Chapter Thirty-Four
After dinner, Kit read Miles’s letter aloud to Abby and Beth.
“Stop!” Abby put her hands over her ears, and Benny mimicked the gesture. “I can’t take any more. It’s too sad.”
“Abby’s right.” Beth sat on the sofa, her legs curled under her. “Just think about all Maxine went through. This beautiful, smart woman, who should have had every reason in the world to be happy, led the most tragic life. It just goes to show you.”
“Show you what?” Abby wiped away a few tears with the back of her hand. “That you can be the most beautiful and smartest person and still live a screwed-up life?”
“That beauty and brains won’t make you immune from heartache,” Beth replied.
“Not to mention emotional instability,” Kit said. “Maxine was not stable.”
“Was she innately unstable, or did the things that happened to her—the miscarriage, her parents’ deaths, losing Miles when she was this close to marrying him, losing her daughter—did those things cause her instability? That’s a lot for anyone to handle.”
“True. And she didn’t lose her daughter.” Kit refused to say me. “She gave her away.”
“Because she knew she wasn’t in any shape to handle a baby,” Beth reminded her. “I bet she thought when she got her shit together, Barbie and Ed would give you back to her.”
“Not if she read the agreement she signed.”
“Duress,” Beth insisted. “She was under duress because Miles died.”
“And then she gets that book in the mail and she has to read about how happy they were going to be together. Like her life wasn’t messed up enough.” Abby took a marker from Benny and traded it for a crayon.
“I’m sure he didn’t know he was going to die when he mailed it.
” Kit felt if anyone in the saga deserved some grace, it was Miles.
She’d read the entire letter he’d sent Maxine, and his love for her was so pure and uncomplicated and complete she’d had to stop several times because the sadness was overwhelming.
“If I’m learning anything from reading his book, it was how deeply he loved her. ”
“No wonder she lost her shit,” Abby said. “Who wouldn’t? I mean, who doesn’t want to be loved like that?”
“I thought I was once. But then Kevin had to answer the call of the wild and head west.”
Abby snorted, then tried to cover it. “Sorry, Aunt Beth.”
“No need to apologize. I can laugh about it now.” She turned to Kit. “Kitty, have you reached that stage yet?”
“What stage? Where I can laugh about the fact that I’m getting divorced after more than thirty years? No.” She shook her head. “No, I have not. I may never be able to laugh it off, but good for you that you can.”
They sat quietly for a moment, then Abby picked Benny up and announced she was taking him upstairs to get him ready for bed. He waved over her shoulder as she carried him out of the room.
Beth said, “You’re still my sister, Kit.”
“We already established that,” Kit reminded her.
“That was before we knew for sure. I’m just letting you know that the DNA results haven’t changed anything.”
“I know. I’ll always be Barbie and Ed’s girl, and your big sister. Nothing’s going to change.”
“Well, maybe after you sell Miles’s book for a gajillion dollars, they might. Once the story gets out, you’re going to need a publicist to keep up with all the TV people who are going to want you on their show.”
“What purpose would going on TV serve?”
“If nothing else, it would put the camp on the map.” Beth ducked when Kit tossed a pillow at her head.
“Not going to exploit them just to rent out a few cabins.”
“You have to admit, it would make one hell of a movie,” Beth said.
“It would be agonizing to watch,” Kit replied. “Who wants to see all that raw pain play out on the screen?”
“You’d be surprised. People love melodrama. I know for a fact that few things feel better than a good cry after a sad movie or a tearjerker of a book. If I were you, I’d call Miles’s agent in the morning.”
“Well, you’re not me, and the agent can wait.” Kit stood, stretching her arms over her head. “And I’m not calling anyone about it until I finish reading it.”
“Because you think it will end differently.”
“I’m hoping for a different ending than the one they had in real life. I’d like a happy version better. I wish they’d had their happy ending. I hope Miles gave them one in his book.”
Kit grabbed her phone and stuck it in her pocket and slipped her feet into her shoes.
“You’re turning in?” Beth asked.
“Nope. I’m going to sit out on the front porch and enjoy this beautiful night. And then I’m going to finish reading Miles’s book.”
On the porch, Kit pulled a chair close to the railing so she could put her feet up.
The night sky was brilliant and made brighter by a million stars.
She remembered Greta telling her how she and Maxine used to take quilts to the backyard to sleep outside and the bugs would chase them in after an hour or so (which Kit thought was just as well, because bears and mountain lions).
She wondered if the nights had been like this one, cool but not cold, with the first flush of spring in the air and the spring peepers calling for love from the lake.
It was a peace like she’d never known before.
It was a wonder that here, at the scene of so much drama, she would feel calmer inside than she had for years.
Maybe because she was back where it had started, maybe because she’d always felt she was missing a part somehow, and now it had been found.
Maxine had wanted her to come home, had willed her home, because she wanted her daughter to know the truth and to know her story.
“I’m here, and I know,” Kit whispered, nowhere near ready to call Maxine Mom. She probably never would be. Barbie was Mom. Maxine was Maxine.
Funny how they were at odds even now. Maxine drawing her to Maine, Barbie trying to erase Maine from her story as if it had never been a part of it.
An increasingly cool breeze had begun to blow across the porch. The longer she sat, the more the chill closed in. She got up and went into the house to finish reading the novel Miles had left behind, holding out hope for a happier ending.