The Second Sister (23 page)

No kidding, I started to choke. And it wasn't a momentary blockage, easily cleared with a polite cough or two. No, no, no. This was a full-on, hacking, face-reddening, “does anybody here know the Heimlich maneuver?” choking. It was so bad that Peter dropped his fishing pole, came over to my side of the room, and started pounding on my back.

“You okay?” he asked when I finally stopped hacking and started breathing again, his expression worried.

My eyes were tearing and my throat was still tight, but I bobbed my head and lifted my hand to wave off his concern. “Fine,” I rasped after a minute. “Cheese curd. Went down the wrong pipe. But I'm—”

I didn't get a chance to finish my sentence.

Before I knew what was happening or could fully catch my breath, Peter locked me in his arms and kissed me, just like he had on Thanksgiving. It was a really, really good kiss. Even better than the first.

Of course, it is possible that, having not been kissed like that in so very long, which is to say passionately, the pleasure of that kiss had been heightened by extended privation, the way a piece of rich, delicious dark chocolate tastes even richer and more delicious after you've been dieting. But I don't think so.

All I know for sure is that I was grateful to be sitting down, because if I'd been standing, my knees would probably have buckled under me. Seriously. I've read a number of novels in which the hero's kiss leaves the heroine feeling faint and always thought it was silly, completely unrealistic. But at that moment, I suddenly understood what swooning meant.

Maybe that was why, even though a part of my brain knew that this was a bad, bad idea, I kissed him back, because I felt faint, or was suffering from acute kiss deprivation, or because it didn't seem quite real. Whatever the reason, I lifted my arms around his shoulders, let my lips fall slightly apart, and kissed him. It just felt so incredibly good. I didn't want him to stop.

And then, in case I hadn't been thrown off balance enough, he made another surprise move, the kind of thing I was
certain
never happened except in books, movies, or the late-night fantasies of kiss-deprived women; he picked me up! No kidding! Without ever taking his lips from mine, he kind of scooted off the bench, scooped his arm under my legs, and starting carrying me across the room toward the bed.

It was, without question, the single sexiest thing I have ever experienced in my life. He lifted me up like I was nothing! And as he did, a thought popped into my head:
He planned this all along....

Peter had come out here the day before, filled the fridge with snacks and beer, set the radio to what he thought was a romantic station (though he sadly misjudged that part), invited me out here, and wore down my defenses by plying me with liquor and opening up to me and becoming irresistibly vulnerable, all in anticipation of the moment when he would kiss me like I'd never been kissed in my life, and carry me to the bed, and . . .

He'd lured me! He had lured me to his ice shanty the way that the carnival guy had lured Daphne onto the Tilt-A-Whirl, both among the least likely possible spots for an assignation, knowing that we wouldn't be expecting it! Hoping to catch us off guard and in a moment of weakness! Joe Feeney was right—I'd never have imagined Peter trying to make a move on me while we were ice fishing. If I had, I never would have agreed to come along. I thought we'd go to some tin shack and sit huddled around a hole in the ice wearing parkas and mittens and shivering. I had no idea there'd be music and conversation and beer and a
bed
.

Peter knew that I wasn't expecting this. And that was why, after I'd rebuffed his earlier advance, he had brought me here. No,
lured
me here!

This revelation was so surprising, comical, and—I'll admit it—oddly flattering that it actually made me feel a little giddy. If Peter's lips hadn't still been pressed to mine, I might have started laughing. But when he actually set me down on the bed, pulled away, and made a move to pull his sweater over his head, I came to my senses—quickly.

“Oh, Peter.” I clutched at his wrist. “I can't. This is a bad idea.”

“Yes, you can,” he said. He loosened my hand from his wrist. “And it's an incredibly good idea. One I've been working on since we were both sixteen years old. Let me show you.”

He turned my wrist upward, uncurled my clenched fingers, one at a time, then pressed his lips to my palm. Where had he learned that? How did he know that the feeling of his lips, so soft and sure and slow, would make my heart pound like a conga line and fill me with the urge to throw him down onto the bed?

I pulled my hand away and held it tight against my chest. “No, Peter. I can't. Really. I can't afford to let myself get mixed up in a relationship with anybody right now, especially someone who lives thousands of miles from DC. If I let myself get caught up with you, it'd be for all the wrong reasons.”

“So you're saying you'd just be using me for sex?” He pressed his lips together and furrowed his brow as if considering the implications of my statement. “I can live with that,” he said, and reached for me again.

I scooted to the far end of the bed, dodging his grasp. “No! Peter, I mean it! This is a really bad idea! I'm going back to DC in just a few weeks and you . . . Ack!”

A sudden clatter of plastic against wood as my fishing pole was jerked from the holder made me yelp with surprise. The pole started skittering across the floor toward the open hole in the ice.

“Grab it!” Peter yelled.

I lunged for the pole, but he got there first, snatching the handle only a moment before it disappeared into the water. Kneeling on the floor, he tried to reel in the line as quickly as he could. The fight and weight of the fish made the pole bend so far that I thought it might snap in two.

“Whoa! This is a huge mutha!” Peter exclaimed, his eyes bright with excitement. “Luce! Help me out here! Grab the line and pull him in!”

Though flustered and a little unsure about exactly what I was supposed to do, I followed his instructions, clutching at the fishing line and pulling it in, hand over hand, drawing the enormous whitefish toward the opening in the ice. The water was clear blue. When I looked down, I could see the fish, twisting and fighting to get away, silver scales glinting like star points in the water.

“Oh, it's beautiful!”

“Sure is!” Peter cried, moving closer and bending down to get a better look. “Man! Look at that bad boy! He's gonna be too big for the frying pan!”

“Frying pan?” My eyes went wide as I realized what he was saying. “Peter, we're not going to
eat
this fish!”

“Of course we are,” he said, looking as if he thought I'd lost my mind. “What else should we do? Adopt him? Hang on!”

The silver leviathan wasn't giving up easily. It twisted its body from side to side, banging into the bottom of the ice, as if it had an understanding of its own size in relationship to the opening and knew that it would never fit through unless it was in a perfect, nose up–tail down position. Peter cursed and pulled up the sleeve of his sweater and plunged his arm into the frigid water.

Moving quickly, I untangled myself from the loops of fishing line, grabbed the tackle box, and scrabbled frantically through the various compartments, searching. I found the wire cutters just as Peter sat back on his haunches, grinning from ear to ear as the silvery head of the enormous whitefish emerged from the hole.

“Look at that! What a beauty! He's got to be eleven or twelve—”

In one quick and unexpected movement—if not for the element of surprise I'd never have managed it—I shoved Peter aside as hard as I could, sending him sprawling, then snipped the line and pulled the hook from the fish's mouth.

“Lucy!” He rocked forward and made a grab at the line, but he was too late; I released the fish into the water. He peered into the hole with his mouth ajar as the silver streak made its escape and disappeared into the depths.

He sat back on his haunches again, staring at me with a mixture of anger and confusion. “Are you insane? That was our dinner!”

I got up from the floor, wiped my wet, freezing hands on my pants, and sat down on the bench across from him.

“I'm not hungry.”

Chapter 31

A
ctually, I was hungry. So was Peter. Cheese curds and a few handfuls of Chex Mix don't quite constitute a well-balanced meal. And so, after we got back into the truck, I suggested we go to the fish boil at the White Gull Inn. It was kind of a peace offering. After all, not only had I rebuffed the man's sexual advances, I'd released his dinner into the wild. I couldn't blame him for being mad.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “But I just couldn't bear the idea of eating such a beautiful, wild creature.”

He turned the ignition switch, revving the engine a couple of times to warm it up after sitting so long in the cold. “The whitefish we'll eat at the boil were beautiful, wild creatures too.”

“I know. But I wasn't the one responsible for killing them.”

“What difference does that make?”

I clicked my seat belt together. “I don't know, but it does. Anyway, do you want to go or not?”

“Okay,” he said, his expression softening as he shifted the truck into gear.

“Just one thing. I'm buying.” He started to protest, but I cut him off. “No! I want to pay this time. I owe you a fish. And, Peter . . . after this? If we go anywhere or do anything together, we split the bill. I meant what I said in there. I'm not getting myself tangled up in another dead-end, long-distance relationship. I'm done with all that. My next relationship is going to be with someone who is
the
one. Or at least has the potential to be the one. And if I never meet that guy, then so be it. I'm not settling for anything less than the real deal. But,” I said, looking to my left so I could see his face, “I am still taking applications for friends. So if that sounds good to you . . .”

Peter shifted his eyes from the road to my face. “Not as good as letting you use me for sex, but since that doesn't seem to be an option . . .”

“It isn't,” I said. “I mean that.”

“Okay,” he said with a shrug, conceding more quickly and easily than I'd supposed he would. “Friends.”

“Good,” I said and fixed my eyes on the road. “Friends.”

 

During the summer, the White Gull Inn in Fish Creek is
the
place to go for tourists and vacationers wanting to take part in a traditional Door County fish boil. From May through October, the White Gull hosts three boils a night, four nights a week. During the winter, they have only one boil a week, on Friday night. Since only the hard-core populace of the peninsula is crazy enough to think that standing around a giant cauldron of potatoes and fish bubbling over a big open fire in twenty-degree weather is fun, most of the wintertime guests are locals.

There were about fifty people in the crowd, and we knew quite a few of them. It was almost like going to a neighborhood party. Father Damon was there with his brother, Bill, who had driven up from Eau Claire for the weekend, and Mrs. Lieshout was there, too, with her husband, Lars, and her in-laws. We saw Mr. and Mrs. DeVine too. They told me they came to the boil almost every Friday night. “Only during the winter, though,” Mrs. DeVine said. “Too many people in summer, but when the snow comes, I'm looking for any excuse to get out of the house.”

“And away from the kids,” Mr. DeVine added, smiling as he put an arm around his wife's waist.

I spotted Celia standing off to one side with a burly, almost hulking man who was holding a tumbler of brown liquor. I figured he must be her boyfriend, Pat. I considered going over to say hello, but they seemed to be in the middle of an intense, somewhat unpleasant conversation. Celia looked up with shiny, tear-filled eyes and warned me off, so I decided to stay put.

The rest of us stood around the fire pit, bundled up in sweaters, boots, and hats, holding steaming cups of hot cider or something stronger in our gloved hands as we chatted with our neighbors and watched the white-haired boil master stand crackling cedar logs vertically against the sides of the cylindrical pot so the boil would stay strong even after he added pounds and pounds of red potatoes and fish, and at least a couple of quarts of salt to the water.

The heat of the fire was intense, the yellow-gold glow of the flames piercing the darkness and casting dancing shadows across the faces of the people and the silhouetted circle of surrounding trees. The million stars in the sharp cold of the winter sky sparkled brilliant and bright, like scattered diamonds on an infinite field of black velvet. It was beautiful and sort of mystical, possibly even a little bit pagan, like a solstice celebration in the palace of some ancient Viking king.

“Admit it,” I said to Peter when he returned from the bar with two more cups of hot cider, “this is way better than a fish fry in your dad's shanty.”

“Maybe. But only because I'm here with you, old pal. Old buddy. Old BFF.” He shot me a bad-boy grin over the rim of his mug and took a sip.

“Don't be a jerk,” I said and elbowed him in the ribs. He elbowed me back and I smiled, happy that we'd moved past the awkward part.

When the boil master announced that the fish was just about ready, everybody gathered closer to see the highlight of the evening: the boil over. I noticed that Celia wasn't in the crowd. I looked over my shoulder, wondering where she could be, just in time to see Pat slam his empty highball glass down on a table and storm off, with Celia following close behind, apparently trying to placate him.

Poor Celia. Daphne told me that Pat was really a nasty piece of work, very controlling, but Celia couldn't seem to see it. Should I go after her? Tell her to come back to the fire and just ignore him, that by chasing after him, she was only getting sucked into his manipulation? Should I? I didn't know her all that well yet. Maybe she wouldn't appreciate me butting in.

I felt a hand on my arm and turned around. “Watch!” Peter said. “He's just about to throw on the kerosene!”

Sure enough, a moment later the boil master tossed a tin can full of kerosene onto the fire. There was an enormous
whoosh!
The flames shot up five or six feet, like something out of a disaster movie, and even though this was the moment we'd all been waiting for, the crowd drew back and gasped, then laughed, then repeated the entire sequence when the boil master threw a second can of kerosene onto the flames to make sure that every last bit of the oils and impurities that the salt had drawn from the fish and to the surface boiled over the top and onto the flames, leaving nothing but perfectly seasoned potatoes and clean, firm, fresh-tasting whitefish.

When the flames died down, the boil master yelled, “Dinner is ready, folks!” and everybody clapped.

Two men in white kitchen aprons slid a long wooden pole through the metal handle of the boiling basket that held the fish and potatoes, lifted it from the cauldron, and carried it into the dining room, where it would be seasoned with lots and lots of butter before it was put onto the buffet table to be served with lemon slices, coleslaw, fresh-baked bread, and cherry pie for dessert. It wasn't fancy or complicated or nouveau, but it was delicious and the people had been coming to the White Gull in droves to enjoy the exact same menu since 1961.

Peter and I got in line behind Father Damon and his brother. We chatted a little bit while waiting our turn. Father Damon laughed when I told him that the FOA was helping me make a quilt.

“I know, right? I'm the least crafty person on the face of the earth.”

“That's not why I'm laughing,” he said. “I'm laughing because, somehow, that's exactly what I thought would happen. Alice told me that she wanted you to come home, see her quilts, meet her friends, and maybe even take up quilting yourself. She said it would do you good. And look! It's happened just like that. One way or another, Alice always did manage to get her way.”

“You're right about that,” I said.

Funny thing, just a couple of weeks ago that observation might have made me tear up, but now it made me smile. I was glad I could remember the good things about Alice and glad that other people remembered them too. And I was glad that, however belatedly, Alice had gotten her wish, glad for both of us.

For a minute, I thought that Father Damon might invite Peter and me to join him and Bill at their table, but he didn't and I was relieved. Not that I wouldn't have enjoyed their company, but I'd been thinking about some questions I wanted to discuss with Peter privately. Maybe Father Damon felt the same way.

Once we sat down and got organized, buttered the bread and removed the bones from the fish, I cut right to the chase.

“You know, I was reading an online transcript of the last meeting of the village council . . .”

Peter's fork froze midway to his mouth. He stared at me as if I'd suddenly grown a second head. “You did? Why? Who
does
that?”

“People do,” I said defensively, feeling the color rising in my cheeks. “I do. Why wouldn't I? And I think it's a good idea to post them on the town Web site. Wasn't that why you did it? Because you want people to be well-informed?”

“I guess,” Peter said. “Honestly, I think we just started doing that because it made it easier to comply with some open meeting regulations, and to make sure we weren't misquoted by reporters or irate citizens. I didn't think anybody would actually read it. At least, not normal people.” Peter put a forkful of fish into his mouth and chewed. “Boy, you really are bored, aren't you?”

“Anyway,” I said, ignoring his question, “I read the transcript. You're really good. No, I mean it!” I protested in response to the skeptical expression that came to his face. “You were obviously well prepared and asked really good questions about the upcoming spring street repairs. And you were right about not going with the cheapest bid; the materials used by the company that turned in the next-lowest bid are much better quality. It's going to save the town thousands in the long run. And I thought it was great that you were able to get the council to go along with you and trim some other items from the budget so the library can stay open longer on Saturdays. That'll be a big help for students and working people.”

“It wasn't a big deal,” Peter said with a shrug. “Just common sense.”

“It was leadership,” I countered. “And it's not something that everybody has. Neither is common sense, especially in the field of politics, but that's another subject. My point is, you're really good at this and you seem like you like it. Have you ever thought of taking it further?” He reached for another piece of bread and started spreading it with butter. “Peter?”

He put down the butter knife. “Further how?”

“Politically. I mean, there's nothing wrong with serving on the village council, but have you considered aiming higher? Maybe running for state senator? And if that works out, who knows?” I said, using my fork to carefully lift a lattice of bones from another piece of whitefish. “You might even be able to run for Congress.”

“Why in the world would I want to do that?”

Now it was my turn to look at him as if he were the one who'd grown two heads.

“What do you mean, why would you want to? Because it's . . .” I put down my fork and cast my eyes up at the ceiling, searching for an explanation.

“Because that's supposed to be the next thing?” Peter offered. “The natural progression for anybody with any ambition? Because I'd have more power and influence in Madison or in Washington than I'd have in Nilson's Bay?”

“No,” I said, trying and failing to keep my tone from becoming resentful. But, really! He sounded so smug. “Although you would. And anyway, what's wrong with having a little more power and influence? In the hands of the right person, somebody honest and decent, with a good heart and good leadership, power and influence can be used to help people! That kind of attitude is just . . . You know what, never mind. I'm sorry I mentioned it.”

I dropped my fork and knife onto the plate. I wasn't hungry anymore.

“I'm sorry,” Peter said, spreading his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “I didn't mean to offend you or to imply anything negative about your work. It's important to get good people elected to office at all levels, and you—”

“It certainly is! And the reason we don't have more good people willing to run for office is because of critical, judgmental, thoughtless people who constantly make critical, thoughtless comments about any elected official who casts a vote that is even slightly counter to their personal beliefs, accusing them of being in it for power, or influence, or to boost their own egos! In that kind of environment, what sane, decent person would want to get into public service?” I grabbed the lip of the table with both hands and leaned so close we were practically nose to nose. “And when good people
won't
run for office, do you know who is left to do it?”

“Egomaniacs who are in it for power and influence?”

“That's right!” I exclaimed, throwing up my hands in frustration.

Peter took one of my hands and pulled it back down to the table. “Okay, Luce. Let's just take a deep breath and calm down, okay? People are staring.”

I shifted my eyes from right to left. He was right. People were staring, but when they saw that I saw them, their eyes darted away.

“Sorry,” I mumbled.

“It's fine. You don't need to apologize for being passionate. And I agree with everything you said.”

“Then why won't you consider running for higher office?” I said, leaning closer, but keeping my voice low. “Peter, you're a natural leader. Think of all the people you could help! If you're worried about raising money for a race, I know a lot of people who could help. Seriously, all I'd have to do is call some people in the party and—”