Sisters of Heart and Snow (26 page)

S
AN
D
IEGO

Present Day

I
t is the Saturday before Halloween, which falls on a Thursday this year. Rachel and Drew drive to the carnival at the park by the pool, Chase in tow. Drew's deliberately dressed casually, in jeans that are form-fitting but not too tight, sneakers, and a purple sweater that looks good against her eyes. Her stomach bubbles nervously. Tonight she's meeting Alan's daughters. Shouldn't she have gone out with him a few more times? What if they hate her? Or what if they love her, and then Drew goes back to L.A.?

To distract herself, Drew turns up the radio. Rachel's playing some music Drew hasn't heard before.

“This is a local band,” Rachel says.

“Yeah. My mom's such a hipster. She only likes indie bands nobody else has ever heard of,” Chase says, and Drew truly can't tell if he's being sarcastic or kind of proud.

Rachel laughs. “I'm not trying to be. Sometimes Tom and I go to concerts at dives around here. Then we buy the band's music. The concerts are cheap, and we're helping out new talent.”

“Really?” Drew figured her sister would just be playing the same CDs she had in high school. But that wouldn't make sense—after all, Drew didn't. Drew had never thought about it. What Rachel likes and doesn't. There's still a lot she doesn't know about Rachel. A lot Rachel doesn't know about her.

Rachel presses the forward button. “Yeah. Like this band, back when they had a really good songwriter.” Drew hears tambourine. It's her band. Or rather, the band she was in, she corrects herself.

“He wants me back in, you know,” Drew says.

Rachel's eyebrows shoot up. “So he can make you play tambourine for the rest of your natural life?”

“No. For viola.”

They park on the street a couple blocks away. Chase gets out. “Meet us back here, ten o'clock, okay?” Rachel directs him.

He salutes her and races off.

Rachel shuts off the car and they sit for a second in the semi-dark, the yellow streetlamps the only light, the moon covered by clouds. Children scream and bass thumps out from the live band. “You believe him?” Rachel asks quietly, and Drew automatically clenches her hands.
You're such a bad judge of character, Drew. Be careful.

“Yeah.” Drew gets out and shuts the door. Rachel follows, beeping the alarm. “They're going to be on
Jimmy Kimmel
. It's real.”

“Well, maybe you should do that, then,” Rachel says neutrally. She looks at her cell phone, scrolls to a picture of Quincy, puts her finger on it, then shuts it off. “It's what you always wanted, isn't it?”

Drew feels a pull in her gut. Not for herself, for her sister. “Are you okay?” She's been acting distant all week, ever since the morning when the kids made cookies. Drew puts it all together only now—she herself has been mostly thinking about Alan and possible jobs, and thought Rachel was still down about their mother and Killian. They'd gone to visit their mother together, and that was the time Rachel had shown the most animation. “Is everything okay with Quincy?” Drew asks with a spurt of intuition. Rachel hasn't talked about Quincy for days. She usually can't go five minutes without bringing up her daughter.

“Yeah. Everything's fine. Come on.” Rachel smiles brightly at her, walking ahead.

It's cooler tonight, for California, but Drew didn't bring a jacket. She never does. The wind stings her skin, and she shivers.

“Are you nervous?” Rachel asks Drew as they walk across the parking lot. He'd said six-thirty, in the food booth area.

“Hell yeah, I'm nervous. I'm meeting his kids. Isn't that a huge event?” She's already seen Alan three times. Warned him she didn't really live in this town. E-mailed back and forth, and talked on the phone more. And so far, only that one kiss that Drew can't get out of her mind. “Aren't you supposed to be engaged or something before you meet someone else's kids?” Alan told her he'd been out with two other women since his wife's passing. Drew asked him why those hadn't worked.

He'd thought about it for a minute. “I saw that these relationships wouldn't go anywhere,” he'd answered, “so I didn't feel right about continuing to see them.”

“They probably won't start off by calling you Mommy.” Rachel links her arm through Drew's. “Don't worry. It's a carnival. It's casual. Not such a big deal in a group, I don't think.” She shrugs. “Or maybe he does this all the time, and he's completely screwing up his girls.”

“Thanks. Thanks. I needed that.” Drew nudges her sister with her shoulder. Yesterday, she stopped by to see Alan at the library, and he'd come out from behind the counter to talk. He wanted to show her some new titles they'd got in, asked for her help in selecting books about music for a display. Afterward, when Alan went into his office, the model-pretty librarian, Brooke, shook her head. “I've never seen him talk that much the entire time he's been here,” she remarked to Drew.

“You have to think about that. Remember. Children come first.” Rachel echoes what Drew said the other day, though Drew doesn't think Rachel realizes it. “You don't want to be the one his girls have to talk about in therapy.”

They make their way across the brightly lit concrete path, pausing to watch an artist creating a 3-D chalk picture of a waterfall. It feels like they're standing on the edge of it, looking down into the whitewater. “Wow,” Rachel breathes. Drew almost swears that a drop of water hit her. She digs out a dollar and throws it into the artist's donation box. Rachel repeats the gesture.

On the lawn, children race around with dripping caramel apples and ice cream cones. Beyond are a couple of rides, a Ferris wheel and a swing ride. An eighties tribute band thumps out a-ha on a small stage (“Take On Me,” Drew remembers). A few portable lights cast everyone in an orange glow.

They walk through the crowd of people watching the band, sitting on blankets or standing or dancing. Drew hears a dissonance in someone's guitar and flinches. Maybe she ought to tell them how to fix it.

“Don't let him crawl on the grass. God. Can't you do anything I ask? Use your head,” a woman's voice snaps. Drew looks down and sees a baby in a leopard costume trying to crawl off a plaid blanket. The owner of the voice stands on the other side of the blanket, a woman about Drew's age, wearing a leopard outfit that used less material than the baby's, impatiently sucking on a cigarette. A red-haired teenaged girl in a Robin costume scoops up the baby. Her eyes meet Drew's briefly. It's Chase's girlfriend.

The girl looks away. Drew doubts she recognized her. “Can I have ten dollars, Mom?”

The mother hands her a twenty. “Only if you take your brother with you. Buy him something to eat, too.”

Drew wonders what on earth this carnival sells that a baby can eat. The girl nods, walks off, the baby cradled on her hip like an expert. The woman blows smoke, squints at Drew. Her face is hard, all angles, wrinkles on her upper lip from the smoking. Drew wrenches her gaze off the woman.

Rachel tugs on her arm. “The food's this way.” They keep walking. Drew says nothing to Rachel.
No wonder the girl's the way she is,
she thinks to herself.

She sees Alan's girls before she sees him, recognizes their white-blond hair and light eyebrows from the pictures. Drew stops, her heels indenting the grass, as if they won't be able to spot her if she stands still.

They could almost be twins, except one's slightly taller than the other. A light illuminates them and their costumes, one in Belle from
Beauty and the Beast
and the older one in a Wonder Woman. They're standing by the cotton candy booth, watching the attendant swirl a poofy cloud of pink onto a paper stick. “Here you go!” Alan hands them the candy. He has no warnings of how they should be neat, or keep it off their faces. Drew smiles. She hates it when parents ruin the simple joy of a treat by warning the kids to be tidy. Once when she and Rachel were little, their parents bought them ice cream cones while on a vacation. Drew's ice cream got all over her face. Chocolate—the messiest kind. Both parents scolded her for so long that Drew had never wanted a cone again.

“Thank you, Daddy,” the little girls chorus sweetly, a faint trace of English accent in their tones.

Alan sees Drew, waves at her. Drew lifts her hand but feels a small surge of panic.
Oh my God
. He points at Drew and the two little girls grin and run straight for her, like miniature football players. He follows at a close clip and Drew wonders if she'll possibly be able to keep up with them all. What if they run in different directions? Poor Alan. He looks good tonight, Drew thinks, wearing a soft-looking brown leather jacket, khakis, and a T-shirt. Nothing flashy, nothing hip, but comfortable. A leather-bound book, Drew thinks. The one you want to keep to read again. That's what he reminds her of. He even smells like books. He introduces himself to Rachel, shakes her hand.

“Are you Dad's friend Drew?” Wonder Woman asks her. Already pink candy sticks all over her face in tufts and melted spots.

Drew nods. “I am.”

Wonder Woman points at herself. “I'm Audrey. This is Lauren.” Named after Audrey Hepburn and Lauren Bacall, Alan has explained to her.

Lauren curtseys in her Belle costume, gold slippers peeking out from under the skirt. Drew's glad to see neither bothered with a wig, their blond hair shining. “Pleased to meet you.”

Drew stoops to the girls' height without thinking. She holds out her hand and first Audrey, then Lauren, shakes it. Their hands are tiny and warm. “Pleased to meet you, too. I'm honored to be in the presence of Wonder Woman and Belle.”

Lauren tiptoes to Drew. “Know why I picked Belle?” she whispers. Drew shakes her head. “She likes books. So do I.”

“I bet your daddy brings you lots of books. What's your favorite?”

“Junie B. Jones.”

“Whoa. That's a chapter book.” Drew whistles through her teeth, impressed. Quincy had read those in first grade. Drew bought her a set one Christmas.

“I read them myself,” Lauren says proudly.

“What a smart girl,” Rachel says.

Lauren nods, suddenly shy. She steps back behind Alan's leg. They have Alan's nose in miniature, a slightly upturned version, but both have a heart-shaped face Drew assumes comes from their mother.

Audrey studies Rachel. “That your sister?”

Drew nods. “My
big
sister.”

“But you're bigger than she is,” Lauren says. “That's not right. She's your little sister. Like mine.” She puts Audrey in a headlock, knocking the smaller girl off balance for a moment.

“I'm thinking of enrolling her in judo,” Alan says with a laugh, prying Lauren's arm off her sister. “She's a natural.”

Audrey grins and holds up the sticky candy. “Want some? We share.”

Rachel bends forward, to Drew's surprise. “Yes, please. Thanks. You have such good manners.” She takes a small chunk. “I love cotton candy.”

Audrey holds the cone out to Drew. Drew pinches off a piece. She hasn't had it since childhood. The sugar crystals crunch, then melt in her mouth. Caramelized sugar. Sort of like the crackle crust on top of a crème brûlée. Her fingers are sticky and she sucks them, which doesn't help much, and wipes her hand off on her jeans. Maybe mothers are just never clean, she thinks. She minds this far less than she would have thought. “Thank you.”

“Daddy?” Lauren points to a giant inflatable slide. It's higher than the roof of the rec center. “Will you go on that with us?” She holds Alan's left hand.

“Sure.” Alan smiles down at Drew with an expression she can't read. A bit closed off. Guarded. Is it because the girls are here? She wants to kiss him, but of course does not. “You don't have to.”

“You're going to have to take off your shoes.” Audrey's little hand slips into Drew's. Audrey. Drew's heart skips.

Drew looks at Alan. “Sure, I'll go.”

“I'll catch up with you later,” Rachel says. “Tom's meeting me by the corndogs.”

Drew shoots her a panicked look. That's not a group thing, then. But Rachel makes a shooing gesture.
Go.
Audrey pulls on her, tries to run. “Hurry up, Drew-lady!” she shouts. “We don't want to be late! Pick me up!”

“That would be terrible.” Drew picks up the girl. She's heavier than she looks. She runs across the grass to the slide.

“We beat them!” Audrey says triumphantly. She hands Drew a wad of tickets. “Now we go.”

They kick off their shoes and climb up the slide steps, which has a rope ladder to help you get up to the top. The girl climbs like a monkey, Drew much more slowly. She looks down and sees Alan and Lauren a few parties below them. Alan is frowning, concentrating on his climbing. She hopes he's not mad that they didn't wait. She was just trying to do what the girl wanted.

“Come on,” Audrey yells from the top, and Drew makes it all the way up. A teenager in a red shirt tells Drew to sit down on a felt mat, and Audrey sits in front of her. Drew puts her arm around the girl—she's so small—and peers down. Wow—it's steeper than she thought. Before she can think anything else, they're sliding down, fast, landing against the soft bumpers.

“That was fun!” Audrey stands up and scoots off the end onto the grass. “Let's go again.”

“Hold on.” Drew waits for Alan and Lauren, who fly down. Neither of them smiles.

Lauren gets off the slide and runs over and punches Audrey in the arm. “Why didn't you wait for us?”

“Ow!” Audrey pulls back. “You're slow.”

“Lauren, no hitting,” Alan says sternly.

“Sorry,” Drew says.

“It's fine,” Alan says with a smile, but he's terse.