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There, I come to a stop.
What now?
I go up to my penthouse and I walk idly into the kitchen, where mail is piled in a huge number of stacks. It’s funny, in all my months away, I never really thought about the nuts and bolts of my other life. I didn’t check messages or open my bills or even think much about any of it. I counted on the machinery of my life—agents, managers, accountants, stockbrokers—to keep me on track.
I know I need to dive back in, to take charge again and reclaim my life, but honestly, the thought of going through all this mail is daunting. Instead, I call my business manager, Frank. I will hand off the responsibility to him. It’s what I pay him for: to pay my bills and invest my money and make my life easier. I need that now.
The number rings repeatedly and then goes to voice mail. I don’t bother to leave a message. Is it Saturday?
Maybe a nap will help. Mrs. Mularkey used to say that a good night’s sleep could change everything, and I need to be changed. So I go into my room, pull the curtains shut, and crawl into bed. For the next five days, I do almost nothing except eat too much and sleep poorly. Each morning when I wake up, I think this is it, this is the day I will be able to climb out of this grief and be me again, and each night I drink until I can’t remember the sound of my best friend’s voice.
And then it comes to me, on the sixth day after Kate’s funeral. An idea so grand and perfect that I can’t believe I haven’t considered it before.
I need closure. That’s how I will put all this dark sadness away and go on, that’s how I will heal. I need to look this grief in the heart and say goodbye. I need to help Johnny and the kids, too.
Suddenly, I know how to do it.
* * *
It is nightfall when I pull up into the Ryans’ driveway and park. Stars litter the charcoal and purple sky, a faint autumn-scented breeze ruffles the green skirts of the cedar trees that line the property. I struggle to lift the flattened cardboard moving boxes out of my small, sleek Mercedes and carry them across the wild front yard, which is strewn with kids’ toys and overrun with weeds. In the past year, yard work and maintenance have hardly been on anyone’s list.
Inside, the house is dark and quieter than I can ever remember it being.
I come to a stop and think, I can’t do it. What have I been thinking?
Closure.
And there is more, something else. I remember our last night together, Katie’s and mine. She had made up her mind; we all knew it. The decision had weighed us down, so that we moved more slowly, talked in whispers. We had one last hour alone, just the two of us. I’d wanted to climb into bed with her, to hold her matchstick body close, but even with her pain cocktail, the time for that had passed. Every breath hurt her, and by extension, me, too.
Take care of them, she’d whispered, clutching my hand in hers. I’ve done everything for them. At this she laughed; it was a crinkling, breathy release of air. They won’t know how to start without me. Help them.
And I had said, Who will help me?
The shame of that washes over me, tightens my stomach.
I’ll always be with you, she’d lied, and that had been the end of it. She’d asked for Johnny and the kids then.
And I’d known.
I tighten my hold on the boxes and trudge up the stairs, ignoring the way the cardboard edges bang into the worn, scuffed risers. In Kate and Johnny’s bedroom, I pause, feeling reluctant suddenly to intrude.
Help them.
What had Johnny said to me the last time we spoke? Every time I look at the clothes in her closet …
I swallow hard and go into their walk-in closet, turning on the light. Johnny’s clothes are on the right side, neatly organized. Kate’s are on the left.
At the sight of her things, I almost lose my nerve; my knees buckle. Unsteady on my feet, I unfold one of the boxes and tape the ends and set it beside me. I grab an armful of hangered clothes and sit down on the cold hardwood floor.
Sweaters. Cardigans and turtlenecks and V-necks. I fold each one carefully, reverently, breathing in the last, lingering scent of her—lavender and citrus.
I do okay until I come to a worn, stretched-out-of-shape gray UW sweatshirt, soft from years of washing.
A memory washes over me: We are in Kate’s bedroom, packing to go off to college together. A couple of eighteen-year-old girls who have imagined this moment for years, talked about it all summer, polished our dream until it is shiny. We are going to join the same sorority and become famous journalists.
They’ll want you, Kate had said quietly. I’d known she was feeling afraid, the unpopular girl her classmates had called Kootie all those years ago.
You know I won’t join a sorority unless we’re in it together, right?
