In her and Sam’s clapboard Victorian house with its pretty curlicued verandah and lush garden, the kitchen had been very much Lillie’s room. It wasn’t that Sam hadn’t cooked – his barbecue equipment had been treated as lovingly as a set of a carpenter’s tools, washed and put away carefully on the grill shelf after each use. But barbecuing was outdoor work.
The kitchen, with its verdant fern wallpaper, pots of Lillie’s beloved orchids on all surfaces, and the big old cream stove they’d had for thirty years, was her domain. She stood in it now and briefly wondered where the small tray was, where the tea glasses were. Shaken by the news that she had a brother, Lillie was suddenly overwhelmed by a wave of loneliness. She and Sam had often talked of travelling to Ireland.
‘We could kiss the Blarney Stone and see if the Wicklow and Kerry Mountains are as beautiful as they say,’ Sam said.
‘As if you need to kiss any Blarney Stone,’ she’d teased back.
He’d known that she didn’t want to search for her birth family. That had been the dream of a younger woman.
I know it’s out of love, but why do people keep coming up with things to make me feel better, Sam? she asked now, looking up.
She didn’t know where he was or if he heard her, but talking to him helped. She just wished he’d answer in some way.
Grief was a journey; she’d read that somewhere. A person didn’t get over it, they moved through it. One of the worst parts was not knowing where she was on the journey or if she was on it at all yet. The pain was still so bad. Perhaps she was still only at the entrance to the grief journey, buying her ticket, looking out at an endless plain in front of her where people were to be seen shuffling along in parallel lines, time slowed to a snail’s pace.
‘Mum—’ called Martin.
‘Hold your horses,’ she called back, finding the cheerful mother voice she’d always been able to summon. Her sons had their own lives and families. Mothers cared for their sons, they didn’t expect the sons to have to care for them.
She carried the tray of iced teas into the living room.
‘Show all the documents to me,’ she said, sitting between them on the big old couch with the plaid pattern. ‘A brother!’
Seth Green had immediately responded to Martin’s email. Martin printed out the reply and read it to her, but Lillie didn’t like this email business. She was a letter or a phone call person. How could you tell what sort of person was writing to you on a computer when you had no voice to listen to or no signature to consider? Seth was apparently happy to hear about her and that was just fine, but nonetheless she felt stubborn. Seth and Frankie could visit her if they wanted to. She was busy, she told her sons.
Then, a fortnight ago, Seth had sent a letter via Martin, the letter that nestled in her handbag and called to her so that she read and reread it many times a day.
Her adopted mother, Charlotte, the only mother she’d ever known, had often talked about Lillie’s background and all she knew of it. She’d told her how in 1940s Ireland illegitimate children and their mothers were so badly treated that most women were forced to give their babies away in tragic circumstances. A nun called Sister Bernard had been travelling to Melbourne to join the Blessed Mary Convent in Beaumaris and she’d taken baby Lillie with her for adoption. Mother Joseph, who was in charge of the convent, knew how much Charlotte and Bill wanted a baby after all the miscarriages, and so baby Lillie had come into their lives.
As Martin proudly handed over the letter to his mother, Lillie knew that he hadn’t considered the possibility that she might not want to see her birth family. She’d thought it wouldn’t bother her, but at that exact moment, she discovered that there was still a tiny place inside her that ached with the pain of rejection.
For two weeks she’d been carrying the letter in her handbag. This morning, just as she was about to drive to the park for a walk with Doris and Viletta, something had made Lillie open her handbag and take out the now worn letter one more time.
Her mother had often told her the Irish had a way with words and it was true. The letter was proof of that. Such warmth and such pure honesty all wrapped up together. And all from someone she had never met. Crazy though it seemed, it was as if this person thousands of miles away could see into her heart and understand the hopelessness inside. Lillie wondered again if it was partly written by Seth’s wife. Because whoever had written the letter had gotten through to her in a way that nobody else had since Sam’s death.
Please come … I may be speaking out of turn because I’ve never suffered the sort of bereavement you have, Lillie, but it might help?
She stood in the hall, lost in thought. Outside, the sun was blazing down. It hadn’t been the best summer but now that autumn had arrived, the heat was blistering. Nearly forty-two degrees on the beach the day before, according to the radio. Even as a child, Lillie had never been a beach bunny. Not for her the shorts, skimpy vests and thongs that her friends ran about in.
‘It’s your creamy Celtic skin,’ Charlotte would say lovingly, covering the young Lillie with white zinc sun cream.
Years later, as a married woman, Lillie had pretended irritation with Sam that he, despite also being of Celtic descent, was blessed with jet-black hair and skin that tanned mahogany.
‘You’re only pretending you’ve got Irish blood,’ she’d tease. ‘You came from Sicily, no question.’
Not a freckle had ever dusted his strong, handsome face and the only time his tan faded was as he lay wasting away in the hospital bed. His skin turned a dull sepia colour, as if dying leached everything from a person.
‘I’m sorry, love. I don’t want to leave you and the kids, the grandkids …’
Those had been almost the last words he’d spoken to her and she treasured the memory.
Lillie had struggled to find words to comfort him. Then it had come to her, a gift to the dying, the only thing she could give him: ‘We all love you so much, Sam, but it’s the right time to go, it’s safe for you to go. We don’t want you to suffer any more.’
Saying it and meaning it were two entirely different things. In her breaking heart, Lillie didn’t want Sam to die. She could now understand people who kept loved ones alive for years even when they were in a vegetative state from which there was no return. The parting was so final.
But people sometimes needed to be told to go. One of the hospice nurses had explained that to her. Strong people like Sam, who had fiercely protected their families all their lives, found it hard to leave.
‘They worry there’s nobody there to take care of you all,’ the nurse had said. ‘You need to tell him it’s OK to go.’
And Lillie had.
When Sam had been dying, the hours seemed to fly past because she knew they were his last.
Since then, time had slowed to a snail’s pace …
Now, standing in the hall, she rubbed her eyes furiously as more tears arrived. She was so tired of crying.
Her cell phone pinged on the hall table with a text message.
Are you coming walking today? I did my stretches and will seize up if we don’t start soon. I am leaning over our park bench and will be stuck like this. Doris xx
Lillie smiled as she put her hat on and grabbed a pair of sunnies from the table at the door. Doris could always cheer her up.
As soon as she rounded the corner at the community centre at the Moysey Walk, she saw Viletta and Doris gossiping happily as they half-heartedly did stretches ahead of their walk – five miles today.
It was a beautiful trail to walk. The girls had been walking along the beach, local parks and now, along the Moysey Walk for nigh on twenty years, long before everyone and their granny began