Page 73 of Beneath the Poet's House

“Hi, Mom.”

“Hi, honey,” her mother says. “How are you?”

Saoirse pulls out a chair from the table and sinks into it. From her periphery, two orange prescription bottles gleam in the window’s light from their shelf in the open cabinet. “Dr. Carrigan says everything looked really good at my last visit,” Saoirse says. “She doesn’t think there’ll be any long-term damage.”

She fingers the petals of a pink rose at the center of the table, listening for a voice, vain and sardonic—You were a thorn-choked black rose in a sea of pale-pink ones—but nothing comes. Saoirse closes her eyes. It’ll take time to get used to the silence in her head; no echoes of Emmit, no guilt-induced commentary from her husband. “How are you?” she asks.

Her mother laughs. “Leave it to you to ask how I’m doing after all you’ve been through. I’m well. At a bit of a crossroads, however, hoping to get an answer on something.”

“What’s that?”

“How soon is too soon to visit you again?”

It’s Saoirse’s turn to laugh. “You were here last weekend.” Her mother stays silent, and Saoirse chuckles again. “Come whenever you’d like. I’m happy to have you.”

She thinks of how she held her mother at arm’s length for most of her marriage to Jonathan. How she kept her distance from her even more aggressively after her mother had not only agreed but insisted that they say Saoirse had been in Connecticut the whole weekend, that she’d arrived home Sunday evening and found Jonathan dead, feeling the vise of guilt tighten around her heart at how she’d implicated her mother. How she’d implicatedonlyher mother, the one person in her life she wished to spare pain. She doesn’t feel that way anymore. Like Jonathan’s voice in her head, that guilt has left. She refuses to make space for it, refuses to allow it in.

“You know,” Saoirse says, reaching down to pet Pluto, “when I woke up in that grave and the dirt was everywhere—in my mouth, in my eyes—a memory came back to me, of running through the woods as a little girl, with you. How we climbed trees to peer into birds’ nests and dug for worms.” Saoirse pauses, her throat tightening. “You were with me every moment of my childhood after Dad turned his back on even weekend custody by moving out of state. You never showed one ounce of bitterness or regret for anything you did for me, any sacrifice you made.”

The tears are coming now, streaming silently down her face. Saoirse swallows. “I think it was as much of a reason for not wanting to have a child as my heart condition was,” she continues. “I am who I am because of my amazing, patient, compassionate, and levelheaded mother. And I know myself; I’d never have lived up to even half the mother you were.”

Her mother is crying as well; Saoirse hears the muffled sounds through the phone. “You would have,” her mother says, her voice cracking. “You would have been a fantastic mother, but I’m glad you didn’t pursue it. It was too risky for you. I’m glad I have my daughter, and nothing is worth anything otherwise. Nothing.”

Saoirse cannot speak through her tears.

“I know you have company this afternoon,” her mother says after a moment. “I won’t keep you. I just wanted to check in, and—”

“Come next weekend,” Saoirse interrupts. “If that’s good for you.”

Another sniffle, and then she says, “That’s perfect. I’ll call you in a couple of days to make sure it still works with your schedule. I know you’re on a writing deadline.”

“The manuscript’s not due for a few months.”

“Who would have thought your old agent was looking for memoirs?” The slight disbelief in her mother’s voice makes Saoirse smile; that slight disbelief is exactly how Saoirse feels.

“Who knew I had a memoir in me?”

Though, is it really a memoir? The police recovered Emmit Powell’s body—no, Willem Thomas’s, for “Emmit Powell” had indeed been a pen name, adopted to distance himself from not just his hometown but his transgressions against Matilda Crabb. Everything about Saoirse’s story—the syringe Emmit had fallen on after brandishing it against Saoirse, the way she’d had to board him up in the alcove to escape—tracked, especially considering the horrific tortures he’d inflicted upon her. These are the parts of the story Saoirse will keep to herself. Or, rather, the parts she will keep between her and her mother, her and her closest friends.

After they’ve said their goodbyes and Saoirse’s hung up the phone, she returns to the tea tray, adds the small vase of pink roses, and starts through the house. In the walkout, she lets her eyes stray briefly to the trapdoor. They haven’t returned to the basement, haven’t held a séance since Saoirse escaped the catacombs, but she thinks they will. She wants to, anyway. Wants to reach out to Sarah directly. To say thank you. Or, maybe, goodbye.

For now, her friends wait outdoors by the rosebushes on a new patio Saoirse convinced Diane to let her hire contractors to install. It’s not as if Saoirse could forget what lies beneath Sarah Whitman’s house, or much of Benefit Street, but the patio serves a purpose: it remindsSaoirse to keep her focus on the world above, on the realm of sunlight and blooming flowers.

The moment Saoirse steps out of the walkout, Roberto runs up to take the tray from her.

“You didn’t have to host us,” he says. “We could have gone for coffee at Carr Haus.”

“No way,” Saoirse says. “You know I need every opportunity to use up all this tea you three have gifted me over the last nine months.”

Lucretia gives Saoirse a long hug. Mia’s gaze is on the rosebushes, but she turns to Saoirse after Lucretia releases her.

“How are you?”

Saoirse studies Mia’s face, looking for any clue as to the woman’s emotions, the thoughts swirling beneath the knife-slash part of her brown hair and the tranquil, sleepy eyes. Mia still hasn’t opened up to Saoirse about her past. Not completely. But Saoirse thinks that will happen, too, in time. “Never better,” Saoirse says, and Roberto chuckles. “Come on, make your tea while the water’s hot.”

While Roberto and Lucretia argue over whether it’s unhealthy to drink caffeine in the afternoon, and Mia pours herself half a cup of Earl Grey, Saoirse stares beyond the rosebushes, to where the gravestones cast shadows on the spongy grass. The grave that Emmit desecrated to stage Saoirse’s premature burial was repaired by the historical society. Grass has started sprouting from the expanse of fresh dirt.

“I spoke with Aidan yesterday,” she starts, and three pairs of eyes fix on her. “He called to see how I was doing.” She pauses, sighs. “I still can’t believe I was so scared of what he knew of Jonathan’s death, I never let him close enough to explain it. That he knew Jonathan had been abusing me for years and planned to keep the existence of Jonathan’s last text message a secret as reparation for not confronting him.”

---