The Mill River Redemption (29 page)

When nothing but water came out of the U-bend, Emily steeled herself and stuck her finger into the pipe. She was able to scoop out a clump of slimy, foul-smelling hair in which her mother’s gold earring was entangled. Emily breathed a sigh of relief. Although it was a disgusting job, which would have been easier had the outdated trap had some sort of a clean-out plug, at least she’d managed to retrieve the earring successfully. She placed it in the medicine cabinet for safekeeping and went to rinse out the U-bend in the kitchen sink before she reassembled the plumbing.

Emily was worried about her sister, who was now a senior. Rose’s grades were so bad that she was in danger of failing the year, and she took little interest in anything but her looks and hanging out with her friends. She had a boyfriend, too, a bad-news guy named Linx who looked to be in his twenties. Emily had met him one time in the middle of the night when he’d climbed up the portable fire-escape ladder to tell Rose to hurry up and come down.

It had taken their mother a long time to figure out that the ladder was enabling Rose to come and go as she pleased in the wee hours of the morning. Her sister had finally been busted after rumors started spreading in town that Rose had been among a group of teens spotted loitering in a parking lot in Rutland. On a night soon afterward, their mother had found Rose’s bed stuffed with
pillows and the ladder hanging out the window. Emily recalled how Rose had climbed back through the window, tipsy and giggling, only to find their mother sitting on her bed in the dark, waiting for her.

Of course, their mother realized that Emily must have known what Rose was up to, and Emily had had some explaining to do. It wasn’t an easy position, being caught in the middle, having to choose between lying to her mother or ratting out her sister when she loved them both. In the end, she admitted to knowing about Rose leaving the house a few times, but she managed to feign ignorance about the length of time that Rose had been putting the escape ladder to use.

Emily sighed and returned to the bathroom. Out in the living room, her mother’s cries had quieted, but she and Ivy were still talking.

“… don’t know what I can do at this point other than let her go,” her mother was saying. “She’s technically an adult now.”

“Well, maybe a taste of the real world will knock some sense into her,” Ivy said. “Tough love, I tell you, that’s what she needs now …”

Sometimes, Emily wondered how she’d managed to emerge unscathed and relatively normal from the last few years of tension between her mother and Rose. The constant conflict weighed heavily on her, and she’d tried her best to talk some sense into her sister, to convince her that sneaking out, drinking, and not caring about school would only hurt her in the long run.

“Em, I get enough lectures from Mom,” Rose had told her just after she’d turned eighteen. “I don’t need them from you, too. God, I can’t wait until I can figure out a way to get the hell out of here for good.”

“You know it’s just because I care about you,” Emily had said. “I still don’t understand why you hate it here so much.”

Rose had rolled her eyes. “Don’t you ever feel like
nothing
happens
here? You see the same old people day after day, nothing new or exciting, and it never changes. I feel … 
stifled
. Like every day I spend here is a day of my life that’s wasted.”

“I don’t think Mill River’s so bad,” she’d said. “I like the fact that it’s quiet and safe. Plus, Mom’s here, and Aunt Ivy, and me.”

“Yeah, but Aunt Ivy’s got her store to keep her busy, and Mom’s never around, same as always, not that I really care about that anymore. You and I will always be close, but we’re getting older now. We won’t always be in the same place, doing the same thing.”

“I know,” Emily had said. “I guess you could always leave after high school, if you want. I’m just worried that, at the rate you’re going, you’re going to get into a lot of trouble. If you’d just focus on your grades and finish the semester, you could probably still get into a college somewhere and
bam
, you could move out and be free.”

Rose had laughed. “You can be the good girl and go to college if you want to. I’m done being stuck anywhere—in a classroom, in this house, anywhere. I’m an adult now. I’m leaving, and Mom won’t be able to stop me.”

“Where will you go?” Emily had asked.

“I don’t know. Boston, maybe. Or New York. Linx has family in Brooklyn. We could get jobs and then get a little place together eventually. Maybe I could even do some auditions. I’ve always wanted to be an actress. You never know unless you try, right?”

It might have been because she was younger than Rose and not as confident, but Emily couldn’t imagine leaving her family and her hometown so easily. She was happy in Mill River. Someday, after she finished school, she could even see herself returning to live in the town, so long as she could find a job nearby. At this point, of course, she couldn’t be sure where she would end up, but at least she knew that her path would be steady, well thought out, and probably the complete opposite of Rose’s.

———

S
EVERAL HOURS AFTER THEIR MOST RECENT SHOUTING MATCH
, Josie sat on the sofa in the living room, waiting for Rose to come home. She hoped her older daughter would return during the night at some point, but after the huge argument they’d had earlier, she didn’t know whether Rose would come home at all. The last thing she wanted was for Rose to disappear, to cease all contact with her family like her own mother had done. Her eyes were red and swollen from crying, and after her talk with Ivy, she’d realized that if she wanted to preserve any sort of relationship at all with Rose, she would have to let her go. No, she would have to
encourage
her to go, and hope that her daughter didn’t ruin her life with more bad choices.

It was nearly four in the morning when Josie was startled awake by the sound of a key being inserted in the front door lock. She sat up and rubbed at one of her eyes as Rose let herself in. They made brief eye contact before Rose raised her chin and walked briskly toward the stairs.

“Rosie, please, just give me a minute,” Josie said. She stood up and took a step toward her daughter. “I’m through yelling and lecturing. Please just listen to what I need to tell you. You don’t have to say anything.”

Rose stopped at the foot of the stairs and, after a second or two, she turned and looked warily at her.

“If you want to move out, to go live someplace else and do whatever it is you feel you can’t do here, in Mill River, I won’t stop you. I need you to know that I’m sorry for not being there for you when I needed to be. Maybe, if I hadn’t worked so much, or if I’d been more in tune with what was going on in your life, we wouldn’t be standing here right now.” Josie’s voice cracked as she continued. “I need you to know that I love you with everything in me. Everything
I’ve ever done has been for you and Emily. You girls are my life. I’m just asking you, please, please don’t cut me out of yours. You’re an adult now, and you want your freedom … you’re entitled to it … so, that’s fine. I won’t stand in your way anymore. Just please promise me that if you leave my house, I’ll not lose you completely. I couldn’t survive it if I did.”

Rose worked her jaw from side to side with her eyes gleaming. “All right,” she said quietly, triumphantly, before bolting up the stairs.

For the rest of the week, the house was eerily silent. Rose came and went at will while Emily kept mostly to herself. Josie buried herself in her work. She ran sales meetings with her brokers and showed several houses each day, all while struggling to maintain a professional façade. Her smiling, cheerful demeanor belied the emotional turmoil inside her.

When she returned home after work on Sunday afternoon, Rose was on her way downstairs carrying a suitcase and a large duffel bag. Emily, with a pale, tear-streaked face and panicked eyes, was close behind her.

“What’s going on?” Josie asked.

“I’m leaving,” Rose said as she reached the bottom of the stairs. “I’m going with Linx to New York. His uncle owns a restaurant and can give us both jobs, and we’ll stay with him until we can get our own apartment.”

Josie fought hard to keep her voice under control. “Rose, I … I don’t know what to say.” She was still so shocked at the sight of Rose on her way out that she could barely speak.
What if I’d come home fifteen minutes later? Would she really have left without saying goodbye?

Rose set down her luggage. For the first time in months, the expression on her face as she spoke was serene and devoid of hostility.

“I thought a lot about what you said, Mom. I don’t want to lose you. I never did. I only want space to live my life.” Josie remained speechless as Rose approached her and hugged her tightly. She wrapped her arms around her daughter, her first child, whose gold-encased picture she still wore next to her heart.

Rose pulled away after a moment, and Josie was shocked to see that her older daughter was also crying. “I’ll write to you, both of you, and I’ll try to call every week so that you know I’m okay,” she said, looking from Josie to Emily. “And I
will
be okay, Mom. I’ll be
fine
.”

Rose went to Emily and embraced her as well. “Remember what I told you,” she said quietly to her younger sister. A car horn sounded outside. Rose picked up the suitcase and duffel bag and hurried to the door. “I’ll be fine,” she said again, and then she was gone.

S
TILL NOT QUITE BELIEVING WHAT HE HAD JUST SEEN
, A
LEX
backed away from the window in his room. He didn’t know what had started the fight between his mother and his aunt, but by the time he’d heard their raised voices and gotten up from his desk to look outside, they were wrestling on the lawn.

He went downstairs to the kitchen. “Mom?” he called. His mother was standing in front of the freezer, popping ice cubes out of a tray and crying. “Mom? Are you okay? I saw you and Aunt Emily—”

“Baby, can you hand me the dish towel over there?” his mother asked. He grabbed the towel on the counter and gave it to her, then watched silently as she wrapped the ice in it and held it to her eye.

“Mom, why were you guys fighting?”

“I don’t want to get into it, Alex. But look, will you do me a favor? Can you wait a day or two and then talk to Aunt Emily about borrowing her metal detector, once she’s done with it? We’ve got to search our yard for your grandma’s key, but I just can’t handle dealing with your aunt anymore.”

“Okay,” Alex said. He was thrilled that his mother wanted to get the metal detector. In fact, he secretly imagined himself operating the machine, finding the elusive safe-deposit-box key in an obscure corner of their yard, and presenting it to his mother.
She would be so proud of me, and she’d be smiling then, instead of crying
like she is now
, he thought. With her being so upset, though, he wasn’t sure what else to say to his mother, so he simply took her hand and squeezed it.

“Thank you, baby,” she said. Unexpectedly, she set down the towel and pulled him into a stifling embrace. “I’m so thankful you’re here,” she whispered into his hair. “I don’t know how I’d get through this without you.”

A
T LUNCHTIME ON THE
S
ATURDAY AFTER HER ALTERCATION WITH
Rose, Emily sat on her front porch, feeding bits of her sandwich to Gus and looking at a morning’s worth of metal-hunting loot lined up on the porch rail. There were objects of all kinds—more coins, someone’s 1982 high school class ring, and a fork that was bent nearly in half.
Probably tore up someone’s lawn mower
, she thought. She’d also found another seven keys, including two more of the “Tweety” variety. Obviously, Rose had thought using the bird-themed keys to be an especially clever touch.

Emily glanced over at her sister’s lawn and smiled. In another day or two, Rose would find herself the recipient of an equally clever gift.

She was ready to start sweeping the remaining section of the yard when Alex emerged from his house. Thinking quickly, she pocketed the fake keys she’d found as he walked across the grass toward her.

“Hi,” he said, but he didn’t look her in the eye right away. “I saw you and Mom, out in the yard.”

“Oh, Alex,” she said, and she was filled with regret at her nephew’s having witnessed the latest encounter with Rose. “I’m so sorry. That wasn’t right of us. In fact, it’s inexcusable that we came to blows, and I’m so embarrassed about it. Your mom and I are just … we’re just very different people, with very strong opinions
about things. And, she’d been drinking again, before we started arguing.”

Alex shifted his weight from foot to foot. “You’re not really going to call the police, are you? Because I’m doing okay, you know. I’m fine. Dad’s been calling every night to check on me, and Mom’s been like this a long time. I’m used to it.”

Emily sighed. Her heart was heavy with sympathy for her nephew. “I don’t want to call anybody, Alex. I just want your mom to get her act together and do what your grandma wanted. I think everything will get better once you and she can go home to New York.”

“Yeah, I do, too. And so does Dad.” Alex was quiet for a moment. “Did you find the key yet?”

Lots of them
, Emily thought.

“Nope, nothing but junk so far. Come see.” She motioned him onto the porch, where he examined the objects sitting on the porch rail. “The metal detector’s working really great, though, and I’ve still got a little to finish up, so we still might get lucky. Besides, we can always check your yard if we don’t find the key over here.”

“Mom was hoping you’d let me use the metal detector after you’re done with it.” Gus got up from his nap on the doormat to sniff at Alex, and her nephew reached out to rub the dog’s ears.

“Sure. The machine’s not too heavy, and it’s easy to use. If we end up having to search your lawn, I’ll teach you what to do and let you have at it.”

“Cool,” Alex said. His grin slowly faded. “I think us finding the key is the only way I’ll be able to make Mom happy again.”

O
N
S
UNDAY MORNING
, R
OSE AWOKE, BLINKED, AND TURNED
toward the window. The first thing she noticed was that the soreness in her eye was finally diminishing. And, to her surprise and
delight, the sky was a crisp, deep blue, a welcome change from the clouds and uncomfortable humidity that had been the summer norm so far.