Summer with My Sisters (27 page)

“T
hat chili really was amazing. And the salad wasn’t bad, either. Funny, I’ve never been into salads before. All that cold green lettuce.”

Daisy laughed. “With all the good stuff Allie adds to a salad it’s not even like eating a salad!”

Evie and Daisy were in Poppy’s old room. Evie’s room now. For a while. Poppy had given permission for Evie to take down the old poster of the boy band and she had. Otherwise, Evie hadn’t changed anything and she wouldn’t. It wasn’t really her room to—to inhabit.

“Your house is really great,” she said now to Daisy. “It’s like a manor house in some wonderful movie.”

“To the manor born. Why do I know that expression? I must have read it somewhere.”

“I used to like to read,” Evie said. “Well, I guess I still do. Or would. If—”

“If what?”

Evie shrugged. “If things were different. If my mind wasn’t so busy all the time with practical stuff.”

“Well, here’s a good thing. While you’re staying with us you don’t really have to worry about practical stuff—not much, anyway—so you can do all the reading you want.”

Evie smiled. Maybe, she thought, there were some foreign-language books in the sunroom or the study. That would be awesome.

“Um, is this really all you have?” Daisy asked. “What we picked up at Nico’s yesterday? I don’t mean anything insulting by that. . . .”

“I know. And yeah, it’s just the stuff I brought with me when I . . . But I don’t really care. Things don’t mean a lot to me. Possessions.”

“Really? They mean a lot to me. Some things, anyway. Look, come to my room. I want to show you something.”

Evie followed Daisy two doors down the hall, where Daisy took a square black box off a shelf of her bookcase. “It’s a conservation box. It helps keep old papers from rotting away. Here,” she added, handing Evie a pair of plastic gloves. “You don’t want any oil or dirt on your skin to get on the paper.”

Wearing her own pair of gloves, Daisy opened the box and lifted out a piece of yellowed paper. “This belonged to my mom,” she said. “We each chose something special of hers to keep when she died. Violet chose her gardening hat and Poppy took a bracelet. This is what I wanted.”

“What is it?” Evie asked, thinking of the locket she wore around her neck and gently touching the old paper. “I mean, it looks like a letter, but . . .”

“It is. It dates from the Civil War,” Daisy explained. “It was written by this woman, look, here’s her signature, Clementine Wallace, to her son, Abraham. He was a soldier in the Northern army.”

Evie squinted. “It’s kind of hard to read the handwriting.”

“I know. It’s pretty faded and people’s handwriting was different back then. But Mom could read it. Basically this woman, Clementine, is worried sick about her son. Listen to this line. ‘My beloved Abraham, I am sending you the shirt you asked me to mend, as well as a new pair of socks as I am sure such amenities are not to be had—’ The next word is too badly faded for me to make out. Even my mom couldn’t read it. Anyway, the next line reads: ‘Your brother recovers from an ague that kept him to his bed for nigh three weeks.’ ”

“What’s an ague?” Evie asked.

“It’s an illness, like a fever with chills and sweats. And then she goes on: ‘Every evening I stand by the front gate and look down the road in the fond hope that I will find you coming home to us.’ Can you imagine?” Daisy said, carefully replacing the letter in the box. “Knowing that your child is out there in awful conditions, getting shot at or stabbed with a bayonet. Getting dysentery. Having a limb cut off without anesthesia. And there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it but pray. If you believe in God and I think pretty much everybody did back then.”

“And nothing has really changed, has it?” Evie said after a moment. “I mean, parents love their children and children love their parents.”
Or they want to . . .

“Yeah. Look, I’m really sorry about your dad. I wish . . .”

“I know,” Evie said quickly, wondering how Daisy had possibly known what she was thinking. “Me, too. I think I’ll go see if Poppy needs any help with anything.”

Daisy laughed. “She’ll find some chore that needs doing! And if you run into Ian, don’t let him talk you into doing his laundry!”

Evie left Daisy’s room and went downstairs, noting as she went the pictures on the walls, the colors of the curtains, the pattern on the stair runner—all the details of the home that would be hers only for a time. She was reminded yet again of all that she had lost. And she had lied to Daisy yet again. Possessions
did
mean a lot to her, now more than ever, possessions and a place to come home to at the end of the day. Evie felt a rush of envy, followed by a wave of sorrow, followed finally by a fierce determination to regain a life of certainty.
I will have a home of my own again,
she vowed, as she went to find Poppy.
I will
.

T
he occupants of the Higgins house, both permanent and temporary, were seated at the table in the rarely used dining room. Allie had suggested to Poppy that they gather there for dinner just for the change.

“Besides,” she had said. “Our brood seems to be ever growing. We’re getting a bit crowded at the kitchen table.”

And that was a point. Poppy looked around at the others at the table. Except for one person she was happy they were all there together.

“If I were you,” Daisy was saying to Ian, “I’d be scared. You’re outnumbered in this house.”

“Because I’m a man?”

“Because you’re a guy,” Daisy corrected.

Ian didn’t seem to take offense. He poured another glass of wine and grinned. “I think I can take care of myself. Unless you’re like, The Witches of Willow Way.”

“Nothing is impossible,” Daisy shot back.

Poppy raised her eyebrows at her sister. Ian was, after all, a guest and that made him in some way vulnerable. It was the host’s job to protect her guest, not to attack him. No matter how obnoxious he was.

“What’s your sun sign?” Violet asked Ian. “I’m usually very good at telling that about someone, but with you, all I’m getting is static.”

Ian shrugged. “Not that I believe in all that stuff, but I’m Gemini.”

Violet frowned. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-eight.”

“Hmm. The Saturn return might explain it, but . . . No. It’s no use. I can’t get anything. It’s like you’re not really there or something.”

Ian addressed Poppy. “She’s a regular little sorcerer, isn’t she? Give her a few years to practice and you could put her on the stage.”

“Is everything mockery with you?” Daisy snapped.

Allie cleared her throat and shot a glance at Poppy.

“Why take life too seriously?” Ian countered.

“Because,” Violet said, “it doesn’t last very long. Because it’s precious and once life here on Earth is gone, it’s gone forever.”

“Live fast ’cause it don’t last. Right? Die young and leave a pretty corpse.”

Poppy cringed. She glanced at Daisy and then at Violet, both of whom seemed in a momentary state of shock.

“You should be ashamed of yourself,” Allie said, her tone icy.

Ian turned to Allie and laughed. “What? It’s from that old Blondie song. Die young and stay pretty. Live fast ’cause it don’t last.”

“Don’t you think,” Allie said, “that it’s a tad inappropriate given the circumstances?”

“Obviously not,” Violet replied, “or he wouldn’t have said it.”

“Really? I’m not so sure. I think he’s a—”

“Daisy,” Poppy began, but realized she couldn’t scold her sister for voicing what was probably also her own opinion. “Let’s change the subject, please, everyone.”

“So, what’s your story?” Ian asked Evie, who until now had been a spectator of the conversational chaos rather than a participant.

“Why does she have to have a story?” Daisy snapped.

“Everyone’s got a story,” Ian replied. “At least, a beginning and a middle. We won’t talk about the end because Poppy wants us to change the subject.”

“But why does she have to tell you?” Daisy persisted. “You’re a stranger. You don’t matter to her.”

Daisy, Poppy thought, could be fiercely loyal. She was like their father in that way. She could also be rude, and that was something of which Oliver Higgins had never been guilty.

“It’s all right, Daisy,” Evie said. Then she addressed Ian. “My story is simple. After I graduated from high school last year I decided to take some time off before college.”

“That’s it?” he asked.

“That’s it.”

“Fair enough,” Ian said. “Is there any more risotto?”

“No,” Daisy said flatly. “You had three servings, more than any of us got.”

Ian shrugged and tossed his napkin onto his empty plate. “So be it.”

Poppy realized something then. Daisy was itching for a fight, but she was never going to get one from Ian. He just didn’t care enough about what people thought about him to take offense. And that, Poppy thought, must be an . . . interesting . . . way to get through your life. It certainly was not how she and her sisters had been raised. They had been raised to care about their conduct and the reputation that would result. And that, Poppy thought, was a pretty wonderful thing. To care.

Y
es, Violet thought, as she, Evie, and Daisy were clearing the table after dinner. Evie Jones was keeping a very dark secret. She was hiding an almost unbearable sadness. Violet knew it as clearly and as certainly as she knew her own name and that Grimace preferred turkey to chicken. What she didn’t know at all clearly or certainly was if Evie’s secret, whatever it was, might bring harm to the Higgins family. And that must not happen, not after all her family had been through. What she also didn’t know was just how much of her secret Evie had shared with Daisy. Daisy definitely knew something—enough to make her leap to defend Evie against Ian’s questioning at dinner.

While the food had been really good—a mushroom risotto and one of Allie’s special salads—Violet had felt uneasy and unbalanced throughout the meal. When she got upstairs to her room she would meditate with a piece of aquamarine. But first, she would try to learn a little bit more about Evie Jones, the newest resident in the house on Willow Way.

“When’s your birthday, Evie?” Violet asked her, as she gathered the dirty napkins from around the table.

“March twenty-second.” Evie laughed and touched her hair as if the question made her nervous. “Oh my God, what made me say that? That’s my . . . That was my aunt’s birthday. How weird. My birthday was, I mean is, November eleventh.”

Daisy laughed a bit too loudly for the occasion, Violet thought. “I’m always forgetting things like that—dates, what day of the week it is. Do you know the other day I couldn’t remember my own phone number?”

Forgetting the day of the week was hardly the same as forgetting your own birthday, Violet thought. But she didn’t argue that. “That makes you a Scorpio,” Violet said to Evie. “Funny. I don’t see you as a Water Sign.”

Evie picked up a fork and dropped it back onto the table. “Oh?” she said, grabbing for the fork again. “I was never really into astrology, so . . .”

“Yes, you don’t seem like a Scorpio to me. You seem more like a Fire Sign. A Sagittarius or an Aries. Yes, an Aries, I think.”

Daisy frowned at her sister. “But it’s not like you’re an expert, Violet, right?”

“Obviously. It takes years and years of study to become a good astrologer. And you also have to have a gift. Do you have a special gift, Evie?”

Daisy looked at Evie and Evie looked down at the table. “No,” she said. “What sort of gift would I possibly have?”

Violet shrugged. “Any sort. Musical. Athletic. Maybe you’re really good with animals. Or with languages.”

“No,” Evie said, grabbing a stack of dishes from the table. “I have no gifts.” She left the dining room with Daisy following her closely.

Yes,
Violet thought.
Daisy’s friend is hiding something big.
And she hurried to her room where Grimace—and a big chunk of calming aquamarine—would be waiting for her.

E
vie had taken a shower before crawling into bed, her second of the day. It had been her habit since arriving in Yorktide, first at Nico’s house and now here at the house on Willow Way. It was as if she were making up for having been without a guaranteed source of running water those weeks she had been on the road. The grubbiness. The fear of being found repulsive and thrown out of a gas station convenience store. The thought of getting so dirty that it felt like bugs were crawling all over you.

Now, still warm from the hot water and smelling of coconut (there were three different types of hair conditioner in the shower caddy; Daisy had told her she could use whatever one she wanted), Evie held Ben to her chest and thought back to earlier in the evening. Poppy was seriously beautiful and it was so nice of her to allow Evie to stay with them for a while. Ian was kind of weird. She had never met anyone like him, so . . . So obnoxious. He was supposedly Poppy’s friend, but even she didn’t seem to like him all that much. Allie seemed very nice but a bit intimidating somehow. Maybe it was just because she was the most adult of the bunch, the one with the most experience, the one most likely to detect a lie.

Then again, Violet, who was only thirteen, seemed scarily able to hit on the truth. Evie
was
an Aries; her birthday really
was
March twenty-second. And how had Violet possibly guessed that Evie was good with languages? No doubt about it, she would have to be on her guard around Violet. She seemed very nice, not at all a vindictive type or someone out to make trouble, but you could never be sure. If only, Evie thought, she could lock this bedroom door when she left it. But she had noted that none of the interior doors in the house had locks. She would just have to be one hundred percent sure that she had any bit of evidence as to her true identity with her at all times. And that meant those old ID cards and the photo Daisy and Joel had found. About her friends’ promise to keep her identity a secret she felt reasonably sure. The real problem was that there were so many deceptions to keep straight. Why had she further complicated things by telling Daisy she was expecting a check from her mother’s estate? That was another lie. She would just have to be extra vigilant from now on, living amid the others in the house, and not allow a false sense of safety to dull her wits to the point where she made too many mistakes and was found out.

In spite of her agitation, the quietness of the night—there was no other house for almost a mile, Daisy had told her—the presence of other people just next door and down the hall, and the fact that there was an alarm system, lulled Evie into the first good, deep sleep she had had in what felt like years.