Maine - J. Courtney Sullivan [165]
Each time she read one of the stories, Alice thought of her last words to Mary, and the look on her sister’s face that night.
You shouldn’t have gone to bed with him, she had said, planting fear in her own sister’s head when she knew full well that Henry intended to propose.
She had allowed Mary to believe that Henry didn’t want her, and because of something she had done. Perhaps it was the last thought Mary ever had. And now she would never know the truth.
When she finished talking, Alice looked across the table at Father Donnelly as if he were a stranger. She felt utterly exposed. She had thought of all of this over and over these past sixty years, but never said it out loud. Had it been worth it? She certainly didn’t feel any better.
Her hands shook, and she had to place them in her lap.
Until now, it had been between her and God, and she had assumed that His wrath would be strong, which was all that she deserved. But the priest looked as if he might cry. She could swear she saw tears in his eyes.
He shook his head. “Oh, Alice, I’m so sorry.”
“Sorry?”
“Here you’ve been, carrying this around all these years for no reason. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Of course I did.”
He reached across the table and placed a hand on top of hers.
“I’m concerned that this still brings you so much torment,” he said. “And you’ve never thought of talking it over with your children?”
What could she possibly tell her children about all of this? That her only sister had died just a few hours shy of her engagement? That the event was a tragedy, but everyone always said that it led to new fire codes across the country and innovations in burn treatment? That you’d never find a door in Boston that opened inward, or a revolving door anywhere that wasn’t flanked by two regular doors, because of it?
That she had not met her husband’s eye across a crowded room and fallen in love like in the movies, but rather, that she had seen him as a means of escape? That her sister had died because of Alice’s stubbornness and anger, two things she could never let go of, even so, even now.
“No,” she said.
“It might be a great comfort,” he said. “They’d tell you the same things I’m saying here, I know they would.”
She wondered if he hadn’t understood. He was young, as young as some of her grandchildren, and maybe that made all the difference. Even though he was a priest, he wasn’t one in the old sense of the word. He didn’t believe in fire and brimstone. He probably didn’t even believe in Hell. She wanted someone harsher here, someone to take a Brillo pad to her sins and scrub until she bled.
“I killed my sister,” she said.
“No, Alice!” he said. He inhaled deeply. “Here’s something to think about. You told me at your house last winter that before your sister died you never intended to marry or have children.”
She thought of what Kathleen had said the day before—you really weren’t that talented … a stupid childish dream. It was similar to something Daniel had said the night they met.
He went on. “Mary’s death was a great loss. But consider how much joy—how many lives have come into being because of it. And because of you.”
She felt uneasy with this sweetsy mumbo jumbo. If she had wanted positive affirmations that she was worthy and good, she’d be paying some cheerleader by the hour the way Kathleen did.
“After she died, I promised God that I’d do better. I put all of my childish hopes away and tried, for Mary’s sake, to do everything she would have done. But I failed miserably. My children don’t respect me. They don’t even have faith in God. It should have been me that died that night.”
“You’re being much too hard on yourself,” he said.
“Please don’t try to make me feel better,” she said. “It’s not what I’m after.”
“What are you after?”
“I want to die in as close to a state of grace as I can,” she said. “So that I can see my husband and sister again.”
He shook his head. “I’ll grant you an indulgence