Page 58 of Before the Storm

Cindy sat down across from Josie and gave her a look of rapt attention. It was clear she wanted to know more about Josie’s cancer. But Josie wasn’t so keen on talking about it this early in the morning, so she filled her mouth with tea and watched the rain.

The three Steiner women fell into a period of silence that lasted nearly forty minutes.

Cindy’s phone rang and rattled them. It was a horrible ringtone, brash and alien, and Cindy muttered that she needed to change it as she hurried into the living room. “Hello, Cindy Steiner speaking.”

Josie and Tara gave one another a meaningful look.

“So?” Josie whispered.

Tara nodded. “I know everything.”

Josie breathed a sigh—but was it a sigh of relief? Or sorrow? Or grief? She didn’t know.

“And can you forgive her?” Josie asked.

Tara hesitated. “Maybe I can.”

Josie felt a gush of love for her sister. This was what she wanted before she had to go.

And here, surrounded by their father’s things, drinking coffee and tea with their mother in a kitchen they’d never known, it was becoming increasingly clear to Josie that she wasno longer required—nor really wanted—on planet Earth. She’d done what she’d come here to do. Her stepdaughters were adults; they had lives of their own; their father, Joe, had even remarried last year, offering up a fresh and cancer-free woman for Leah and Violet to be friends with. Josie was exhausted down to her bones. She loved Tara, though. She needed Tara to be safe and secure, and she needed to be loved before Josie left.

Maybe she’ll even fall in love with Johan, Josie thought.Perhaps she’ll be happier than ever before.

Cindy came into the kitchen with some news. “I have to sign a few documents down at the funeral home. After that, I think I’ll go down and visit him.”

It was clear she meant she wanted to visit Bob at the cemetery.

“I’d like it if you two met me at the gravesite,” Cindy said. “But please don’t feel pressured.”

Tara looked sickly pale as though she wanted to protest.

But Josie spoke for both of them before she could. “I want to go.”

Tara rolled her eyes so that their mother couldn’t see. “Okay. Let’s go.”

It wasn’t till a half hour later that Cindy left Tara and Josie alone in the kitchen. With the twenty minutes or so they had before they had to get ready, Tara summed up the dramatic story of Cindy, Bob, and Josie’s real father, Philip, whom she’d never heard of.

Josie wasn’t entirely surprised. It wasn’t the kind of news that rattled her.

But she burned with a question. “Where did Philip go?”

Tara had worked herself up, and it looked as though she was about to cry again.

“I mean,” Josie continued, “if Philip was hanging around, threatening Bob and Cindy in November of 2001, why didn’t he approach me?”

Tara shook her head. “Do you have any memories of older men approaching you back then?”

Josie grimaced and looked at her spider-like hands. She traced her memories through that life-altering autumn and early winter through images of picking Tara up at university, learning about Tara’s pregnancy and finding their childhood home locked up and empty.

“I would have remembered meeting my dad,” Josie said.

“We need to ask Mom,” Tara said. “She owes us the truth. Especially you.”

Josie and Tara went upstairs, changed into jeans and big fuzzy sweaters, and headed out to their rental car to meet their mother at the cemetery where their father was buried. Josie suddenly felt ridiculous for having made Tara get the convertible, and she turned on the heat as soon as they got comfortable and tried to warm her hands on the vents.

“Do you still think of Bob as your dad?” Tara asked as they snaked through the glossy gray roads.

Josie sighed. “I guess so. He’s the only one I ever knew.”

---