Page 3 of The Family Plot
“What?” I ask.
“She’s been guilt-tripping us,” Charlie says.
“No.” Mom shakes her head. “No guilt trip.”
“She’s mad,” he continues, “that we’ve stayed away for so long.”
“I’m not mad,” Mom insists. “I’ve just missed you, that’s all.”
Tate puts her arm around Mom’s shoulder. “Do I or do I not call you three times a week?” she asks. “And do I or do I not send you all the treats you can only get in Manhattan? You said you loved those chocolates from Moretti’s.”
“I did love those chocolates,” Mom agrees. “I just love you all more.”
“Aw. That’s sweet,” Charlie says, but there’s something tart in his tone. “But like we told you yesterday, which I’m sure Dahlia would agree with—” He looks at me meaningfully, urging me to mimic his nod. “We’ve had to make our way. And that requires distance. Time. I’ve been gone as long as I lived here, and I’mstilladjusting to the world.”
Mom swivels to face Charlie, her jaw quivering. “I always meant,” she says, “to prepare you for that. For the outside world. That’s what everything was for.”
She extends her arm toward a photo on the wall, one where her parents laugh at some party, each with a cigarette between their fingers, and she caresses the frame slowly. It’s a haunted gesture, as if she’s trying to touch the past, trying to save her parents from their future.
“What Charlie means,” Tate says, cutting him a glance, “is just—there’s so much life out there, you know? I had no idea how much! The world is huge with it.”
Mom’s fingers drop from the frame. Her shoulders slump.
“And in a way,” Tate adds, squeezing Mom closer, “I appreciate it more, I think, because of everything you taught us. Don’t you agree, Dahlia?”
Tate’s eyes lock onto mine, and they’re so blue, so hypnotic, that I find myself nodding. But then I remember Mom’s response to Andy’s runaway note—Your brother’s chosen his own path—and I don’t know why I’m bothering to comfort her. She’s never cared before if we stayedaway, and I still haven’t forgiven her for that, for giving Andy up so easily.
The fact is, we all had our reasons for never coming back. Charlie claimed he needed to stay close to the city, be ready at the drop of a hat for whatever new role might open up. And because Charlie didn’t return to Blackburn, Tate didn’t either.Codependent, Greta tsked when I told her how they’ve lived together in the same Manhattan walk-up ever since they both got their inheritance. And me, I lasted only three years in the house without Andy, done with dodging the shadows that piled up like dust bunnies in every corner. But what about him? He left without telling me why, without even saying goodbye, and I’ve had to live all these years in the not knowing, which is a lonely, comfortless place.
I know he was troubled by things I wasn’t. I know he took his ax to the trees in the woods—not to cut them down, but to wound them, scar them, to make them carry something on their bark he couldn’t hold inside him anymore. I know his emotions ran hot and hard; he was quick to anger, frustration. But what was it that made him run? I don’t believe—I’ve never believed—that our “unnatural” life was enough of a reason. I haven’t forgiven our family for letting him go, and I haven’t forgiven him, either, for going.
“I’m just glad you’re here now,” Mom says to us. “The circumstances are dreadful, of course, but I’m happy to have all my children back home.”
All?
Did she really just say all?
“Did you—”
But I’m cut off by a shout bursting through the back door.
“Mrs. Lighthouse! Mrs. Lighthouse!”
The urgency in Fritz’s voice prickles the hair on the back of my neck.
He limps into the foyer, quick as a man nearing eighty can. His right leg—the bad one—drags a little, and his long, milky hair is streaked with dirt.
Mom rushes down the stairs to meet him. “What is it?” she asks.
Charlie, Tate, and I clomp down as well, and when Fritz spots me, he does a double take. “You came,” he says, breathy from running, from shouting.
“Of course I came,” I say, for the second time. “What’s going on?”
“It’s… Outside, I…”
He trails off, prompting Charlie to roll his eyes. “What is it? Is everything o-kay?” And I remember this now—how Charlie used to speak to Fritz as if he were dumb.
“No. N-n-no,” Fritz stammers, his focus still on Mom. “I was in the woods out back, digging up Mr. Lighthouse’s plot, and—”
