“You need to understand, Kate, that we are all being tested. I understand that. You need to. Suzanne needs to. I am here to help you understand that. Your family”—by which he meant Kate’s parents and brothers and sisters—”are here to help you.” Kate was so entwined with the people in New York that she neglected her family in California, and she should have realized that William would reach out to them. They, as expected, took his side, or most of them did, an observation that troubled her. It had become about “sides” and not about faith. William was playing a game and he wanted to win. He wanted to do what he thought was right by her soul, and Suzanne’s, but in part he did not want to lose. It was part of him she enjoyed when they were allies, but it frightened her now that they weren’t, and especially now that it concerned her daughter.
Kate would not lose her baby again. She had lost two children through miscarriages she could not control. She would not lose her lone living, breathing daughter. It was something she had control over, knowing, too, that her lone breathing, living son could be lost too if Suzanne was. At that moment, in response to her husband’s sermon, she knew what she had to do.
She was surprised. The bile that came up when she first spoke to Eileen and when she first met Eileen was absent. There was no need to fling her glass across the room and let the gin and the tonic splatter the wall. There was no need to rush out and drive for hours along the Pacific.
“William,” she calmly began, “I do not need help. I do not need redemption. I have been redeemed.”
With that, she got up and walked upstairs to call her daughters and her sisters, the ones in New York. She knew she would need to speak individually with her parents and each of her siblings. For now, though, it was Suzanne and Kerry and Eileen and Mary who had to be called.
A Mother’s Return to New York
Kate was on the six-forty flight to JFK the next morning, after again sleeping in Suzanne’s room. The early departure was no problem; she barely slept. When she arrived at about three-thirty she was met by Suzanne and Kerry, who somehow wrangled yet more time away from their respective jobs. “Maybe,” Kate said to them after hugs, “I can get a job where you work. I’d never have to go in.”
The two girls took a cab from the city and now they hopped in one to head up to Tuckahoe. It took some time to get to the cab, though, since their Mother had checked a large suitcase in. “Just essentials,” she said, “I’ve shipped a load of stuff.”
Kate had a fair bit of things at Mary and Betty’s place. She had only brought a carry-on when she first came to New York and after realizing she’d be staying for a while had hit some stores to bolster her wardrobe.
Some Necessary Calls
Over the next week, Kate spoke to her parents and her two brothers and two sisters. Her conversations with her parents and her brothers, Devlin and Edward, were brief; they merely told Kate that they understood that she was under a lot of strain with Suzanne gone and that they would be happy to see her when she came “home” and that they would be “praying for you and Suzanne” until then. Her sister Debbie was pretty much the same.
Things were different with Elizabeth, the youngest in the family and married to Phil Windsor with three kids in high school. They had never been close in part because Lizzie was her family’s “free spirit” as Mary had been in William’s. Lizzie listened to everything that Kate said and simply responded, “I know it’s hard for you Kate but I love you and I love Suzanne so I’ll be there for you for whatever you need.”
When Suzanne heard this, she called Lizzie and discovered yet another aunt she never really knew, as had happened with Mary. They promised to, and did, keep in touch, and Lizzie and Phil were guests at Suzanne’s wedding, Kerry whispering after the ceremony, “now we know where we’re staying if we visit California.”
Embarrassment
It was embarrassing. William Nelson was at one of his firm’s parties for summer associates. It was in the San Francisco apartment of one of his partners, offering a great view over the Golden Gate. It was a party where one’s spouse was expected to attend, and several spouses of other partners were there. Kate Nelson was not.
William had followed in his father’s footsteps: Stanford, Stanford Law. His father died with his mother in a car accident about twenty years before, when they were in their early fifties. William, now fifty-two, worked his way up to partner in one of San Francisco’s top Big Law firms, one that had seen and developed ties to growing Silicon Valley firms before most of the others did, and he was part of the group that developed and worked those relationships. He worked very hard and he was among the most-respected technology-lawyers in the country. He did very well for himself, and his family.
Things at home, though, were in turmoil. His daughter went to Stanford undergrad but had defied family tradition to go to Columbia for law school. Eric wanted nothing to do with Stanford, and he was going to Yale in the fall. Worse, Suzanne dropped out of law school after her first year and was now working for a start-up firm in Manhattan and blamed him and his wife for everything that had gone wrong for her.