,” Kelly admitted.
“At least you came back.”
“Not by choice.”
In February 2020, she was living abroad in a belle époque maison overlooking the Seine when Mrs. Verga summoned her because her mother was hospitalized. Lousy timing, Kelly thought, when the pandemic stranded her stateside.
Quarantined alone in her childhood home, she faced COVID that nearly killed her, isolation that nearly broke her, and memories she could no longer outrun.
So many memories . . .
Among them, the time she overheard her mother tell her father, “Stop trying to make her into the son you always wished you had.”
“No child of mine is going to be a helpless candy-ass,” he replied. “She’s going to know how to be strong and defend herself.”
Kelly Barrow has never been without her faults, but fragility and powerlessness aren’t among them.
She survived. COVID, the isolation, the memories, her mother’s dementia diagnosis, the news that the pandemic had claimed her closest French friends and that her beloved cat, Bijou, had run away.
By the time lockdown lifted, there was nothing left for her in Paris.
She wasn’t sure there was anything for her in Mulberry Bay either. But her mother needed her. Still needs her. Always will.
She’s not proud of how she handled loss when she was young. First Caroline, then her friendship with Midge and Talia a year later. After that, she had to deal with her first divorce, her second divorce, her father’s death . . .
Every time her life fell apart, she turned her back on the memories and moved—or maybe ran—away.
New York, San Francisco, Paris . . .
She did her best to make all of those cities into her home. Looking back, she can see that none of them ever was.
Only Mulberry Bay and Haven Cliff will ever be home. Now she’s not going anywhere, not even with dementia slowly robbing her of her mother.
For the first time in her life, Kelly is tackling loss head-on. It’s not easy, but it is empowering.
That’s why she continues to follow the familiar path to the lake every morning, even though it leads her past the pool. Even today, having learned what she learned last night from Toby about the man Caroline had known and trusted.
Wildflowers are naturalized in sun and shade along her route. She pauses to gather a stem or two whenever she sees a splotch of pink—phlox, cosmos, hyssop. When she reaches the clearing, she has a full bouquet.
She walks slowly toward the heap of dirt and gaping hole that had been Caroline’s grave for all these years.
The pool contractor removed his excavating equipment when the job stalled, saying he needed it elsewhere.
“Just tell me when the cops give you the green light to move ahead again,” he said, “and I’ll get you back into the schedule as soon as I can.”
Kelly thanked him and told him she would, but she no longer wants a pool.
She’s decided to have it filled in again, as it had been the summer after Caroline disappeared.
Now she thinks maybe she’ll create a beautiful flower garden on the spot.
“That would be nice, K. K.,” she hears Caroline’s sweet voice saying in her head. “Plant lots of pink. Pink flowers are my favorite.”
Pink—never Kelly’s style.
Looking down at the wildflower bouquet in her hand, she whispers, “Anything for you. I’m sorry I wasn’t paying enough attention. I was so self-centered. If I had known . . .”
In her head, Caroline responds with forgiveness. That’s who she was; it’s what she would have done.
It’s just going to take a while before Kelly can forgive herself.
Head bowed, eyes closed, she promises Caroline, “I’ll try to do better.”
“You have done better, K. K. Look how far you’ve come.”
The voice is only in her head. But she hears something—a soft swishing and snapping back in the trees, as if someone is there.
Her eyes pop open. She half expects to see Caroline standing beside her, alive again, young, sweet, smiling.
She does not. But she can feel the presence. She turns toward the trees and calls, “You’re there, aren’t you? I know you are.”
In response, there’s a rush of receding movement, as if Caroline really is there, and is running away.
“Caroline! Wait!”
All is still again. But she knows what she heard.
She used to fear that she was just like her mother, delusional, hearing things, seeing things. Then she attributed it to the neurological effects of her Lyme disease.
Now, though, she thinks it’s just grief. Just missing the people she knew and loved, just keeping them alive in her memory.
With a sigh, she turns away from the trees, tosses the flowers into the hole, then continues on toward the lake as the first glow of daylight kisses the mountains in the distance.