Rainy Day Sisters (23 page)

“What a load of nonsense,” she managed as she swiped at the nonexistent spills on the table. Lucy had, for once, not scattered sugar everywhere.

“Is it?” she asked. “Were the two of you at the pub?”

“Well, obviously. I don't think Maggie is a pathological liar.”

“Then what happened?”

“Nothing. We had a drink and a chat and Peter had to leave. The end.
Honestly
, this is ridiculous.” She turned away, the towel clenched in her hand.

“Juliet.” Lucy's voice was soft, almost tender. “Don't bullshit me.”

“What gives you the right to get into my business?” she demanded, but it came out less stridently than she'd wanted it to.

“Nothing gives me the
right
,” Lucy said after a moment. “But you're my sister and I am actually quite fond of you, even if we had a rocky start and you can be kind of awful sometimes—”

Juliet gave a snort of laughter. “Now don't start getting all mushy on me.”

Lucy ignored her, continuing more seriously. “I care about you, Juliet, and I can see that you're hurting—”

“Okay, really, now stop.” She shook her head, dragged a breath into lungs that felt like concrete blocks. “I can't stand this kind of sentimental claptrap. It's nauseating.”

Lucy sat back with a little smile and sipped her tea. “So tell me, then.”

Juliet hesitated, torn between the contrary desires of wanting to both unburden and protect herself. She decided to try for both. “I just made a practical suggestion and Peter took it entirely the wrong way.” She twitched her shoulders as if to dismiss the subject. “He can be such an
oaf
sometimes.”

“A practical suggestion,” Lucy repeated after a moment. “What kind of practical suggestion?”

“Nothing that onerous, really,” Juliet hedged. She didn't want to get into details, because she had a strong feeling that Lucy would side with Peter. “Just . . . helping me out with something.”

“This wouldn't be helping you out with the baby thing, would it?” Lucy asked, and Juliet twitched her shoulders again. Her sister was too perceptive by half.

“Maybe.”

“Oh, Juliet.” Lucy sighed and shook her head. “So what exactly did you suggest?”

“I asked him to donate sperm,” Juliet answered, all brittle indignation now. “I wanted my baby to know his or her father. I didn't think it was too much to ask, just an afternoon at the clinic in Carlisle—”

“Juliet.”
Lucy looked appalled, just as Juliet had thought she would. “You know it would be more than that,” she protested. “He'd be your child's father.”

“But I told him he wouldn't have any obligation—”

“And I bet
that
went over well.”

Juliet pressed her lips together. “Not too well,” she admitted. “He was angry,” she continued reluctantly, feeling she somehow owed Lucy the details now. And she realized she wanted to confess them. “Offended, really.”

“And why do you think that was?”

“Don't play psychiatrist with me, Lucy,” Juliet snapped. “We both know why it was. Because he's not the sort of man to father a child and then just go about his business.” She blinked rapidly, and then set her jaw. She hadn't admitted that to herself, much less to anyone else, but she knew it was true. They were talking about Peter Lanford, after all. A man who carried on his family's flagging farm, who cared for his ailing father. Who believed in responsibility and duty and even honor.

“If you knew that,” Lucy asked, “why did you make the suggestion to him?”

“Because I didn't realize . . .” Juliet felt her throat go tight and she swallowed in an attempt to ease the soreness. “When I was thinking about it, it didn't seem so . . . I don't know. I was just focused on my child knowing his father. And Peter is a good man. . . .”

“He's cute too.”

“Oh, honestly, Lucy. If you like holey jumpers and knobbly toes.”

Lucy's eyebrows shot up. “How do you know he has knobbly toes?”

“He took his socks off once—oh,
never mind
.” Juliet rose from the table and dumped her half-finished mug of tea in the sink. “This conversation is pointless, because I did ask him, and he got rather cross, and I'm not sure we'll ever be on speaking terms again.”

“You could say ‘sorry,'” Lucy suggested. “Wait till he cools down a bit, and then talk to him?”

“It's been over a week. I don't think he's going to cool down much more.”

“But have you tried—”

“I'm not sure there's much point.” And the thought of talking to Peter again, of seeing that awful contempt on his normally gentle face . . . no. She couldn't do it. She wouldn't.

“Can I ask you something?”

Juliet gave her sister a shrewd glance. “I think you're going to anyway.”

“Why didn't you just let things happen naturally with Peter? I mean, he obviously liked you—”

“He didn't. Not that way.” The response was automatic, although Juliet couldn't even say why.

“Juliet, he did. He brought you that rosebush. He came to see you. The only reason he agreed to come to the pub quiz was because you were going—”

“You don't know that.”

“No, but I think it's a fair assumption. I might not be great with my own love life, but I can see what's going on in other people's.”

“I don't even have a love life,” Juliet retorted. “Nothing has happened between us in that way.”

“But it might have, if you'd given it time,” Lucy countered. Juliet shrugged, not able to voice or even acknowledge what she felt. It hurt almost unbearably to think she might have messed up even more than a friendship. “Can I say something?” Lucy asked, and Juliet rolled her eyes.

“What, again?”

Lucy gazed at her steadily. “I think you didn't let something happen with Peter because you're afraid. Afraid of being rejected the way our mother rejected you. The way that married jerk rejected you.”

Juliet simply stared, trapped by the knowing compassion in Lucy's eyes. Trapped and horribly, horribly exposed.

“It's hard to try again, Juliet,” Lucy continued. “Trust me, I know that.”

“Do you?” Juliet managed, the two words squeezed from her throat with painful difficulty.

“Yes, I do. I'm not attempting to equate my experience of our mother with yours. I know you had it worse. But having her criticize me so terribly in public, having the entire world take notice and do the same?” Lucy let out a huff of sad laughter. “Yes, I know how rejection feels.” Juliet didn't say anything, and Lucy took a deep breath, staring at the ceiling. This conversation was almost as hard for her, it seemed, as it was for Juliet.

“I dated this man, Thomas, for three years back in Boston,” Lucy said. “He had two sons. I was trying hard with them, but they wouldn't have anything to do with me, the turds.” She let out a long, shaky sigh. “Anyway, when the whole thing blew up in the paper, he called it off. Well, technically, I called it off. He said I shouldn't come around for a while because the publicity would be bad for his boys. I told him I needed his support and all I got was silence.”

“And what happened then?” Juliet asked.

“I called it off, but I was really just bluffing. I wanted him to realize he needed to be there for me, and guess what?” She finally looked at Juliet, her face bleak. “He didn't.”

Juliet thought about asking Lucy if she was thinking about trying again with Alex, but decided not to. She didn't trust herself to manage a coherent sentence just then.

“I'm saying all this because I can see how it would feel easier to keep yourself from caring about anyone, from putting yourself out there, even if it's a little lonely.”

“A little lonely?” Juliet said, her voice torn from her, a ragged thing. “Lucy, you have no idea.”

“Then tell me.” Juliet shook her head, knowing she didn't trust herself to put it into words. “Juliet . . .”

“I haven't been a little lonely,” she finally said, her voice hoarse and grating. “A little lonely is a night at home with the TV. I've been . . .” She stopped, gasping for air as if she'd run a mile, or forgotten how to breathe. “I've been
drowning
in loneliness. Or frozen in it, a great big ice block of isolation.” She drew in a ragged breath, hating that Lucy was seeing her like this.

“Oh, Juliet,” Lucy said softly, and she shook her head, vehement now, her voice choking.

“Don't.
Don't.
” She could feel the tears gathering in her eyes and she blinked them furiously back. “Maybe you're right. Maybe I'm afraid. Maybe I just don't know how. It doesn't matter, anyway, because I
can't
.”

“You could try—”

“You don't get it, do you, Lucy?” Juliet said, her voice sharpening. Anger was better than grief. “I'm not like you. I don't bounce around making friends and sending little rays of sunshine everywhere like some kind of do-gooding fairy. There's no trying with me. I can't, and that's that, and this discussion is
over
.”

Lucy

WAS IT A DATE?
Lucy asked herself, not for the first time, as she headed to Alex's house the following Saturday. Had Alex Kincaid really asked her out on a date? And did she want it to be a date? She was here for only three more months, and he had two damaged daughters,
and
he was her boss, which might even make dating him illegal. Maybe there was some school policy against fraternizing with staff. She couldn't exactly ask.

After several days of deliberation she decided to play it the way Alex had pitched it: as a favor to Poppy. Stay safe. Not what she'd advised Juliet, but after witnessing her sister's heart-wrenching near breakdown, she could see the merits in emotional cowardice.

In the few days since then, Juliet had gone back to her brittle self. And Lucy had let her, because she understood about needing to claw back some composure after you'd been rubbed so emotionally raw.

She stopped in front of Alex's house, took a deep breath, and ran a hand over her frizzing hair. Before she could knock, the door flew open, and Poppy stood there, already dressed with a coat and backpack, grinning widely.

“You look like a sausage!” Poppy exclaimed.

“Umm . . . thanks?” It wasn't the look she'd been going for, but Poppy seemed pleased.

“She means,” Alex said, coming behind Poppy and resting his hands on her shoulders, “that you're wearing red and yellow.” At Lucy's blank look he clarified, “Mustard and ketchup. Poppy puts loads of both on her sausages.”

“Ah.” Lucy glanced down at her yellow top visible under her unbuttoned coat and her red corduroy skirt. A sausage it was. She glanced up again, taking in Alex's weekend wear of faded jeans, a T-shirt, and a crew-neck sweater. He definitely could rock the casual look, and deliberately she moved her gaze back up to his face.

Bella slouched downstairs, dressed all in baggy black, her arms folded ominously. Lucy braced herself. She was not going to spend the day trying to win Bella over. Been there, done that, and no desire for a repeat trip.

“Hello, Bella.” Her voice rang out, manically cheerful. Seemed she couldn't keep from trying.

Bella muttered a hello back, which was better than silence, if only just.

“So I looked up this Crab Fair on the Internet,” Lucy said, “and it looks wicked cool.”

Poppy frowned. “Wicked?”

“Sorry, that's American slang for completely amazing.” She ruffled the girl's hair gently, grateful that at least one of the Kincaid girls liked her. “Did you know about the gurning competition?”

“The what?” Alex asked, and reached for his coat.

“Gurning. I'd never heard of it before, but apparently there's a competition to make the strangest face. How cool is that?”

“Oh, Daddy, you should enter,” Poppy cried, and Alex made a face that Lucy thought wouldn't remotely win, but it was still kind of cute.

“Me? I don't think so.”

“You should, Dad,” Bella said suddenly, and this surprising contribution to the conversation had them all turning to her.

“You think I should?”

“Do you remember how you used to make faces at us when we were little? To get us to take our medicine.”

Alex blinked, and Lucy felt her heart give a dangerous little twist at the sight of the bittersweet memory on his face. “I'd forgotten that.” He turned to her to explain. “Both Bella and Poppy were prone to ear infections, and they hated the rounds of antibiotics they were put on—”

“Daddy used to pull funny faces to make us open our mouths, and when we did, Mummy would spoon the medicine in.” Now Poppy made a face. “It tasted
awful
.”

Lucy smiled in sympathy, even as she felt a dozen different conflicting emotions collide inside her in a kaleidoscope of feeling. Sadness, for the mother they'd lost. A little shameful jealousy, because Alex and Anna sounded like such a loving team. And hope, because clearly there was more to Alex than the stern taskmaster he was at school.

“I think we should all enter the competition,” Lucy said. “Apparently you have to make the face through a horse collar, which just adds to the craziness. They call it ‘gurning through a braffin.'”

“What's a braffin?” Poppy asked, wrinkling her nose.

“A horse collar, I guess,” Lucy answered. “Are we all ready?”

Charlie gave them all a morose look before Alex shepherded him into the kitchen and appeased him with a full water bowl and a dog treat. A few minutes later they piled into Alex's car; Lucy noticed the papers littering the front passenger seat, along with a browning banana peel.

“Sorry,” he muttered, sweeping it all into a pile and tossing it into the back.

“I've never owned a car,” Lucy said, “but if I did, it would be a complete mess, I know. It would be like having another closet.”

He laughed, and Lucy saw Bella shoot him a sharp look before turning to stare determinedly out the window. Okay, so it was becoming clear that his daughter did not approve of her friendship with Alex. She wasn't going to bend over backwards to make Bella change her mind.

They drove along the coast road towards Egremont, the sea sparkling on one side and sheep pasture stretching out on the other. Lucy saw a sign for Buttermere and said, “Do you know I haven't actually been to a lake since I've been here? I saw Bassenthwaite on the drive down, through the fog and rain. But considering this is the Lake District, I feel gypped.”

“This is the
Western
Lake District,” Alex said. “We're nine miles from the most westerly lake, Ennerdale.”

“Sometimes we walk Charlie there,” Poppy piped up. “He likes to swim in the water.”

“I'll have to check it out.”

“You could go with us,” Poppy suggested blithely. “Couldn't she, Daddy?”

Alex stared straight ahead, flexing his hands on the steering wheel. “I suppose she could.”

Which wasn't the most promising invitation, and so Lucy kept silent.

The fair was in full swing by the time they arrived, after having spent a taxing twenty minutes trying to find a parking space while Poppy clamored to be let out and Bella kept sighing loudly.

“You're going to wish you hadn't come,” Alex told Lucy, when they finally made it down the hill to the town's market square, where the fair's main activities were being held.

“It takes a little more than that to put me off,” Lucy answered, and then wondered if he would read more into that statement than she'd meant—although she wasn't even sure what she meant.

What was she doing, tangling herself up with this widower and his lonely kids?

Poppy ran back to tug on Alex's sleeve. “Daddy, the parade is starting!” she cried, and they both turned to see a crowd of people coming down the high street, led by the year's crowned Crab Fair Queen, a teenage girl in a ball gown and a tiara.

They watched the procession of classic cars, dancers, a brass band, several floats for various causes and charities, and finally the apple cart, which was the highlight of the parade. Following the ancient tradition, apples were tossed to the children lining the street, and they ran around, laughing and shouting, as they gathered them up. Even Bella got into it, although she tried to be cool, and Alex turned to Lucy.

“Why don't you think you're good with children?” he asked, and she blinked, disconcerted by the sudden, unexpected question.

“What—”

“You said you weren't good with them before. Why?”

She shrugged, her eyes on the children scurrying for apples as she wondered how much she should say. Then she decided, for once, to tell the truth. “I suppose because the two I tried with the hardest were pretty unimpressed.”

Alex was silent for a moment, seeming to sift through her words before he asked lightly, “So who were these brats?”

“Their names were Will and Garrett. I don't think they were actually all that terrible, but they certainly didn't like me.” She paused, and then continued. “They were the sons of a man I dated for a couple of years. Thomas.”

Another silence, and Lucy kept her gaze on the hunt for apples. “And then what happened?” he finally asked.

“I suppose it's really a question of what didn't happen.” She tried to keep her voice both light and matter-of-fact, the only way she knew of lowering the intensity of the conversation. “They never accepted me, even though I tried so hard. Maybe
because
I tried so hard.” She sighed, her gaze still on the children, and decided to go for broke. “I wanted to be part of their family. Thomas was divorced, and their mother married someone else and had a baby, and so Will and Garrett were kind of left out in the cold. At least I thought they were. But maybe that was wishful thinking. I wanted to fill a space in their lives that wasn't really there.”

“Maybe they were confused about their mother's new relationship,” Alex suggested. “And they took it out on you, because that was easiest.”

“Maybe,” Lucy agreed. This was definitely starting to feel like a very charged conversation, although she couldn't discern its actual currents. “But it certainly made me miserable, and I ended it, accidentally, I suppose, after everything blew up with my mother and the art showing.”

“What do you mean?”

“Thomas suggested I not come around for a while, because of all the media attention. He felt it would be bad for the boys.”

“Pillock,” Alex muttered, and Lucy shook her head although she was smiling.

“You really need a naughty jar.”

“So did you stay away?”

“I did the classic stupid female thing and gave him an ultimatum. I told him I was going to break it off if he didn't support me and he said fine, more or less. Actually more. It made me realize how unimportant I was to him as well as to the boys.” She sniffed and looked away.

“I thought he'd realize what he was losing,” she said after a moment. “I imagined he'd come charging to me, stand up for me to my mother and the press and everyone. I wanted a knight in shining armor, and I'm afraid I didn't get one.” She sniffed again. “Sorry. I thought I was over this. And I am over Thomas, because leaving him didn't actually hurt that much. It was just realizing how stupid I'd been, how easy it was for him to let me go, that hurt.”

The apple cart had moved on, and Bella and Poppy were returning with the fronts of their hoodies full of apples.

Alex didn't say anything, and Lucy was starting to wish she hadn't just off-loaded a whole Dumpster of emotional garbage. Just what Alex wanted from this day. He was probably freaking out, wondering if she was equating him with Thomas, and his girls with Will and Garrett. What if he came out with some awful line about how they were just friends? And what had happened to her resolution to keep today light and unthreatening for Alex and the girls? She knew Bella was suspicious of her, if her obvious silence and endless sighs were anything to go by. Poppy was easy to love; she'd slipped her hand in Lucy's as soon as they'd left the car.

And knowing herself, Lucy acknowledged, she'd love Bella too. She'd love all of them, if they'd just give her a chance, and that's what scared her. She didn't want to end up as she had before, trying so hard and getting nowhere. Having a man choose his children over his girlfriend, a choice Lucy agreed with in some ways but that she hadn't wanted Thomas to have to make. She certainly didn't want Alex to make it.

So what was she doing here, holding Poppy's hand and confiding in Alex? Why was she upping the ante with every moment she spent with this family?

“What on earth are you going to do with all those apples?” she asked the girls. Time to get back some lost ground, and make this light again. “Make loads of applesauce?”

“Apple crumble!” Poppy crowed, and then made the mistake of dropping her hands from her hoodie, so the apples rolled everywhere. “Oh, no!” Her eyes filled with tears and her lip wobbled and before Lucy could even think about what she was doing—or why—she was down on her knees, chasing after the apples. Bella made some kind of snorting sound and belatedly Lucy realized how ridiculous she must look, cavorting around on all fours after a bunch of apples you could easily buy in the supermarket.

This was what she did, she acknowledged as she reached for another bruised apple. She tried too hard. She acted pathetic and ridiculous and something about it pushed people away.

Slowly she got to her feet, a few of the apples cradled in her arms. The knee of her tights was ripped, she saw, and they were a new pair. Not that she cared about her tights, or even the apples. She cared about Poppy, about Bella, and, yes, about Alex, and she was afraid it was already too late to stop herself from caring even more. From getting hurt.

“Here you go,” she told Poppy, thrusting the apples she'd collected back into the little girl's hoodie. “Sorry I couldn't get them all.”