The Second Sister (30 page)

Chapter 39

I
went to bed feeling pretty rotten and, not surprisingly, woke up the same way. The house was so quiet without Celia. Amazing how quickly I'd gotten used to her presence.

Standing next to the coffee maker with Dave and Freckles winding around my legs, waiting for the pot to fill enough so I could sneak a cup, I decided that I wasn't going to give in to gloom. I would go about my day as if nothing had happened, do the things I'd planned to do, beginning with the Christmas tree.

Celia and I had bought a tree from the Kiwanis lot earlier in the week and had planned to decorate it and the rest of the house after the meeting at the library. I'd just go ahead and do it on my own. I thought about calling Barney and inviting him to come over for dinner, but then remembered he was at a fruit growers' conference. Well, maybe I'd work on my new quilt instead. Or rent a movie and make popcorn. Or try out my new snowshoes. A little exercise would do me good. One way or another, I was going to salvage the day.

After drinking my coffee and feeding the cats, I built a fire in the fireplace, found some Christmas music on the radio, and set to it. Getting the tree to stand up straight in the stand was a little tough to manage on my own—I really should have stuck with that five-foot tree instead of letting those guys from Kiwanis talk me into a seven-footer—but it all worked out.

I untangled the lights, wrapping them carefully and evenly on the branches so there were no bare spots, and then put on the ornaments, making sure that the fragile and expensive glass ones were placed near the top, out of paws' reach. The cats, Freckles in particular, were already showing a dangerous fascination with the decorations on the lower branches.

I had just put on the last ornament and plugged in the lights, and was standing back to admire the effect, when the doorbell rang. Peeking through the window, I saw Peter at the door. The sight of him standing there lifted my spirits a little. Maybe it wasn't too late to make things up between us.

I greeted him with a smile and invited him inside, asked if he had time for coffee. He accepted, but seemed nervous while I prepared a fresh pot, taking his hands in and out of his pockets and clearing his throat.

His discomfort was understandable. We hadn't parted on very good terms, but I was ready to overlook that. I'd been thinking about him and . . . well, I'd been thinking about a lot of things since I'd seen him at the festival. I figured that his sudden appearance meant he'd been doing the same thing.

There was so much I wanted to say to him, speeches I'd been mentally rehearsing for the last day or two, but he was the one who had taken the initiative, so I thought it would be better—and yes, less embarrassing for me—to let him speak first. Then, as soon as he broached the subject, I'd jump in and let him off the hook, and we could move on from there as if nothing had happened and make a fresh start. But he certainly was taking his time working up to it.

Waiting for the coffee to drip, we made small talk about the weather and how we couldn't believe that it was only a few days until Christmas. He was nice enough to ask how things had gone at the meeting and said he was happy it had gone well, which, in light of our last conversation, was big of him.

I filled two mugs with coffee and set them on the table along with a plate of leftover bars in case he was feeling hungry.

“So,” I said with what I hoped was an encouraging smile, “is this just a social call? Or is there something you wanted to talk to me about?”

He took a big gulp of coffee, as if he were trying to fortify himself for what was to come next.

“Yes, there is. But first, I want you to know that I . . .”

He stopped for a second and looked up at the ceiling, clearly at a loss as to how to begin. It was really kind of sweet.

He cleared his throat and tried again. “Lucy, before I say what I've come to say, I want to tell you that I'm sorry.”

I smiled. “You don't have to apologize. I think we both said some things we wish we hadn't, so let's just call it a wash and move forward. Okay? I'm pretty sure I already know what you're here to say anyway.”

Peter tilted his head to the side, giving me a quizzical frown.

“No, I don't think you do.” He took a breath. “What I wanted to say is that I'm sorry I couldn't be more forthright with you about this before, but, professionally, I really couldn't talk to you about it. But something has happened to change that.”

“Professionally? So, this has something to do with Alice?”

“Yes.” He took an even bigger gulp of coffee. “As you know, Alice hired me to create a will for her. But that wasn't the only thing she asked me to do for her. When she first came to see me, right after I moved home to Nilson's Bay and started my practice, it was because she wanted me to help her find someone.”

He looked at me for a moment, as if hoping that I'd take it from there, but I honestly had no idea what he was talking about.

“She wanted me to find Maeve,” he said.

It took a second for his meaning to fully sink in.

“But . . . but I asked you if she'd ever mentioned anyone named Maeve and you said she hadn't.”

“No,” Peter said, his eyes solemn and his voice even, “I said that I couldn't say that I had. And it was true; I couldn't. Alice told me about Maeve in confidence, as her attorney, and because of that—”

“You knew? And you didn't tell me? Not even when I came right out and asked?” Peter started to answer, but I didn't give him the chance. I wasn't in the mood to listen to any more lawyer-speak. “What right do you have to keep secrets about
my
sister?”

“Because they were Alice's secrets, not yours!”

His raised voice and the sudden flash of his eyes startled me into silence. He took a couple of breaths and went on, his voice low and deliberate.

“Even after her death, unless there was some compelling reason to do otherwise, I had a duty to keep her confidence.”

“And now there's a compelling reason?”

“Maeve is Alice's daughter.”

My mouth dropped open. For a moment, I forgot to breathe.

“Her daughter? Is this some kind of joke? Alice was never pregnant. She never even had a boyfriend! Not after the accident.”

“Yes, she did,” he said. “Well, I assume there was a boyfriend. Honestly, it could have just been some guy who took advantage of her. Alice never wanted to talk about it. You know how she was.”

I started to nod, but then realized that maybe I really didn't know how Alice was.

“She never shared more than the basic facts,” Peter said. “All I know is that she got pregnant while she was away at school, working on her veterinary tech certification. Your parents convinced her that she couldn't keep it, that she wasn't capable of taking care of a baby, and made arrangements for her to go away to have the baby and then give it up for adoption. They told her that she could never tell anyone about it, not even you. They said if people knew it would make the family look bad and hurt your dad's practice.”

I let out an incredulous huff. They didn't need Alice's help with that. Dad had been perfectly capable of hurting his practice all on his own.

“Alice was always sad about giving her baby up for adoption,” Peter continued. “She thought about her all the time. After a couple of years, she became so depressed that she tried to kill herself.”

I'd always known about that part. Mom had found her lying on the floor, unconscious. She called me from the emergency room, completely hysterical. I told her everything was going to be okay, even though I didn't know if it was, but somebody had to calm her down. I packed a bag and went to the airport, but before I could board the plane, Mom called again and said that Alice was awake and would be all right, but they were transferring her to a psychiatric hospital and that she wouldn't be allowed visitors, so I shouldn't come after all. Alice was in the hospital for three weeks and I sent postcards almost every day, most with pictures of animals, but she never answered. After she was released, she didn't want to talk about it. Neither did my parents, even when I asked my mother directly.

“That was the first time she'd ever told anyone about the baby,” Peter said, “during that time in the hospital. Alice said it made her feel better just to be able to talk to someone about it. The doctor said that even though Alice wasn't in contact with Maeve, she might want to make something for her—”

“The quilts,” I whispered.

And the drawings too. Though she hadn't inscribed them, I knew without being told that the dozens upon dozens of drawings were of Alice's daughter, the way she had imagined her for all those years as a baby, a toddler, a girl, a teen, and the life they might have had together.

“So she made a quilt for every year of Maeve's life,” I said, “hoping that someday she would find her and be able to give them to her in person.”

“That's right,” Peter said. “After I moved back to Nilson's Bay, she came to my office and asked if I could help her get in contact with Maeve. I tried,” Peter said earnestly, “but it was a closed adoption, so I couldn't track her down. I did help Alice register with several reunion registries. It was a long shot, but I hoped that once Maeve turned eighteen, assuming she even knew she was adopted, she might go searching for her birth mother. Now she has. Maeve—her name is Jennifer now—called my office yesterday.”

I started to cry. How could I not?

Everything about Alice's life and death, her unfulfilled promise and longing, and the secrets she'd felt she had to keep, even from me, was not as tragic as knowing that the child she had carried and borne but never known and, yet, who was never far from her heart, not even for a day, had finally come looking for her. But come too late.

I pressed my hand hard against my mouth, barricading the sobs that threatened to escape. My shoulders shuddered with silent convulsions as the tears trailed down my cheeks. Peter moved his chair back, as if he might come to comfort me, but I raised my arm to warn him away. I didn't want to be comforted. I didn't want him.

“Why?” I choked when I was finally able to speak. “Dear God, why now? Why let her die before she had a chance to meet her daughter? What was the point?”

When God shared no answer, I posed the question to Peter. He offered no explanation either, just sat there helplessly.

“I thought . . .” he said hesitantly, casting his eyes over his shoulder as if embarrassed by my tears, or perhaps by his inability to stop them. “I thought you'd want to meet her, to give her the quilts. She's coming up the day after tomorrow. I made a lunch reservation for you at the Harbor Fish Market in Bailey's Harbor. It's quiet there and I thought you'd prefer that to—”

“You should have told me about her before,” I said, as the tears of my grief grew hotter and harder, turning to anger.

He turned his head toward me, his gaze steady and final. “I couldn't.”

“You should have gotten Alice to tell me. If she'd just have told me, then—”

“I tried to, but she wouldn't . . .” He stopped himself. His lips became a line. “She wouldn't do it.”

“You should have made her!”

His eyes flashed and he slammed his hands hard against the table, shoved his chair back, and sprang to his feet, his body unfolding sharp and fast like a jackknife ready to slice.

For a moment I thought he would shout back and I was glad. I wanted him to be as angry as I was, to feel what I was feeling, to know his own failure the way I knew mine. But he didn't shout. Instead his voice became low, hard, and cutting.

“I couldn't make Alice do, or feel, or see
anything
. Not any more than I can you. I don't know what more you expect of me, Lucy. I don't know what you want.”

I shook my head, turned my face to the wall. When I turned back, he was gone.

Chapter 40

I
t came back that night, the dream.

It had been at least three weeks since I'd walked across the white plain and the earth had opened up, swallowing me whole, plunging me into the icy, suffocating depths, but Celia's harangue summoned it back into being, in the extended version that came to me shortly before Alice's death, the dream where she saves me, but then, the tables turning, I am unable to save her. And this time, there was something more.

Unable to grab hold and haul Alice back to the surface, I put my head into the hole and then slipped through to follow her, my arms stretched out and pointed purposely toward the abyss. I couldn't see Alice, but I knew she was just ahead of me, somewhere, hidden in the black. I was frozen with cold and nearly out of air, and frightened, knowing that, in a moment, I wouldn't be able to stop myself from opening my mouth and trying to breathe, that I could not override eons of instinct, and that doing so would mark the end. And I was right.

With my lungs about to burst, my mouth opened in a desperate gasp. I was flooded by water and fear and relief. Terrible relief. And a single thought that shone quicksilver bright in my brain.

I woke with a start, the way I had on that night when Alice's final phone call splintered my dream, but this time there was no rude ringing phone and no patient and persistent sister, begging me to come home and remember rightly.

And still, it wasn't over. It never would be. Not unless I figured out a way to finish it.