The Mill River Redemption (5 page)

Josie bit down on her lip, trying to keep some semblance of composure.

“It’s always harder for people who have lost someone during the holidays, too,” Father O’Brien continued. “I’m so glad you came here tonight. It’s important now that you have people around you to support you. You say you’re staying with an aunt here in town?”

“Yes, my aunt Ivy. She runs a little bookstore a few streets over.”

“Ivy Collard is your aunt?”

Josie nodded.

“I’ve known her for years,” Father O’Brien said, smiling. “She’s … what is the word I want … feisty? Sassy? But, you’ll not find a more caring, giving person.”

“She seems that way. Ivy is my mother’s older sister, but she and my mom never got along. Before yesterday, I hadn’t seen her since my mother’s funeral, and I’ve never really spent any time at all with her. Until now.”

“You needn’t worry about being a burden to her. I know Ivy well enough to know that she would never feel burdened by helping
you and your girls, especially at a time like this. You should try to open up and talk to her. Give her a chance to be there for you.”

Josie thought about those reassuring words. Perhaps this kindly priest could answer a question she had asked herself what seemed like a million times during the past several days. “Father, how long will it take until I can get through a day without falling apart? Until I can think about my husband without feeling as if my heart will explode?”

“It’s different for everybody,” Father O’Brien said, “and impossible to know. But, I can tell you that time will ultimately help ease the hurt. It may not take it away completely, but one day, you’ll feel strong again. You’ll be able to remember all the wonderful things about your husband and feel happy to have created those memories with him.” He hesitated for a moment, smiling a little to himself. “Part of Psalm 34, which is one of my favorites, says ‘the Lord is close to the brokenhearted, and saves those who are crushed in spirit.’ I truly believe that, Josie. And I think that maybe in this fragile time, you and your daughters ended up in Mill River for a reason. Your wonderful aunt is here. The town’s full of kind and loving people. It’s a good place for children to grow up. And the natural beauty of the area! In the fall, I sometimes think that the good Lord takes a paintbrush and colors the trees one by one.” He placed a hand lightly on her shoulder. “I’ve been the parish priest here in Mill River since I was a young man. I know the town very well. As hard as it is right now, you’ve come to a place where you
will
heal. It will take time, but you’re not alone. Ivy will be there for you, and so will I, anytime you need me.”

Josie sat very still, taking in Father O’Brien’s words. “Thank you, Father,” she finally said, and she rose, a bit unsteadily, to her feet. “I should get back. I left after my girls were asleep for the night. Ivy’s there, but they don’t know her very well yet. If they wake up and I’m gone …”

“Of course,” Father O’Brien said. He stood up as well and walked the few steps to the front door with her. “You’ll be in my prayers.”

“Thank you again, Father,” Josie said. She managed a small smile as she pulled her hood up over her head and slipped outside.

Back at The Bookstop, Josie let herself in through the side door and hung up her coat. She retrieved the certificate of cremation from the floor where she’d dropped it and lowered herself onto a chair at the breakfast table. Her hand was unsteady as she ran it over the box of Tony’s ashes. Carefully, she slid the box from the table and hugged it against her chest.

“Josie?” Ivy’s hushed voice carried into the kitchen.

“In here,” Josie said.

Ivy appeared in her bathrobe in the doorway to the kitchen with a look of pity on her face. “I was a little worried when I realized you’d left,” she said, coming to sit in the chair next to Josie. “I figured you needed some air, maybe some time to think.”

Josie opened her mouth to say something, but she was suddenly overcome. Unable to stifle her sobs, she tucked her chin down until it rested on the top of the box in her arms.

“Oh, honey,” Ivy said, as she moved closer. Josie leaned into her aunt’s arms as Ivy held her, stroking her hair, rocking slightly, in much the same way as Josie had comforted her daughters so many times. “I know this was a hard day for you,” she said after a few minutes. “You’re gonna have lots of hard days, but you’re gonna get through this. And I promise I’ll be there to help you every step of the way.”

Her aunt’s words and the thought of what Father O’Brien had said about Ivy only made Josie cry harder. When she was finally able to speak, she looked at her aunt through her blurry eyes. “I don’t know what to do, how to go forward,” she whispered. “Honestly, I feel like it’s such an imposition on you, having the girls and
me here. We’re pretty much strangers to you. And I keep worrying about raising the girls on my own, being able to provide for them. I don’t know how I’m going to do it without Tony. Every time I think of him … I can’t think about him. It hurts too much.”

“Look here,” Ivy said. “First, we may not know each other, which is a damn shame, but it’s something we’re gonna change. And you’re still my family. Right now, there’s nowhere else you and the girls belong except here with me. You’re no burden. Second, did you and Tony have anything saved? Did he have life insurance?”

Josie sniffed and nodded. “The insurance check is being processed,” she whispered. “And we were trying to save enough for a down payment on a house.”

“All right, then,” Ivy continued. “You don’t have to worry about working right now. If you’re here with me, you won’t have much in the way of expenses. You should be able to get by on what you have for quite a while. Plus, your girls are so little, and they’re going through a lot, too. They’ll need you around ’em for the time being. We’ll figure out what you can do for work once you’re ready. But right now, you’re not. Right now, you’re raw and grieving, and you’ve got to give yourself time to heal.”

Josie was starting to feel a bit calmer. At least she was no longer breathing in ragged gasps.

“And the last thing,” Ivy said, in a quieter tone, “is that you
have
to think about Tony. Talk about him, too. It’ll hurt something fierce, but you have to allow yourself to cry, to feel. You can’t keep it all bottled up and expect the sadness to go away. It won’t. If you keep it inside, it’ll eat away at you until there’s nothing left.”

“Rose and Emily hate seeing me cry,” Josie began, but Ivy was already shaking her head.

“With children, you’ve got to tell them the truth in terms that they can understand. Teach them that crying’s natural, and okay.
Tell them you miss their daddy and you feel sad, and crying helps you feel better. In time, you’ll cry less and they’ll understand why you do when you do. It’s just a part of life. It’s how you’ll get through this, for yourself and for the girls.”

Josie could feel the memories and the grief swelling behind the emotional barrier she was maintaining, and deep down, she knew her aunt was right. The empathy and emotional engagement of her aunt were surprising to Josie because her own mother had had little of either. When Josie was growing up, her mother’s answer to almost every difficult situation had been to pour herself another drink and retreat to her bedroom. As she listened to Ivy, Josie found herself marveling that someone could be so closely related to her mother and yet so different.

“You know, you’re very good at sorting things out,” Josie told her. “Mom could never make sense of difficult situations. She always left that to me. I guess I learned after a while how to get
her
out of trouble, but I’ve never had to do that for myself.”

“Abby was a good person underneath, but her drinking kept her from doing a lot of things,” Ivy said. “Kept her from coming home to visit, from keeping a good job and being the kind of mother you should’ve had. And that kept me from getting to know you while you were growing up.”

“Well, as you say, we’ve got the chance now,” Josie said. She used her sleeve to dry her eyes. “We’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”

A
T THE HOTEL BACK IN
R
UTLAND, A SHOWER AND A FRESH
change of clothing did little to help Rose’s mood. Two martinis in rapid succession at dinner and a Kahlúa mudslide for dessert helped take the edge off, but even as Rose and her family resumed the drive back to Manhattan, she was still fuming.

As usual, Sheldon was behind the wheel, and Alex was in the backseat with his nose stuck in a book.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” Rose asked her husband. “You’ve been staring straight ahead for hours.”

“What do you want me to say?” He didn’t turn his head or meet her gaze, which only infuriated her further.

“Something. Anything. How about, ‘Gee, it really sucks, what your mom decided to pull. It’s a good thing we don’t need her inheritance. We can just tell her to go to hell, if she isn’t already there.’ ”

“Rose,” Sheldon sighed. “I get that you’re sad about your mom’s death, and it’s coming across as anger. You’re pissed about the whole scheme she’s concocted. And then the whole mess with the ashes. It was a bad day.” He paused, seeming to consider his next words carefully. “The thing is, I don’t think I can say what you’d like me to … because I don’t agree with it.”

Rose cackled. “Surely, you’re not serious! Oh, that’s rich, Sheldon, truly.” She waited for his reaction, but he sat very still in the driver’s seat, moving only to steer the car through the curves of the
highway. Rose felt a realization creeping into her alcohol-numbed mind, the kind of realization with life-changing implications.

“Sheldon,” Rose said, sitting further up in her seat, “what do you mean, you ‘don’t agree with it’?”

“If we’re going to be completely honest here, we do need that inheritance. We need it very badly.”

“What?” Rose felt her mouth open, but she was too shocked to figure out how to close it or what else to say.

“It’s been almost three years since the bank went under. We’re well into our savings. My unemployment ran out a long time ago. The occasional consulting gig isn’t enough to pay for everything. Our mortgage is killing us, and we can’t unload the condo because it’s underwater. Our investments have come back some, but not enough to make up the losses, and a huge percentage of what we had disappeared with the company. I’ve cashed out some of what I can because the bills keep coming—the nanny, the housekeeper, the credit cards, school fees.” Sheldon rattled off these things as if they had been circling through his mind. “There are ten, twenty guys like me out there for every open position, and no one will touch me once they learn where I worked and how high up the ladder I was. We’re just about out of options.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before now? Didn’t you think it’s something I should know?”

“You’ve never taken much of an interest in our finances, and I wasn’t sure you wanted to hear it. And,” Sheldon added, more quietly, “I kept thinking that things would get better soon.”

Rose struggled to process this information. “What’s left of the savings?”

“Enough to cover things for another few months, maybe six if we cut out all the extras. Long enough for you to go up to Mill River for the summer and do whatever you need to do to get your share of your mom’s estate.”

“It can’t be that bad, Sheldon.”

“It is.”

Rose clenched her teeth. She was starting to feel a little nauseous, imagining herself living in a tiny old house surrounded by good ol’ New England country folk. Escaping that dump of a town was the main reason she had moved to New York City. “And if I go? What will you and Alex be doing?”

“I’ll keep looking for work and taking consulting gigs as they come. Alex will have to go to Vermont with you. We can’t afford to send him to camp or keep Clara on for the summer. If I’m working, even sporadically, you’ll need to take care of him. Which means,” Sheldon continued after dropping his voice to a stern whisper, “that you’re going to have to lay off the booze.”

“It’s all right, Mom,” Alex said. “I won’t be any trouble. I’m almost ten. I can practically take care of myself.”

Hearing her son’s voice softened Rose. She turned around and looked at Alex. He smiled hopefully. She couldn’t help but smile a little in return before the scowl crept back onto her face. Rose faced the front again and sighed. Leaning back against her seat, she tried to ignore her throbbing headache and the inevitably ugly summer ahead of her.

T
HE LONG JOURNEY BACK TO
C
ALIFORNIA FROM
V
ERMONT REMINDED
Emily just how much she hated being stuck in one place. She was trapped in the middle seat on the six-hour flight from Boston to San Francisco. To her left, a man slept with his head against the window. The poor fellow’s snoring would grow louder and louder until he snorted and grunted himself awake to start the cycle over again.

To her right, a tiny woman with braided gray hair and half-moon spectacles knitted at a feverish pace. The clicking of her
needles combined with the snoring was almost enough to drive Emily mad.

While she sat still with her eyes closed, Emily thought about the arrangements she would have to make. Her current job was scheduled to be completed in late May or early June, which was ideal timing. Since her mother’s plan was sheer lunacy, there was no telling what would happen or how long she might be living in Mill River. She would drive, not fly, back to Vermont, in late June.
In fact
, Emily thought,
maybe I should just pack up and take everything
. If she ditched the few pieces of furniture she owned, she could fit all of her other stuff into her car. She liked not being tied down or burdened by material possessions. She could pick up and move on her own anytime she wanted.

Although she loathed the idea of living next door to Rose, she knew her sister would be far unhappier in Mill River than she. If Rose acquiesced to their mother’s wishes, there was no way she would pass up the opportunity to watch Rose leave her fancy life in the city to fester and squirm in “Hicksville,” her sister’s name for Mill River.