Summer with My Sisters (12 page)

A
woman stood at the edge of the cliff overlooking the sea. She was wearing a long black dress with a cinched waist, tight sleeves, and full skirts. It was a dark, overcast day and the waves were crashing against the rocky shore. Poppy wondered if the woman was one of the Civil War heroines her mother had written about so feelingly. One of those kind and beautiful and brave women. Except that women in the nineteenth century usually didn’t wear their hair down in public, did they? So maybe . . . Yes, of course, Poppy saw it now! The woman was her mother, it was Annabelle! And suddenly she was going over the cliff, her long dark skirts billowing around her, her arms outspread as if she would fly, her long dark hair spread out against the moody gray sky. . . . An awful cry of anguish rose from Poppy’s lips as she rushed toward the cliff’s edge. She would go after the woman. Her mother. She would save her, bring her back. It was only a mistake, her going over the cliff, only a misstep. It hadn’t been meant to happen. Poppy spread out her arms in imitation of the woman, her mother, and then gentle but strong hands were gripping her waist. An angel from heaven above, she thought, come to help carry her over. She turned her head to see this angel, but it was Jon Gascoyne and he was holding her back, he wasn’t helping her at all! She plucked at his hands around her waist. “Let me go!” she cried. “I have to go after her! I have to!”

Poppy woke in a cold sweat. A dream. Of course. Just a dream, but an awful one. She shivered and pulled the damp sheet up around her neck. Her mother’s book was beside her in the bed; she had been reading from it before falling asleep. With a trembling hand she opened it to the photo on the inside of the back cover. Annabelle Higgins, alive and vibrantly beautiful. Even a professional photographic portrait, which so often could fail to capture the real nature of the sitter, couldn’t mask her mother’s lively spirit.

Like death could.

 

Poppy had been dragging all day, and not even three cups of coffee had helped wake her fully. She had been unable to get back to sleep after that nightmare. The image of her mother falling through the air like a dark angel dogged her every step, from the time she took the garbage to the curb for the weekly morning pickup to the time she started the preparations for dinner. Why hadn’t she recognized her mother sooner? If she had, she might have reached her before . . . And for the life of her she couldn’t figure out why Jon Gascoyne had been involved, why, indeed, he had come to her rescue. She barely knew him, after all. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that he had been her mother’s student once upon a time. Not that that was much of a connection.

At least she had managed to be productive in one small way. She had gone to the OfficeMax in Kittery for a whiteboard and markers. The purchase made her feel a bit like a throwback. Most people these days seemed to keep track of their schedules on an electronic device. But electronic devices could be ignored and they were often temperamental. What was the worst thing that could happen to a whiteboard? It fell off its hooks?

“What’s that for?” Daisy had asked when Poppy had finished nailing the whiteboard to the wall next to the fridge.

“It’s so that I don’t forget another doctor’s appointment or whatever else it is I’m supposed to be remembering. We’ll all write down our weekly schedule and that way we’ll all know what everyone else is doing and when.”

“Sounds like a police state to me,” Daisy had muttered.

Damned if I do and damned if I don’t,
Poppy had thought, watching her sister tramp out of the kitchen.

There was still some time before dinner would be ready (she had put a casserole in the oven to bake, the lazy cook’s dream concoction), and she decided to call Allie Swift. They hadn’t talked in over a week and a text here and there didn’t really count for much.

“Is this a bad time?” she asked when Allie answered the phone, sounding a bit breathless.

“Not at all. I’m just in from my yoga class—what a workout! —and I’m pouring a chilled glass of wine as I speak.”

“Oh. Good.”

“Such enthusiasm!” Allie laughed. “What’s going on?”

Poppy sighed. “Nothing. And that’s the problem. What’s the
point
of my life, Allie? What am I here for?”

“Whoa, not even some meaningless chitchat? Why all the existential angst? And maybe you need a glass of wine, too.”

“Because I feel so useless,” Poppy told her, knowing that she probably sounded like a whiny teen but unable to help herself.

“Poppy,” Allie said sharply, “you’re not contemplating doing something drastic, are you?”

“You mean, am I suicidal? No, absolutely not! I’m not even close to despair. I just wish I could be certain that I’ll—I’ll leave a legacy. A good one, I mean. Like my mother did. And my father. You know, when each of them died, we got hundreds of cards and notes from colleagues and former students and even people who had read their books but never met them. Literally hundreds. It was extraordinary. I guess I want that kind of recognition for myself. But only if I’ve really earned it. And that’s the problem: How am I to earn it? Where do I start?”

“If I might quote Soren Kierkegaard,” Allie replied, “ ‘Life can only be understood backward; but it must be lived forward. ’”

Poppy laughed humorlessly. “Good ol’ Kierkegaard.”

“You’ll find out someday if your choices and decisions were right,” Allie assured her. “But you’ve got to make them first.”

“But how!”

“You’re going to have to trust your instincts, take a leap of faith,” Allie said patiently. “There’s no other way, Poppy. We’re all in the same situation. None of us knows what’s going to happen tomorrow or even in the next twenty minutes. We’re all pretty much stumbling around blindly, if not always then most of the time.”

“That’s not a very comforting thought.”

“Sorry. I meant you to realize that you’re not alone. Look, are you sure you’re all right?”

“Yes, absolutely,” Poppy said firmly. “It’s just been a tough day. I slept badly last night.”

“Well, get to bed early tonight. Doctor Allie’s orders.”

“I will,” Poppy said. “And thanks.”

Daisy and Violet appeared in the door to the kitchen as Poppy put her cell phone on the counter. “We’re starved,” Daisy announced. “Is dinner ready?”

Poppy sighed. “Five minutes.”

“It smells delicious,” Violet said.

At least,
Poppy thought,
I’ve mastered the art of the casserole
.

D
aisy pushed the vacuum cleaner across the living room floor. For the life of her she couldn’t remember the last time anyone had used the room. It had seen a lot of life in the old days, back when both of her parents were alive. Annabelle and Oliver Higgins were naturally gregarious people and had been known for their frequent parties. How many times had Daisy come downstairs on a Sunday morning to find one or more of her parents’ friends or colleagues asleep on the couch here in the living room, and also often in the study and sunroom?

We should shut this room up,
she thought now, turning the vacuum cleaner off and winding the cord around the handle. It would be one less room to clean. Daisy wasn’t sure why her father had fired their housekeeper not long after her mother had died. It meant that she and her dad were left to keep the house clean and in order; Violet was too young to be expected to pitch in, though she did keep her own room clean. Maybe he just hadn’t been able to bear a relative stranger puttering around the house that his wife had loved so much; maybe the presence of Mrs. Olds felt like a violation, even though the family had known her for years. Daisy had never asked her father and now she would never know the answer to her question.

“Rats!” Daisy retrieved the figurine she had accidentally knocked to the carpet with the dust cloth. It was Columbine, one of the commedia dell’arte figurines her mother had collected. Poppy loved the figurines; what would she have said if Columbine had broken? Daisy decided she would talk to her sister about hiring a new housekeeper. They had the money to hire someone, maybe even a team of people, to come in at least once a week. It was silly to think that a bunch of kids—and that’s what they were—could keep a huge house clean and in working order. Besides, housekeeping was boring.

Daisy gave the mantel of the magnificent stone fireplace a quick pass with the dust cloth, careful not to disturb the framed photograph of her father taken by one of his colleagues at a conference in Geneva about a year ago. (Though he had cut back on the number of public appearances he made since his wife’s death, there were those occasional conferences he felt compelled to attend.) He was impeccably dressed beneath his head of wild white hair, wearing a tiepin that had once belonged to his father, Henry. That tiepin was another item Daisy had chosen to treasure after Oliver’s death, along with his scarf and favorite dictionary. She didn’t think that Poppy knew she had taken it from the safe. If she did know, she hadn’t mentioned it. Poppy still hadn’t gotten around to clearing out Dad’s things and Daisy was in no rush to remind her.

Housework abandoned for the moment, Daisy flopped onto the couch. She remembered so clearly the day her father had died. He had been very upset that morning about not being able to find a particular photo of her mother, an old one taken before they had married. Daisy had assured him that the photo would turn up, but her attempt at consolation had fallen on deaf ears. And then, the letter had come, the letter relating devastating news about a respected colleague, a man with whom her father had gone to school. Dr. Morris, who had once been accused of plagiarism (her father had been a staunch supporter of his innocence, and indeed, he had been proved not guilty), had now been fired from his university for sexually harassing several students.

Not that Daisy had known what the letter contained. She had simply given it to her father in the sunroom and gone off. But what if she
hadn’t
given her father that letter, what if she had read it first—not that she was in the habit of reading her father’s correspondence—but what if she
had,
just that once? She might have broken the news to him another time, when he wasn’t already so upset. She had left him alone while she started dinner (a cold salad and pasta with sauce from a jar) and then Freddie had come by the house and gone into the sunroom to see Oliver and then . . . And then Freddie had come back into the kitchen where Daisy was setting the table and the look on her face was enough to tell Daisy that the very worst thing that could happen had happened.

Daisy had only discovered the contents of that fatal letter (that’s how she thought of it) when she finally had the nerve to go into the sunroom, after the paramedics had removed her father’s body. It was lying open on the floor by his chair.

The doorbell rang and Daisy gratefully abandoned her housekeeping chores—and her memories—to answer it. Joel stood on the doorstep.

“You look glum,” he said immediately. “Thinking about your dad?”

Daisy nodded and stepped outside to join him, closing the door behind her. It was the first time she had been out in the fresh air that day.

“Come on, I’ve got just the thing to cheer you up.”

Joel grabbed her hand and pulled her after him out of the house and down to where his car was parked in the drive.

“Where are we going?” Daisy cried.

“To Ogunquit beach,” Joel said, opening the passenger side door for her. “There’s a kite-flying festival today. Kites always make people happy. Even grumpy-pants people like you.”

Daisy smiled. “Will you buy me an ice-cream cone, too?” she asked.

Joel heaved a dramatic sigh and slid behind the wheel. “If it’ll make you happy, I’ll buy you two ice-cream cones.”

E
vie, sitting on the edge of her bed after a long day at The Clamshell, removed the heart-shaped locket from around her neck and opened it. She studied the pictures inside at least once a day, comparing her mother’s face to her own. They were so similar. The crooked smile. The slim nose. Even the same hairline. Still, there was no denying that she had inherited her father’s eyes, wide set and slightly almond-shaped. No matter how hard Evie tried to reject or dismiss him, her father would always be a part of her. All she had to do was to look in the mirror.

With a sigh, Evie fastened the locket around her neck again and slipped it under her shirt the way she always did. When people saw a locket they automatically asked whose picture was inside and Evie didn’t want to share her mother with anyone. She could lie, of course, say there were no pictures inside, but she was already lying about so many things . . .

Like the fact that she was an “unaccompanied teen.” She couldn’t remember where she had heard that term; probably, she thought, on TV or online. Either way, that’s what she was officially, an unaccompanied teen. The term was broad enough she supposed to encompass teenagers whose lives had been badly disturbed in all sorts of ways, resulting in their being on their own and without a safe home. Teens whose parents were in jail. Teens who had run away from abuse. Teens whose parents or guardians had kicked them out for getting in trouble at school or with the police. Teens who had been dumped on distant relatives who didn’t want them, like she had been.

Her aunt and uncle hadn’t said as much and really, they had been nice enough to her, but from the moment Evie had set foot in their house she had felt more unwanted than she had ever felt before, haunted by a sense of dislocation, of shifting ground. People needed stability, a place to call their own. Even animals built burrows and birds built nests and each defended those homes against invaders, intruders, beings who didn’t belong. Evie hadn’t felt like an intruder when she had been living with Kate, not at first anyway. But she had known Kate and her parents for a long time and besides, Evie figured she had probably been in shock for the first weeks or maybe even months after her mother was killed and her father so badly hurt. Not able to fully realize her situation. Not able to comprehend that her life would never be normal again.

She would never forget the moment when her path became clear. She had been living with her aunt and uncle for about two months when her cousin Alexa had announced one night at dinner that the annual father-daughter dance for juniors was in two weeks and that she didn’t want to go. Her uncle had asked why not and Alexa had replied that she thought the whole idea “boring and old-fashioned.” If Uncle Ron was hurt by his daughter’s decision he hadn’t let it show; if Aunt Joanne was aware of her daughter’s insensitivity, given Evie’s situation, she hadn’t said. But Alexa’s dismissive attitude toward the event cut Evie to the core. At least her cousin
had
a father to take as her date to the dance. When Evie became a junior, whom would she be able to take? She supposed that other girls without a father asked another significant male adult to go; she supposed she could ask Uncle Ron. But it wasn’t the same, not at all! And at that moment, over a meal of roast chicken and baked potatoes, Evie’s decision was made. She would leave this house as soon as she possibly could. She simply didn’t belong in the normal world.

The memory of that awful dinner still in her mind, Evie went into the bathroom that was hers to use. Suddenly, another memory confronted her. She saw herself as a little girl, watching her father shave before her parents’ bathroom mirror. She remembered the routine. The way he splashed water over his face. The way he applied the creamy white foam. She heard the scratch of the razor as it passed over his cheeks. The whole thing had fascinated her, such an exotic ritual that belonged only to men, like Daddy. She remembered how her father would put a dollop of shaving cream on her nose and how she would squeal with laughter.

Evie shook her head. She hadn’t thought about those times she had spent alone with her father in what seemed like an eternity. Watching him shave; spending long Saturday afternoons at the zoo while her mother was at her shop; sharing a bowl of popcorn while watching her favorite Disney movies, time and time again. She didn’t want to think about those moments now. They might lead to her wondering where he was and what he was feeling. They might lead her to wondering if he was thinking of her.

Quickly, Evie brushed her teeth and turned off the bathroom light. But the images of her once-beloved father followed her in the dark.