Mark Enright was Dad. I thought he was someone else. My dad.”
Mom got it then. She parted her flaky lips.
“I thought he’d committed the murders,” Eileen went on, and then, to her horror, she began to cry.
“Leenie.” Mom’s arms were around Eileen. They didn’t squeeze hard—only a tentative hug. “There’s a lot I should have told you. There are so many things I could’ve done differently.”
“Yeah,” Eileen agreed.
Because this wasn’t the time to make Mom feel okay. This needed to happen. It had been building in Eileen for two years, fueled by liquor and uneasy silence and a locked bedroom door.
“I got it wrong,” Eileen said, wiping a hand beneath her nose, catching snot on her knuckles. “I guess it’s not surprising, though. Like, I totally bombed the genetics exam in biology.”
Mom clasped Eileen’s elbows, looking her up and down. “Dad was your dad, Eileen. And he loved you beyond belief.”
“I’m the reason you had to stay in Emmet, though, huh? Because you had a kid.”
Mom said, “You came when we needed you most.”
There was a blockage the size of a football in Eileen’s throat. She couldn’t swallow it down.
She really needed a drink.
But she needed this more.
“Did you know?” she rasped around the lump.
Mom’s brows contracted. “Know what?”
That’s when Eileen understood that she didn’t. Mom had been that disconnected. And Eileen had done as good a job of hiding the drinking as she’d thought—not from Claire, maybe, but from her mom.
That was a feat, though not one to be proud of.
Eileen didn’t press the question. She hugged back. She placed her arms around Mom’s body-odor-stenched tee, and pulled close. This time, the hug wasn’t tentative.
“Yoo-hoo!” called a voice down the hall. Murphy. “Mom! Leenie! You guys have to see the cake Bonnie made!”
Neither of them moved just yet.
THIRTY-TWO Claire
Claire couldn’t keep her eyes off them: Kerry and Bonnie, and the looks and words they exchanged over Bonnie’s pistachio chocolate sponge cake, and then over the table as Claire helped them clear away the dishes, and then over the kitchen sink, as they loaded the dishwasher and dropped platters into sudsy water.
She knew it was creepy, paying this much attention to practical strangers. Claire was careful about it, though, never allowing her gaze to linger too long. Meantime, she hung on every innocuous word the women spoke, from talk of cable bills to New Year’s plans to Bonnie’s work at Rockport’s bakery, the Rosy Warbler. Claire was riveted. Mystified.
Because how could it work?
How could two smart, accomplished women in love with each other be living in Nowheresville, Oregon? And, more important, how could they be happy about it?
They seemed happy, even though their bungalow was small, and the kitchen was outdated. Even though they lived in a tiny town without even a Walmart to its name—a town full of close-minded people who had, at one time, practically banished Claire’s parents.
Her parents.
Leslie Clark.
Mark Enright.
Teenagers with a sordid story Claire had known nothing about.
She should have been processing that: murder, scandal, a hidden history. The fact that Mom, who’d been distant for years, was suddenly back in Claire’s life, acting close and caring, the way she once had. And maybe that was the way she’d always been—it was just the merciless grind of life that had gotten in the way.
Claire wasn’t thinking that through, though. Instead she was watching Kerry and Bonnie, leaving her mom to talk to Eileen in the hallway, as they had been doing for over an hour. Clearly, those two had their own issues to resolve. Murphy, meantime, had asked permission to turn on the TV and had settled herself in front of the TBS marathon of A Christmas Story. The world-weary narration of Ralphie Parker floated into the kitchen, where Claire was towel-drying the last of the serving dishes. Bonnie had left the room to take a phone call from her father, and Kerry had pulled the drain stopper from the sink. She rubbed her pruned hands against her jeans and gave an accomplished sigh.
“Well,” she said, “that’s that.”
“I’m … sorry,” Claire wheezed. For all her observation in the past hour, she hadn’t done much talking. Now her voice was dusty and uncertain.
“What’re you sorry for?” Kerry asked, surprised.
Dish towel in hand, Claire motioned in a wide arc, as though to say, for everything. “Lying to you about the house and who I was. Ruining your Christmas brunch. I’m sure it was going to be special, and you would’ve had leftovers. You could’ve—”