Summer with My Sisters (28 page)

E
vie was at The Clamshell and the other women were in the kitchen. Poppy had suggested—rather strongly—that they give the inside of the drawers, fridge, and cupboards a good cleaning and reorganizing. That morning she had found an empty box of cereal put neatly away in the cupboard, a moldy lime in one of the vegetable bins, and the night before she had discovered that the good corkscrew her father had preferred had gone missing from the silverware drawer, where it usually lived.

“Where’s Ian?” Allie asked, removing the contents of the junk drawer in search of the missing corkscrew. “Not that he would be of any help to us.”

“Definitely not communing with nature.” Daisy laughed. “You should have seen him running away from a bee yesterday. It was hilarious.”

“Bee stings can be fatal,” Poppy pointed out, as she combined into one box two half-empty boxes of pasta shells. “Maybe he’s allergic.”

Daisy shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. He didn’t get stung.” “But he’s given me hives. Look.” Violet pushed up the right sleeve of her dress and held out her arm.

“What?” Poppy cried. “Has he touched you?”

Violet sighed and lowered her sleeve over the red and white lumps. “You don’t get hives from touching someone, Poppy. It’s just—
him
. I’m having an allergic reaction to him. My body is displaying my discomfort at his being in my home. Our home.”

Oh,
Poppy thought.
Is that all?

“He is kind of an idiot,” Daisy added. “No offense.”

“Of course not! Just that the guy I—”

Allie frowned. “Don’t say the guy you’re in love with, because you’re not, are you?”

“No,” Poppy said adamantly. “I was never in love with him.”

“The guy you used to have casual, meaningless sex with.”

“Violet!” Poppy cried. “How do you know . . . how do you know that we were romantically involved?”

Violet shrugged and looked up from the forks she was examining for water stains. “It’s not a secret, is it?”

“Is he even a friend, Poppy?” Daisy asked. “Seriously, he doesn’t treat you like a friend. He treats you like . . . like a lucky convenience. I can’t imagine Joel treating me that badly. And if he ever did, that’s the end of the friendship.”

“Thank you all,” Poppy said, hoping no one would miss the note of sarcasm in her voice, “for pointing out my poor judgment in character!”

“We’re not saying he’s bad or dangerous,” Allie said. “He’s no Lord Byron. He’s just a waste of your time. And it’s not the first time I’ve said it. Hey, I found the corkscrew!”

“I’m dying to shave his beard off some night when he’s asleep,” Daisy admitted. “Do you think we could drug him and then when he wakes up and finds his beard gone we could act all innocent and deny we had anything to do with it?”

Allie laughed. “Probably not a good idea.”

“It would violate the laws of hospitality,” Violet said. “Plus it would be like bullying and that’s always wrong.”

Daisy shrugged. “I know. Hey, Poppy? Why did you hang out with Ian in the first place? Really, I’m not trying to be challenging or obnoxious. I just want to know. Oh, ick, this milk has turned.”

“I don’t know,” Poppy admitted as Daisy poured the offending milk down the sink. “He knew—he knows—a lot of people. Musicians, mostly. And artists. Well, not professional artists. People who worked in interesting shops. We went to a lot of parties. He took me to these hip clubs and cafés. He . . .”

Poppy couldn’t go on. She was acutely aware of how pathetic that all must have sounded and the identical look on her sisters’ faces confirmed it. Allie, she knew, had probably long since figured out the nature of her relationship with Ian—that she had been using Ian (however unconsciously) for his connections, such as they were—and repaying him by being the gorgeous girl on his arm. The relationship had been an exchange of goods and services, not a real emotional exchange. How careless and wasteful she had been with her precious time!

“We all form bad relationships in this life,” Allie said briskly. “We all regret some of the friends we’ve made. The point is to learn a lesson from our mistakes and to move on.”

Yes, Poppy thought. It was time to move on. So much was becoming clear to her about what she wanted, at least in her personal life. She thought then about Jon. She hadn’t seen or heard from him since she and Ian had run into him on Main Street. And she thought of how lucky Julie and Mack were to have found each other before time gave either the chance to make terrible mistakes. Once upon a time Poppy used to think that all experience was for the good, but now she wasn’t so sure....

Daisy poked her arm. “Earth to Poppy.”

“Sorry,” Poppy said. “I was just thinking.”

“I know.” Daisy grinned. “I could smell the wood burning.”

Poppy swatted Daisy. “Ha, ha! Very funny little sister. Very funny.”

“B
ertie and I missed you.”

“I’m sorry. I missed you, too.” Daisy was way too embarrassed to admit to Mrs. Wilkin that she had quit her volunteer position in a fit of pique. They were alone in the Wilkins’ apartment. Daisy had brought Muriella a box of scones Allie had made that morning. It was the least she could do, she thought, after having abandoned her friends.

Mrs. Wilkin looked closely at Daisy. “I hope all is right at home,” she said. “With your sisters.”

“Everything’s fine,” Daisy assured her. “I just didn’t have a ride for a while, so . . . Tell me what’s been going on here? Is that guy Tom still cheating at checkers?”

“Tom is dead,” Mrs. Wilkin stated flatly. “He passed about ten days ago. I’m afraid Bertie’s yet to find another lying checkers partner.”

“I’m sorry,” Daisy said, and she was sorry.

“There’s already someone new in Tom’s room,” Mrs. Wilkin told her. “People keep dying and people keep replacing the dead.”

Daisy thought Muriella sounded sad, even angry. It
had to
make you angry at times, when your mature self-composure and sense of resignation slipped and you knew that you didn’t have very long left in this world. It must make you furious, Daisy thought. And there was nothing you could do about it.

“Where is Mr. Wilkin now?” she asked.

Muriella sighed. “He went for a walk on the grounds.”

“You didn’t want to go with him? We could go and find him if you like.”

Muriella shook her head. “I think he needed to be alone. Funny, isn’t it, that even near the end, when you’d think all that people would want to do is to cling to whoever is left, they sometimes need to be alone.”

Daisy felt a terrible urge to make up an excuse for having to leave—she had never witnessed Mrs. Wilkin in such a mood and it depressed her—but she fought the urge with all her might. She was going to be a doctor someday. And that meant she was going to have to deal with all sorts of people in all stages of life, young and old, healthy and ill. It was important and it was what she was meant to do.

“Tell me again about the trip you and Mr. Wilkin took to China when he retired,” she said, moving her chair a bit closer to Mrs. Wilkin so that she could take her hand. “You have such wonderful stories.”

T
he Higgins sisters and Allie were in the sunroom, which was anything but sunny. Rain had been coming down in sheets all afternoon and every lamp in the room was lit against the gloom.

Violet was reading a book on astrology and drinking yet another cup of that decaf green tea she had become so fond of. Daisy was working on a crossword puzzle, her pen flying. Allie was once again attempting to get through one of Oliver Higgins’s books, a deep frown of concentration on her face. Poppy was thinking about Daisy’s friend Evie. She liked Evie. She had no problem doing small favors for her, like driving her to The Clamshell, even in a rainstorm. Evie was an excellent houseguest and more than repaid any kindness Poppy showed to her. Still, over the past week Poppy had caught a few inconsistencies in Evie’s brief tale of herself and was beginning to suspect that something was not quite right. For example, she could have sworn that Evie had said she grew up in Winter Lake, which was a town in Vermont, but then, just that morning, she had heard Evie tell Ian that she had grown up in Crookville, which was a town in New Hampshire. Both couldn’t be true. Unless of course at some point Evie and her parents had moved from Vermont to New Hampshire. And there was another thing. Poppy had been in the study a few days earlier, leafing through one of her mother’s coffee table art books, when Evie had come in.

“I’m sorry,” she had said. “Am I disturbing you?”

“Of course not,” Poppy assured her. “Hey, do you know French? I took Spanish in school. I don’t know what this phrase means.” She turned the book toward Evie and pointed to the words.

Evie shook her head. “No,” she said. “I have no idea. Sorry.” And then she had left. The odd thing was that yesterday Poppy had gone into the study in search of her phone only to find Evie settled in an armchair, reading a hardbound book. She hurriedly thrust the book between her leg and the arm of the chair but not before Poppy had seen the title.
Le Colonel Chabert,
by Honoré de Balzac. And she recognized the volume as one of her parents’ collection of novels in the original French. She hadn’t commented on this to Evie, only glanced around for her phone and gone away. But the incident had been bothering her. . . .

“Penny for your thoughts?” Allie asked.

Poppy looked up to see that Allie had addressed the question to her. “Actually,” she said, “I was thinking about Evie.”

Daisy dropped her pen. “What about her?” she said, snatching it from the floor.

“Well, she hardly ever talks about her home or her family or her friends. And when she does tell us something it doesn’t always match what she’s told us before. Do you think she’s hiding something?”

“Yes,” Violet said promptly.

Poppy nodded. “So it’s not only me. I wonder if she is who she says she is.”

Daisy leaned forward in her chair. “Of course she’s who she says she is,” she said emphatically. “Why would she be lying?”

“To confuse anyone who was trying to find the truth about her,” Violet said matter-of-factly. “Like when her birthday is.”

“No,” Daisy said. “I don’t believe it.”

“I think,” Allie said, “that Poppy is probably right. Evie is hiding something. But then again, do you know anyone who isn’t? Secrecy isn’t necessarily a bad thing.”

Poppy sighed. “Well, I guess it doesn’t matter what went before. Evie’s a nice person and she’s a good houseguest. Unlike Ian.”

“Right,” Daisy said. “And that’s all that should matter. By the way, when is The Bearded Wonder leaving?”

“Soon,” Poppy promised, and she meant it. “Very, very soon.”

“I
an,” Poppy said, “you need to leave.”

Ian looked up from the pile of pancakes he was rapidly consuming. “Why?” he asked, his mouth full.

“Because I told you to,” Poppy said, wiping up a bit of spilled maple syrup from the countertop. “Honestly, I don’t know why I invited you to come here.”
Because I was weak
.
A pushover
.
But not anymore.

Ian swallowed, took a slug of coffee, and smiled. “Because we’re friends.”

Did he really believe that, Poppy wondered. Could he? “No, Ian,” Poppy said. “We’re not. I don’t think we ever were.”

Ian said nothing for a moment as he wiped his mouth and beard of pancake crumbs. “You know,” he said, putting his crumpled napkin next to his plate, “now that we’re on the subject, you kind of asked me here under false pretenses.”

“What do you mean?”

Ian laughed unpleasantly. “You know exactly what I mean. I thought we’d be sleeping together, but then you stick me on the couch in the study. What’s that about?”

Poppy knew she shouldn’t be surprised by this caveman-ish attitude, but she was. Surprised and somewhat sickened. “Ian,” she said, her voice higher than it needed to be, “we haven’t been—involved—for almost a year! Why would you ever think I was going to sleep with you?”

“Since when did you get all Puritan?” he shot back.

Suddenly, Poppy was overcome by an anger so intense it frightened her. “You never even sent me or my family a card!” she cried.

“What?”

Poppy took a deep breath. It wouldn’t do to have a stroke over Ian’s emotional negligence. “When my father died,” she said more calmly. “You never even sent us a sympathy card. What sort of friend is that?”
The sort of friend I never should have allowed in my life—or in my home.

Ian laughed again. “You’ve got to be kidding. Those things don’t matter. Greeting cards, all those made-up holidays, they’re all just money-making scams.”

“Those things
do
matter,” Poppy argued. “They matter to
me
and if you really knew me even a little you would have understood that. Allie knew that. She came to the funeral. She’s a real friend.”

“The way you go on about Allie.” Ian squinted at her. “Are you two doing it or something? Is that why you banished me to the study?”

“You make me sick, Ian.”

Ian pushed away from the counter, the legs of the stool scraping on the tile floor. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll pack my bags and leave tomorrow morning. I made a date with this girl I met last night.”

“I want you to leave this afternoon,” Poppy said firmly.

Ian shrugged and stalked off toward the study, presumably to pack, and Poppy made a vow not to lay eyes on him again. And she would apologize profoundly to her sisters and to Allie for bringing him into their home.

Poppy scraped the remains of Ian’s breakfast into the trash and put the dish, cup, and silverware into the dishwasher. When she turned back toward the counter she spotted the letter from the scholarship committee at Adams College. Really, she thought, what was the harm in accepting the offer? If after some time she did feel she was in over her head or too uncomfortable among the scholarly types she could always quit, having at least the satisfaction that she had made the effort. She pulled her cell phone from her pocket and made the call.