The Sparrow Sisters (6 page)

“You won't find anything like their stuff for miles and miles,” Sally finished and moved to go back to the counter. Henry stopped her.

“No marriages, no children, none of them?” he asked and lowered his head to avoid Sally's curious gaze.

“No, I mean it's not like they're old maids or anything; they just kind of keep themselves to themselves. You've seen them,” she added and circled her hand around her face. “They're hardly dogs.”

“Or magicians,” Henry murmured. “So Patience, she's the local faith healer.” Henry's voice maintained a neutral tone, but Sally could see the skepticism in his eyes.

“Pfft! You don't need faith for Patience.” Sally laughed. “She just makes people better. I don't know whether she learned it or just inherited it, but once she decided to stay, she turned a part of the Nursery into what she calls a psychic garden.”

“Physic,” Henry said. “A garden of remedial plants.”

“Right,” Sally said. “It took a while but now, the things she grows, how she puts them together,
that
could make you believe in magic.”

Henry stared at Sally, his head tilted and his mouth curved up on one side.

“What?” she asked. “It's not magic, obviously.”

“Have you ever used her?”

“Of course.”

“Certainly not now,” Henry said, pointing at Sally's enormous belly.

Sally shrugged and her face blanked.

“Sally! You're a nurse.”

“Morning sickness,” Sally admitted. “She fixed it.”

Henry went back to his office, nearly as irritated and puzzled as he'd been standing in the Sisters' hallway. The only thing he did know, and of this he was certain: he wanted to see Patience again. He needed to know what it was she did, how she'd put such a hold on these people and, to be honest, on him.

Sally picked up the charts Henry had left on her desk: the Sparrows'.

W
HILE
P
ATIENCE ATE
her muffin and steamed over Henry Carlyle, Sorrel woke Nettie and found her cool and dry, her fever long gone, her breathing easy and her chest clear. She had been so apprehensive about her sister only a few days ago that Sorrel had only reluctantly tended to the Nursery. But
she saw how well Nettie was now and looked forward to the work ahead. Sorrel glanced into Patience's empty room as she headed down to the kitchen and wondered if that sister was already at work. She stood, drinking coffee and eyeing the garden. Slowly, she pushed through the screen door and took the center path. Asparagus ferns brushed against her wrists, pulling a faint shiver from her core, and she had to pause and take a breath to steady herself. She leaned over and whisked her fingers over the stiff green spears, mentally measuring how many days before she could snap them off. The asparagus grew and ripened in the same unreasonable way of all Sparrow Sisters' crops. This was her second harvest, nearly two months after the first, which itself was at least a month early. Sorrel could taste the slight metallic echo of a single spear, dripping with butter.

“Makes your pee smell.” Patience stood at the kitchen door.

For the first time, Sorrel voiced her fear. “What are we going to do?” she asked, her voice disturbingly plaintive as a child's.

“Everyone's pee smells.”

“No, what are we going to do when there aren't any more?”

Patience looked at Sorrel and brought her hands up. “You always have a third crop in time for the August rush.”

“What will happen when the Sparrow Sisters are gone?” Sorrel said and was so surprised by the desolation she heard in her own words that she couldn't meet Patience's gaze.

Patience was so frightened by Sorrel's tone that she spoke without thought.

“Oh, for fuck's sake, Sorrel,” she snapped. “Why are you asking me?”

“You sound like Dad when you swear.”

“Great,” Patience said. She stepped out and walked lightly over the sharp gravel. “What do you want us to do, Sorrel? Reproduce immaculately? Find a sperm donor? Or should we really adopt Rob Short's kid and rename him Sage?”

Rob Short was a widower, and his ten-year-old boy was generally agreed to be more than a little odd. His name was Matthew. The Sisters were very fond of him and let him help out at the Nursery. He could most often be found following Patience around, asking questions or humming to himself. If there were ever to be a Sparrow son, he'd do nicely—in his own odd way. And if the Sisters were being honest, they suspected they would be better parents to him than his distracted father.

Sorrel moved farther into the garden, stopping at the dahlias that were still just tender leaves and celery-pale stalks, buds like peas, nearly transparent as the sun struggled through the watery clouds.

“You know,” she said, “I always imagined us with families by now. I mean, not just the Sisters to everyone.”

Patience saw that Sorrel's nightgown was damp at the hem, her ratty slippers wet all the way up the toes. Her black hair was loose, the white streaks the brightest things in the garden.

“Let's go in,” Patience said. “No use standing still out here. The birds will think we've put up a scarecrow.”

She put her arm around Sorrel, surprised by how bony her shoulders were, how quickly her sister leaned against her. Sorrel sniffed at Patience's arm. The smell of clover was sweet and clean, and Sorrel was reassured that her sister was still full of possibility. For her part, Patience smelled the coppery tang of sadness as if it flowed straight out of Sorrel's veins.

As Patience got ready to go to the Nursery, she considered Sorrel's remark and realized that, somewhere inside herself—in that place that traps you at two in the morning when you are too disoriented to find your way out again—she too thought she might have met someone by now. She'd not really looked but while she studied biology and botany at Granite Point College, Patience had cut a wide but shallow swath through the young men at the school—students, a greenskeeper, and once an assistant professor. The only criteria she held were that each be beautiful and game. And so they were, to a man. Like the wild sweet peas that twined along the rock walls near the water, the young Patience was hungry for something to hold, if only for a season.

GPC was known for two disciplines, animal husbandry and history of music, and two stranger things to have developed side by side in a small seaside town you could not imagine. Still, the curriculum attracted some interesting male scholars—vague lute-playing boys with long hair and calloused fingers and muscled, boot-wearing ones who brought the smell of timothy and sweat into Ivy House. If Patience was careless in her conquests, she had to make up for a pretty mild high school
experience after all. There hadn't been a single local boy who made her want to do more than kiss breathlessly behind the athletic fields. And when she did that, she'd found not a lover but a best friend.

True to a small town, that boy, Sam Parker, had grown up to be a fireman and EMT in the firehouse just down the road. So when Sorrel said she'd hoped that they could be more than just “The Sisters,” she probably meant that at least one of the college guys who'd snuck out of Ivy House after a dreamlike time with Patience might have snuck right back in. But that was years ago now. The town had grown too small for her to quietly take a lover. Summer boys came and went and were even more cavalier than Patience, so that didn't work. And while Patience missed the release of sex, the wonderful abandon she'd felt when she ran her hands down some ridiculously handsome boy, the look on those boys' faces as she kicked her jeans into a corner, she didn't miss the way they all wanted to stay. She hated sleeping with anyone (except Nettie when Patience was little and frightened) so if she ever did “find someone,” he'd better be willing to sleep in her father's old room. Whoever really wanted Patience had to want sand in his socks and dirt in his hair, bay leaves on the windowsills and thyme in his shoes. She didn't think there was anyone out there like that.

Just remembering those years made Patience's face feel hot and her lips tender. She hated the fact that Henry Carlyle's voice wouldn't leave her as she tried to recall the last boy whose whispers had filled her room. When she'd looked up at Henry
that morning, the words “strong,” “capable,” “useful” came to mind. And, when his hand drew so close that she could feel the heat, she'd nearly leapt out of her skin—she'd almost grabbed his fingers and pulled them down to her mouth.

Patience got into the shower hoping Sorrel hadn't used up all the hot water but found that her skin was so warm that even tepid water steamed when it hit her back.

S
ORREL MADE SURE
Nettie was settled upstairs and climbed into the pickup with Patience. They rode in silence and Patience drove a little too fast. When they turned onto the sandy road that led to the Nursery, they saw Matthew Short biking like crazy toward the greenhouses.

“Oh boy,” said Sorrel.

“Missed his meds,” Patience guessed.

Matty Short was what the doctors called high-functioning autistic, the town called “off,” and the Sisters called friend. When he entered second grade he'd been labeled as being on the autistic spectrum, and his parents were duly reassured that he was not in any real danger. This allowed the medical community to define him and medicate him, and his father to struggle to understand him. His mother had died the year before, and every now and then Rob Short let his grief and exhaustion overtake him and lost track of his son's pills, leaving Matty to careen through a day or more until one of his teachers made a call. Nobody exactly blamed Rob Short, but after a while the school and the neighbors had gotten a bit cross that
he couldn't keep up with his own kid. The summer was always tough; no teacher to see the shift into darkness, no school nurse to unlock her cabinet and find the bottle with Matty's name on it.

Patience backed the jeep into the space next to the barn and jumped out with the engine left running. Sorrel reached over and turned the key before she grabbed her bag and Patience's and walked into the office.

“Hey, Matty!” Patience called to the little figure leaning over his bike, chest heaving. “Buddy?” She put her hand on his back and watched as his breathing slowed. Finally Matty looked up at her, his face red and pinched.

“I thought you were gone, that I was late,” he said. “But it's you guys. You're late, you are.”

“Yeah, we are,” Patience said. “Nettie's had a bad cold.”

“Can't you fix her?”

“Well, yes, I could. But, she went to the new doctor.” Patience made a sour face.

“Is he bad?” Matty wriggled out from under Patience's hand. She was the only sister who could touch him. Actually she was the only person other than his father who could touch him. He never went rigid beneath her as he did with anyone else. He never pulled at his fingers—thumb to pinkie, thumb to pinkie—as he counted. Still, he could only take so much and now, standing with his back to the greenhouse, he was feeling a bit trapped. His anxiety was twisting up from his stomach, closing his throat and making it hard to talk. He began to whisper the
names of all the plants he'd learned from Patience. The rhythm of the words calmed him as he considered the frightening prospect of a bad man in his town.

“Oh, Matty, he's good, he's fine. You know I just don't much like doctors.” Patience held out her hand. “Come on, let's go see if the calendula cream is set.”

Matty didn't take her hand, but he followed her toward the barn. For him things were either bad or good, as were people. He saw life through a lens that colored the world black or white, and he often asked Patience to help him choose. Patience kept talking as they walked, and Matty's shoulders loosened as her voice floated back to him.

“I'll make you some iced tea, and we'll steal Nettie's cookies,” she said. “Ryder Redmond brought some over yesterday.” Patience looked at Matty and smiled. “I'll let you lick the labels today, OK?”

Sorrel had a tray of seedlings out and was on her knees pressing each one into a neat hole.

“Hey, Matty,” she said, shading her eyes and adding more dirt to her forehead.

“What are those?” he asked.

“They're daisies, shastas, very hardy and by July this batch will be in someone's wedding bouquet.”

“They aren't poisonous?”

“No, silly, we don't grow anything like that,” Patience said. “They're happy flowers and my sister's favorite.” She stepped around Sorrel and into the barn. It was cool in the little build
ing. The smell of Patience's ingredients combined to become a wash of watery green that swirled through the ceiling fan. Matty stood under it for a minute, his chin tilted up and his eyes closed. The breeze lifted his hair, and Patience had an almost overwhelming urge to brush it away from his face. But she knew how far she could go with Matty, especially when his father lost track.

Patience took a pitcher of tea out of the half fridge and poured a glass. Made from mint and comfrey leaves, it was a pale green color, clear as water. She watched Matty carefully as he swayed beneath the fan.

“Matty, do you want me to help you through this?” she asked.

He nodded and turned to her. “Please?” he said. The hollows beneath his eyes were dark as bruises, and Patience thought that Matty had probably been unwatched for days.

“OK, let's fix you, but you know that you have to tell your dad that I did, right?”

Matty nodded again, and Patience reached into the old Swedish cupboard behind her. It was tall; she had to use a stool to reach the topmost shelves. There were eight rows of narrow, deep drawers, unmarked, but Patience knew what each held. She didn't hesitate as she reached into one and pulled out a tiny vial with a dropper stop. She let three drops fall into Matty's tea and stirred it with a long silver spoon as old as Ivy House.