“It’s all right, honey. You don’t have to talk,” Rita said as my mother sat down beside her.
The two of them sitting there so close to one another filled me with an additional source of anguish. I ached at their sisterly complacency. Stella and I would never grow older together, never hurt or comfort one another the way only sisters can. I couldn’t suppress the urgent need to hear their story. For whatever reason, I hoped it might provide a blueprint for my healing process.
“There is something I want to talk about.” I began.
Mom shifted in her seat, and Rita stared at her lap.
I took the direct approach. “I remember what happened the night Uncle Roy disappeared.”
“Right. We wondered when it would come back to you.”
I couldn’t say what I expected from my aunt, but it wasn’t this calm acceptance.
She set down her cup and continued. “A few months before your sister ran off, she came to see me. She put some things together about Roy going missing.” Rita gave Mom a look. “She was positive about the events of that night. But when she mentioned it to you, you seemed clueless.” She took a sip of coffee.
Mom picked up the story. “That’s when we realized you girls had been on the porch.”
My aunt waved a hand, and my mother stopped talking. “I told Stella she should talk to her mother about what happened, but she insisted she didn’t need to. That she was aware of everything that went on. And she was. She figured it out a long time ago. She said she understood why her mother and Gran killed her uncle. What she wanted to know was if I had forgiven them.”
I did the math and calculated my sister must have been planning her exit with Ben when she visited Rita.
“Marilyn, why don’t you get us some of those sugar cookies your church lady friends dropped off?”
“You want cookies now?” Mom asked, but she scurried to the kitchen without waiting for an answer.
“So, were you able to forgive them?”
“I’ll be honest. At first, I hated them, but not for the obvious reasons. They took matters into their own hands because they thought I was too weak to act for myself. They expected I would take that miserable son of a bitch back, even after he hurt my baby boy.”
Mom returned with a plate of pastries and put it in front of my aunt. She selected one and took a dainty bite.
“Umm,” she murmured. “Church ladies make the best cookies in the world. It’s almost enough to get me back into religion. Almost.” She grinned and gulped her coffee. “As soon as I got my boy out of the hospital, I went straight to a divorce lawyer. I didn’t tell your mother or Gran because I knew they’d roll their eyes at me. But I was dead serious. Of course, it turned out Roy was plain old dead, so I never got the satisfaction of serving him with papers.”
“You mean you weren’t upset with them about, well, you know.” I was still squeamish about the whole murder concept.
“Sure, I was. It’s more than a little unsettling when you find out your sister and mother killed your husband. God help me, I still loved the man, but I hated him, too. And I loved your cousin more than life. I guess you could say I got knocked off-kilter.”
It said a lot about my aunt she remembered her stint in the mental institution as being “off-kilter.”
“But when I got back on track, I understood what they did and why they did it. I was even a little grateful. Divorcing Roy wouldn’t have gotten him out of our lives. Most likely, I would have had to kill him myself.” The frown lines on her forehead deepened as she scowled at Mom and added, “But he was mine to take care of.”
“Still, you forgave them?”
“Oh, yes. I forgave them a long time ago, and I told Stella that. I explained no matter what happens between you and family, there’s always forgiveness. And I told her that was especially true with sisters because, well, it’s not like sometimes you’re sisters and sometimes you’re not. And you always forgive each other. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not making up excuses for what Stella did. It was low down, and she knew it. Your baby sister lacked in the character department but having you in her life mattered to her. So, you see, Grace, she didn’t die without knowing you’d forgive her.”
I let my tears fall freely, and so did the sisters. They came to me, one on each side of the worn leather recliner. Together, the three of us cried for the depth of our loss and the power of our forgiveness.
We froze in that tableau of grief and hope and stayed that way until Mike came into the room.
“Oh, my, God, girls! Let me get you something. More coffee or tissues or—oh, my God!”
The sight of my mother’s big, strong soldier running his hands through his buzz cut before he threw them up in the air, ended our communal sobbing. Mom walked to where he stood and put her arms around him. Rita and I looked at each other and began laughing.
We let Mike fix us lunch and take care of us for the rest of the afternoon. My aunt gave her approval of the memorial plans, remarking once, out of my mother’s earshot, what a hoot Stella would have gotten out of all that singing and sanctimony.
I used Scarlett as an excuse to leave before dinner. On the drive home I considered how strange it was to know someone your entire life and continue to uncover secrets and surprises that make you reconstruct your view, not only of the person you loved but of your entire world.
Scarlett greeted me with the same enthusiasm she showed when I first returned, and I wondered if she’d forgotten her original mistress.
