After the front door shut, Nora emerged from the kitchen, still holding napkins they didn’t need. Magpie had arrived while Nora was talking to Ben. She looked a little tired, which was unusual because, of the four of them, Magpie was the one who could stay awake all night and perk up before her morning cup of coffee. This Magpie looked subdued, pale, and worried. Nora realized she never had had that late-night conversation with her sister; in fact, she’d forgotten entirely that Magpie had wanted to talk.
What was happening to Nora? Since when did she let her family down like that? It was all that conflict with Ben, she told herself. Once they were divorced—
Divorced. God, the word held a razor edge that stole her breath and ached in her chest. It equated to failure in her mind. She had done everything right—and still failed to keep her family together.
“Come on, everyone, stop lollygagging,” Ma said, ushering everyone forward like a mother hen. “Dinner is going to get cold.”
They all sat down, with one vacant chair. Nora expected to see a place setting, the same one Ma had set every night for two decades for the husband she had lost, but the space before the chair was empty. Nora pushed her chair back and got to her feet. “Did you want me to get Dad’s plate, Ma?”
“That’s not necessary.” Colleen waved Nora back into her seat and shook her head. “I think it’s high time I said something to you girls. I will always love your father, God rest his soul,” she said, glancing at Bridget, Abby, Magpie, and finally Nora, “but I need to start moving forward. If you girls are okay with that.”
“Of course we are, Ma.” Bridget leaned over and hugged Ma. The other three sat there, all looking a little stunned. “We’ve all been waiting for you to do that. Is there a special someone you are moving forward with?”
Even as Bridget asked the question, the answer was obvious. Nora had noticed how much time her mother spent with Roger and how giggly she got when he was around.
“It’s far too soon to think about anything silly like that.” Ma blushed and cleared her throat. “Our dinner is getting cold with all this jabbering. I didn’t spend all that time in the kitchen to eat cold pot roast. Let’s say grace.”
Aunt Mary met Nora’s eyes across the table, a question in her face, probably wondering how things had gone with Ben earlier. Nora just dipped her head and waited for her mother to pray.
When Ma was done, the table erupted in chatter. Bridget started first, asking Sarah and Jake about their vacation. Jake gave a lively and long-winded account, ending with, “and we found a dog! And Mommy is letting us keep him!”
Bridget glanced at Nora. “You got a dog?”
“The kids found him,” Magpie said. “Nora took him to the Truro vet but he didn’t know who he belonged to and the dog didn’t have a microchip.”
“So he’s temporarily ours,” Nora added. Emphasis on the temporarily.
Jake and Sarah took turns talking about Chance and how he fetched a ball and slept on Jake’s bed. Nora pushed her food around and tried to look happy and interested, but her mind was back in the kitchen, on Ben asking her if she wanted to work things out. On the kiss she’d shared with Will, the mistake she had almost made this afternoon. When had she gotten so off track?
“Nora?” Ma asked. “What’s this about you staying at Mary’s house?”
Nora jerked her head up and rewound the snippets of conversation she’d heard. Jake talking about the dog, about his bedroom, and then mentioning that he was sharing a room with Sarah, and Bridget asking why.
Crap. She hadn’t thought about the kids talking about staying at Aunt Mary’s. She hadn’t even told them not to say anything. Yet another detail that had slipped past her.
“She’s staying there while Ben works on the other house,” Mary said, saving Nora from an answer. “My house is empty, so I thought it would work out perfectly.”
“The kitchen renovation is taking that long? I thought it was already halfway done.”
“It is. It was. It’s…” She glanced around the table. At Bridget, Abby, Magpie, Jessie, Aunt Mary, her mother, her kids. She was surrounded by people who loved her. People who made her feel like she belonged. People she could trust.
Ma passed the biscuits to Abby. “It seems to be quite the project.”
“Everything okay?” Bridget asked. “You look a little run-down, Nora.”
“Everything’s fine.” She barely held on to her wobbly smile.
“Mommy, I’m done. Can I go get a cookie and play in the yard?” Jake asked.
“Bring your plate into the kitchen. You too, Sarah. Then you can both go outside, but stay in the yard.” The kids did as they were told, with no argument. Sarah was still tentatively engaging with Nora, but it was better than last week. Progress. She’d take it.
Except once the kids went outside, it was a lot harder to hold the façade on her face. Ma sent her a sidelong glance, obviously suspicious. “You haven’t been yourself in some time, Nora.”
“Just stressed. You know how renovation projects are.” She added a little laugh that made it sound believable.
“So did you pick a countertop yet?” Bridget asked. “I know you were talking about granite. But have you seen those new ones from recycled glass? They’re pretty cool too.”
Nora remembered when she and Ben had started the renovation nine months ago. She’d had her head in the sand, completely unaware that they were already teetering on the edge of financial ruin. Granite, marble, recycled glass, none of that mattered anymore. Someone else would finish that kitchen and live in the space she had loved.
Exhaustion hit her hard and fast, a rogue wave brought on by years of carrying a burden too heavy for her shoulders. All her life, she’d been pretending everything was perfect. She’d shouldered the worries for her mother, kept her in the dark when the girls had struggled after Dad died. She’d done it to Ben, too, she realized, taking over with the childcare, the vacation planning, even the grocery shopping.
She’d been the perfect daughter. The perfect mother. The perfect wife. And where had she ended up? Homeless and divorced.
You control what time the kids go to bed, what we eat, but most of all, what people think of us. That image of the perfect family was so damned important to you, you refused to ask for help when we really could have used it. And you know what happens when you try to control everything? You end up controlling nothing.
That was exactly how she felt right now, completely and utterly out of control. Like being on a bike without brakes, careening down a steep hill. She’d been feeling that way since she lost the baby, and even more so now that she had lost her husband and home. It was only going to get worse as she took the next steps. She wasn’t so sure she was strong enough to handle what was coming, at least not on her own.
“The truth is…” Nora sighed, and when she exhaled the next words, some of the stress that had had a choke hold on her breath began to ease. Why not tell them? Why not trust them? Why not admit that she wasn’t as perfect as she pretended to be? Truth was, it was pretty damned exhausting keeping up that smoke screen. “We’re losing the house.”
Bridget’s jaw dropped. “What? How? You love that house.”
“I loved the life I thought I had in that house.” And that, she realized, was the heart of the matter. The kitchen counters didn’t matter. The flooring didn’t matter. The dream she’d had when she and Ben had first bought the house was what she was losing. What she had lost a long time ago when her husband cheated on her with a deck of cards. “But it turns out that life was…” She paused. All those years, she had pretended she had it together. Admitting the truth was harder than she thought. “Well, it was built on a very shaky foundation.”
Nora waited a beat. Waited for the shock, the judgment. For them to be angry that she had lied.
Abby glanced at Bridget and Ma and then back at Nora. “But I thought Ben was working and making good money.”
“He was. He does. And we were doing really great, but then…” Nora sighed. She’d kept all of it from her family, her kids, lying about Ben’s month-long stay in rehab, lying about everything. “I’ve been lying to you guys.”
The words came out and hung heavy in the air. Her sisters didn’t say anything for a long moment. Ma laid her hands flat against the table. “And why would you do such a thing?” she said.
“Because I’m the one who’s supposed to have it all together.” Nora’s face heated, and for a second, she considered taking it all back, pretending the whole thing was a joke. But where would that get her? “I don’t. I haven’t for a long time.”
Magpie reached out and put her hand on Nora’s. “Why…why didn’t you say anything?” she asked. “We spent all those days together, and you didn’t really talk about things.”
“I’m sorry,” Nora said. “I didn’t want to worry you. Any of you.”
Abby scoffed. “Have you met us? Worrying about each other is what we do best.”
“Besides, it’s about time you stopped being the family martyr,” Bridget said. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’re all grown up and fully capable of remembering our lunch money. You don’t have to protect us anymore, Nora.”
“I guess that is what I’ve been doing. Protecting you guys, my kids, maybe even myself.”
“From what?” Abby leaned forward, her dinner cold and untouched now.
“From…the truth.” Nora’s throat clogged, and the emotion she tried to keep hidden from everyone around her began to bubble to the surface. “That life sucks and good people die and husbands gamble away all your money.”
“Ben? He…” Outrage flashed in Magpie’s eyes. “He did what?”
“He started gambling a couple years ago. He spent almost a full year blowing his paycheck on slots and dog and horse races and kept the whole thing hidden from me. Then on my birthday last year, he called me, crying, because he’d given away his car to pay for a gambling debt. I had to pick him up at Foxwoods. And that was how I spent my birthday, not on a moonlit cruise around Boston Harbor like I told you all.” The fiction had become so real in the telling that for a long time, even Nora had believed it. She could keep up this fantasy marriage in her mind and avoid facing the truth. But now the dam that held those lies back began to fracture, and the words spilled out of her almost faster than she could say them.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” Ma asked. “Your family is here to help you, Eleanor. You should have come to us.”
Nora fiddled with her napkin, her gaze on her lap, as if she were thirteen, not thirty, and had gotten caught cheating on a test. “I was so afraid you would all be ashamed of me for failing so badly.”
“Holy shit. I never knew any of that happened.” Bridget shook her head and let out a long breath. “And, honey, none of us are ashamed of you. We all have crap we don’t want other people to know. Mistakes we wish we hadn’t made. That makes us human, not bad people.”
Nora gave Bridget a watery smile. Around the table, the rest of her family echoed Bridget’s support. They were her family, imperfect as they were, and they loved her regardless. How could she have gone this long and not seen that? Not trusted them?
When she was younger, she’d done it to protect her grieving sisters, her struggling mother. But as Bridget had told her, they were all adults now and all had weathered their own storms.
Everyone but Ma. Her mother’s expression was stern, unreadable.
“Ben went into a program for a month,” Nora said, “and then did meetings, one of those twelve-step things, and as far as I know he’s stopped gambling, but the damage was already done. We were too far behind on the mortgage to get caught up, and now”—she sighed—“they’re auctioning the house off just before Thanksgiving.”
“That’s less than two weeks away.” Ma put a hand to her chest. “Is that why you’re staying at Mary’s house?”
“Partly, yes. And partly to think.” Nora fiddled with her silverware. In the reflection of the knife, her image was long and drawn, wavy. “I told Ben I want a divorce.”
Magpie cursed, and for once, Ma didn’t even correct her. “A divorce? Really? But I thought you guys were so happy.”
“I thought we were too.” And now the tears she had held at bay for so long began to fall. If she’d had to write down the recipe of those tears, she would say they were one part relief and two parts regret. She wasn’t going to be able to make any of it prettier with fondant and marzipan. “I don’t know what I’m doing going forward. How I’m going to pack up the house. What my next steps will be. I guess I’ll start with talking to a lawyer. It all just seems too overwhelming.”
“Divorce is not a thing to take lightly,” Ma said. “I hope you have thought this through. Your children—”
“All I do is think about my children, Ma!” Nora got to her feet. “Why do you think I’m doing all this? I have to give my children a home and at the same time try to keep them from finding out that their parents fucked up and that’s the reason they are losing everything they know.”
Ma pursed her lips. “There is no reason to yell at me.”
“Yeah, there is. I’ve done everything right, Ma. Everything you and the church and God told me to, and this is where I am. Homeless, broke, and divorced.” Nora threw up her hands. “I give up. I just…give up. I’m sorry I let you all down.”
In an instant, her sisters were on their feet, surrounding her, wrapping her in their arms. They held her and they cried, and they became the support dowel in a seven-layer cake. Nora needed that so badly right now because she truly felt like she was about to topple. “I need you guys to be there for me now, if that’s okay.”
“Of course. That’s what we’re all here for, Nora,” Magpie whispered. “To hold you up when you want to fall down.”
Only her mother stood to the side, her face cold and blank.