The Geometry of Sisters (2 page)

“Things will be better when we get to Newport,” she says.

“Stop,” I say, the ghost of my old lisp coming back, and I hear “shtop.”

I hate Newport and we're not even there yet, and besides, I don't believe her. All that water. I want to stay here, make things right. Make everyone like me again. Most of the time I say my
s
's and
l
's perfectly. No one makes fun of me for that anymore—I got through it.

Carrie helped me get over my lisp. She coached me through my speech exercises. With my sister, I overcame the obstacle. She can't help me with this, though. C + B = Us. I hold on to that truth. Mathematics and logic don't lie. So I sit in the back seat in perfect silence, just glaring into my mother's eyes. She doesn't know what I know about Carrie's last day. See, when she's ready, Carrie is coming back.

Storm clouds don't speak. And there's no such number as zero.

2
NEWPORT GREETED THEM WITH BRIGHT BLUE water sparkling everywhere, a fresh September breeze blowing off Narragansett Bay, thick roses tumbling over high stone walls. Maura Shaw's hands were clamped tightly to the steering wheel as she drove along Farewell Street, between the two graveyards at the foot of the bridge. She drew the first deep breath she'd taken since leaving their house in Columbus early yesterday. She'd finally gotten them here.

The trip from Ohio had taken longer than she'd expected. Maura couldn't help it: every car on the highway, every exit off the interstate, all potentially could be where she'd find Carrie. She'd driven carefully, eyes on the road. But one part of her attention, a big part, was spent darting over to the passing Dodge Ram, the young hitchhikers, the broken-down Chevy, the ambulance speeding in the opposite direction.

Carrie's postcards had been from places out West. Santa Fe, New Mexico, had been the first; Billings, Montana, was the last. But who was to say she might not have changed her mind? A girl who could run away the very same day her father died, having never purposely done one thing to make her parents fret or worry, who had never been anything less than sweet, reliable, and incredibly smart, might in fact be capable of changing direction and heading east instead.

So Maura and the two younger kids had spent one night in a
Days Inn near Allentown, Pennsylvania. This was out of the way; obsessing about Carrie, she'd taken a wrong turn, and the kids hadn't realized. Travis had been navigating, doing a great job, but after a while, assuming they were basically on autopilot, he'd turned to text-messaging Ally on his cell phone.

Suddenly Maura had started seeing signs for Gettysburg—they were heading south instead of east. She almost panicked. She couldn't let the kids know they were off course. Not because of pride or a need for infallibility, but because she wanted to give them a sense of safety, reassure them that she had it together, was on top of her game. Especially Beck, who had become a teenage nihilist, who doubted all that was good, who had seemed to retreat into a world of cats and numbers, and expected only disaster of real life.

Maura had quietly adjusted course, off one exit and back on the other way, not telling the kids they had traveled fifty miles out of the way without her realizing, and trying to keep herself from pondering the symbolism of driving straight toward one of the bloodiest battlefields in America while thinking of where her oldest daughter might be.

And here they were: The southern end of Aquidneck Island, Newport jutted into the Atlantic Ocean, and the sea was everywhere: down every alley, across every lawn, surrounding the city. She had come home to her New England roots, and in spite of everything, she felt a sudden surge of joy. She pressed the buttons to open all the car windows, ignoring the kids' protests as their hair blew wildly.

“Smell the salt air,” she said.

“It's bothering the cats!” Beck said.

“She speaks,” Travis said.

“I don't believe the cats mind the air,” Maura said. “I think they love it. They know we're almost home.”

“Home is Columbus,” Beck said.

“Honey this is where we live now,” Maura said.

“Mom, don't even bother,” Travis said. “She's going to give you a hard time no matter what you say.”

“You don't know anything,” Beck said. “Why don't you text Ally and say you're a bonehead?”

“You're not even making sense,” he said.

“Right,” Beck said. “She already knows it, so why would you have to tell her?”

“Hey,” Maura said. “Stop it.”

And they did. They liked each other, in spite of how they were acting right now. For so many years, this had always been one of the great blessings for Maura and Andy: the way their kids had been real friends, not just siblings.

Maura concentrated on driving. The streets were crowded with late summer traffic. She knew Newport like the back of her hand. She and her sister had lived here many years ago, while they were in college, back when they'd still been close.

In recent years, after finishing her master's degree, she'd started receiving emails from educational placement services, private schools, and tutoring services looking for teachers. She'd filed them all away. Andy and she had decided she would wait to start teaching until Beck started high school.

But then everything changed. Andy died, and Maura felt as if she'd been hit by a truck. Everything was broken. Her family was wrecked, in grief, in tatters. Insurance covered some things, but she got slammed by the second mortgage, car payments, shrink bills for Beck, detective bills to look for Carrie, and just when she wanted to crawl under the covers and never come out, her family needed her to provide for them.

Several months after Andy's death last August, just over a year ago, she got a mailing from Newport Academy and jumped on it. Ted Shannon, the headmaster, flew to Ohio for an alumni event, and Maura interviewed and got the job. It had seemed like fate.

Newport: so much had happened here to set the course of her
family's history. Maybe by coming back, Maura could find peace. But there were more pressing reasons to leave Columbus. They needed the money and Newport Academy paid well. Besides, Maura knew she had to get Beck out of there, away from all the talk.

Maura wanted to take her younger daughter away from the reputation she'd gotten in school. Maura knew she would outgrow it, that people would forget, just as no one remembered now that she'd once needed speech therapy, and the kids teasing her about the way she'd talked had long ceased.

But stealing was more serious, and Beck was deeply ashamed and confused, even as she was trying to change her behavior. Her grades had slipped badly except in math—high school level and even beyond, according to her teacher, an accomplishment that both shocked Maura (neither she nor Andy had been particularly good at or interested in mathematics) and made her very proud. So Maura had grabbed the chance to come to Newport, a place she knew her kids would love once they settled in. A bonus: the school offered housing as part of the package.

Salary, insurance, reduced tuition for the kids, and a place to live: all the bases covered, and that was necessary. Without Andy, they were having a hard time. Grief still was fresh, a constant, aching emptiness. Maura had stayed home with the kids; it had always been the plan for her to start teaching once Beck finished middle school. Ironically, they were right on schedule.

Beck would be starting Newport Academy as a freshman, Travis as a junior. And Carrie was who knew where. Maura knew there wasn't a chance in the world that her daughter would find that note she'd left on the door, but she'd left it anyway. Leaving Columbus without Carrie had been something like driving away without her right arm. Only it hurt a lot more.

“Okay you two,” she said, as they drove up Memorial Boulevard, crested Bellevue Avenue, and started down the hill toward Easton's Beach. “Watch for Cliff Avenue on the right.”

“There, Mom,” Travis said, pointing.

Maura took a right, drove a short way, and then spotted the tall iron gates. A discreet sign,
Newport Academy
, was set into the stone post. Her stomach flipped as she realized that this was it—the start of a new life. She drove through, onto a private drive lined with venerable old trees, branches interlocking overhead.

Breaking into a clearing, they saw the main school building—a limestone mansion with turrets, balconies, pointed-arch windows, and gargoyles—built on the tall cliff's edge, overlooking the crashing Atlantic. Spectacular, and she tried not to think of the pictures Carrie would have taken of this place.

“That's the school?” Beck asked.

“It is,” Maura said.

“It looks like a prison!”

“It does not,” Travis said. “It looks like a castle.”

“I hate it,” Beck said.

Maura didn't speak. She just followed the road behind the main school building—the grand mansion—past other smaller but no less elegant houses, around an ancient, sprawling copper beech tree, into a darkly wooded laurel grove. Several small outbuildings were set here, including the small brick carriage house where they would live.

“This is
it?”
Beck asked, sounding incredulous.

“Yes,” Maura said. “Home sweet home.”

“It's tiny and dark!” Beck said. “It's horrible!”

“It's not tiny,” Maura said. “It has three bedrooms, one for each of us.”

“We had four bedrooms in our other house!” Beck said. “Three's not enough. You know that …”

“Beck, honey,” she began, her throat shutting tight.

“Beck,” Travis said, “there aren't five of us anymore. Only three. Come on, you can add.”

“You mean subtract!”

“Don't make it worse.”

“Shut up, shut up,” Beck said. “Why did we have to leave? What if Carrie tries to find us? How will she, Mom? Have you
really
thought about that, aside from leaving that lame note?”

“Beck, Jesus, stop,” Travis said.

“Um, yeah, Beck,” Maura said. “I've thought about it just a little.”

“Don't be sarcastic to me!”

“Well, don't treat me like an idiot. If you don't think I think about Carrie, oh, let's see… twenty-four hours a day…” Maura took a deep breath.
Be calm, don't lose it, be the mother
. “Beck, I have tried everything and will keep trying every single way to find Carrie. I have a detective on retainer. Police forces from here to California have her description. I left word with Justin and all her friends, and I've left a forwarding message on voicemail—”

“Voicemail!” Beck shrieked. “Carrie's gonna find us through voice mail?”

Maura threw up her hands—literally. This was like traveling with a three-year-old. Beck was overtired, overstimulated, and exhausted from the ride and her own bad temper.

“Why didn't you just leave a trail of
bread crumbs?” Beck sobbed
.

Travis, good boy that he was, climbed out of the car and started unloading it. Maura saw him carry the heaviest suitcases to the front door, then stand there waiting for her to unlock it. Beck clutched Carrie's portfolio.

“I want Dad,” Beck said. “I want Carrie.”

“I want them too,” Maura said, turning to reach into the back seat for her hand. Beck wouldn't take it, so Maura faced front again.

“I don't want to be here,” Beck said.

“I know, Beck,” Maura said, staring at the house.

Beck was right—it was doll-size. Set far from the cliff, deep in the shade of oaks and maples, tall mountain laurel and rhododendron bushes, it nestled in darkness. She thought of the big, airy
house they'd just left. This carriage house came furnished, so the movers would be dropping most of their big furniture at a storage facility outside town—maybe that would make it easier, not having to look at all their things.

She hadn't been able to store Carrie's pictures. She'd kept them here in the car, wrapped in a quilt. Pictures of other girls, strangers as well as Carrie's friends. Her daughter had aimed the camera, snapped the photos, and they had traveled here in the way-back of the car, and now Beck was holding them as if they were Carrie herself.

Maura breathed salt air. Soon school would begin, a fresh start. She glanced at Beck in the rearview mirror, saw her sitting there in a knot, arms tight across her chest and the portfolio.

“Ready?” she asked.

“Ready, Mom,” Travis said, back at the car, holding out his hand. Maura handed him the key so he could unlock the front door.

“Come on,” Maura said. “Let's get the cats inside. They need water.”

“They need to go back to Ohio,” Beck said.

Maura grabbed the two cat carriers, and Beck loaded her arms with Carrie's photos, and they followed Travis into their new home.

Travis sat with Beck on the cottage steps, wanting to make sure she wasn't going to bolt like Carrie. While his mother waited for the movers and Beck went into the world of tangents, pentangles, quadrangles, triangles, and whatever, plotting her escape—as if he and their mom didn't know her plan—he was checking things out.

Then, continually circling back to see what was happening in the house, to make sure Beck hadn't darted through the bushes for her big return to Ohio, he prowled the walkways of Newport Academy in search of, among other things, a spot where he could get decent cell reception.