In an effort to get away from Walker, her eyes found the casket’s polished wood. She opened her mouth to begin her next story, about how her brother took over the school speakers with his high school band to sing her “Happy Birthday” in the style of the Beatles. But she couldn’t make out the words.
She pictured the adult inside the casket, resting on the flawless silk, the adult she couldn’t tell one story about, the one she shared blood with, had thought she shared a mind with for so long.
We weren’t close.
He was my everything.
Weren’t they both true? The tears came, unstoppable. She blurted out “Thank you” and stepped away from the podium. As she walked to her seat, regretting not getting the casket and thinking her mother was always right, she noticed someone she didn’t recognize lurking by the doorway. He was tall, and large, someone she would remember if she had seen him before.
When she plopped herself into her seat, Walker’s knees shot toward Caitlin’s and away from Alice’s as if she were made of lava. She turned away from him to watch the stranger. Who is he? Did he know the adult Rob?
After the pastor read a few more generic Bible verses, Alice popped up from her seat next to Walker to go after the stranger. She half waddled, moving as quickly as she could, and dodged several of her mother’s friends as they tried to praise her speech or tell her that she looked like she was “about to pop!” She reached the doorway and followed it to the side lot as an old minivan pulled out and drove away.
She stood in the open doorway, watching the space where the van had been, until Walker exited the front door with Caitlin on the other side of the parking lot. Though he didn’t know he was being watched, he spun to look behind several times as he fast-walked to the car, pulling Caitlin by the hand. The earlier ease was gone from his stride, replaced by hardness and anger. Though his shoulders slumped from a level of sadness appropriate for a funeral, Alice knew grief over the dead had nothing to do with it.
She breathed deeply, filling the parts of her stomach and chest that already felt close to bursting, and thought of little Robbie. When he came, Walker would forget about today. The memory of her brother and his secrets would once again be hers alone to bare.
* * *
As the mourners filed out of the church, Alice found her mother in the bathroom. Crying.
“Are you okay? Mama, I think the service was great.” Alice stared at her, unsure what to do. She reached her hand toward her mother’s shoulder, but Maura shuddered away from the touch.
“It’s the damn flower company!” Maura said, suddenly straightening up. “I said no orchids. And what do I get? Orchids! Of course.” She scooped the flowers out of the vase and threw them in the trash can. Alice reached to stop the crystal from falling as her mother flung open the door.
Alice remembered seeing her mother cry only twice. The last time was two mornings after Rob left. Alice woke up to the sound of her mother ripping band posters off his bedroom wall, sobbing.
The first time was when Alice was about six. She remembered running around the house with Rob, chasing the dog, which—along with opening the decorative books on the shelf, doing crafts on the kitchen table, and the word fart—was forbidden in the Tate household. They ran around the main floor’s loop, all three panting and giggling, until the dog froze at the sound of the garage door. Both Rob and Alice barreled into the dog, and the tangled group rolled into a vintage bookcase, knocking two delicate plates off their stands.
Maura ran in to survey the damage. When she saw the broken china, her face crumpled as tears ran down her red cheeks, bringing her mascara with them.
“Those were wedding presents! I told you not to run in the house!”
The dog ran off, but Alice and Rob froze, barefoot in the middle of a minefield, waiting to be dug out by the unfriendly forces.
When Richard saw the mess, he crunched in to retrieve Alice. Rob waited until their father left to find the dustpan before struggling out of the wreckage. As Alice trailed Rob up the stairs, watching blood from his left foot drip toward the carpet, they heard their father say, “That’s why we shouldn’t have all these damn antiques. Children need to be able to play in their own house.”
But growing up in that house, the antiques were the least of their problems.
Winter 2016
8½ years after the funeral
Chapter Two
Alice stood barefoot in the kitchen, stirring a gigantic pot of chili. The smell of freshly cut cilantro from her garden, still resting next to her on a wooden cutting board, mixed with tomatoes and the smooth air of a mild Georgia winter that flowed through the open windows.
She breathed it all in, trying to settle her stomach before dinner. She had barely eaten since a lawyer rang their doorbell a few days ago with the contract her mother had signed last spring, selling the house where Alice grew up and slating it for demolition two weeks from tomorrow. She didn’t fear the wrecking ball. In fact, Alice had imagined it gliding into the too-quiet brick colonial like an eagle in flight, exploding the pain and loneliness of her childhood along with the Corinthian columns out front. Picturing herself stepping inside her parents’ house, though—that’s how she thought of it, never her house or “home”—sent her back to the fridge to pour another glass of wine.
She had entered the house less than a dozen times since graduating from the University of Georgia at twenty-two, and never beyond her mother’s elegant parlor off the foyer. Since her mother left, the house had ticked as an unavoidable bomb in Alice’s mind, one that she’d wanted to evade for another few months. “Procrastinating,” Walker had called it.
Alice moved around the kitchen island, picking the last chili ingredients from among the scattered papers, mail, outdated report cards, dog treats, energy bars, pens, and spare change. As she walked past her open shelving crowded with knickknacks and frames filled with mismatched art, Alice prepared herself for tomorrow by mentally walking through the house of her childhood, with its pristine antiques and silver frames from Tiffany’s.
The sound of a car on the driveway cut through the neighborhood’s quiet, the reverent hush Walker had used to convince Alice they should buy the house, even though the stone facade and gated neighborhood were grander than she’d envisioned for the house where she would raise her children. She restacked items in one corner of the island, turned down the music, and switched it from Johnny Cash to REM.
Normally, she valued the quiet time to mince, stir, and drink wine before the family piled in, especially since she was never alone at work anymore. In the last few years, her tiny cabin on the lake had become a full-fledged research and outreach center, complete with donors to impress, research assistants to coach, and staff meetings to call. The Georgia Creekside Center was a dream of hers, a success, yet she couldn’t help but miss the glorious early years as the founder and only employee, wading through the water with a teetering Caitlin. Today, though, Alice was eager for the family’s noise.