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In the past few years they’d become a trio, he and the twins. Their time in Los Angeles had brought them closer together, and they’d been happy to move back here. And yet, he could see fissures forming in their relationship. Both of them, but especially Wills, had begun to keep secrets. Wills had begun to answer ordinary questions evasively. “Who was that on the phone?” was a good example. “No one. ” “Oh, so you’re talking to no one?” Like that.
“Hey, Dad,” Wills said, jumping down the last three steps. Lucas was a second behind. They landed together hard enough to rattle the floorboards.
God, he loved these boys. And yet he’d let them down in a million tiny ways without Kate to guide him. Alone, he hadn’t been as good a parent as his sons—or Marah—deserved. He reached out to hold on to the entry table beside him. He had made so many mistakes in the years without Kate. How was it he saw his failings so clearly now?
Would they forgive him someday?
“Are you okay, Dad?” Lucas asked. Lucas, of course. Take care of Lucas … he won’t understand. He may miss me most of all …
Johnny nodded. “We’re going out to clean Dorothy’s house tomorrow and paint. Get ready for Tully to go home. I know how much you’ll want to help. ”
“She and Mom liked blue,” Wills said. “That would be a good color for her room. ”
Lucas took a step forward, looked up at Johnny. “It’s not your fault, Dad,” he said quietly. “Tully, I mean. ”
Johnny reached out, touched Lucas’s cheek. “You’re so much like your mom,” he said.
“And Wills is like you,” Lucas said. The family myth; reiterated, passed along, repeated often. And true.
Johnny smiled. Maybe that’s how they would make it in the future, by keeping Kate alive in a thousand small ways while they moved on. He was ready, at last, to do that. Ironically, Tully’s accident had shown him what really mattered. “Where’s your sister?”
“Gee, Dad. Guess,” Wills said.
“In her room?”
“What does she do in there all the time?”
“She’s going through a hard time right now. Let’s cut her a little slack, okay, Conqueror?”
“Okay,” they said together.
He moved past them and went up the stairs. Although he paused at Marah’s closed door, he neither knocked nor said anything. He was trying like hell to give her space. Today, in the hospital, he’d seen how deep her pain ran, and he’d learned a good lesson in the past few years: Listening mattered as much as talking. When she was ready to talk, he would be the best version of himself. He wouldn’t fail her again.
He went into his room, tossed the pile of paperwork on his bed, and then took a long, hot shower. He was towel-drying his hair when there was a knock on his bedroom door.
He dressed quickly in jeans and a T-shirt and called out, “Come in. ”
The door opened. Marah stood there, her hands clasped tightly together. He still got a little jolt of sadness every time he saw her. She was so thin and pale, a kind of grieving doppelgänger of the girl she used to be. “Can I talk to you?”
“Of course. ”
She glanced away. “Not in here. ” Turning, she left his room and walked downstairs. In the mudroom, she grabbed one of the heavy sweaters from the hooks by the washing machine and put it on as she pushed through the door.
Out on the deck, she sat down in her mother’s favorite Adirondack chair. Above them, the sprawling branches of the maple tree were plush with autumn. Scarlet, tangerine, and lemon-yellow leaves lay scattered across the deck and were stuck here and there on the railing. How often had he and Katie sat out here at night, after the kids were in bed, with night at their feet and candles glowing in the air above them, listening to each other and the waves?
He shook the memory aside and sat down in the chair beside her. The old, weathered wood creaked as he settled into place.
“I sold a story to Star magazine,” she said quietly. “I told them Tully was a drug addict and an alcoholic. They paid me eight hundred and fifty dollars. It came out last week. I … saw it at Tully’s condo. She read it before she got in the car. ”
Johnny took a deep breath and exhaled it. Then he did it again, thinking: Help me, Katie. When he was sure his voice would be even, he said, “That’s what you meant when you said this was your fault. ”
She turned to him. The anguish in her eyes was heart-wrenching. “It is my fault. ”
Johnny stared at his daughter, saw the pain in her eyes. “We fell apart without your mom,” he said. “And that’s on me. It hurt too much to be around Tully, so I walked away. Hell, I ran away. You aren’t the only one who hurt her. ”
“That doesn’t help much,” she said miserably.
He said quietly, “I’ve thought about that day in your dorm room a thousand times. I was wrong to blow such a gasket. I would do anything to have a do-over and to tell you that I love you no matter what choice you make and that you can always count on me to love you. ”
