Page 71 of The Housekeeper

Chapter Twenty-nine

In the end,it was Tracy who called to inform me of our mother’s death.

It was a cold Monday morning in early November. The kids were in school. Harrison was upstairs working on a presentation he was set to give at the Whistler Writers Festival in British Columbia at the end of the week. I was about to leave for the office when the landline rang and my sister announced, “Dad just called. Mom died.”

“What?” I remember shouting into the phone. “No! No! Don’t tell me that!”

“There’s more,” she said. “Don’t move. Don’t do anything. I’ll be there in five minutes.”

“What’s all the screaming about?” Harrison asked, coming down the stairs as I replaced the receiver and sank into the family room sofa.

“My mother died.”

He took a moment to digest this information. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he said, sitting down beside me and surrounding me with his arms. “But you had to know this was coming,” he said, as I cried against his shoulder.

I nodded into his gray sweater, the soft cashmere tickling mynose. How could I explain that, while it was true that my mother had been an increasingly sick woman for most of the decade, it still came as a shock to realize she was gone? She’d hung on far longer than anyone had expected, outlived everyone’s expectations. I guess I’d just assumed we still had lots of time.

I was also overwhelmed with guilt. I hadn’t seen or spoken to her in more than two months.

I hadn’t seen or spoken to my father, either—not since he’d sent the police to my door, when he’d chosen to believe Elyse over me. Which I guess explained why he’d called my sister with the news, and not me. Somehow, no matter what Tracy did or (mostly) didn’t do, she managed to avoid the pitfalls I was always tripping over.

“It’s better this way, honey,” Harrison said. “At least she’s not suffering anymore.”

“I know.”

“Be thankful for that.”

I nodded, biting my tongue to keep from saying,Be thankful my mother is dead?

I knew Harrison meant well, that he was simply spouting what people often say in times like these, that his words were meant to comfort, not inflame. Maybe it was unfair to expect more than clichés from a writer of his supposed insight and sensitivity.

At least he hadn’t told me that she was in a better place.

Maybe I was just being selfish. But the fact that my mother was no longer suffering provided me with scant comfort. She was dead. I would never hear her tell me that she was proud of me, that I was a good mother, a good daughter. I would never hear her say “I love you.”

The buzzer sounded.

Harrison walked to the front door, then stepped aside as my sister burst through.

“Good,” she said when she saw me. “You’re sitting down.”

I fought back a mounting sense of dread. Tracy had alwaysbeen prone to theatrics, and she was nothing if not dramatic. Still, this was a little over-the-top, even for her. “What’s going on? Is Dad all right?”

“He’s fine. It’s Mom.”

“I don’t understand. You said she was dead.”

“Sheisdead. But she didn’t…she didn’t just…die.”

“What are you talking about?”

Tracy took a deep breath, her eyes shooting between Harrison and me.

“Tracy, for God’s sake…”

“It wasn’t the Parkinson’s.”

“What do you mean, it wasn’t the Parkinson’s?”