Lillian stared back at her. Sunny should have answered yes immediately.
“Did he . . . did he ever hurt my mother?”
Sunny looked down at her hands. She cleared her throat. “I worried this day would come.”
Tears ran into Lillian’s eyes, but she reached out to Sunny, encouraging her to continue.
“I showed my mother his photo. She said he was a bad man. She seemed happy that he was gone, that I—or rather little Lilly—was safe. It seems she has a burn mark, and I’m worried that he may have . . . may have . . .” She couldn’t continue. Lillian felt a cold prickle of sweat on the back of her neck. She didn’t want to hear the answer, but there was no escaping it now.
Tears welled in Sunny’s eyes. “I never knew for sure. I only suspected. When she started wearing long sleeves and dark stockings in summer. When she wore collars that covered her neck. Wore lots of makeup and pushed her hair over one side of her forehead. What went on behind closed doors between couples . . . people didn’t talk about it then. It was considered nobody’s business.”
Lillian took Sunny’s hand and held on, wishing it was Anna’s. An echo of what she’d said to Ruth about Carrie flashed into her mind. “They don’t talk about it now. Poor Mom. She must have felt so lonely and afraid.”
“I should have asked. Made her tell me. Not helping your mother—my best friend, who took me in when I needed work—is the greatest regret of my life.” Sunny did not meet Lillian’s eyes. Her head bent as if in prayer.
Not helping. That’s what caused regret. Lillian would have wanted to stop her father if she’d known then, but what could she have done? No one ever talked about bad things, unless they were happening to someone else. And that was only to gossip, not to help. She wasn’t ready to think about the fact that the vacation she remembered didn’t exist, not for Anna anyway. Lillian said, “You did the best you could back then. She was so young. You were both so young.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t ask Anna. Didn’t help her—and you—escape. That’s what a real friend would do. It’s why I visit your mother in the hospital. I just wish I could make it up to her somehow—I should have tried harder to rescue her. After all, I knew, deep inside, that he hurt her.”
Lillian could barely breathe. Sunny was the only person who’d been part of her mother’s anguished life, and she was bearing witness at last.
“Please . . . please forgive me.” Sunny’s voice broke as she said the words.
“It’s not for me to forgive you. It’s not your fault. She never told you. If only she had. Maybe you could have helped her.”
As she stroked Sunny’s hand and let her cry, Lillian thought of Ruth telling her about Carrie, and how she’d been unwilling to listen or to help. She’d immediately blamed Ruth for the problem, rather than Eli. All to maintain the status quo.
Lillian felt sick to her stomach as a realization struck her, and she grabbed the arm of the sofa to steady herself. Her life had been uprooted in a single day when her father died and her mother was institutionalized. And today Lillian, who had been robbed of a mother because of abuse, was herself perpetuating the problem by ignoring Ruth and Carrie.
All her mother wanted was for Lillian to be safe and happy—what every parent wants for their child. Perhaps she’d thought that remaining silent would protect Lillian from her father’s anger. But it was the silence, the fear of addressing the issue, that had ended in Lillian having neither parent—and in her mother living this shell of a life. Lillian wondered who she would have become if she had known. Would she have grown to be the woman she was or become scarred for life?
“You okay, Lilly? I know this must have been a shock for you.”
“I’m fine.” Lillian wasn’t fine at all. “But this has made me realize there’s something I have to do.” Now that she understood the damage secrets could do, she would be the friend that her mother had needed—to Carrie. Today’s clarity made it essential.
Etiquette be damned. Lillian was too shaken by this understanding of her history, and the way she was allowing it to repeat itself with Carrie, to even say goodbye to Sunny. She wobbled to her feet and staggered out the door, letting it slam ungracefully behind her.
Chapter 24
RUTH
Ruth had always assumed that women like Lillian were impervious to everything that caused problems for other people. Dirt. Rude people. Even germs. So she was surprised when Lillian called Shirley at the last minute and asked her to teach the day’s lesson because she was ill. Ruth was dying to ask Shirley what sort of germs could take down someone as strong and stoic as Lillian, but she knew that was none of her business.
She had been told she’d poked her nose where it didn’t belong too many times already over the past few days. Had alienated her friends and Lillian. Even Asher was losing patience.
She felt more alone, more incompetent, than she’d ever dreamed possible.
Ruth was relieved that Lillian was ill and was grateful that Shirley had agreed to host lesson four, on elegant entertaining, at their house. After the brush-off Ruth had received from Carrie, Irene, and Harriet, she felt that being in her own home, with Asher’s family, would at least give her a modicum of equanimity that she wouldn’t have had at Lillian’s. After all, Lillian had told her in no uncertain terms to mind her own business and had ushered her out the door.
Ruth had no idea how the others were going to treat her today, after she’d betrayed Carrie’s trust and dished on Carrie’s abuse. She wasn’t in a hurry to find out either.
Shirley was carrying bowls of macaroni salad and coleslaw to the dining room. She had gone to a lot of trouble on the Diamond Girls’ behalf. The dining room table was laden with rice pudding, lemon squares, and rows of cookies coated in chocolate and dipped in rainbow jimmies. Mini challah rolls stuffed with tuna salad and egg salad had been stacked in a spiral. Ruth doubted it would be as tasty as Irene’s egg salad. She wasn’t sure she would identify any of this as elegant entertaining, but she believed it appropriate for an informal luncheon, and it was plentiful. No guest would leave hungry. That thought seemed inconsequential, given what was going on. But she knew Shirley cared about that.
Ruth offered to help, and they arranged the food to look more attractive. Moving a dessert tray a little this way or that. Adding a cornichon or radish garnish here and there. This feeling of working in tandem with another woman besides Dotsie or her college friends—being in sync with a woman of Shirley’s generation—was new to Ruth.
She had aunts, but this was somehow different, and Ruth wondered if this was how daughters felt when they did things with their mothers.
Any minute now, the other girls would be arriving. She had no idea what to expect today—if they even showed up.
As for Carrie, she still hadn’t answered any of Ruth’s phone calls. Ruth couldn’t help but worry about her. And she worried that she was letting Asher down too, since she was sabotaging their happy new life by ruining the friendships she’d only just made.
Ruth was letting everyone down.
She hadn’t been able to help Carrie. She hadn’t been able to fit in here with Asher’s life and with his family. She’d found it increasingly difficult to focus on her studies for the bar exam. She’d heard some people didn’t pass it on the first try. At the rate her life was going, she might be one of them. And that, more than anything, would ruin her plans.