Home with My Sisters (5 page)

CHAPTER 7

We Three Kings motel was a low-budget, two-story affair located within walking distance to Pike's Market but tucked behind a viaduct and set back from the main part of the city, giving the place a bit of an abandoned feel. Even though Austin insisted they had enough money to stay at a decent hotel and eat at a nice restaurant, Hope chose a fried chicken joint and the sketchy motel. The fried chicken because she had a craving, and the motel because they allowed dogs. An added bonus was the hope that the musty odor of the room might just cancel out the dog's stink bombs. She was glad somebody had been feeding him something, but this poor guy needed some consistency. One whiff and even the most loyal of dog lovers would be tempted to turn away. She'd tried to foist him on Austin for the night, and to her surprise he'd agreed, but instead of following Austin into his room, the dog trotted into hers and commandeered the bed.

“Well,” Austin said with a grin, “looks like he made his choice. Can't say I blame him.” He treated her to a long look and a wink before softly shutting his motel room door. Hope had to admit that a part of her wished the old sitcom scenario of there being only one room left at the inn and being forced to share it with Austin Rhodes had crossed her mind. One tiny little bed for the two of them. But, of course, that didn't happen. This was where motels went to die and there was plenty of room at the inn.

Hope stood out on the communal balcony, taking in the crisp air and scrolling through Facebook on her iPad. Christmas lights strung around a potted tree in the parking lot blinked on and off. Joy was awake and online. She was posting about her new coffee shop.
GIVE TO THE CAUSE,
one posting said with a link to Joy's Kickstarter page. Since when was coffee a cause? Hope clicked onto Joy's Kickstarter page. She had only $57 in donations. Looked like Hope wasn't the only one who didn't think coffee was a cause. She navigated back to Joy's Facebook page. Who was her sister? Would they be friends if they weren't related? There was a time she knew Faith and Joy like they were a part of herself.

Faith had been a protective older sister, and scrappy to boot. A girly-girl and a tomboy rolled into one. It was like having a little soldier on your side, always armed and ready to do battle. Faith could equally braid Hope's hair and then defend her when the redheaded boy across the street tried to pull it. She'd scold Norman, the old German shepherd next door who growled whenever Hope tried to sneak a pet, and Faith even rescued Hope from their mother's moods. All it would take was for Carla to say “I'm getting a headache,” and Faith would whisk Hope off on an outdoor adventure. They'd trip down to the corner store and buy lollipop rings, potato chips, and cans of soda. Arms loaded down with their treasures, they'd head to the beach. If it was raining they'd make forts in their bedroom, using up every bedsheet and blanket in the house. They'd curl up and color, or read Nancy Drew, or make up stories about princesses in castles.

Hope had always felt so safe, so protected around Faith. And when Joy came, she had two little soldiers protecting her. Hope remembered feeling like Joy belonged to her and Faith. They changed diapers, and fed her, and bathed her, and dressed her. They were the first ones up in the middle of the night when Joy would cry. Often their mom would go out on dates and leave them all by themselves. Looking back, it was child abuse, but at the time it felt like freedom. Freedom from Carla's tears, and headaches, and stale beer and cigarette smoke. Freedom from the barrage of awful things Carla would say about their father and why he wasn't coming for them. Faith would pretend to be the mother and boss Hope and Joy around, but in a fun way.

She'd decide what was for dinner (always macaroni and cheese), what they would watch on television (
Animaniacs,
and soap operas, and talk shows—they were glued to Jerry Springer; it was like watching long-lost family members), whether or not they would take a bath (usually not), and what book they would read before bed (
Harry Potter
). Sometimes they'd have to spend hours calming down a crying Joy, but most of the time they created elaborate, imaginary lives. They were orphans living in Russia, they were triplets going camping, they were runaways hitching a ride on the nearest train.

Many of Hope's childhood memories were a blur. But she remembered how she felt about her sisters. Loved. Inseparable.
The Three Musketeers,
their mother used to say with a trace of jealousy. They grew up together; they battled sunburns, and knee scrapes, and Carla, and their missing father. They made up all sorts of reasons he hadn't come for them—the favorite being that he was a spy. He wanted nothing more than to see his girls, but it would put all of America in danger. But he watched them, and loved them, and protected them from afar. And they continued to protect one another. For a while anyway. For as long as it lasted. Her sisters; herself. There was a sliver of time when Hope never could have imagined it any other way.

And then one day Faith was gone. Fled to California at seventeen. The usual reasons. Pregnant by a summer boy. To Hope the west coast might as well have been Siberia, and losing Faith felt like losing a limb. She kept reaching for her, thinking she was by her side, only to discover over and over, more and more shocked each time, that Faith was really gone. All Hope was left with was long-distance phone calls that always ended too soon. It was as if a giant undertow had stolen her sister and whisked her out to sea.

Hope stuck around for Joy, though. Tried to fill Faith's shoes. But Joy was always the wild one. The older she grew, the more she resisted Hope's efforts to mother her. She was probably more like Carla than any of them. The second she turned eighteen, Joy ran off to Seattle without so much as a thank you. And even though they were basically estranged, Hope couldn't stomach the thought of being on the opposite coast from her sisters, so she soon followed to Portland. They were circling one another's orbits without getting too close. They saw one another every couple of years. Not nearly enough for Hope. Maybe this Christmas was the excuse they needed to really commit to one another again.

Hope brought her attention back to Joy's Facebook page. This is how she knew her sisters now. From social media.

Every other picture was coffee, or foam, or Joy and a handsome young black man gazing at coffee or foam. This must be her new boyfriend. Hope hadn't heard about him first-hand, of course, but Faith had mentioned him. His name was Harrison, they'd met on some dock looking at sailboats. Hope didn't even know Joy liked sailboats, let alone went looking at them on random docks. Faith said the only reason Joy talked to her more was that she was always angling for money. Faith was extremely well-off; turned out getting pregnant by Stephen hadn't been the worst thing that could have happened. He was wealthy, and his parents even made sure Faith finished high school and went to college. They now had a beautiful home in San Francisco, two kids, and a two-car garage. Hope had only been there a handful of times—mostly because of Faith's busy schedule.

It was too late to call Faith, but Hope left a message on Joy's Facebook Feed.
I'm in the Emerald City, sis. Call my cell!
A few seconds later Joy logged off of Facebook. Hope stared at her cell and waited. And waited. Why that little scoundrel. When had Joy stopped loving her? Hope had sensed a year or so back that she'd done something to tick Joy off, but she seriously didn't know what it was. She asked Faith over and over, but Faith insisted she didn't know either. “Joy is Joy,” Faith said. “Whatever it is she'll get over it. You're lucky she's not calling, all she does is ask for money.”

For the heck of it Hope checked her mother's page. Carla Garland. There she was, smiling, her naturally dark hair colored the lightest shade of blond Hope had ever seen on her, and the latest post read
: Heading for Cuba for Christmas with my sweetie!! Thanks, Obama!!
The picture was of her mother and a smiling Cuban-American man standing on a sailboat, champagne glasses raised. Hope's eyes welled with tears. When would she stop crying over the mother she wished she had? People needed to be themselves, didn't they? Her mother had raised three girls practically on her own, and despite their father being the love of her life, Carla was not a woman who could be alone. She'd had a string of men since Thomas, but not one of them had ever stuck. Hope suspected Carla had never stopped waiting for Thomas to come back to her. In a sense, each of them was a little bit stuck in the past, still waiting. Not that any of them would ever admit it.

Hope closed the cover on her iPad, hugged it to her chest, and leaned into the rail. Her eyes fell on another set of blinking Christmas lights surrounding the W
E
T
HREE
K
INGS
motel sign. The
g
was missing, making it W
E
T
HREE
K
IN S
motel. Another message had been added below: W
E
T
HREE
K
INGS
W
ELCOME
Y
OU
. At least someone welcomed her.

Hope turned and headed back for her room. Austin's curtains were drawn, but she could see he had a light on. Did he have a wife or girlfriend? She didn't get that feeling, but then again he'd said very little about himself.

The flatulent bloodhound was taking up more than half of the bed. Hope crawled in but instead of pushing his snoring body out of the way, she simply formed herself around him. She loved the sound of dogs sleeping. She made one more attempt to call Joy, and once again got her voice mail. She hung up. Tomorrow morning she would park herself outside of Joy's apartment and ambush her.

* * *

Hope woke to the sound of her cell phone blasting out “Jingle Bells.” She pawed the nightstand until she made contact with it, then glanced at the screen. Faith. Who else would call before seven a.m.?

“I was asleep,” Hope said.

“Do you want to FaceTime?”

“God, no.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don't even have a face yet.” Hope covered her eyes with her hand. Even the dog was still sleeping.

“I'm returning your call.”

“From yesterday.”

“I just got back from a run.” Faith always had to workout-drop. It was worse than name-dropping.
Oh, I just got back from the gym. Oh, I just got back from Pilates. Oh, I just got back from lifting weights. Oh, I just ran a marathon and bought a kale farm.

Hope stretched out on the bed, opened one eye, and glanced at the empty box of fried chicken by the bed. The dog was still snoring on the floor beside her. His giant paws were covering his head as if he, too, had been rudely awoken by Faith. “Me too.”

“You too, what?”

“I went for a run this morning.” Hope had woken up in the middle of the night to run to the bathroom. She was going to use it.

“You went for a run?”

Hope gripped the phone and tried not to let Faith's obvious sarcasm get to her. She
could
have gone for a run. “Just got back.”

“Liar.”

“Why would I lie about going for a run?”

“You're cutting into my kale smoothie time.”

“I'm drinking mine now,” Hope said. Should she make a slurping noise or was that taking it too far?

Faith sighed. “What's so urgent?”

“Are you sitting down?”

“I'm stretching in the kitchen. Seriously, in twenty seconds I'm putting kale in the blender.”

Why didn't she just tattoo her accomplishments on her forehead? I'M HEALTHIER, FITTER, SMARTER, RICHER, MORE IN LOVE, HAVE CHILDREN. SO MUCH BETTER THAN MY SISTERS.
“Guess who invited us over for Christmas?”

“Who?” Faith was immediately on guard.

“Over the river and through the woods.”

“I'm hanging up.”

“To Grandmother's house we go.”

“You want to spend Christmas in the cemetery?” There was a grunt. Faith was still stretching. Maybe she wasn't as limber as she claimed.

“Yvette Garland.”

“Who?”

“Dad's mother. Our paternal grandmother.”

There was a clatter, then swearing. Faith had dropped the phone. When she spoke again, she was out of breath. “Dad's mother?” Panic was evident in her voice. They rarely talked about their father and when they did their voices always resorted to higher pitches.

“Her neighbor showed up at the shelter yesterday looking for me.”

“Looking for you? Why did she look for you first?”

“He.”

“What?”

“The neighbor is a he.”

“So? Why did he come to you first?”

“Maybe our grandmother is a wicked witch and he was ordered to bring back one of our hearts on a silver platter.”

“Oh, and you're Cinderella, and we're the Wicked Stepsisters?”

“And how!” Hope laughed. Faith did not.

“My kale is wilting,” Faith clipped.

Holy night. Faith was jealous. It didn't matter how old they were, they could succumb to their childhood roles within seconds of speaking. Faith, as the oldest, always felt she was entitled to be first. “He probably came to me first because I'm closer to Leavenworth.”

“Seattle is closer to Leavenworth. So if it was a geographical decision, then Joy should have been first.”

“Oh my God. Who cares who he approached first?”

“It just doesn't make sense.” Everything had to make sense in Faith's world. Which meant everything had to agree with the way Faith saw the world.

“Our paternal grandmother is not only alive, but she's requesting to see us. Can we focus on that for a second?”