The Other Sister, page 23
There are even people here who know me. Not family, but people I grew up around, some of whom I even liked. We chat, about our jobs, about friends, about Whitestone. Old jokes get revived, pictures of kids get brought up on phones, or even pulled out of wallets. I introduce Tyler. Everybody shakes hands. Nobody thinks it’s weird I’m with a man half my age. Or if they do, they keep it hidden behind an impenetrable wall of small-town Midwest polite.
And for a moment, everything is normal. For a moment.
Then, I hear a familiar voice.
“Geraldine!”
Amber, one of my cousins via Aunt June, threads her way between the picnic tables and comes up next to me and Tyler. The wind whips her Monroe blond hair across her face. She keeps pushing it down, but it doesn’t do any good.
“I thought I…oh, hello,” she says as it sinks in that Tyler is not just near me, he’s with me.
And here we go. “Ty, this is my cousin, Amber Hearst. Amber, this is Tyler Prescott.”
Amber’s eyes narrow suspiciously. Tyler ignores this and they shake hands.
“I didn’t think this was your kind of place,” I say to her.
“I saw your car.”
I have got to get a new car. “So, what do you want?”
Amber eyes the picnic bench, and Tyler, and me. She finally decides we’re probably not that contagious, and sits.
“I just…I wanted to let you know you can count on me.”
“For what?”
She shrugs, trying to look casual, but she can’t stop shifting her gaze toward Tyler. I’m about ten seconds from saying he’s with me and she better keep her hands to herself, although this probably wouldn’t do any of us any good.
“If you need help with your book. Or whatever. I just wanted to let you know, I’m here.”
Whatever it is she wants to say, she really does not want to talk in front of my boyfriend. I am not in the mood to humor her. “Seriously? You came all the way up here and that’s it?”
She turns fully toward me. Our eyes meet and I can see it. Amber has never managed to break free on her own. She thinks I’m going to blow things up, and she wants to be there when I light the fuse.
The realization twists my guts. I want to sneer at her, full of righteous contempt, but I don’t. I also can’t let her get any closer, because I know her too well. She cannot wait. She cannot plan. Amber just reacts to whatever comes her way.
She is not like Marie.
“Thanks for the offer,” I tell her. “Maybe we can talk on Tuesday. Did your mom tell you she and Grandma have invited us to dinner? Should be a hoot, don’t you think?”
Amber does not like this answer. Her eyes crinkle, even though her thoroughly Botoxed brow stays flat and smooth. “You know, Geraldine, you might want to consider treating the rest of us like something besides deaf, dumb, and blind assholes.”
“Why?” I ask, and try not to notice Tyler wince.
“Because then I might be motivated to tell you that I was at the Marina Club this morning, and Uncle Martin was there with a bunch of his buddies, schmoozing it up. I heard your name get mentioned. And Lillywell.”
I keep my face neutral, but it’s not easy. I do not have chemical assistance. “What did they say?”
“Gosh, you know, I just plain couldn’t tell, ’cause I’m a deaf, dumb, and blind asshole.” She swings her legs back over the bench and stands. “Have a nice life. You, too, whoever you are.”
“Shit.” I struggle to my feet and run after her. “Amber. Wait.”
For a moment, I think she’s going to keep ignoring me, but, thankfully, she’s too angry for that. We only make it to the edge of the parking area before she rounds on me.
“You know something? You’re just as bad as your sister. Neither one of you can see past the ends of your own noses.”
“Has Marie said something to you?”
“If she had, do you think I’d be here trying to beat it out of you over the whitefish?” Amber snaps. “By the way, who’s your friend really?”
I almost say “no one,” but I catch myself just in time. Not soon enough to keep my skin from crawling that I even thought it.
Amber shakes her head. “You see, this is the problem. The two of you think you’re different. Better. Well, in case you hadn’t noticed, cousin, you’re right back where you started from, just like I am. And pretty soon, you’ll be crawling to Daddy with your tail between your legs asking for your handout. Just. Like. Me.”
She’s wrong, but I can’t tell her that. I can’t even really get angry at her for being so wrong, no matter how much I want to. Because we are different, me and Marie. We’re the ones who lived in that house. The others don’t know, and what they do find out, they don’t believe. Dad spent years making sure of that.
That little reminder stings me into action.
“Look, Amber, I’m sorry.” I mean it, too, even if I’m having to force it out through gritted teeth. “You’re right. There is something going on, and it’s big. But I haven’t got the proof yet.”
She leans in. There’s booze on her breath, which shouldn’t be a surprise, but it is predictable enough to be disappointing. “What are we talking about?”
“Has anybody checked the trust’s books lately?” I ask.
“You think Uncle Martin’s been messing with the trust?”
I hesitate. “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
Amber’s eyes flicker toward Tyler’s table, and away again.
“Do you want me to ask around?” she says. “Walt might talk to me.”
Never in a million years. But I smile anyway. “Would you?”
She nods. “Count on it.”
It’s almost too easy. Poor Amber. It’s not her fault she’s like this. We’re all victims, of the money and the family and our own endless, human flaws. It’s left her broken, just like the rest of us.
I wish I were better than this, but I’m not.
“Listen, Geraldine, you should know, there’s a council of war happening up at the Rose House right now.” She lowers her voice to a stage whisper. “Uncle Martin, Grandma, Marie. I think Mom’s there, too, but probably she’s just getting sloshed while everybody else huddles about the Geraldine problem.”
Already? Electric excitement slides through my veins. I thought it would take at least another week before they got that worried.
I suddenly become acutely aware of Tyler sitting patiently back at the table, and that excitement turns to ice. “Thanks, Amber,” I whisper.
She touches my shoulder sympathetically. “Good luck,” she says. “See you at the graduation party.”
She leaves, and I slowly return to my spot next to Tyler.
He pushes my milkshake cup toward me. “So, that’s your family?”
“In a nutshell.” I twirl the straw, and suck some vanilla shake off the end.
“Explains a lot.” Tyler bites into another dripping french fry.
“Yeah, it really does.”
“So. Are you going to tell any of them about…what happened? With Lillywell?”
No. I’m not. Because that’s when you’ll have to leave. And I’m going to hang on to you until the very last second, and then I’m going to make good on my promises to Marie. And never see you again. Never leave here again. Finally pay all my debts, take all my punishments.
Except even as I think that, I feel the rebellion rise. Or maybe it’s desperation. Maybe that’s all it ever was. The drugs and the cutting and the petty crime, it was all just a way to try to stay alive in the face of everything that I thought was trying to kill me. And Marie.
Marie, who only tried to run once. Who spent the rest of her life hiding. Hiding herself. Hiding our past in a hole in the ground. Hiding those pills inside a box inside a heart, inside an egg, inside a duck, inside a well, inside a forest, inside a story that someone else made up about us all three, four, five hundred years ago.
All the time planning. All the time waiting. All the time slowly stewing in her own hate.
Just like the rest of us.
I face Tyler. “Ty…Wanna meet my family?”
He drags the end of his last french fry thoughtfully through a catsup blob. “You are talking about the family in the big house on the hill?”
“Yes. Them.”
“The ones we previously planned to meet at the formal dinner, once I’d had a chance to comb my hair and put on my good jacket?”
“Yes.”
The sunset catches in Tyler’s brown eyes, and I’m reminded that for all his good-natured Mr. Fix-It vibe, I’m not the only one here who likes to break things.
“Let’s go.”
5.
We gather up the wrappers and pop the last of the fries into our mouths. Tyler dumps everything in the dented trash can while I start the car.
“Do we have a plan?” he asks as I ease us onto the highway.
“No,” I tell him.
“Well, yee-haw!” He mimes settling a cowboy hat back on his head.
I laugh because I can’t help it. Because being reckless and angry still comes more easily to me than anything else.
Because I’m saving myself and betraying Marie, again. And if I stop to think about it, I’ll lose my nerve.
We’re rounding the bend when I catch the red gleam of a taillight. I swear and swerve, and as I do, I see somebody’s put their car into the ditch.
“Stop, Gerie!” says Tyler. “Somebody’s hurt back there.”
I brake hard and yank the wheel so we bump onto the shoulder. Ty’s got his seat belt off and the door open before the car is fully stopped. I jump out as quickly as I can behind him, cell phone in hand, cursing myself for having left the first-aid kit back at the old house.
Ty sprints along the shoulder and kneels beside the figure on the slope. I’m trying to dial 911 on my phone and run at the same time, so it takes me a minute to see clearly.
But when I do, I forget the phone and just run like my life depended on it.
Because that skinny young man on the edge of the ditch is Robbie.
The girls never get to take back their own castle. Don’t know why I thought my story would be any different.
—Dr. Geraldine Monroe (margin notes)
GERALDINE, FIFTEEN YEARS OLD
THE ROSE HOUSE
1.
“Goddamn! Goddamn!”
Aunt Trish reeled backward and Geraldine all but fell into the ancient kitchen, dragging Marie with her. Their aunt put out her withered arms to catch them but failed, and the sisters crashed to the floor. The freezing wind blew in sparkling snow like pixie dust to settle around them.
“Help,” Geraldine gasped as she struggled to get out from under her sister. She hurt. Oh, God, she hurt. She was soaked and shivering and the snow was caked up around her knees. There was nothing left to feel but cold and pain.
But Marie was worse. Marie had no coat, no hat, nothing. Geraldine had given her her hat and her scarf, but it didn’t make any difference. Geraldine wasn’t even sure she was alive. Somehow, for some reason, by someone, Marie had been left out in the snow to die.
Geraldine hadn’t been at the Rose House in months, but it was the only place she could think to go.
Aunt Trish blinked. Slowly, heavily, she got down on the floor with them, one knee at a time, hissing through her teeth. She dug her twisted hands under Marie’s body and heaved. Marie flopped onto her back. Geraldine tried to pull herself upright, but she couldn’t. She was frozen. A fallen statue. All she could do was watch and shake.
Aunt Trish set her jaw, raised one hand, and slammed it down across Marie’s face.
Marie screamed and Geraldine shouted and tried to scramble to her knees.
“All right, all right! Get up!” shouted her aunt. “Goddamn! You gotta help me. Move it! You didn’t bring her all this way to freeze her here!”
Somehow, Geraldine managed to get to her feet. Trish grabbed Marie’s left arm, Geraldine got her right. Marie moaned and tried to roll up into a ball.
“None of that,” said Trish ruthlessly. “Come on. In here.”
Between them, they half-carried, half-dragged Marie into the great room, kicking aside the corpses of rotting books. Heat touched Geraldine’s skin, a bright brush of pain. There was a fire in the fireplace and the complex smell of burning wood and paper.
Trish dumped Marie on the flagstone hearth and started tossing wood scraps into the fire. There was a hatchet, a broken chair, and a heap of books.
Geraldine felt sick.
“Get those clothes off her.”
Geraldine stared, open mouthed and dull from cold and exhaustion. “She’s freezing!”
“Do as you’re told!”
Trembling, Geraldine did. The touch of her sister’s ice-cold skin sickened her, but she yanked and struggled and got her socks and jeans and sweater off, until Marie was in her underwear. With every touch, Marie whimpered from the pain. She screwed her eyes up tight. Geraldine was furious—and terrified.
“Put your arms around her,” Aunt Trish ordered as she stumped toward the door. “You got to get her warm!”
Aunt Trish disappeared into the house’s darkness, leaving them alone. Geraldine didn’t know what else to do. She lay down on the stones in front of the fire, grabbed Marie tight and pulled her close. Marie screamed and she coughed.
“It’s okay,” said Geraldine. The fire beat at her back, Marie’s cold froze her front. She was caught shaking in the middle. “It’s okay, it’s okay. We’re here. We made it. It’s okay.”
But it wasn’t. Marie was going to die from cold and pain and fear, and she’d never know why.
Geraldine screwed her eyes shut and tried to will what little warmth she had into her sister’s body. She heard rustling and thumping and swearing. All at once a blanket that felt like it weighed a hundred pounds dropped over top of them. It scratched like it was full of pricker weeds. It stank of mildew and mothballs. Geraldine huddled under it like it was the only shelter left to her.
But Aunt Trish yanked the covering off Marie.
“Come on, honey,” muttered Trish. “Come on, girly, bumblebee, little fairy girl, bumblebee. Gotta see if you’re frostbit. Come on, bumbly-bee. Let me see if it got you anyplace.”
Her twiglike fingers poked and prodded (“Toes first, fingers next,” she muttered). The fire’s warmth was turning Marie’s white skin red (“no gray, no gray, no gray,” whispered Trish with each poke. “There? No gray”).
By the time she finished, tears were streaming down Marie’s face, but she wasn’t shaking anywhere near as bad. Geraldine turned her sister to face her and pulled the filthy blanket over them both.
Aunt Trish crawled backward to the very edge of the hearthstones. She just hunched there and watched the two of them for a long time.
2.
Geraldine didn’t remember falling asleep. But when she woke up, the gray morning light trickled through the rose forest windows. At some point, a section of plywood had either fallen or been taken down. Frost tinged the red roses with white.
Marie was asleep on the blanket, her skin warm to the touch. When Geraldine put her hand on Marie’s cheek, she just rolled over, taking most of the blanket with her. There was nothing but a heap of glowing coals in the hearth, but Geraldine could feel the waves of warmth pounding against her skin.
Someone chuckled. Geraldine, startled, sat up.
Aunt Trish was still perched on her corner of the hearth. There were two mugs on the hearthstones, along with a heap of rubbish—sticks and trash and weirdly shaped chunks of wood. It slowly occurred to Geraldine that Trish must have been there all night feeding that fire, making sure it stayed alive so the two of them stayed warm.
Geraldine was starving. She was going to die of thirst.
“Here.” Aunt Trish nudged a mug at her. “Go slow.”
Carefully, Geraldine eased her way out from behind Marie. Her sister trembled a little, but didn’t wake.
The mug held cocoa. It probably had been hot, but it was lukewarm now. It hit her stomach like lead. At the same time, it felt like she’d never get enough.
“So, you gonna tell me what happened?” asked Aunt Trish as Geraldine slurped.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I just…found her. Out in the old root cellar. I wanted to take her home…”
Geraldine didn’t get any further. Marie shifted, and slowly she sat up. Her skin was a healthier pink now, but her eyes had sunk deep into her skull. Her fair hair hung lank and filthy around her ears.
“I’m not going back,” whispered Marie. “Ever. I’m not.”
Aunt Trish slurped in a long breath. “Did he finally get at you? Your mother thought he might.”
“No,” said Marie, but her voice shook. “No, no, no, no, no!” She curled up, hugging her knees to her chest.
“Hey, hey, it’s all right. Here.” Geraldine pushed the second cocoa mug into Marie’s hands. “Come on.” She moved Marie’s hands to her mouth and made her drink. Marie swallowed, and swallowed some more.
Geraldine glowered at their aunt. “You say anything like that again, I’ll knock your teeth out of your stupid head!”
Aunt Trish chuckled and mumbled. “Good luck with that.”
“No,” Marie pulled away. “She didn’t mean it. She didn’t. Please don’t be mad. Please don’t…”
“Don’t worry, Marie.” Aunt Trish patted the hearth around and behind her, and dragged out a third mug. “I’m not mad. And I’m not sending you back to him.” She glanced around the room. “What did happen? Huh? What’d he finally do?”
But Marie just curled in tighter on herself. I shook my head.
Aunt Trish shrugged. “M’kay. Keep it to yourself. Your choice, kid.”
“Thank you,” said Marie.
Trish’s withered grin split her face. Which was when Geraldine saw she had no teeth left at all. “Don’t thank me. We’re all going to be in the shit for this. Just you wait and see.”
You have to believe they saw it coming. You have to. Otherwise…
