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They sat there a little longer, saying nothing. Finally, Margie stood. “Well. I have to get back. ”
Dorothy nodded. She rose slowly and walked Margie off the patio and up to Firefly Lane. As Margie started across the street, Dorothy said, “Margie?”
Margie turned back. “Yes?”
“I’ll bet she knows how much you love her. Your Katie. That would mean a lot. ”
Margie nodded and wiped her eyes. “Thanks, Cloud. ”
“I’m Dorothy now. ”
Margie smiled tiredly. “Dorothy, I hope you don’t mind me saying this: time passes. Trust me. Strong girls suddenly get sick. Don’t wait too long to see your daughter. ”
Twenty
In October of 2006, rain fell from swollen clouds day after day, turning Dorothy’s carefully tilled fields into a black and muddy mess full of cloudy puddles. Still, she went out every day, rain or shine, to care for this ground that had become the whole of her focus. She planted garlic and a mixture of winter rye and hairy vetch to cover the wet ground. She prepped the beds for crops she would plant in the spring, lining them with dolomite and layering compost down. She was busy planting when a floral delivery van turned into the driveway across the street.
Dorothy sat back on her heels and looked up at the Mularkey house. Rain threaded the view, fell from the brim of her hat in fat beads that obscured the black ribbon of Firefly Lane.
The house was empty now, she knew. The Mularkeys were either at the hospital or Kate’s house every day. Dorothy had picked up their mail and stacked it carefully into piles and placed it in the silver milk delivery box. Several times she’d found the box empty and the mail gone, so she knew Bud and Margie were home occasionally, but she’d not seen either of them or their car in the past month.
She put down her trowel and stood up slowly, peeling off her gloves. Tucking them into her waistband, she picked her way out of the garden and walked across the patio and along the side yard toward the driveway.
She was at her mailbox when the delivery truck chugged back down the Mularkeys’ driveway and turned left onto Firefly Lane.
She walked across the street and up the gravel driveway in her oversized rubber boots. To her right, the rolling green pasture fell away from the farmhouse and ended at the split-rail fence that delineated the property. As she approached the white farmhouse’s welcoming front porch, she couldn’t help thinking that this was the house that came closest to home for her daughter and Dorothy had never even been inside.
The porch was full of flower arrangements. They were on the floor, on the tables; one was even on the milk box. Dorothy felt a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. She plucked the envelope from a bouquet near her and opened it.
We are so sorry for your loss.
Kate will be missed.
Love, the Goldstein family
Dorothy had no idea why she felt such loss. She couldn’t even summon a picture of Kate Ryan in her mind. Nothing came to her but a memory of stringy blond hair and a quiet smile.
Pot and alcohol. They’d stolen so much from her, and never had she missed her memories more.
This would break Tully’s heart, pure and simple. Dorothy might not know much about her daughter, but she knew this: Kate was the ground beneath her daughter’s feet, the rail that kept her from falling. She was the sister Tully had yearned for and never had; the family her daughter had wanted so desperately.
Dorothy prayed the Mularkeys didn’t come home to a porch full of dead flowers—how depressing would that be? But what could she do to help?
She could reach out to her daughter at last.
The thought filled her with a tenuous, unexpected hope. Maybe this terrible moment would be the time to show Tully that she had changed. She hurried back down the driveway to her house. It took less than thirty minutes on the phone to find out the funeral plans. It would be held in a few days, at the Catholic church on Bainbridge Island. In a town as small as Snohomish, the news of a death of one of their own moved quickly.
For the first time in as long as Dorothy could remember, she prepared for an event. She rode her bike into town on October fifth—in the pouring rain—and had her hair cut. She could tell by the way the young girl clucked and tsked that she thought Dorothy’s hair was too long and too gray, but Dorothy had a long history of being too something and she was okay with that. She didn’t need to come out looking like Jane Fonda, all impossibly young and fit. She just wanted not to embarrass Tully, to show her daughter that she’d changed.
So she had her hair cut to shoulder-length and let the blackbird girl in the motorcycle boots dry it until it fell in pretty waves. Then she went to one of the small local boutiques on First Street (where she endured more clucking and tsking) and purchased a pair of simple black pants and a matching turtleneck. She had the clothes wrapped up in plastic bags and carried them out to her bicycle. By the time she got there, her hair was ruined again, but she hardly noticed. She was too consumed with the conversation going on in her head.
It’s good to see you again.
I’m so sorry for your loss.
I know what she meant to you.
I’m sober now. Two hundred and ninety-seven days.
