The Second Sister (19 page)

Now I was glad it hadn't. It would have made things awkward between Peter and me. And wouldn't it have been sad if that time, with Peter, whom I liked a lot, would have been just like the other times—something happened because I had determined in advance that it would?

No passion. No pursuit. No heat.

I looked at Daphne.

I smiled. “I don't think you sound like a big slut.”

“Good,” she said, crushing out the second cigarette. “Because I'm not. The way I see it, I'm a giant panda.”

“Excuse me?”

“A giant panda,” she repeated, and then, seeing that I wasn't following her, she continued. “Not an
actual
giant panda. It's a simile. I'm
like
a giant panda. I read in a book that giant pandas only ovulate and mate for two or three days once a year. So I'm like that, see? Except with me, it's every four years.”

She started counting off on her fingers. “I was eighteen when I had Juliet. Four years after that, I had Viola. Four years after Viola, I had Ophelia. And four years after
that,
I had Portia.”

“So Portia is four now?”

“Uh-huh,” Daphne said in an ominous tone. “Which means I'm due. That's why, when I moved to Nilson's Bay after she was born, I made a conscious effort to seek out the company of women. I met Alice, and then, through Alice, I met Rinda and Celia. I figured they'd reel me in if I started to veer off course. Two years ago, just to hedge my bets, I decided to start having happy hour with the girls instead of going to The Library.”

“The library? But I just saw you there last week.”

Daphne lowered her chin and raised her brows, giving me a “think about it” sort of look.

“Oh, wait. You mean the bar, not the building.”

“Right. In addition to the four-year time frame, the common component in the conception of all my darling daughters was a lethal combination of alcohol and men. I don't consider giving up men that much of a hardship, but I'll be danged if I'm giving up Riesling. Or potato chips.”

She held out the bowl and I took a few.

“It's going pretty well so far, but I won't feel safe until Portia turns five in May. Of course, technically, if I were to get pregnant tomorrow, then the baby wouldn't be born until after Portia's birthday, but still. I'm just not going to feel like I'm out of the woods until Portia blows out all five candles on her cake.”

She put a chip in her mouth and chewed it thoughtfully. “There's this guy who comes into the minimart to buy beef jerky and M&M's who looks just like Ryan Reynolds. He's a long-haul trucker, so I don't see too much of him, but when I do . . .”

Moving her head slowly from side to side, she pulled another cigarette halfway out of the pack and then slid it back, apparently thinking better of it.

“If he starts coming more often, I might have to quit my job. At least until May. The man makes me nervous.”

“I can see why,” I said.

Matilda, who had eaten all of the available potato chips, waddled over and stared me down with her beady black eyes. More from fear than from benevolence, I crumbled a chip and tossed it on the ground.

“I'm nervous about Juliet and that boyfriend of hers too,” Daphne said.

“The skinny guy with the long hair? I saw him at the consignment shop.”

“That's him. The one who hangs on to her like a three-toed sloth.” She growled and took a small sip from her glass.

“Juliet is so smart,” she said, frustration creeping into her voice. “She could be anything she wants to be! But this boy is putting pressure on her to stay here after graduation, and if she does . . . Listen, I don't regret moving here one bit. If Juliet wants to come back to Nilson's Bay after college, I'd have no problem with that. But first I'd like her to finish her education and experience life a little. ‘Ignorance is the curse of God. Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.'
Henry the Sixth, Part Two,
” she informed me.

“With all my love of Shakespeare, do you know that I've never actually seen one of his plays performed on a real stage? I want better for Juliet.”

“Can't you just tell her to stop seeing him?”

“Tried that. Didn't work.” She picked up three chips and ate them, one after another.

“Sometimes I almost wish I
did
have a man in my life. Maybe a father would be able keep her in line. But who knows? My father didn't have much success with me. He knocked me around plenty, but it didn't keep me away from the Marine. If anything, it drove me to him.”

She sighed heavily and then shrugged. “But enough about me. How are
you
doing? I mean since Alice is gone? I wanted to talk to you at the reception after the funeral. . . .”

“I thought you were avoiding me.”

Daphne tilted her head to one side and frowned. “Why would you think that? I just had my hands full was all. Celia was such a wreck that I didn't feel like I could leave her.”

“She seemed pretty torn up.”

“We all were. But Celia is so tenderhearted, and that day of all days, Pat decided to pick a fight and threaten to leave. That's her boyfriend. He knows
exactly
how to push Celia's buttons.”

Daphne's eyes grew dark. She took a big swig from her glass.

“Come to think of it,” she said with disgust, “I take back what I said before about wishing I had a man around. Men are so manipulative! And Celia has a gift for terrible relationships, poor thing. Before Pat it was a guy named Don, worked in a dry cleaners in Sturgeon Bay and ended up taking
her
to the cleaners. I didn't really think anybody could treat her worse than Don, but I was wrong. Pat is always picking at her, starting fights or flipping out because some other guy looked at her sideways, and threatening to leave. It's a complete control thing, but Celia just doesn't get it. She's so young and so sweet, and she just wants to be loved. It's always the sweet ones who get their hearts broken, isn't it? Probably explains why mine is still intact, being made of stone and all.” She winked.

“Yeah. Not buying it,” I said with a smile. “I suspect you're a lot softer than you like to let on. Can I just say something? I know it sounds stupid, but I'm so relieved to know that you weren't avoiding me during the reception. I was sure you all hated me.”

“Don't be silly,” Daphne scoffed. “I don't hate you. And Celia doesn't hate anybody; it's just not in her.” She picked up her glass. “Of course, Rinda is a different can of worms. She
definitely
hates you. . . .”

Daphne tipped up her glass, leaving me hanging while I waited for her to swallow the last drops of wine.

“That's kind of the way she is. Rinda loves fiercely and hates the same way. But I wouldn't let it bother you. In a lot of ways, she's even more sensitive than Celia. But she'll warm up to you once she gets to know you. You'll see.”

“Oh, I doubt that,” I said, recalling the way Rinda had glared at me in the grocery store. “And even if that were true, I won't be here long enough for her to get to know me. I'm off to Washington right after Christmas.”

“That's right,” Daphne said with a frown. “I forgot about that.”

Evening twilight was quickly giving way to darkness. I heard the high, nails-on-chalkboard squeak of a screen door opening, followed by the soprano piping of little Portia's voice, calling from the doorway.

“Mommy! Juliet says to tell you that it's time for dinner!”

“Be right there, honey!” Daphne got up from her chair and looked at me. “Care to join us?”

“I've got to get home and feed the cats.”

She folded up her lawn chair. I got up from the stump and started walking across the grass toward the cottage, smiling when I saw Daphne
chook-chooking
to the hens, using the lawn chair to herd them toward a coop that stood closer to the house.

After she opened the door to the coop and the first of the chickens went inside, Daphne looked up and called out to me. “You doing anything after dinner? I've still got that half bottle of Riesling. I could bring it over to your place.”

“I'm really more of a scotch drinker, but come on over,” I called back. “About seven?”

“You sure? I don't want to bother you.”

“You won't be,” I said. “It'd be nice to have some company.”

Chapter 27

A
few minutes after seven, just as I was throwing half of a pretty awful frozen pizza into the trash can, the doorbell rang.

Daphne Olsen was standing on the porch with a nervous smile on her face, holding a half-empty bottle of Riesling and a plate covered with aluminum foil.

Celia Brevard and Rinda Charles were with her.

“Surprise! Celia and Rinda were already coming over for a little girls' night gathering and I didn't think you'd mind if I brought them along. The more the merrier, right?”

I stood there, temporarily frozen to immobility by the enmity of Rinda's cobra-like stare.

Daphne cleared her throat. “Can we come in?”

Her voice jolted me back to sensibility. “Oh, yes! Sure. Come right in.”

I opened the door wider to let them pass. Daphne headed immediately for the kitchen, making little kiss noises at Dave, who had come out from under the sofa as soon as he heard her voice, following right behind her, meowing plaintively.

In contrast to the bright, almost whimsical wardrobe she'd worn to the funeral, Celia was now dressed in a black zip-front dress with a bustier-like bodice attached to a short, ruffled skirt and black lace-up booties. However, I noticed she had added a streak of bright blue to her blond hair since I'd last seen her.

She politely introduced herself, but her eyes were shiny and her chin quivered as she attempted a smile. For a moment, I was afraid she might burst into tears, but Daphne, who was now holding Dave in her arms, poked her head out of the kitchen and said, “Celia, run in here and help me, will you? I can't remember where Alice kept the paper napkins.”

I knew exactly where she kept them: to the right of the refrigerator, third drawer down. My guess was that Daphne knew that, too, but she was assigning Celia a task as a distraction from the wave of grief that accompanied her first entry into the cottage since Alice's death.

“Excuse me,” Celia murmured and scurried off toward the kitchen, leaving me alone with Rinda.

“Nice to see you again,” I said.

“Oh, I am
sure
that's not true.”

She stepped through the doorway and set her purse down on a nearby table.

“Let's clear some things up right now. I am here for three reasons and three reasons only. The first is Alice. Daphne told us that you were trying to teach yourself how to quilt, and as near as I can tell, that is the only time you've done anything that Alice wished.” She stuck out her index finger and pointed it right at my nose. “The
only
time! So I feel duty bound to help make that wish come true.

“The second reason is Alice again. Not you—Alice. No matter how I feel about you, she would not have wanted to see her little sister's hand hacked off like a piece of meat.” She shook her head and scowled even more deeply. “What kind of fool doesn't move her fingers out of the way when she's cutting fabric? Are all the overpaid, do-nothing bureaucrats in Washington as brilliant as you?”

She raised the remaining four fingers on her hand, holding it flat in front of my face. “Never mind,” she said. “I already
know
the answer.

“The third reason I am here is because of Jesus,” she declared, lowering her hand and lifting her chin. “My Jesus said we must offer forgiveness if we hope to receive it. So I offer you mine. For the terrible way you treated my sweet Alice, never
once
coming home to see her even though she begged you to year after year, for your selfishness, and even for your participation in an election that is going to lead this country further down the path to perdition, I forgive you. But only because Jesus says I have to.”

She scowled and pointed her finger at me again. “And just because I forgive you doesn't mean that I like you. So don't go thinking that it does.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “Because I don't think I like you either.”

There was a little spark of something in her eye, a glint that could have been shock or respect or some combination of the two.

“All right, then. Now we understand each other.”

“We do.”

“Good.”

I closed the front door. Celia, who was smiling for real now, came running out of the kitchen, holding a plate in her hand.

“You've got to try one of these bars. They're the best!”

Rinda picked one up and nibbled at the corner.

“Good,” she said, sounding a little surprised. She took another bigger bite and raised both eyebrows. “Daphne made these?”

“Uh-uh,” Celia said. “Daphne brought cheese and crackers, remember? We found these in the kitchen.”

“I made them,” I said. “It's an old family recipe: You Like-A Me Bars. I don't know if they go with cherry Riesling or not, but I guess we can find out.” I took the plate from Celia's outstretched hands and marched off toward the kitchen. Celia trailed behind. Upon reaching the doorway, I looked over my shoulder at Rinda.

“Well? Are you coming?”

 

It was awkward for the first few minutes. Even the administration of refreshments didn't quite help the ladies loosen up. And why would it? In spite of our mutual connection to Alice, we were complete strangers.

Once everyone had a bar and a beverage in hand, Riesling for Daphne, Celia, and me—it actually wasn't too bad with the cookies—and a cup of tea for Rinda—maybe that was why Alice had that box of Earl Grey—we went up to the sewing room. Celia started to sniffle as we climbed the stairs, and the others were quiet too. Upon entering the room they just stood there, looking around the room. It was almost exactly as Alice had left it.

“It still smells like her,” Celia said softly.

“It does,” I agreed. “I keep waiting for her to walk through the door. Hey, I'm glad you're here. I wanted to ask you something. Who is Maeve?”

“Maeve?” Daphne frowned and looked at Rinda, who shrugged. “No idea.”

I opened the trunk and showed them the pile of quilts, flipping over the corners so they could see the labels on the back. None of them had ever seen the quilts before or heard Alice mention anyone named Maeve.

“That's so weird,” Celia said. “I thought Alice showed us all of her quilts. I've never even seen most of these fabrics before.”

“Maybe she made them before we met her?” Daphne offered.

Rinda frowned and pointed to one of the quilt labels. “No. Look at the date on this one—2014. I moved here in 2010 and started sewing with Alice the same year. You moved to Nilson's Bay and joined us a couple of years later, and Celia came in the fall of 2013. For some reason, she must have decided to keep these a secret from us.”

Rinda leaned closer, squinting as she studied the stitches on the quilt, an eight-pointed star design made with a range of pale-blue and sage-green floral fabrics with touches of metallic gold on the leaves, set on a cream-colored background.

“Beautiful work,” she said quietly. “Alice was really something. Sweetest woman on the face of the good Lord's earth and just about the best quilter I ever met. And yet,” she went on, flipping the quilt back so she could look at the label that, once again, had words written in Alice's laborious script, “even writing her own name was so difficult for her.”

“So you never heard her mention anyone by the name of Maeve? Not even in passing?” All three of the women shook their heads. “I don't get it. Why would she make all these quilts for someone and then not only not give them to that person, but also not even show them to her three closest quilting buddies? It doesn't make sense.”

They all agreed, but as Daphne pointed out, a lot of things about Alice didn't make sense.

“On the one hand, Alice said whatever came into her head without filtering a word of it.” Daphne chuckled to herself. “That made for a few uncomfortable moments around town, but nobody could be mad at Alice for long. She wasn't ever mean, just one hundred percent honest and completely open. But then, every once in a while, sometimes right in the middle of one of her monologues, those real long ones—”

“Oh, Lord, but Alice could talk,” Rinda interrupted. “She could just go on and on when she took a mind to. I met her in the quilt shop over near Fish Creek about a week after we moved here. I was buying fabric for a new project and Alice just came over and started talking my ear off, asking what I was planning to make and where I lived and the names of my children and if I had any pets and I don't know what all. At first I just thought she might be the local crazy lady. Then I saw that the clerks in the shop really liked her and talked to her kindly and just a little slowly, like you might speak to a child, so I realized she must have some kind of disability, you know. I thought she must be slow, but then she pulled out this quilt she was working on, this very complicated appliqué block with a basket of flowers, and I didn't know what to think. Anyway, Alice just kept following me around the shop, talking a blue streak while I shopped.”

Rinda paused for a moment and smiled, wide and bright and real, the first time I'd seen her smile like that. “We'd just moved to town and I didn't have a job yet, so I was trying to be careful about money. I went over to check out the sale rack and I pulled this yellowy-green bolt off the shelf that I thought might be okay for a backing. So Alice sees this stuff and says, ‘That's the ugliest fabric I ever saw in my life. Why would you buy that?' I told her it might be ugly, but it was only two dollars a yard.”

Rinda's eyes crinkled at the corners. “And then Alice puts her hand on my arm and looks at me all serious and says, ‘Rinda, it is possible to pay too
little
for fabric.' ”

Rinda started to laugh and the others laughed with her. So did I. That was Alice, we all agreed. Honest to a fault, completely open with her thoughts and feelings.

“Except when she wasn't,” Daphne said, picking up her comments where she'd left them before Rinda's interruption. “Every now and then, she'd suddenly get very quiet. Right in the middle of a sentence, she'd just clam up and stare off into space. I'd ask her if something was bothering her, but she always said no. You know what people in town call the three of us, don't you?”

I nodded. “The FOA—Friends of Alice. Because you never saw one without the other three.”

“That's kind of an exaggeration,” Daphne said. “I mean, we weren't together all the time. We all had lives to lead, but we were pretty close to her.”

Celia tipped her head to one side, as if some new thought had just occurred to her. “Which is kind of strange when you think about it. I mean, Alice lived here her whole life, knew everybody in town from the time she was a little girl, but the three people she picked as friends were three people who had just moved here.”

“That was just Alice's way,” Rinda said. “She never could resist a stray. I think that's how she saw us, as three strays who needed rescuing.”

“And yet,” Daphne said, “for all that we knew Alice as well as anybody in town did, there were times when I felt like I didn't know her at all.”

I knew exactly what she meant.

 

After I folded the quilts and put them back into the trunk, Daphne insisted that I show them the quilt I'd been planning to make when I sliced up my hand. I pulled out the bag where I'd stowed the fabric and pattern book upon my return from the ER and laid everything out on the table.

I could tell they weren't as excited about my choices as I'd been, and I had to admit, after looking through all of Alice's pretty, vibrant quilts, it did seem a little on the dull side.

After a moment, Celia, who was always very encouraging—I guess you have to be if you're going to teach art to middle schoolers—said, “Well . . . it's definitely a good pattern for a beginner. And that's a nice blue.”

“It's a boring pattern,” Rinda countered. “And a namby-pamby blue.”

Boring? Namby-pamby? And she was the one who'd been telling stories about how overly frank Alice could be? But . . . it was hard to argue with her observations.

“I was worried about making something too busy or complicated, you know? The first time out, I figured I wanted to play it safe.”

“Yeah, well. You succeeded,” Rinda said. “That quilt is safe as a bowl of oatmeal and just as bland. Or it will be, when you finish it. Except I don't think you will ever finish it. You'll get sick of it halfway through, put it aside, and then never quilt again because you'll have convinced yourself that quilting is boring.”

She gave me a look of disdain. “Just because you're making a beginner's quilt doesn't mean you have to play it safe. Look at Alice's quilts; even her early work—not a dull one in the bunch. Alice was willing to take chances. A quilt is only as boring as the person—”

“I think what Rinda means to say,” Daphne said, jumping in and shooting her friend a “Be nice!” look, “is that you might want to think about spicing this up a little. There's nothing wrong with the fabrics you picked; I just think you might want to add a few more to the mix.”

“And maybe find a pattern that's a little more exciting,” Celia added. “The basic idea here isn't bad, but let's maybe just use this as a jumping-off place. Where did Alice keep her graph paper and drawing pencils?”

“Ummm . . .” I turned in a circle, trying to remember where I might have seen drawing supplies.

“Here they are,” Daphne said, bending down and opening the bottom drawer of the painted white dresser that stood on the far wall. She handed a pad of paper and box of pencils to Celia.