“Like ripping off a bandage?”
“More like ripping a fifty-foot long dressing off a gaping head wound, but yeah. It's better to get on with your life. You can't live under the shadow of it forever. It'll bring you closer together. I promise.”
I drew in a deep breath. I hoped she was right, especially since I wasn’t convinced at all about that last part. As madly in love as Eamon and I were with each other, I knew our dynamic would change when I told him. I had no reason to think otherwise. It had gone that way with everyone I’d ever told, which was why I’d simply stopped talking about it.
“Of course, it's probably easy for me to say that,” she went on. “I was unconscious after the accident. You were awake. Sitting in the car for hours, waiting for someone to rescue us. And you were the one with mom before she came to get me at school.”
Once again I felt like my whole body had been dipped in ice water. My brain was moving at half speed, dragging me back again, like it wanted to torture me and force me to remember every last detail.
As if I could ever forget.
Chapter Seventeen
Amyand I headed downstairs to pry Fiona from Magic Hour with Grandpa Mark so we could go on our hike. The days were so short now. Mid-day was really the best time to go. We didn't want to risk getting stuck in the woods in the dark. Amy and I knew our way very well, but anyone could get confused.
“Fiona's going to need boots,” I said, walking into the kitchen. “Maybe I can run into town and find her some that will fit.”
“I think I've got a box of your old winter stuff in the attic,” Dad said. “I’ll get it down.”
“You kept that stuff? For what?”
“I keep everything, Katherine. You know that.” He got up from the table, but I stopped him before he could leave the kitchen.
“I don't want you going up into the attic and digging around. Eamon and I will do it.”
“You realize I’m perfectly fine when you're not here,” Dad said.
“No, no,” Eamon said. “Katherine and I are happy to do it. Fiona wants to be with you anyway.”
Eamon really did have a knack for smoothing things over. We headed back upstairs to the pull-down for the attic, in the hall between my room and Amy's. Eamon did the honors and went up first, but I got the benefit of watching his perfect behind in motion. The man's butt was made for jeans.
I'd forgotten how huge our attic was, with ceilings high enough for Eamon to nearly stand up straight. “I have no clue where to start,” I admitted. There were cardboard boxes everywhere, none of them stacked neatly. “I guess I should've asked him. Maybe we should start over by the Christmas stuff. Maybe he put things in here seasonally.”
“I like the way your mind works.”
Eamon kneeled down in front of a stack and began shifting crates. It only took a few minutes before he found it. “Here we go. Winter coats and boots.”
“Hopefully there's only one of these. I still don't know why he wouldn't donate this crap to the thrift store. Or throw it out. Who wants twenty year-old coats and boots?”
“Mam never threw anything out either. Had a devil of a time going through everything after she passed.” Eamon's mom had died a few years after I left Ireland, another detail of his life I'd had to learn from a magazine.
“Perils of being an only child, huh?”
“One of many.”
“Did it take you a long time to sort through her things?”
“Months. Rachel came and helped a few times. She and my mam were close. They liked each other quite a bit. Of course, my mam knew the truth of our marriage and our divorce. Rachel's mam never did. I think it was a big relief for Rachel. She didn't have to come clean about anything.”
I crouched down next to him. “I really wish I could've met her. Your mom.”
“I feel the same way about yours.”
A vision popped into my head, of me as an adult with my mom. My conversation with Grandma Price had planted a seed in my brain. Would we have been close? The sort of mom and daughter who talk on the phone every day? Who tell each other everything?
These were questions with only hypothetical answers. Any closeness I'd had with my mom, or lack thereof, was framed by the trappings of childhood—the times we baked cookies together or the times she sent me to my room with no dinner. Wasn't closeness with a parent measured in the later years? When bigger, more life-changing issues were at stakes? And anyone, at any time, could decide that they wanted out?
Maybe she and Dad would've patched things up. Maybe she would have changed her behavior because of the things I said. I might have grown up a far less hardened person. I might have said yes on that night when Eamon first proposed to me. I might not have thought he was making a joke. I might have stayed in Ireland and never left Eamon at all.
