Chapter 20: One Year Later
The townhouse smelled of rosemary and roast chicken, and Catherine found herself standing in the kitchen doorway with her hands folded, watching Nora slice bread at the counter as if this had always been their life.
"You are standing there supervising," Nora said without looking up. "I can feel it."
"I am doing no such thing."
"You are. You have your supervising face on."
Catherine smiled. "I have a face for that now?"
"You have a face for everything, Catherine." Nora set the bread knife down and finally looked at her. "Twenty-three years apart and you already learned my weakness for overcooked garlic."
"It was one time."
"It was three times, and Iris witnessed two of them."
As if summoned, the doorbell rang. Catherine crossed the hall and opened the door to find Iris on the step with a paper box from a bakery and a look of mild apology.
"I am late," Iris said. "The train sat between stations for twenty minutes while the driver explained nothing."
"That is the most New York thing I have ever heard," Nora called from the kitchen.
"Then I am fully assimilated." Iris handed Catherine the box and stepped inside, shrugging off her coat. She had cut her hair shorter since the summer. "I brought the tart. The one from the place on Bleecker. Nora, if you tell me it is too sweet, we are done as sisters."
"We were done as sisters at chapter four, if you recall."
Catherine laughed, surprised the way she still was, a year later, that laughter could move through this house without catching on anything.
Dinner was unremarkable in the best way. They ate at the round table by the windows. Nora talked about the community kitchen job, how one of the volunteers had set off the smoke alarm trying to toast a bagel, and Iris asked about the building codes of commercial kitchens, and Catherine listened and thought about how impossible it was that this had ever been impossible.
"Helen called me this morning," Iris said, twirling her fork.
Nora glanced up. "Oh?"
"She wanted to tell me the trust cleared its last condition," Iris said. "She said I do not have to report to anyone about it anymore. Legally."
"And did she apologize?" Nora asked.
"She will not. Not in words." Iris set her fork down. "But she asked what I wanted to do with the studio money, and she listened to the answer. That is new."
Catherine reached across the table and covered Iris's hand with her own. "That is something."
"I am finding my way," Iris said. "I left the firm. Officially, this time. I am taking on two small projects of my own and teaching a drafting class on Tuesdays. It pays almost nothing and I love it more than anything I did for them."
"Rebellion suits you," Nora said.
"It is not rebellion. It is just work I chose."
After dinner they cleared the table together, and Nora produced a small tin of tea from her bag, another of the quiet small gifts she had been bringing all year. They settled in the sitting room with the tart, and Catherine reached for her handbag and took out the locket.
It was still worn silver, still heavier than it looked. But it opened differently now, on a new hinge, and inside, where the faded newborn photo had lived for twenty-three years, there was a new photograph.
"May I?" Nora asked.
Catherine handed it to her. Nora held it close, then tilted it so Iris could see, and the two of them leaned their heads together over it the way people do over something small and precious.
It was a photograph from August. The three of them at the café table where the sisters had first met properly, laughing, unguarded: Catherine's arm around Nora's shoulders, Iris's chin on her hand.
"I put it in last week," Catherine said. "I kept the old photo, of course. It is in the box in my desk. But this is the locket's life now."
Nora studied the photograph for a long moment. Her thumb rested on the silver edge, and Catherine saw her swallow.
"It is a good picture," Nora said quietly.
Nora's fingers tightened on the silver, and for a moment her guard fell away entirely.
"I know it is."
Nora looked up at her, and her eyes were bright, and she said, very quietly, so quietly that Catherine almost did not hear it, "Thank you, Mom."
The word landed in the room like a held breath finally released.
Catherine went very still. She felt something in her chest come loose, something knotted tight for twenty-three years and then one more, waiting.
Nora saw her face and gave a small, embarrassed smile. "I have been practicing that one."
"It sounded perfect," Catherine said, and her voice broke, and she did not care. "Say it again sometime. I am not tired of it yet."
Later, after the tart was gone and the tea had gone cold, they drifted out to the terrace, the three of them in a row along the railing. The city hummed beyond the walls, and the air was cool, and Iris stood in the middle, Nora on one side, Catherine on the other.
Iris held out her wrist. Nora held out hers. They pressed them together, side by side, inner wrists up, and there they were in the lamplight: two identical heart-shaped marks, small and pink and perfect.
Catherine looked at them for a long time, these two daughters, twenty-three years lost and one year found, and thanked the small mercies that carried them here.
"Well," she said softly, "there they are. Proof."
"Proof of what?" Iris asked.
"That you were always mine," Catherine said. "Both of you. All along."
Nora bumped her shoulder against Iris's, and Iris leaned her head against Nora's, and the two hearts sat side by side in the light, and the evening held them all, warm and whole and unbroken.