Chapter 1
The Lie
It was my mother’s lie that brought me back home that July day. Not some inconsequential fib, the kind she occasionally told when my sister and I were young, like saying that Grover’s was out of chocolate chocolate-chip ice cream when the truth was, she’d forgotten to put it on the shopping list. This was different. She said her health was failing fast and that she needed to be with her girls. It didn’t matter that I was thirty-eight and Mariel thirty-five. We were still her girls.
Of course I believed her. Why wouldn’t I?
It was a Monday morning and I was at my desk, working on the arrangements for the fall senior-management meeting. Two hundred fifteen people converging on Scottsdale, Arizona, to hear the company’s plans for the coming year, get face time with one another, take jeep rides into the desert, have dinners around bonfires, eat too much, drink too much, and, if all went well, leave with a good feeling about Kelly Thompson Pierce Financial.
I’d just looked up from my computer and was gazing at the traffic on Lake Shore, wondering where all the sailboats in the harbor were off to, when my cell phone rang. It was Mom. Her voice sounded weak, shaky. And strangely distant, as though she were calling from someplace much farther away than Connecticut.
“You have to…come home…right now,” she said, breathy spaces between the words. “Before it’s too late.”
“Before what’s too late?”
“I’m ill, Sara. Very, very ill. I can’t explain it…over the phone. I need to see you. Just come home.”
Every nerve ending in my body stood at attention. “I’ll get an afternoon flight from O’Hare.” I was already searching the internet, my hands trembling, my fingers clumsy and numb when I needed them to be efficient.
“Your sister’s coming” was the last thing she said, spoken as though it were a footnote.
It should have been the title.
I tried not to think about that as I booked the flight. Tried not to imagine Mariel packing. It wasn’t even seven o’clock in Los Angeles, but I was sure Mom had called her first. She always sought her out first. After eighteen months of not speaking to my sister, I didn’t want to think about the two of us being in the same place at the same time. Somehow, I’d survived last New Year’s Eve, the first anniversary of the night I’d realized there was something going on between her and Carter. The night that ended my relationship with him. And with her. But I’d always thought I’d have a choice about whether to see her again and on what terms. I was wrong.
On the plane, I stared out the window at the clouds while my brain kept grinding away, wondering what was happening to Mom. I was prepared for the worst when I pulled into the driveway in my rented Jetta, a little after six that evening, Jubilee and Anthem hanging their heads out their stall windows, the late-day sun casting a faded glow on the white clapboard house.
In the mudroom, music drifted from the ceiling speakers, the last few bars of “What I Did for Love” from A Chorus Line. A stack of newspapers sat in the recycling bin, an edition of the Hampstead Review on top, and sun hats were piled on a shelf. Mom kept those sun hats there even through the winter, displayed as hopeful harbingers of spring. A black-and-white photo of my parents at the Broadway opening of Right as Rein stared down at me, the last play my father produced before his death from a cardiac arrest almost five years ago.
In the hallway, I charged past Martha, the housekeeper, who was carrying two boxes wrapped in silver-and-white paper. She looked surprised to see me.
“How is she?” I asked, but instead of waiting for an answer, I raced toward the stairs.
“Your mother?” Martha called out. “She’s in the kitchen.”
The kitchen? I thought she’d be in bed. But I was heartened that she was up. As I got closer, I could smell food. Something cooking. Tomatoes and onions, garlic, red wine. It smelled like spaghetti sauce, although I couldn’t imagine Martha cooking spaghetti sauce for my mother—or cooking anything, for that matter. She broiled or boiled the taste out of any food, and Mom had stopped letting her near the stove.
Still, I expected to find Mom at the table, looking peaked and wilted, cloaked in a bathrobe, a little cup of tea in front of her. But she was standing at the Viking range, her back to me, seeming as fit as ever in a pair of pale gray pants and an ivory sweater, an apron around her waist. Her light brown hair shone as though she’d had it washed and blown out no more than a few hours before. And she was singing along with Frank Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon.”
She held the lid of a large pot in one hand and a wooden spoon in the other. Empty cans of tomatoes and tomato paste were strewn across the counter. A chunk of onion and a clove of garlic rested on a chopping board. This was not a woman who was on her way out of the world.
“Mom?”
She spun around. “Oh, there you are!” She put down the lid and spoon and hugged me, squeezing me tight. She hadn’t lost any strength, and her weight appeared unchanged from when I’d been there in March. “I’m so glad you made it.” She studied me. “You look a little tired. Long flight?”
“Mom, I thought you’d be—”
“Well, you can catch up on your sleep here. And see? I’m making one of your favorite meals. I also picked up a peach pie from the Rolling Pin. I know how much you love their pies.”
I felt as though I’d just walked into a Twilight Zone episode and Rod Serling was about to appear by the refrigerator: You’re looking at Sara Harrington, product of a dysfunctional family. Her sister has betrayed her; her mother has lost her mind. Sara thinks she’s come home. But in fact, she’s just entered The Twilight Zone.
“Mom, what’s going on? You call sounding horrible and tell me to come home because you’re ill. ‘Very, very ill’ is what you said. So I tell my boss I’ll have to be out for a week, maybe longer. I scramble for a flight. I pack. I get here as fast as I can, and you’re cooking dinner? I thought you were at death’s door.” Maybe all actors were overly dramatic, especially the ones with a few Tony Awards under their belts. But this was going too far.
Mom dipped a spoon into the pot and tasted the sauce. “Needs a little salt.”
“Mother!”
“I never said I was at death’s door, sweetie.”
There was a name for the crime of killing your mother…was it matricide? I wanted to have the correct term because I felt I was getting close to committing it. “Yes, you did. You said your health was failing fast. You implied you were terminally ill.” My voice was ratcheting up a few decibels with every syllable. “You said you needed your girls here.” I glared at her until I knew she felt the burn.
She dropped the spoon into the sink. “Well, my health is failing fast. My mental health. It’s failing very fast, and that’s because I worry all the time about you and Mariel and why you two can’t make up.”
I’d been frantic for an entire day, missed an important meeting, and spent my three-hour flight next to a guy who snored and drooled the whole way. For this. “You made me come back to reconcile with Mariel? I can’t believe it.”
She took a step closer, her hand outstretched.