The Space Between Sisters (12 page)

He'd said some other things, too. Things like he knew he'd
never been a good father, but this was one thing he could do for her. He could give her the cabin and maybe, sometime, she'd go up there, to visit or to live. And maybe it would help her. Help her find some peace again.

“He was right,” Everett said, quietly, when she finished telling him this.

“Right about what?”

“Right about your living here one day.”

She nodded. “It didn't happen right away, though,” she said.
Nothing,
it turned out, had happened right away. She'd been so overwhelmed by loss then that there were times when just leaving her apartment felt like a major accomplishment. Poppy had been wonderful, coming over every day, bullying her into eating, dragging her out to the movies, and just generally insisting that she not give up on her life. It was during this same time that Win first met with Kyle's lawyer, and first saw a copy of Kyle's will. She wasn't surprised he'd left her money. He'd told her he was going to do this. She was only surprised at how much it was: two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, or a small fortune to Win. At the time, she'd felt so desperate in her grief that she'd considered doing something crazy with it. Giving it all, in cash, to a homeless man in her neighborhood, or leaving on a trip around the world and not coming home until the money was gone. In the end, though, she'd done what Kyle would have wanted her to do: she'd made a generous donation to a cancer research organization, and another one to a hospice where Kyle had stayed before he died, and then she'd invested the rest of it in a conservative portfolio of stocks and bonds, and left it there, untouched, for some future day she could never quite imagine.

But she didn't tell any of this to Everett. She told him instead about how, a year after Kyle had died, she was still living in the
same apartment they'd lived in together, still going to all the same places they'd gone to together, and still seeing all the same friends they'd seen together. And she'd thought,
This is crazy. No wonder I'm depressed all the time.
So she'd made some calls, found out that there was an opening for a middle school social studies teacher in Butternut, and came up to interview for the job. “I got it, obviously,” she said now, “and that fall, two years ago, right before school started, I moved up here. And the rest, I guess, is history.”

“Your subject,” Everett pointed out, and she smiled. He had an easy way about him, she thought, a way of lightening even the heaviest moments. It was a gift that not many people had.

She looked out over at the water now in time to see another rocket shoot into the air and explode in a shower of multi-colored sparks. “That must be the finale,” she said, glancing at her watch. It was getting late, late enough for Everett to be leaving. Except for one thing . . .

“Everett,” she said. “You shouldn't drive. We split that first bottle of wine.”

“I know.”

“You're welcome to sleep on the couch. If it's not too uncomfortable.”

“Thank you,” he said, his eyes looking especially sleepy. “And I've met your couch before. It's very comfortable.”

A
few weeks after the Fourth of July, Sam was shut up in his office—a converted, windowless storage room barely large enough to hold a desk, two chairs, and a file cabinet—and was trying to get some work done. He hated being in here. It reminded him of why he'd bought Birch Tree Bait in the first place; he hadn't wanted to work in an office. But business was good now, so good that the only way Sam could get anything done was to hole up in here for a couple of hours every morning before things got too busy. The only trouble was that his employees, his friends, and his regular customers insisted on interrupting him at regular intervals. Like right now, for instance.

“Come in,” Sam said, in response to the light but insistent tapping on the door. But he kept his eyes focused on the purchase order on his laptop screen in the hopes of discouraging his visitor from staying any longer than was absolutely necessary.

“Sam?”

“Yes, Justine?” he answered, not looking up.

“Can I ask you a favor?”

He sighed. He looked up. “What?”

“Can you cover the register? Just for a minute? I have to make a phone call.”

“Can Byron do it?”

“No. He's . . .”

“Taking a bet?” Sam said, exasperated. “He knows he's not supposed to be doing that here.”

“I know, but there's a big game tonight. Plus, Haley Grey is getting her ultrasound today, and a lot of people are betting on whether it's going to be a boy or a girl.”

Sam closed his eyes and blew out a long, slow breath. He tried to ignore the sensation of a metal band tightening around his head, the hallmark of the tension headache that had been coming on all morning. When he opened his eyes, though, Justine's expression was so plaintive that he stood up, immediately, and said, “All right. I'll take over. Make it quick, though, okay?”

“Okay. And Sam? Thanks. I wouldn't ask you to do this if it wasn't an emergency.”

“It's not . . . it's not your mom, is it?” Sam asked, thinking that, even by her own standards, Justine looked pale today.

“My mom?”

“Weren't you worried that she had some kind of . . . disease?” he reminded her, coming around to the front of his desk and leaning on its edge.

“Oh,
that
. No. That was nothing. She's fine. This time it's my dad.”

“Is he okay?”

“He will be,” Justine said. “It's just, right now, he's going through a divorce.”

“So, he and your mom . . . ?”

“No. Not them. They got divorced a long time ago. This is, let me see, his fifth divorce.”

“Fifth?”
Sam said.

“I'm pretty sure,” she said, looking a little less than sure.

Still, he shook his head in disbelief. “Justine, I got divorced
once
. And I can tell you, it was a very time consuming process. I've never understood this. Where does someone find the time to get married and divorced multiple times?”

Justine considered her chipped black finger nail polish. “He just made it a priority, I guess,” she said finally, looking up. Her eyes, ringed with their usual heavy black makeup, were completely serious.

“Riiight,” Sam said, reaching up to massage his temples.
Yes,
there was definitely going to be a headache, and sooner rather than later.

Justine started to leave his office, but Sam called her back. “Hey, um, how's Poppy doing? I mean, is everything working out there? Is she . . . catching on quickly?”

“She's fine.” Justine shrugged. “I have her setting up the s'mores display now.”

“Good,” Sam said, casually. “That's . . . that's good.” And he was glad, for once, that Justine was so obtuse. “If you want some privacy, you can make your phone call in here,” he told her, and he left her in his office to console her father, the serial divorcer. There was more aggravation, though, waiting for him at the front counter, where several customers were already milling around impatiently. But as Sam ducked behind the register he still found time to scan the two rooms of the business, taking stock of where everyone was, and what everyone was doing.

There was Byron, sitting at the coffee counter, and writing in the notebook in which he kept meticulous track of all the bets he took. There was Linc, in the next room, supervising a group of vacationers filling out kayak rental forms. And there, at the end of aisle three, was Poppy, her brilliant blond hair seeming to
generate its own light as she patiently stacked boxes of graham crackers, bags of marshmallows, and slabs of Hershey's chocolate bars. His eyes lingered on her for a moment, and he was reminded of the other reason he'd sequestered himself in his office. His newest employee was proving to be a distraction, a
major
distraction. She was beautiful, it turned out, but at the same time, she wore her beauty as casually as she might wear a pair of favorite blue jeans. Sam found this captivating. More captivating still was the way she seemed to flirt with him, though he wasn't always sure about this. He could have been misreading her. Either way, though, it added up to the same thing: more distraction.

“Is that it?” Sam asked, reaching for the six-pack of beer a customer had placed on the counter in front of him.

“That's it,” a young man's voice said, and something about that voice, its highness, perhaps, made Sam look up at him skeptically. He didn't look old enough to shave, Sam thought, of the short, skinny, curly haired kid in front of him. He didn't even look old enough to grow peach fuzz.

“Can I see your ID?” he asked him.

The kid sighed, as if he had more important things to do, and extracted his license from his wallet. He slid it across the counter to Sam.

Sam glanced at it. “Hawaii, huh? You're a long way from home.”

“I like to travel,” he mumbled.

“It says here you're thirty,” Sam said, almost conversationally.

“I am. I look young for my age,” he said, careful not to meet Sam's eyes.

“Nobody looks that young for their age,” Sam said, reaching for the scissors he kept in a nearby drawer.

“Hey!” the kid yelped, when he realized what Sam was doing.
“Stop!” But it was too late. Sam was already cutting up the fake ID.

“That cost me a lot of money,” he said, accusingly, to Sam.

“Well, then you got ripped off,” Sam said, sweeping the shards into the trash. “Now get out of here, before I figure out which of the rental cabins you're staying in and I tell your parents.”

He glared at Sam, but then something inside him seemed to waver and then break. “Look,” he said quietly, glancing nervously back at the line and then leaning closer to Sam. “I got invited to a party tonight. And there are going to be girls there. Actual girls.” Sam took a closer look at him. Judging from his concave chest, and his acne-riddled face, he probably didn't see a lot of action, unless of course it was video game action.

“Here, take these to the party,” Sam said, coming around to the front of the counter and handing him a couple of bags of Doritos. “Seriously, girls love this Zesty Ranch flavor.” He faced him toward the door then and gave him a little push. He didn't say thank you as he left, but Sam hadn't expected him to.

When he went back to ringing up customers, Sam wondered if he'd ever been that young, or that stupid, and decided that he had been both. He'd had an easier time getting beer, though. His friend John had had an uncle who used to buy it for them. His nickname was Seven Fingered Freddie, Sam remembered, due to the fact that he was missing three fingers. He wouldn't tell them how he'd lost those fingers, but Sam and John and their friends had spent hours sitting in the hayloft of an old abandoned barn, drinking beer and speculating on what might have happened to them.

His mind wandered on like this for some time, or at least until he'd handed a customer change for a cup of coffee and a familiar voice said, “Sam! Aren't you even going to say good morning?”
It was Margot Hoffman, her bright green polo shirt emblazoned with the Butternut Nature Museum insignia across her left breast and a matching green visor perched on her head.

“Yes, of course. Good morning, Margot. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be rude.”

“That's all right,” Margot said, cheerful as ever. “I still can't believe you missed the fireworks.”

“Yeah, I ended up staying at home and trying to get some work done.”

“Well, you missed a great show. But you're forgiven, on one condition.”

“What's that?”

“You buy tickets to the hoedown.”

“Is it . . . that time of year already?” Sam said, of the annual fund-raiser and silent auction for the Butternut Nature Museum. This was held on a farm outside of town, and came complete with a country and western band, strategically placed bales of hay, and enough checked shirts, string-ties, and cowboy boots to convince the denizens of the town that they'd been picked up and transported a thousand miles due west for the evening.

“Yes, Sam, it's that time,” Margot said, her brown eyes shining. “And we have a special addition to the festivities this year.”

“What's that?” Sam said, trying to muster the requisite enthusiasm.

“A professional square-dance caller.”

“No kidding.”

“Swear to God. He's the real deal. He makes a living doing it, Sam. Can you believe it?”

“I really can't,” Sam said. The thought of square dancing inspired in him a dread so acute that it was very close to panic.

“Well, he'll be there, and I wanted to give you a heads-up
about something else, too,” she said. She leaned in and added, in a conspiratorial tone, “This is supposed to be a surprise, but one of the silent auction items is a naturalist-led pontoon boat tour of Butternut Lake. And honestly, Sam, I think your kids would love it.”

“Are you by any chance the naturalist?”

She blushed. “Yes, that would be me,” she said, fidgeting with a lanyard that hung from the strap of her backpack. “And I can personally guarantee that if you bid on the tour and win, I'll show the twins every single bald eagle's nest on the lake.”

“Wow. That's . . . quite an offer,” Sam said, and he felt a flicker of irritation then, not at her but at Byron, who'd closed his notebook and was watching his and Margot's exchange with a sly amusement.

“Okay, well, I'll let you get back to work,” Margot said. “If it's okay with you, though, I'd love to post these around the store,” she added, holding up a sheaf of flyers for the hoedown.

“Of course,” Sam said. “Go right ahead.”

Margot left then, and Byron drifted over, adjusted his seersucker hat, and leaned on the counter. “You said it yourself, Sam, that was quite an offer from Margot. And I'm not talking about the boat ride, either.”

“Byron, come on. Give me a break.”

But now Linc sidled up to the counter, a gleeful expression on his face.

“Did you, uh, tell Margot she could plaster those flyers all over the place?” he asked.

“Yes, I did, Linc. It's a worthy cause,” Sam said, feeling an ominous thud at his right temple. He came out from behind the counter and grabbed a travel size bottle of Advil from a display and a bottle of water from the refrigerated case.

“You know what else is a worthy cause, Sam?” Linc said. “Margot.”

Sam, twisting the cap off the Advil, finally lost his patience. “Cut it out, both of you. She'll hear you,” he muttered.

“Oh, Sam,” Byron said good-naturedly. “Just ask her out already. The woman is spending a small fortune here just to see you every day.”

“I'm not asking her out,” Sam said, keeping his voice low. “Just . . . give it a rest, okay?”

He spilled a couple of Advils into his palm, unscrewed the lid on his water bottle, and washed them down. “Byron, do you want to take the register?” he asked, looking over at Byron. But Byron wasn't listening to him. He was still leaning against the counter, but now, instead of joking with Linc, he was gazing off into the middle distance, watching something with rapt attention. Linc, standing next to him, was watching the same thing, his mouth slightly ajar. Sam knew what they were looking at without having to look himself, but he sighed and followed their gaze anyway.

Poppy was done with the s'mores display, and she was down at the other end of the aisle, standing on a stepladder, arranging bottles of barbeque sauce on the top shelf. She was wearing a floral print cotton blouse, faded blue jeans, and Converse sneakers, and her hair was pulled back in a simple ponytail. But it didn't matter, she was still a sight to behold, and God knew how long they would have gone on beholding her if Sam hadn't suddenly said, under his breath,
“This is pathetic.”
And, as irritated with himself as he was with them, he knocked Linc's baseball cap off his head, and gave Byron a gentle punch in the arm.

“Knock it off, you two. Really, you look like a couple of puppy dogs. Linc, I think you got some drool on the floor. You should
probably wipe it up. And Byron? Come on, you're old enough to be her father. Her
grandfather
.”

Sam grumbled a little more about this, but neither one of them seemed particularly penitent. Linc put his baseball cap back on and continued to stare, and Bryon sighed and said, “A man can dream, can't he?” So Sam went back behind the counter and ignored them as he rang up a woman buying enough Popsicles to feed a small army, but by the time he was done with this transaction, he'd made a decision.

“Is Margot still here?” he asked, looking around.

“Why?” Linc asked.

“Because . . . you're right. I should ask her out. I don't know why I haven't done it before.”

“Yes,”
Linc said, pumping his fist in the air. “I told you, old man,” he said to Byron.

“You got lucky this time,” Byron admitted.