“No, I’ve seen it. I just don’t say anything.” Megan hesitated. “I want everyone to get along so badly I missed a lot of years when I—when I was gone. Now I’m back. You and Jane have your husbands and your own lives far away from me. But you two, and Aaron and Amy and Mom are all I have. I think it’s about time for us to be a family again.”
Ellen sighed. “It’s not that easy, Megan. Time passes, things change. I can’t explain it but I can feel it. We’re all different and we can’t go back to being something we were twenty years ago.”
Silence settled over them as they walked.
“How’s everything with Mike?” Megan said after a while.
Ellen laughed, but she knew it sounded bitter. “I’m not sure I want to talk about it.”
Megan studied her older sister carefully “I thought something might be wrong. Mom said Mike was coming with you. When I found out you were flying by yourself I thought it was strange.”
“He has to work. At least that’s what he says. He also says he doesn’t care for funerals.”
Megan cringed.
“Yeah, tell me about it. He actually told me I didn’t need him, that I’d have lots of people around for support.”
“Let me guess …you don’t agree?”
The sun was setting, splashing brilliant hues of pink and orange across the northern Michigan sky Ellen stopped walking and allowed her eyes to drift. When she looked back at Megan she shook her head angrily.
“No, I don’t agree! I wanted him to come with me and he refused.” She was quiet a moment. “That’s how Mike and I are doing.”
Megan was pensive as they resumed walking. “Mike’s a great guy, Ellen. Don’t judge him on this. You know he loves you.”
Ellen shrugged. “I used to think so. But it’s not just this. Weddings, concerts, social events, lots of times he doesn’t want to go with me. What kind of love never makes a sacrifice for the other person?” She studied her feet and kept walking. “I don’t know. Sometimes I think we’re drifting apart.”
“You guys going to church?”
Ellen shook her head. “That’s a big part of it. How can God bless our marriage when we’ve all but forgotten about him?”
“I can’t believe you guys aren’t going to church. I always thought you were the perfect Christian couple.”
“No one’s perfect, Megan. Least of all Mike and me.”
“Did something happen? At church I mean?”
“No, nothing like that. We just got busy. One thing led to another and now it’s something we don’t talk about. Like we’re too far away from it all to go back.” A lump formed in her throat and she had to fight a wave of tears. “I think I’m starting to feel that way about Mike, too.”
“He is coming for the funeral, right?”
“We left it up in the air. I told him I didn’t care if he stayed home, and he told me that was fine with him. I guess I’ll have to talk to him sometime this week so we can decide what to do.”
They turned a corner and headed back toward the Barrett home. Megan thought a moment and then glanced at her sister. “Know who I saw the other day?”
“Who?”
“Jake Sadler. Over at the hardware store buying lumber. He’s building a fence for his parents or something.”
Ellen’s stomach flipped. She forced her voice to remain unchanged. “How’s he doing?”
“Same as always. Single, tall, beached-out, and gorgeous. Guys like Jake never change.”
Ellen’s eyes narrowed. “I haven’t seen him in so long. Probably ten years, I’ll bet. Eight at least.”
“He asked about you, wanted to know if you were still happily married, the whole nine yards.”
“What’d you tell him?”
“Ellen! What do you think? I told him of course you were happily married.” She hesitated. “You are, aren’t you? I mean there’s nothing really wrong with you guys, is there?”
Ellen picked up a loose rock, took aim, and threw it at the trunk of an old maple tree. She stared at her sister. “I guess not. I just wondered what you told him.” She fell quiet then, but warning bells sounded deep inside her …. Don’t do it. Don’t go there!
She pushed her thoughts aside impatiently. It only made sense that she was thinking about Jake a lot lately. After all, her father’s death had made her think about the past, hadn’t it? That’s all it was. Remembering a time gone by …a love that could have been …
The bells grew louder—and with them, Ellen’s determination to ignore them.
The sisters stopped in front of the aging yellow Victorian, the home they had shared for so many years.
“I look at the old house and I can still see Dad sitting on the porch, smoking, waiting for us to come over for dinner. That year before we moved we probably ate here twice a month.” Ellen stared at the house and saw it as it had been a decade earlier.
“Yeah, I know what you mean. I see him sitting beside the front door in that heavy jacket and that old caroling hat, handing out Halloween candy and pretending to be scary. He must have given out more candy than anyone on the block.”
“And the kids knew it.” Ellen tilted her head, smiling despite the tears that filled her eyes.
Megan laughed softly. “He did that every Halloween for as long as I can remember.”
“And then in December he’d be there climbing up that old broken-down stepladder, covering the house in lights. He sure loved Christmas. Remember that time when someone stole the lights from Candy Cane Lane?”
Megan nodded, a sob lodged in her throat, as Ellen reached over and gently squeezed her sister’s hand. Candy Cane Lane was an upper-class neighborhood that ran along the lake in Charlevoix. Twenty years earlier residents there agreed to erect stunning Christmas displays, complete with thousands of lights, moveable figurines, piped in music, and special effects. Three streets participated, and each was given a different name for the Christmas season. Carolers’ Lane, Bell Lane, and Candy Cane Lane. The Barretts visited the neighborhood every Christmas as part of their holiday traditions.
Then one year vandals struck and stole the lights from several houses. For the first time ever, the home owners talked about stopping the tradition. Determined to show his appreciation, Ellen’s father went to the store and purchased dozens of light strings. He put them in a bag and left them on the porch of a Candy Cane Lane home owner. He taped an anonymous note to the bag: “We enjoy what you do. Please don’t let one Scrooge ruin it for the rest of us. God bless you.”
The newspaper got wind of his act and ran a story. After that, others followed John Barrett’s example until the home owners along the three streets had more than enough lights to make up for what had been stolen. The tradition continued.
“He was something else, wasn’t he?” Megan finally said.
Ellen nodded and put an arm around her sister, hugging her close. “Come on. Wipe your tears. Let’s go in and see if Aaron’s still glued to that chair.”
Eleven
A feeling of doom hung over the house Sunday night when Mike Miller returned from covering the baseball game. He’d done a particularly professional job of reporting the close contest that night, both throughout play and later during post-game interviews. Before he left the field, one of the producers had approached him.
“Mike, they say you’re a natural. You have national sports written all over you, man. You must be living right or something.”
Normally the producer’s comments would have sent Mike sky high and he would have sped home to share the news with Ellen. But she was in Petoskey, and ever since their disagreement on Friday, nothing felt right to Mike. He was jumpy, nervous, and there was a hard knot in his gut that wouldn’t go away. Dread, deep and frightening, burned at him.
He was afraid his marriage wasn’t going to survive.
“How’d everything get so messed up, Lord?” He wandered about his living room. Almost in answer, he paused by the bookcase and found himself staring at the binding o
f his leather Bible. Maybe later. After I eat. Maybe it’s time to get back into the Word.
He tossed his jacket on the back of the chair and glanced at the clock in the kitchen. It was just after nine. Ellen and the others would be together now, probably seated around the Barrett dining room table.
Mike sat down at his own empty table and stared at the portrait of Ellen and him that hung over the fireplace. As he had been doing since Friday evening, he second-guessed his decision to let Ellen go by herself to Petoskey He could have found a replacement to cover the game. So what if he didn’t care for funerals? Ellen was right: no one enjoyed funerals.
But he still could not stomach the idea of spending a week watching the adult Barrett children tear each other apart. Ellen always talked about how close she and her sisters and brother had been growing up, about the memories they’d made together. But based on what he’d seen of her family Mike wondered if she wasn’t imagining things that had never happened.
He remembered a dozen times when he and Ellen had been at a Barrett family gathering only to leave early because of the tension that all but crackled in the air. In some ways that was why they had moved to Miami. Yet, when Ellen was away from them she called often, wrote once a month, and there seemed to be no conflict at all.
“We get along better when we’re two thousand miles apart,” Ellen had often told Mike. “I think that’s the secret.”
Especially when it came to Ellen and Jane.
The strangest thing about Jane, in Mike’s opinion, was that away from Ellen she was a wonderful person. Sadly, Ellen knew it, too.
“Have you ever seen how her friends treat her? How she treats them? They love her, Mike. She’s bubbly and funny and happy. She’s the greatest in their eyes.”
Mike listened sympathetically.
“Why can’t she be that way with me? I’m her sister, after all. I love her more than any of them, and she treats me like dirt. Sometimes I feel like walking up to her and saying, ‘Hi. I’m Ellen. Let’s be friends.’ Maybe if I pretended to be a stranger, she’d be nice to me.”
Mike was puzzled by Jane’s attitude. Especially after Jane and Troy were married and began having children. Koley was born in 1992, and Ellen tried to make herself available on the weekends to help Jane when Troy was on business trips.
Mike recalled the time Ellen stayed at Jane’s home and watched the newborn baby one Saturday so Jane could sleep. Mike had come to pick Ellen up just as Jane trudged wearily from her bedroom.
“How was he?” she asked.
“Just fine,” Ellen cooed at the baby and tickled his cheek. “Get any sleep?”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
Ellen studied her sister. “You know, Jane, you look really good. You’d never know you had a baby two weeks ago.”
Mike had been surprised at the cool look in Jane’s eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Ellen paused, clearly at a loss. “Nothing. Just what I said. You look good.”
“Listen, don’t make fun of me,” Jane barked. “Just because you’re Miss Cosmopolitan with the sleek figure doesn’t give you the right to comment about me—”
“Whoa, Jane, Ellen was just being nice,” Mike broke in.
She ignored him. “Just wait, Ellen. Your turn will come. You’ll get stretch marks on your stomach and crease marks on your chest and you’ll be struggling to find your old shape. I can’t wait for that day. Imagine, Ellen Barrett, chunky and out of shape. That’ll be a sight I definitely don’t want to miss.”
Tears welled up in Ellen’s eyes and she stood up, passing the baby to Jane.
“I have things to do, Jane. Call me if you need me.”
“Are you trying to say I can’t do this on my own?”
Mike wondered if he had missed some segment of their conversation. He could not understand what had triggered Jane’s anger.
He took Ellen’s arm and led her across the living room to the door, growing angry himself when he felt how Ellen was trembling. Jane followed after them, crying and waking the baby with her shouting.
“Don’t worry about me, Ellen! I don’t need you. I can handle this mothering thing all by my—”
Mike closed the door on the rest of the sentence. They walked to the car in silence, then drove straight to Ellen’s parents’ house where they were staying for the weekend.
“It’s like she hates me and I don’t even know what I’ve done wrong,” Ellen cried when they were in their room.
Mike had his opinions about Jane but he kept them to himself. That afternoon he convinced Ellen that Jane must have been suffering a hormonal imbalance. “You know, that baby blues thing, postportem or something. I heard about it on Oprah once.”
“Postpartem.” Ellen sniffed. “Maybe you’re right.”
“Come on, honey She’ll be fine in a few weeks. Don’t take it personally.”
But privately he didn’t think hormones could excuse Jane’s actions toward Ellen. They certainly could not explain her bitter attitude before the baby was born.
Through the years Ellen had found several opportunities to address the issue directly with Jane.
“Why do you hate me, Jane?” Ellen would ask. “What have I done to hurt you? What can I do to change so that you’ll be civilized when we’re together?”
Whenever Ellen asked such a question Jane would do something that completely baffled Ellen. She would cry and accuse Ellen of saying hurtful things and trying to upset her.
“Do you think your words don’t hurt me, Ellen?” she’d shout, tears coursing down her face. “You have a wicked tongue and you don’t care how it hurts people.”
Inevitably Ellen would apologize. For six months or a year the sisters would get along, visiting by phone from their separate homes and talking about surface subjects.
Mike shook his head. Problem was, they never discussed the real reason behind Jane’s resentment. Mike thought it was almost as if Jane was hiding something from Ellen.
The cycle made Mike tired just thinking about it. He could only imagine how it had taken its toll on Ellen over the years. Poor Ellen. She had been so close to her father and Jane had been so distant. Undoubtedly, now that he was dead, Jane would be upset with Ellen over that fact, too. She would probably accuse her of being their father’s favorite. If Jane did that, Mike could only imagine the friction that would develop between the two oldest Barrett daughters that week.
As if the tension between Jane and Ellen wasn’t enough, Ellen’s other siblings had problems of their own—some considerably more serious than Jane’s anger.
There was Megan, who at twenty-seven was finally beginning to live again. For a five-year period, from age twenty to twenty-five, she had spent much of her time dating a drug dealer. The man had convinced her that her family didn’t care about her and that Ellen, especially, was trying to change her into something she could never be.
As a child Megan had looked up to Ellen. She imitated her and planned to be just like her when she got older. Megan was a brilliant writer with an art for communication. Like Ellen, she was a natural leader and had dozens of friends. She was also, unquestionably, the best looking of John Barrett’s daughters. Whereas Ellen was beautiful and Jane quietly pretty Megan was gorgeous. She had blue eyes big enough to fall into and cheekbones that seemed carved by an artist. Her skin was the color of pale honey and her dark hair hung halfway down her back. On top of that she was gifted with the voice of an angel. When she entered a room, her presence demanded the attention of every person there.
When Megan was in eighth grade Ellen gave her a handwritten book with personal advice on how to survive high school. Megan read the book hungrily, fascinated at the advice Ellen had written for her. She wanted to be everything Ellen had been and more.
Then, unexplainably she dropped out of cheerleading in her junior year and began dating loner types. When she was twenty she met Mohammed, a Goliath of a man with Middle Eastern roots and a forest of dark hair that covered his body
. The few times Mohammed visited Megan at the Barrett home he never wore shoes or spoke directly to John or Diane. His eyelids remained half closed and there was something condescending in his attitude toward everyone in the Barrett family. Especially Megan.
Mike remembered the first time Mohammed visited the Barrett family. It had been a big family get-together.
“So, what is it you do for a living, Mohammed?” John had asked, spreading a thick layer of butter on his bread and helping himself to an extra serving of gravy.
“Things.” It had bothered Mike, the way Mohammed refused to make eye contact with John. Several others at the table had exchanged curious glances.
It made sense now, but at that time none of them—except Megan, of course—knew that Mohammed was a pusher. Everywhere he went he carried a briefcase packed with marijuana, cocaine, and two loaded pistols.
Mike learned later how Mohammed had taught Megan to listen to blank cassette tapes for subliminal messages from “helping-demons,” and when Megan didn’t cooperate, he’d beat her or put his fist through the windshield of her car.
“If you leave me I’ll kill your parents,” Mohammed would threaten her. He was five years older than Megan and she believed him completely. The relationship continued.
For years, Mike had watched as Ellen tried unsuccessfully to bring Megan to her senses.
“Don’t preach at me, Ellen!” Megan would scream. “Not everyone is perfect like you. Besides, I don’t do drugs and I’ll date whomever I want, so don’t try to run my life. At least Mo isn’t some plastic phony like Mike!”
Long after Mike and Ellen moved to Miami, Megan was still caught up in the destructive relationship. By the time she finally broke it off with Mohammed, so many years had passed that the chasm between Megan and her sisters was almost too vast to cross. Mike had seen firsthand at family get-togethers how the tensions remained. This week would be no exception.
Then there was Aaron, the only son. His father’s pride and joy. Aaron was strikingly handsome and had always boasted a string of girlfriends. But he was lazy and utterly dependent on his parents for survival. By the time he was twenty-two he had been fired from seven construction jobs. He was six-foot-four, built like a professional linebacker with the strength of five men his size. Once his temper flared in the workplace most employers found it simpler to let him go than to deal with his outbursts.