Page 48 of The Gallagher Place
Only one thing worked every time. There was only one true cure. Marlowe slowly rotated the empty glass in her hand.
It made her happy. She was better when she drank. She felt lighter and smarter and funnier. How could she turn away from that?
She’d had her share of misfires. There was the cousin’s wedding when she was in college, at which she got glass after glass of white wine and didn’t bother eating. The next morning, she was curled up around the toilet bowl, throwing up bright yellow bile that looked like the runny centers of sunny-side up eggs. There were a few nights out with colleagues, back when she was working as a paralegal in a New York office and wishing she could be a full-time painter instead. Nights when she couldn’t remember how she got home. Mornings when she woke up to find vomit in her kitchen sink.
But over time, Marlowe learned to hone her craft. She learned to properly nurse a bottle of wine and to chug a glass of water between refills. She learned cocktails and hard alcohol before dinner, and then only beer or wine after. She learned that if she started with a drink at three or four in the afternoon, she could still be in bed well before midnight and up bright and early the next day.
Being a middle child taught Marlowe one thing: how to be sneaky. She knew how to snoop and how to identify the exact same type of wine her mother bought, so she could replace bottles that she emptied. She knew where to hide bottles. She knew that if she took the empty ones out early enough in the morning, before her coffee, no one would notice.
She had found her cure, and she knew how to get away with using it. How could there be anything truly wrong with that?
And none of it was Enzo or Nate’s fault. He knew they were only trying to help her.
Because Ariel Mintz and John Brierley had been right about one thing: Siblings protect each other.
Marlowe had told Ariel that Nora was like a sister.
But like alcoholism, it came down to genetics. Blood. Either she was or she wasn’t.
Nate could spend years teasing and deriding Marlowe. He could judge her and be furious at her. But when it really mattered, he would do anything to help her.
But Nora was not Nate’s sister.
TWENTY-FIVE
THE CAR
Tuesday, July 8, 1997
Marlowe tugged hard on the moss-covered rock lodged in the ground until she felt the dirt release it. She grunted as she caught her balance and then flipped the rock over, revealing its smooth underside.
“That one’s pretty good,” Nora said from where she stood atop the ancient stone wall.
The two of them had wandered deep into the woods, away from Nate and Henry, to hunt for the smoothest and flattest stones they could scavenge from the remnants of the old fieldstone walls that zigzagged the property.
Enzo had explained that the old walls had been built by colonial farmers, and Indigenous people before that, who had cleared the land of its abundance of glacial rock in order to farm it. Conveniently, they used the rocks to mark their property lines. The walls were still in good condition in many places, but Marlowe and her brothers frequently made unexpected discoveries of partial walls deep in the woods—ruins that must have dated back hundreds of years, now disguised by forest growth and long forgotten.
Their parents had challenged them to complete their own wall before the end of the season. Frank had picked out the spot, at thenorthern edge of the Flats, near where the Bean River spilled out of the swamp. Getting there from the Gray House required a long trek through the old Gallagher property along the outskirts of the swamp, but Marlowe and her brothers rarely shied away from a challenge set by their father. Besides, their father had recently finalized the purchase of the Gallagher farm. Dave, the last Gallagher brother, had passed on, and the abandoned barn, the fields devoid of cows, all the empty land across the street, called to them, as if it was lonely. Though the kids already knew the Gallagher property well, Nate said it was theirs now, so they should approach it with fresh eyes, exploring every inch anew.
But when Nate first came up with the idea of taking stones from the walls in the woods for the one they were building, Marlowe thought that would be cheating. It felt almost sacrilegious to pluck the flat, heavy stones off the old ruins, lugging them down to the appointed site of their new wall. Even so, Marlowe couldn’t deny the convenience of the plan.
“It’s not like we’re destroying it completely,” Nate reasoned. “We’re just taking a few rocks.”
Marlowe ran her hand along the cool hardness, inspecting the rock. She knew Nate wanted their wall to be perfect and would accept only the finest stones. She added her new find to the growing pile she and Nora were making in the woods. Nate and Henry would come find them soon enough with the wheelbarrow to ferry the stones down the side of the North Field and then across the road and onward to the building site.
The day was muggy. Though the thick trees blocked out the sun, Marlowe was coated with a layer of sweat. Nora’s ponytail was limp, and she was breathing hard every time she lifted a rock.
“We need to go swimming after this,” Nora grumbled.
“Let’s just go now.” Marlowe grinned over at her friend. “We don’thaveto follow Nate’s orders all the time.”
Nora smiled. “But you know he’ll yell at us and tell us we’re being lazy.”
“Maybe I am lazy. It’s too hot today.”
Nora laughed, but she kept searching for rocks.
As annoying as Nate could be, it was fun to work together as a team. Nora balanced the power, so that Marlowe never felt outnumbered by her brothers. At the end of each long day of building the wall, they all laughed together round the dinner table and took stock of their progress. Peace reigned in the household.
