Last Day (40 page)

Dr. Laurie Banks practiced in a barn on the edge of Mile Creek. Kate had been here before, accompanying Beth to take Popcorn for shots. Dr. Banks took one look at the rabbit and shook her head.

“I’m not licensed to treat wild animals,” she said. “You have to take this one to a wildlife rehab.” She leaned closer, though, examined the hawk’s gouges. “It really doesn’t look good, though. The rehabber will probably euthanize it.”

Kate stared at the rabbit’s wide dark eyes and saw life force and knew she wouldn’t let that happen.

“Can you at least tell me if it’s male or female?”

Dr. Banks turned the rabbit over carefully and looked beneath the short white tail. “Female,” she said.

Kate nodded.

“Here’s the name of the closest rehab,” Dr. Banks said, handing Kate a slip of paper.

“Thanks,” Kate said.

“It could be a long shot,” Dr. Banks said. “It’s unlikely she’ll survive. It’s probably kinder to put her out of her misery. The wildlife vet will make that decision.”

“Okay,” Kate said.

The vet brought out a cardboard crate for transport and placed the rabbit inside. Kate carried her to the car, set her on the front seat beside her. She started to drive toward Montville, the address Dr. Banks had given her, but instead she stopped at CVS, bought hydrogen peroxide and bacitracin, and headed for home.

On her couch, she set the cottontail on a towel. The bleeding had stopped. She gently washed the cuts with warm water, then hydrogen peroxide. The gashes were clean. She applied the antibiotic ointment to prevent infection as carefully as she could. The rabbit’s fur felt impossibly soft.

Popcorn investigated. Kate didn’t want him to scare the rabbit, but Popcorn was so cautious it seemed okay. Kate slung her arm around his neck, burrowed her face in his fur. The dog had been Beth’s. Beth had instinctively known how to care for him, and she’d wanted to. Beth had had a husband and a daughter and a lover and all the people she’d helped at the shelter and the soup kitchen. Kate had kept herself as separate as possible from all creatures.

“What should we name her?” Kate asked Popcorn.

He circled, lay at her feet. Kate heard him sigh as he settled. The rabbit was perfectly still, except for her breath. Kate’s hand rested on the sofa beside her, and she felt the warmth of each exhalation. On the coffee table was a blue bowl filled with small oranges. The scent filled the room. It smelled like a citrus grove, both sweet and tangy. Beth had loved oranges. They had been her favorite fruit. And she had been wearing the color in those pictures Lulu had taken.

Kate held her hand above the rabbit’s head and felt energy passing between them. All her senses were engaged. Beth was still with her. She
felt warm breath on the back of her neck and actually turned around to see if her sister was standing there. She had the sudden feeling that she was coming alive in a different way.

Kate’s gaze fell upon the bowl of oranges, and the rabbit’s name came to her. “You’re Clementine,” she said. “You’re going to get better.”

She carried Clementine to the other side of the loft, away from the windows, where it was dark and toasty. She put her back into the crate. It was 2:30, nearly time to leave to meet the others. She’d have to gather tall grass from Mathilda’s yard, arrange it in a nest for Clementine. And food—she’d need to learn what wild rabbits liked to eat. She’d seen families of them in the meadow, hopping through clover. She wondered where she could find clover in late November.

“It will be all right,” Kate whispered. She thought of Lulu and Beth, the ritual of drawing a heart on the back of the painting. She cringed to think of the secrets they had kept from her.

Since July, her heart had ached more than she thought was safe. She’d thought maybe she would collapse. Her sister was gone, and she’d never see her again. The feelings were similar to what she’d felt when her mother had died, when it had seemed that if someone she loved could be taken so violently, there might be no reason to go on.

Sitting with Clementine, feeling sudden and deep commitment to saving her, she saw clearly what she’d known all along—that she’d already been doing that with Sam. She had decided, without putting it into words, that she would be her niece’s person. Less than a mother but more than the somewhat distant aunt she had always been. She might have thought she was shut down, but she had loved as deeply and totally as anyone else all along. She just hadn’t let herself feel it.

Sitting cross-legged on the floor, she stared through the crate’s open door and watched Clementine watching her. She remembered being eleven, rescuing a feral cat that had lived behind the gallery, the last pet she’d ever had—loving every second with Maggie, feeling her warmth as she snuggled against her side.

After those hours in the basement, Kate couldn’t even look at her sister. She had been too numb to grip her hand, to hold her little sister tight, to bond together and try to dispel the horrors of that day and night.

Kate’s love of her sister had never left her, but after their mother had died, after the brutality of the ropes, she’d stopped being able to open her heart to physical, hands-on caring for any living being. You never knew when they would be taken from you.

She thought about what Lulu had told her. If not for the photos and video, she would have had a hard time picturing Beth with the knife, cutting
Moonlight
from the frame, and she couldn’t help feeling angry at her sister. Beth had staged a fake crime, reminiscent of what their father had done with the same painting.

“Beth,” she said out loud. Then she closed her eyes and listened. She ached to hear her sister’s voice. After a few minutes, she leaned down to stare into the rabbit’s big beautiful eyes.

“You’re going to be fine, Clementine. It will all be okay,” Kate said, unable to stop herself from reaching into the crate, gently touching the head of her injured cottontail. “I love you more than you could ever know,” Kate said, and she wasn’t completely sure whether she was talking to Clementine or to Beth. She stood up. It was time to meet the others and celebrate Beth’s birthday.

51

Scotty and her family lived in a winterized beach cottage overlooking the boat basin at Hubbard’s Point, and at this time of year, she never felt quite warm enough. The November wind whistled through every window. Most boats had been hauled for the season, but gazing out her kitchen window, Scotty saw that there were still two tied up in their slips. Lobster pots were piled on the bulkhead between them. Late fall and winter weren’t bad times to be lobster fishermen, if you were hardy enough.

Isabel and Sam had gotten off the bus after school, had a quick snack, and were up in Isabel’s room with the door closed. She had no idea what they were talking about. It was time for Scotty and Sam to head to Mathilda’s—Isabel would stay here and babysit Julie—but try prying the best friends apart. It had been the same for Scotty and the rest of the Compass Rose when they were that age.

Scotty walked into the pantry and stood looking at the liquor. She wanted a drink badly. Often she let herself have a small one at this time of day. She used to wait till 6:00, the official cocktail hour, but lately she’d begun telling herself an hour or two earlier didn’t make a real difference. She didn’t drink to get drunk—just to take the edge off.

But other than her two days a week at the food pantry, she didn’t usually have to drive anywhere. She actually missed volunteering on the days she wasn’t there. She knew it would be frowned upon, but every so
often she’d take a walk with one or more of her favorite clients and treat them to a cocktail. Why not? They were all adults, and if it brought a little pleasure into their painful lives, she was happy to provide it.

Beth might not have approved of her sharing alcohol with them—many had substance abuse issues. But Beth had understood almost everything else that mattered to Scotty.

They talked about how it felt to have teenage daughters, how unnecessary they’d started to feel. Both Isabel and Sam had found their independence on what had seemed to Scotty the early side—they’d embraced the belief they didn’t need their moms the same way. They had lives of their own, and the last thing they wanted were mothers hovering.

But of course they did need their mothers, more than ever. These were crucial days—that’s how Scotty thought of it: mere days, six hundred or so, before they went off to college. The comfort of years stretching ahead—a seemingly endless time for the entire family to nestle together, for Scotty to savor the closeness with her older daughter—was over.

Beth had thought she had that luxury too. Even though life had changed, with Sam growing up, they were still together, and Sam, although perhaps not in the same way as she had in middle school, needed her guidance and love. Beth had loved that girl, and she had been so ready to love Matthew. It was supposed to last forever.

Scotty shivered, thinking of the terrible loss. Beth, gone from their lives. Today, on her birthday, the emptiness was almost unbearable. She stared at the vodka bottle, then abruptly turned her back on it. She had to stay strong. And sober for today.

Kate and Lulu would be expecting her and Sam, but she knew they wouldn’t mind if two more joined them. She knew in that moment she couldn’t leave Isabel at home on Beth’s birthday, and that meant she’d take Julie along too. Her children were everything.

She paused. The last talk with Beth had been so upsetting. Her sweet Beth, so hurt by the men in her life. Was that why Beth had refused to give either one of them, Pete or Jed, the satisfaction of knowing he was the father? Scotty had no use for Pete, and she couldn’t see much good in Jed. He was an ex-con, probably drawn to Beth for her money and the connections she could make for him in the art world. He certainly didn’t deserve any respect, not after tempting Beth away from her marriage.

Money, clearly. And the prestige of the gallery. Beth must have realized he didn’t have good motives. That had to be the reason Beth wouldn’t tell him whether he was or was not Matthew’s father. Although Jed wasn’t honorable, it wasn’t fair to keep that fact from him. If he was about to be a parent, he deserved to know, and it was terribly unfair of Beth to not tell him. Everyone had loved Beth, but very few had realized how deeply flawed she had been.

There were certain rules in life that had to be adhered to. You simply couldn’t come between a person and his child. That would be selfish and unforgivable. The important thing was to celebrate Beth’s life. To be with everyone who had loved her as much as Scotty had.

“Girls!” Scotty called from the bottom of the stairs. “Hurry up; it’s time to go! Dress warm—it’s cold out!”

52

November 21

It’s my birthday.

It’s so strange to be here instead of there on this day. On any day.

You’re not supposed to ask for gifts; if they are freely given, you are grateful. But you can’t expect them.

Am I allowed to wish for one?

The gift I would like is for them to know, to exact payment. They are my beloveds, my sister, daughter, and best friends. In some ways I believe they’ve known all along, for how could they miss it?

Or maybe my own experience has been colored: of trusting and loving, then turning my back and my skull being smashed—hearing the bones in my head crack. Then feeling hands around my throat, seeing that wild gaze—so charged with fury, but then emotion draining away, staring into my eyes with no emotion as dispassionately as someone trying to loosen a particularly tight lid from a jar. It has colored my judgment, made me believe that there could be no questions—none at all. That is the drawback of knowledge. It gives you a singular point of view that you cannot, in fairness, expect others to share.

I would have liked to have remained blank as I died, to not give the satisfaction of my panic and desperation, but I wasn’t that strong, or perhaps a better word would be
disciplined
. I so quickly lost track of
what I wanted—to remain calm. My survival instinct made me want to fight with everything I had. But instinct wasn’t enough. I started to die the minute that sculpture, the owl I had loved so much, struck my head. I would have withheld my fear if I could. I believe it was accepted as a gift.

Although I couldn’t scream—the grip around my neck was too tight—I could hear the terrible choking, gurgling sounds coming from my throat, the fine bones breaking under the pressure of strong thumbs. In that most human of moments, I thought I sounded inhuman.

I reached for those hands, wanting to pull them away, but I couldn’t even reach them. My muscles tensed, softened, and my arms fell slack. I imagine the power bestowed by my weakness. Is it odd that I didn’t wonder why this was happening to me? Every cell in my body knew, so why bother asking the question? The point is, while being murdered, I was purely there on the bed, physically and therefore mentally present in the moment, experiencing my own death.

And Matthew’s death. My son had been moving and dancing and kicking for weeks. He was even more active in my womb than Sam had been, and that is saying a lot. I was sure she’d come out a champion tennis player. Her prebirth serve-and-volley game was strong.

Matthew was ready to be born. If he could have arrived in July, instead of October when he was expected, I believe he would have. He had such an exuberant life force. I felt I already knew him. When he kept me awake, his feet contentedly tapping, I could picture him learning to walk early, chortling with pleasure as he toddled after Popcorn, a dancer who would grow up singing and laughing.

He had a wonderful personality.

He fought even harder than I did. Even as my own life faded away, I felt Matthew twisting and punching. His little fists balled up, moving in slow motion in the fluid in which he swam. My heart beat oxygen into his. Every breath I took was a breath for Matthew. When I stopped being able to breathe, so would he. That was the only thought that
pulled me away from the physical act of dying. The sorrow that my son, already so alive, would lose his life before he had the chance to truly live it. I felt such heartbreak for his father—that his father would never know his beautiful son.