The Friends We Keep (36 page)

1

Poppy Higgins hung the last of her tops and blouses in the large chestnut armoire that had once contained her mother's clothes and firmly closed the door of the beautiful old piece of furniture. She wasn't at all sure she belonged in this room, what had once been her parents' master suite, but here she was, stowing away her clothes in the armoire and laying out her makeup and moisturizers in their bathroom.

This was the thing. Poppy had decided that there was probably no way she could pull off a role of authority in the house on Willow Way if she continued to sleep in her girlhood bedroom, the place where she had mooned over airbrushed boy bands and cried in frustration when her parents wouldn't let her see a movie all of her friends were allowed to see and dreamed childish dreams of a secret benefactor suddenly leaving her billions of dollars to spend in any way she liked. No, if she was going to succeed (or, at least make a stab) at being her sisters' guardian now that both of her parents were gone, she would need all the psychological props she could find, and installing herself in the master suite seemed like as good a prop as any.

Not everyone agreed with her. Sixteen-year-old Daisy wasn't happy about it; then again, she hadn't been happy about anything lately, and Poppy really couldn't blame her. Violet had said nothing about the move, but anyone who knew Violet at all knew that she probably had a strong opinion about the matter. Violet was preternaturally mature, almost oddly so. Maybe mature wasn't the right word; maybe simply odd would do. She was as far from the average thirteen-year-old girl (if such a thing existed) as you could imagine, more interested in esoteric subjects like astrology than in pop culture; often shockingly blunt and straightforward in her speech; and possessing a highly developed and always on target intuition about people and their motives.

Now, looking at the king-sized bed in which Annabelle and Oliver Higgins had spent so many nights of their married lives, Poppy wondered: Could you invade a person's private space even when they were dead? Was she indeed trespassing or being disrespectful? Maybe, but she was determined to stick it out in the suite, at least for a week or two. After all, she was supposed to be the adult in the house now, the one who acted with firmness and a sense of being in the right. A person who made a considered decision and stuck to it. The thought was terrifying.

Twenty-five-year-old Poppy had been back home—or, what had once been home—in Yorktide since the sudden death of her father in February and the completely shocking discovery, when his old friend and solicitor Frederica Ross, aka Freddie, had read his will to the family, that he had named Poppy legal guardian of her two younger sisters. He had requested she not move them to Boston, where she had been living for the past several years, but that she return to the house on Willow Way so that Daisy and Violet could finish high school and middle school without being wrenched from the community in which they had been a part for all of their lives.

It made sense, of course. Her father had known that Poppy had no deep roots in Boston. She had moved to the city after graduation from college more in the hopes of stumbling across something “interesting” than because she had a definite plan for her future. Still, not long before Annabelle Higgins died of lung cancer three years earlier, she had strongly encouraged her oldest daughter to return to Boston when she, Annabelle, was gone; she had urged her not to give up her quest for a meaningful life, not to feel that she need move back to Maine to be with her father and younger sisters. So Poppy
had
gone back to Boston shortly after her mother's funeral, but three years later she still had not found anything “interesting” to do with her life. Her job as a freelance writer for a few online “cultural” magazines was unfulfilling in the extreme; how often could you write creatively about a new beer and bacon joint or a pop-up dance club or discuss whether socks worn with sandals was actually “a thing”? The only reason she kept at it was to pay the bills. Unlike her highly motivated and focused parents, Poppy feared she was sadly directionless and quite possibly lazy.

Well, you could be directionless and lazy anywhere, so why not in Yorktide? Leaving her on again, currently off again boyfriend Ian had caused Poppy no regret. Ian could be a lot of fun, but not much more than that. The only thing—the only person—she would miss—that she did miss—was Allie Swift, the woman who owned the beautiful old mansion in which Poppy rented a spacious and sunny top-floor apartment. Though Allie was forty and had seen an awful lot more of life than Poppy had, they had formed a true friendship and Allie had promised Poppy a place to stay when—if—she returned to Boston when her sisters were finally on their own.

Poppy placed the palm of her hand against the smooth, polished wood of the armoire and fought a fresh wave of sorrow. Soon after Annabelle's passing, her clothes had been given to charity; Freddie, the aforementioned Higgins family's lawyer, and her partner, Sheila Simon, had orchestrated that for the sisters. First, though, each girl had chosen one or two of their mother's items as keepsakes. For Poppy, this was the slim gold bangle she wore on her right wrist and a black velvet shawl, fringed with jet beads. She remembered her mother wearing the shawl to formal occasions at Adams College, where she was a professor of American History, and to the ceremonial dinners her husband, Oliver, was compelled to attend, many of them in his honor. “You look like a princess,” Poppy remembered telling her mother once. “Thank you,” Annabelle had replied. “But remember, it's better to be queen.”

Now, her father's clothing had to be dealt with, and Poppy had decided she would see to the task herself. She was afraid she had already relied too heavily on Freddie and Sheila, who, as friends first of Oliver's father, Henry, and then of Oliver himself, were the obvious choice of shoulders upon which to lean. Still, she had been back at the Higginses' house for almost four months now and had still failed to take the first step in sorting her father's beautifully tailored shirts and his bespoke suits. Oliver Higgins had been a brilliant intellectual on the international stage of political theory and economic practice, but he had also been a bit of a dandy. Alongside his beautiful wife, they had made a stunning couple, the kind of pair who turned heads and effortlessly drew people into the circle of their formidable personalities.

Annabelle Higgins's clothing might have gone to the local charity shop, but her jewelry (except for the bangle Poppy wore) was locked in a safe in the master bathroom. Along with the pearls Annabelle had inherited from her grandmother, her diamond and platinum wedding set, and a hefty collection of Bakelite pieces from the nineteen thirties and forties, was Oliver Higgins's wedding ring. His watch, a Breitling, had been there, too, until a few days earlier Poppy had decided that she would wear it in much the same spirit she wore her mother's bracelet, as a physical reminder of the two most important people in her life. A local jeweler had removed a few of the links from the watch for a better fit, and though Poppy felt a bit conspicuous wearing such an expensive piece, she was glad to have this bit of her father so close.

Poppy turned from the armoire, and her eye caught her parents' official wedding portrait next to a spray of dried hydrangea, her mother's favorite flower, on the dresser against the wall opposite the bed. Annabelle and Oliver had been anything but run-of-the-mill types and had eschewed the popular bride and groom styles of the mid-eighties. (Hideous, in Poppy's opinion. Puffy sleeves? Really?) Her mother had worn a tailored white pantsuit; her father, a simple, navy suit with a white shirt and no tie. His wildly wavy hair had already started to whiten, though he was only in his early thirties at the time. It gave him a look of distinction and elegance.

Poppy looked more closely at the photograph. There really was a striking resemblance between Annabelle and her oldest daughter; everyone had remarked on it. Like her mother, Poppy was tall and slim, and her features were near perfectly symmetrical. Her eyes were as vividly green as Annabelle's, and her hair as glossy a chestnut brown. Her complexion, like her mother's, was clear and pale. Daisy, on the other hand, took after Oliver Higgins, although not in the elegance department, as she would be the first to admit. But she had his darker skin tone, his infectious, lopsided smile, and his medium, slightly stocky build. Violet, Poppy thought, was a charming combination of both parents.

What would her own wedding day be like? Poppy wondered now, looking away from the photograph. No father to walk her down the aisle. No mother to help her plan the festivities. Maybe she would elope. It might be unbearably depressing to get through the occasion without her parents. Assuming she ever decided to get married, which meant falling in love with someone and so far,
that
hadn't happened. Sometimes it bothered her that in her twenty-five years no one had ever captured her heart or inspired her devotion. Sure, she had dated and had even been with one guy for about six months before things just fizzled. Maybe the fault was hers. She knew that she wasn't cold or unsentimental. She cried at the drop of a hat, and all it took was a chubby-cheeked baby or a fuzzy kitten to cause her to
ooh
and
aah
. But for some reason when it came to romance, her heart, her innermost and truest self, just hadn't been brought to life.

How had Annabelle and Oliver done it? she wondered. They had been so deeply in love with each other. How had they found that sort of bliss? Sometimes Poppy wondered if her parents' perfect romantic union had tainted her own romantic career; maybe somehow it had caused her to despair of ever finding her own soul mate. But maybe that was just silly.

Bellisima. That was one of the affectionate names her father had called her mother, and his favorite poem was Edgar Allan Poe's “Annabel Lee.” In fact, he had had a few lines of the poem inscribed on his wife's headstone.

A grand gesture if ever there was one, though the lines had always disturbed Poppy. Maybe it was the word “dissever.” It gave her the creeps, and that was probably what the poet had intended. Doomed love. Love cut short.

Or, love eternal
, Poppy thought now as she left the master suite and went downstairs to start dinner. And this was also something new. For the past few years she had been catching meals when she could, hardly ever cooking (boiling water for pasta didn't really count), and rarely spending more than twenty dollars at a time in the grocery store. Now, she was responsible for putting at least two meals on the table each day for three people, and that took planning and time and energy. And money. Who knew the basics like milk and butter and eggs cost so much! Luckily, Annabelle and Oliver Higgins had left their children well provided for, with a mortgage fully paid and a portfolio of sound investments.

Things, Poppy thought as she entered the spacious, thoroughly modernized kitchen, could be much worse. She hoped that being back home with her sisters might help assuage some of the guilt she felt for having left them after Mom's death; that would be a very good thing. Though how she was going to form a definite plan for a productive and meaningful life in the future by playing parent to two strong-willed teenaged girls was anyone's guess!