Chapter 3

“How much did my mother know?”

Ethan stayed by the door.

“She knew Claire spent the night. Freezing rain had started, and Claire had been drinking. June agreed she could use the guest room.”

“You told me Claire left after dropping Lucy off.”

“You were exhausted. I knew having Claire there would upset you.”

“So you lied.”

“I left out something that would only make you angry.”

He spoke as if my reaction had been the problem all along.

I looked at the photograph again.

Claire stood barefoot on the porch, wearing the same dress from the night before beneath my mother’s red coat. Ethan’s reflection was close behind her. The two wineglasses did not look like the remains of a lonely drink.

“Where did you sleep?”

“On the couch downstairs.”

“And Claire?”

“The guest room.”

“What happened between you?”

“We talked for a few hours. She was going through a difficult time.”

People passed outside the preparation room.

Ethan glanced at the door, more concerned about being overheard than answering me.

“You’ve already made enough of a scene today,” he said. “You canceled the ceremony and left everyone wondering what’s wrong with us. June wouldn’t want her memorial turned into this.”

He was using my mother to defend himself again.

“You don’t get to tell me what she wanted.”

I put my phone away and tightened my arms around the urn.

“This conversation isn’t over.”

“If you keep letting Claire provoke you, it never will be.”

“You took the picture.”

Ethan did not deny it.

I opened the door and returned to the pavilion.

The reception lasted less than an hour.

I listened as my mother’s former coworkers described how she never forgot a birthday. A neighbor remembered her walking the shoreline every morning before she became ill.

Ethan stayed across the room.

Claire stayed too.

She accepted condolences as though she had lost someone close to her.

When one guest asked how she knew my mother, she answered, “I’m Lucy’s mom.”

That was enough to make strangers assume she belonged in our family.

After the guests left, Lucy found me packing away the photographs.

Her hands were empty, but she kept twisting the cuff of her sweater.

“Nora?”

I set the photograph down. “What is it?”

She glanced toward Ethan and Claire.

“Are you leaving Dad?”

Claire hurried over. “Lucy, this is between the adults.”

“I didn’t ask you.”

She rarely spoke to her mother that way.

Claire stiffened. Ethan joined us and motioned for her not to interfere.

I crouched so Lucy and I were at eye level.

“I haven’t decided everything yet. But none of the arguing you heard was your fault.”

“If you leave Dad, are you leaving me too?”

The question came quickly, as if she had been holding it in all afternoon.

She had been five when I first brushed the tangles from her hair. Later, she left water beside my bed when I had the flu. During my mother’s illness, she drew June a picture of the ocean every week.

I could not promise a place I had no legal right to keep.

I also could not pretend seven years of love would disappear with my marriage.

“I won’t stop loving you because of something your father did,” I said. “What happens next should include what you want, and both your parents need to be part of that decision. No one will make you choose sides.”

Some of the tension left her shoulders.

Ethan stepped in. “Nora, don’t make promises before you know what you’re doing.”

I stood.

“I’m promising not to use her as leverage.”

Claire put a hand on Lucy’s back. “We should go.”

Lucy allowed herself to be led away, but she looked back at me once.

After they left the pavilion, Ethan lowered his voice.

“If you walk away from this marriage, you can’t keep acting like Lucy’s mother. You’ll only confuse her.”

“You had no problem with it for the last seven years.”

“Things are different now.”

“Because I might stop being your wife?”

“Because Claire is her mother.”

He had always known what I was most afraid to lose.

He had also believed Lucy would keep me from ever leaving.

“I’m staying at my mother’s cottage tonight.”

“You’re moving out because Claire wore a coat?”

“I’m leaving because you keep deciding what I deserve to know.”

I took the urn and the red coat and left without waiting for his approval.

That night, I returned to the seaside cottage.

The guest room door was closed. I did not open it.

I placed the urn on my mother’s desk, then searched the bottom drawer for the instructions she had written about scattering her ashes.

Beneath the folder was an envelope with my name on it.

Nora.

The handwriting was uneven and pressed deep into the paper. My mother had written it near the end.

I opened the envelope.

The first line read:

Ethan asked me to keep Claire’s night here from you.