Family For Beginners

“Will you stay at the house?”

Clare shook her head. Jack had suggested that she stay with them in Brooklyn, but she’d refused. She’d told him she didn’t want to make extra work, but the truth was she wasn’t ready to see him yet. Jack, with his warm nature and quick smile. She remembered the first time Becca had mentioned him. I’ve met a man.

Becca had met plenty of men, so to begin with Clare had barely paid attention. She’d expected this relationship to be as short-lived as the others.

“He’s a good man,” Becca had said and they’d laughed because up until that point Becca had never been interested in good men. She liked them bad to the bone. She blamed her upbringing. Said that she wouldn’t know what to do with a man who treated her well, but apparently with Jack she’d known.

Clare remembered the first time Becca had shown her round the house in Brooklyn. Look at me, all grown up—four bedrooms, three bathrooms and a closet for my shoes. I’m almost domesticated.

Almost.

There had been a twinkle in her eyes, that same twinkle that had helped her laugh her way out of trouble so many times at school.

Clare gripped the letter.

Attending the funeral wasn’t going to be the hardest part. The hardest part would be pretending that nothing had changed between her and Becca. Kissing Jack on the cheek, keeping that unwanted nugget of knowledge tucked away inside her.

Her mother brushed raindrops from her coat. “Will the family come here next summer, do you think?”

“I don’t know. Probably not.” For the past twenty years their two families had spent three weeks together at Lake Lodge. Marriage, kids, life in general—none of it had interfered with that time. It was theirs. A sacred part of their friendship. A time to catch up on their lives.

And then there had been that conversation. One conversation that had changed everything.

And the letter, of course. Why a letter? Who even wrote letters in these days of email and instant messaging?

She’d found it in the mailbox, tucked in between a letter from the bank and an advert for a local pizza delivery service. She’d recognized the bold, loopy writing immediately. At school Becca had frustrated the teachers with her inability to conform. Her handwriting was like everything else she did—individual. Becca did things the way she wanted to do them.

Clare had carried that letter back to the house and set it down on the kitchen table. An hour had passed before she’d finally opened it, and now she wished she hadn’t. Letters got lost in the mail, didn’t they? But not this one. She already knew what it was going to say, but somehow having it in writing made it worse.

She’d almost sworn when she’d read it, but she tried never to swear aloud.

As she held the letter in her hand she could hear Becca’s voice: Say fuck, Clare! Go on! If ever there was a time for you to vent, it’s now.

“You’re getting wet.” She kissed her mother on the cheek, sure now of what she was going to do. “Let’s go indoors. Hot tea and toasted muffins, and then I’ll book my flight.”

Her mother looped her arm into hers. “It’s all horribly sad. You were a good friend to her, Clare, remember that.”

Was that true? Did a good friend tell the truth no matter what the cost? Or did a good friend offer support even when she considered the action to be heinously wrong?

They reached the house and scrambled indoors out of the rain.

Her mother left the dripping umbrella on the stone floor and walked toward the kitchen. “I’ll put the kettle on.”

“I’ll be there in a minute. There’s something I need to do.” Clare hung up her coat, retrieved the letter from the pocket and walked into the living room where a fire was blazing. In the evenings the whole family gathered here to talk, play games or watch TV. Charmingly old-fashioned, Becca had called it in that same ambiguous tone she used for compliments and mockery.

Clare paused for a moment, thinking about her friend and the times they’d sat in this very room and laughed together.

Then she took a deep breath and dropped the letter into the fire, watching as the edges turned black and curled under the heated lick of the flames.

Becca was dead, and the letter and its contents should die with her.

That was her decision, and she’d learn to live with it.

1

Flora

The first time she saw him, he was standing outside the store staring at the flowers in the window. His hands were thrust into the pockets of his coat, the collar turned up against the savage bite of a New York winter. It was the type of raw, freezing day that turned each breath into a white puffy cloud, the sky moody and heavy with menace. People scurried past, heads down, going about their business with grim determination.