Page 47 of Before the Storm

A hollowness opened in her stomach and widened into her chest.

She thought,I’m alone.

Now what?

Chapter Fourteen

January 2025

Airplane to Seattle

Prior to the phone call that had changed everything, Josie had assumed she’d spend the entirety of the five-hour journey half asleep or fully knocked out. But now? Now that they’d learned Bob Steiner was dead? Everything felt jagged and strange. Despite her serious fatigue and her cancer-riddled body, sleep was out of the question. All she could do was sit with her hands clasped and her eyes to the window, watching as the immense country beneath them whipped past in tapestries of brown and white and tan. Beside her, Tara drank a glass of wine a little too fast and ordered another one when she was halfway done.

They’d hardly said more than a few words since they’d boarded the plane. Lucky for them, they were seated in a row without anyone else, giving them more legroom and privacy. But what could Josie say to bring them together? They had to talk about it before they landed in Seattle.

Everything suddenly felt as though it was coming to a head.

Ultimately, Tara broke the silence. “It’s not like we really knew him anymore anyway.”

Josie grimaced and turned to look at Tara. Tara’s lower lip quivered.

“We should have turned around the second we learned he died, though,” Tara said. “Mom is a stranger, too. And she’s grieving. We don’t know her enough to grieve with her. We don’t know either of them enough.”

“I’m sure you’ve been to plenty of funerals for people you didn’t really know,” Josie said.

“But these are our parents,” Tara reminded her, enunciating the word parents like a snotty teenager might. “And it shouldn’t be far from our minds that our mother didn’t bother to grieve her relationship with us—her daughters.”

“We don’t know that she didn’t grieve,” Josie offered.

Tara rolled her eyes. “I never would have left Winnie like that. Ever.”

And then, at the mention of Winnie’s name, Tara burst into tears. Her shoulders shook so violently that she nearly spilled her wine. Josie scrambled through her purse to find a tissue, but Tara didn’t notice. She instead cried into her sleeves, drenching herself.

“I’m just so sorry!” Tara cried now. Her voice was echoing on the plane, and people in different rows were turning to look at them. “I’m so sorry about all of it, Josie! I can’t believe it! I was given this one precious life, and I totally botched it.”

Josie unbuckled herself and moved into the middle seat between them. There, she took Tara’s hand. But Tara still couldn’t look at her.

“You know what? Winnie reached out to me last year,” Tara continued blubbering. “She reached out via text message, called, and even tried to friend me on Facebook. She said she wantedto talk. But I never responded to her!” Tara let out a crazy-sounding laugh, then placed her hand on her mouth. Her eyes were buggy and glassy.

Josie could hardly believe her ears. “I didn’t know that.”

“I haven’t told anyone,” Tara admitted. “I didn’t even tell my grief therapist. I didn’t tell my friends.”

It tore at Josie’s heart to think of Winnie reaching out to Tara and receiving no response.

And then it struck Josie that Winnie and Tara were playing out a pattern their mother Cindy had set for them. The Steiner women were founded on misunderstandings; they were founded on going years without talking.

It was a waste of their precious life. It was horrible that it had taken Josie’s cancer diagnosis for her to realize that.

“I just keep going over it in my mind,” Tara continued. “I still can’t believe Winnie left like that. I still can’t believe I let her go! But I didn’t feel I had a choice. She was so unhappy. She was so angry with me because I wasn’t you. I wasn’t her Aunt Josie. I wasn’t the one she loved the most.”

Josie’s adrenaline spiked. She remembered the year after she left Nantucket to marry Joe and move in with Violet and Leah—2016, she guessed, which was the same year Winnie moved in with Donnie in North Carolina.

“She was only supposed to go for a month,” Tara said now. “She wanted to get to know her dad, stepmom, and little brother. But something happened while she was away. I think she met a boy? I think she really liked being with her dad. I think she really liked being away from me. I don’t know! But before I knew it, Donnie was calling me and telling me he’d enrolled Winnie in the high school by his place. He told me it was bigger and better than Nantucket High School and that a huge percentage of its alma mater went on to Ivy League universities. I started screaming and crying immediately, of course. But thenI demanded to talk to Winnie. I wanted to talk some sense into her. But how could I talk sense into her when I sounded so out of my mind? It was probably an easy decision for Winnie. I’m sure she had more freedom and fun than she ever would have had in Nantucket with me.”

“Don’t say that,” Josie said. “You don’t know that!”

Tara blew her nose into one of Josie’s tissues. “It’s true, though, isn’t it? Oh, gosh. I went completely wild when she left. I didn’t take on any new projects for six months. I was mostly at home, watching television, not caring about myself at all. All my life, I’d had you, Josie. And then I had Winnie and Donnie and Nantucket. But suddenly, I had nobody. I didn’t know how to love myself. I still don’t know how to love myself!”

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