The Second Sister Read online

“Sure, why not? Could be fun.”

  “Good. I’ve got to go to Madison for a couple days next week, but I’ll call you as soon as we haul the shanty onto the lake.”

  “Sounds good,” I said. “Thanks for inviting me. And thanks for inviting me to Thanksgiving too. I had a really good time.” I smiled and stuck out my hand.

  “What?” he said and spread out his hands. “No hug? Everybody in the family got a good-bye hug from you, even cranky Uncle Hugh.”

  I rolled my eyes and took a step forward, into his open arms. He squeezed me and I squeezed him back, laying my head against his chest for a moment before looking up.

  “That’s better,” he said. Then, without warning, he kissed me.

  Not a kiss on the cheek, the way I had kissed him in front of the library, but a proper, full-on, lip-to-lip kiss that lasted . . . well, I’m not sure how long. But it was a good while, several seconds at least. Though it seemed longer and yet much too brief.

  When he finally loosened his hold on me, I took a step away from him.

  “I don’t think you should do that.”

  He tipped his head to one side, frowning. “Why not?”

  Because I liked it, that was why. I liked it a lot.

  When a person spends thirteen years working pretty much without a break, too busy to rest much or think much, too busy to eat or sleep or even breathe much—at least that’s the way it felt sometimes—self-reflection is a luxury you can’t afford. And if you’re that kind of person, the so, so, so busy kind, chances are you don’t want the luxury of self-reflection. Chances are you’re avoiding it.

  But with all this time on my hands and not enough activity with which to fill it, I couldn’t avoid it—self-reflection, I mean. And one of the things I’d been reflecting on, one among the many, was the conversation I’d had with Joe just before the election, when he offered me a job over breakfast.

  Joe had pointed out my ongoing pattern of getting involved with unavailable men, men whom I had little in common with aside from some connection to the political profession, who either traveled as much as I did or lived in some far-distant state, men I didn’t have to see very often or risk getting attached to. Joe’s theory was that I picked these men, the unavailable kind, on purpose, which was ridiculous.

  But I could see how people might think that I had feelings for Tom. They might look at my devotion to getting him elected and mistake it for personal devotion, or even love. And okay, it might be true that I got myself involved in relationships that were doomed to fail because, subconsciously, I didn’t want anyone to compete with my mission to help get Tom elected, but that was all over now. In less than two months’ time, Tom Ryland would be sworn in as president. Mission complete.

  Of course, I’d still work for him and work hard; I didn’t know another way. But I wouldn’t work quite as hard for him as I had in the past. He didn’t require that level of devotion from me anymore. The time had finally come for me to have a life of my own: a house, furniture, pictures on the walls. And friends. Maybe even a cat—they were starting to grow on me. And a man, someone who cared about me most. Someone whom I cared about most.

  And who knew, maybe even a family? There was still time. I wouldn’t be forty for another four years, and I knew of plenty of women who didn’t have their first baby until after that. And, I had to admit, seeing Jeff playing peekaboo with Harry across the table, how Kylie had fallen asleep on Karin’s lap, that halo of blond curls resting on her mother’s shoulder, had tugged at my heart. They were such beautiful kids; Harry’s eyes were as blue and bright as could be, and Kylie’s mouth was so perfect and pink, like a little rosebud, and seeing the two of them dressed in those jammies with the feet, yawning and waving as they were carried off to bed in their daddy’s arms . . . well, it almost brought tears to my eyes. Wouldn’t it be fabulous to have a family like that? Two adorable kids? A husband who is crazy about you? Someone to share your life with?

  If there was one thing that these days of stillness and solitude had taught me, it was that I didn’t want to spend my life alone. But that didn’t mean I was willing to settle for just anybody. I’d been alive long enough to see the consequences that could result when a woman whose biological clock had started to strike twelve married in haste. I wouldn’t make that mistake. From here on out, any man I dated would have to meet some very specific criteria.

  That was why I’d called Terry Boyle and broken up with him last week. He didn’t care about me most, and if I’d had any doubts about that, they were shattered by the way that Terry received the news—dispassionately, as if it didn’t much matter one way or the other to him.

  I don’t know why I was surprised. That was the way he approached just about everything, including sex: with a definite lack of passion. Still, it would have been nice if he’d displayed a little distress, a hint. At least for form’s sake.

  Instead, he said, “Well, okay, Luce. I understand. Listen, I’ve got a conference call in a few minutes, but give me a call when you get to DC, okay? We’ll do lunch.”

  Well, good riddance. The next guy I let myself get involved with would be the polar opposite of Terry Boyle. He would be kind, strong, smart, funny, loving, passionate, and, most important, available. He wouldn’t live more than ten miles from me, twenty at the most, because the thought of being farther from me than that would be agony, for both of us.

  That would be part of the passion. It would be a thing we shared for life and for each other. I wouldn’t settle for less. Not anymore. That was another thing that Alice’s death had taught me, that life is short and time is too precious to waste or to spend going through the motions.

  And if I couldn’t have the real thing with someone who was genuinely available, then I’d just as soon abstain, thank you very much.

  And since Washington is a thousand miles from Wisconsin, I couldn’t let myself get attached to Peter Swenson. I wouldn’t. No matter how much I liked how he kissed. And I did like it. Too much. Much too much.

  But I couldn’t tell him that.

  I took another step back and opened the door of my car.

  “I’ve been sniffling all week,” I said. “I think I’m coming down with something. I’d hate for you to catch it.”

  Chapter 26

  Growing up in Nilson’s Bay, I spent more than one Halloween trick-or-treating in snow boots and with a parka over my costume, so I knew how fortunate we were that the weather had continued to be cold but bright and sunny so late in November. But it wouldn’t last. The forecast was calling for storms early in the week.

  I spent the Saturday after Thanksgiving raking up the last few leaves so they wouldn’t rot underneath the snow and burn the lawn come spring, bleeding the outdoor faucets and wrapping them in old towels and plastic bags to make sure the pipes didn’t freeze, locating the shovels and ice scrapers, and making sure that the snowblower had plenty of oil and gas and that I still remembered how to start it. Once that was done, I drove to town for rock salt from the hardware store, groceries from the market, and movies from Redbox.

  I came home feeling pleased that I was ready to handle the winter’s icy blast and even a little excited about the prospect of snow. I decided to take a nice long walk along the lakeshore. It might be my last chance to do so for some time, maybe even forever, since I’d be selling the cottage in the spring.

  The trees were completely bare by now, stark and skeletal, but still beautiful, like pen-and-ink drawings superimposed upon a canvas of bright blue. I was wearing a sweater under my coat, gloves on my hands, and a thick pair of wool-blend socks inside my boots, so even though the temperature was hovering just above twenty degrees, I was perfectly warm.

  After cutting through the neighbors’ backyards, I reached the edge of the forest and the start of a trail that led to the far side of the bay. The trail, a deer path that had become more established when people started using it, wasn’t maintained by anyone, so I sometimes had to climb over rocks or fallen tree limbs to follow
it, but that was part of the attraction for me; it was a great workout.

  I walked for about two miles to a big fallen tree that hung out over the edge of the water. I climbed out onto the trunk to catch my breath and enjoy the view for a few minutes before turning around and retracing my route through the woods and then the yards that backed up to the shore. I was so entranced by the sight of the sun beginning to sink toward the water that I didn’t notice Daphne Olsen sitting outside in a lawn chair until I heard her calling out to me.

  “How’s the hand?” she asked, blowing out a column of cigarette smoke and gesturing with the wineglass she held.

  “Better,” I said. “The stitches come out soon.”

  “Good! So you’ll be able to start quilting again.”

  “Oh, I’m pretty sure that little escapade marked my first and last attempt at quilting. Thanks again for driving me to the hospital.”

  She dismissed my gratitude with a wave of her cigarette before putting it to her lips and taking another deep drag, making the tip glow orange. I walked across the grass toward her, trying not to look too surprised as I got closer and saw a half dozen chickens with rust-colored feathers milling about at her feet, pecking at something on the grass and also occasionally dipping their beaks into a wide-mouthed wineglass that was filled with golden-colored liquid that looked exactly like the liquid in Daphne’s glass.

  “Is that... ?”

  Daphne nodded and blew out another breath of smoke.

  “Cherry Riesling,” she confirmed and then looked down at the birds. “I get it from the winery in Fish Creek. Pairs well with macaroni and cheese. They’ve got a lingonberry wine, too, but that’s got a little too much bite for me. We like our wine a little on the sweet side. Don’t we, girls?”

  She put her cigarette between her lips, took a couple of potato chips from a little bowl she was holding on her lap, then crushed them between her fingers and tossed them on the grass, creating a flurry of flapping and excited clucking.

  “You give your chickens wine? And potato chips?”

  “Uh-huh. Every day after work I come out here with my chair, my chips, and my wine and have happy hour with the girls. At least when the weather is decent,” she said. “This’ll probably be our last happy hour until spring.”

  I watched, fascinated, as the biggest hen pushed one of the smaller ones away from the glass and dipped her beak several times in succession.

  “Can that be good for them?”

  “Well,” Daphne said, taking a quick puff of her cigarette, “I’ve lost plenty of chickens to foxes, but not a one to booze. So far. But Matilda here might prove to be the exception.”

  She nudged the fat hen away from the glass with her foot. “Get away from there, Tilda. You big hog. Give somebody else a chance, why don’tcha?”

  The hen clucked softly and waddled unsteadily away in search of more potato chip crumbs. Daphne tilted her head far to one side, squinting through the sunlight to see me.

  “The way I look at it, the girls work hard and so do I. We all deserve our little pleasures, don’t we? If that means we end up shaving a little time off the clock, then so be it.” She inhaled deep and long, then tilted her head back and blew smoke slowly, almost delicately, through the curve of her lower lip. “We all end up under the dirt eventually. Or in the pot. Any way you look at it, every goose gets cooked in the end.”

  “You work at the . . .” I paused, almost but not quite able to recall what she’d told me during my pain-pill-fogged attempt at small talk on the drive home from the hospital.

  “The minimart out on the highway,” she said. “But that’s just during the cold weather. In the summer, I’m a flagger for a road crew. Miserable work, but the pay is good.”

  “That’s right,” I said, wincing with self-annoyance. “You told me before. I should have remembered.”

  She shrugged and dropped her cigarette butt onto the grass before grinding it out with her shoe. “You were kind of out of it during the drive home.”

  “Those pills they gave me were way too strong.”

  “Speaking of medication,” she said, lifting her glass, “would you like a drink? There’s half a bottle left in the kitchen.”

  I hate Riesling. Of course, I’d never tried the cherry variety, but I was pretty sure I’d hate that even more.

  “Oh, thanks. But I’m sure you’ve got better things to do than sit here with me.”

  “Not for a while. Juliet makes dinner on Saturdays when I work—always the same thing, macaroni and cheese with hot dogs—but it’s great not to have to cook after I’ve been on my feet ringing up blue raspberry slushies and lottery tickets all day. Really,” she said, nodding toward a nearby stump, “pull up a chair and stay a while. It’d be nice to have an adult conversation before I have to go inside and referee my kids.”

  She sighed. “Lucy, you are looking at the Midwestern distributor of female children. And every single one of them is going through a stage. That’s the polite word for it—a stage. I could come up with a few more choice expressions, but I don’t know you well enough for that yet. Are you sure you don’t want a drink?”

  I shook my head, but sat down on the stump. Daphne took a sip from her glass and then, seeing that Matilda was about to belly up to the bar again, reached down and poured the contents of the other glass out onto the ground.

  “You have had enough,” she scolded. “You big lush.”

  The bird turned her head to the side, glaring at Daphne with one beady eye, and then tottered off.

  “So I was wondering about your girls,” I said. “I mean your daughters, not your chickens. Very unusual names. Are you a big Shakespeare fan?”

  “I am! In high school the teacher made us read Julius Caesar and Romeo and Juliet. Except for the sex and the murder, everybody hated them. But not me. I just loved every word, even the ones I didn’t understand.”

  Eyes gleaming, she stared out at the horizon and recited, “ ‘My only love sprung from my only hate! Too early seen unknown, and known too late!’ ”

  She sighed and closed her eyes, as if savoring the lingering taste of poetry on her tongue.

  “I couldn’t get enough,” she said. “I went to the library and checked out every Shakespeare play I could find, the tragedies, the comedies, and the histories. The sonnets, too, every single one of them.”

  “Does your . . .” I was about to say “husband,” but then I remembered that, during the drive, Daphne had told me she wasn’t married. Never had been. “Does the girls’ father like Shakespeare as much as you?”

  Daphne lit up a new cigarette and took a long drag, as if she needed to think awhile before deciding what or how much she could share with me.

  “Juliet’s father was a lance corporal in the Marines. I met him at a dance and lived with him for two weeks before he shipped out. The only thing I ever saw him read was Mad magazine. I met Viola’s father at a biker bar. I’m not sure he knew how to read.”

  She gave me a wry smile and tapped her finger against the top of the cigarette, even though there wasn’t enough ash to flick away yet.

  “Ophelia’s father worked on the construction crew with me, came up from Arizona for the season to run the paver. He read the Weekly Standard. At the end of the season, he went back to Arizona. Turned out he had a wife he kind of forgot to mention. Two-timing jerk. I’d never have given him the time of day if I’d known about that.

  “Now, Portia’s father was different,” she said and took another quick drag before going on. “Very smart guy. He ran the Tilt-A-Whirl ride at a carnival. I met him at an Oktoberfest. You remember how those rides look? All painted red with kind of a half dome over the top, so you can’t really see inside? Well, he rigged up some kind of remote control device so he could start or stop the ride without having to actually be at the controls. That way, if it was after hours and nobody was around, he could just hop into one of the cars, bring along a friend, and ride as long as he wanted.”

  She put her
smoke between her lips, moving her head slowly from side to side, and inhaled. “Let me tell you, that man could go a long time. It was impressive.”

  “Wait a minute.” I laughed. “Are you saying that Portia . . .”

  Daphne nodded. “. . . was conceived on a Tilt-A-Whirl. Uh-huh.”

  My jaw went slack. I was sure she was kidding. I waited for her to wink or laugh, but she just kept on talking as if her admission were nothing out of the ordinary.

  “Tony read books, real books. Hemingway.” Her lips flattened into a line. “Well, that tells you all you need to know, doesn’t it? Biggest misogynist in literature. One of them.” She shook her head. “Anyway, Tony left with the carnival. I’d always known he would.”

  “But if you knew he was going to leave . . .” I paused, frowning, still not quite sure if I really understood or believed what I was hearing.

  “Why did I let myself get mixed up with him in the first place? Because I don’t really care for men,” she said simply.

  “Oh, sure, listening to me talk, knowing that I have four daughters by four different fathers, you probably think I’m a great big slut. But those four men were the only men I’ve ever been with and the sum total of my encounters with them can be counted on both hands and two toes. And half of those were with the Marine. Either I cared more about him than the others or I got more self-control as I got older.”

  I leaned forward, resting my elbow on my knee and propping my chin in my hand as I sorted out the math in my head.

  If Daphne had had only four lovers in sixteen years, then our love lives were on a pretty even pace. I’d actually had one more boyfriend than she had. And even with the challenges of time and distance that marked nearly all my relationships, my physical encounters with my boyfriends had been significantly more numerous than Daphne’s.

  But hers sounded a lot more interesting.

  A Marine. A biker. A burly construction worker with big biceps and a tight T-shirt. A hard hat. A tan.

  Okay, maybe the philandering construction guy hadn’t had a tan. Or big biceps. Daphne hadn’t actually described what the man who had fathered Ophelia looked like, but I was pretty sure that he and all the rest of them were a lot more masculine, capable, and passionate than Terry Boyle or any of the slick suits I’d dated in the last sixteen years.