The Sisters (45 page)

Rainey was trying to work out the meaning of the three letters—
F
,
M
,
B
—when Lynn touched her mother’s arm and nodded at what stood on the other side of the gravel road. “It gets worse.” There was no missing that what served as a mailbox was an immense knight’s helmet, gleaming green and at least three times the size any ordinary man might wear. It bore the same images as on the shield, only smaller and painted in red edged with gold, with the practical addition of a delivery address.

“Ha!” cried Taylor. “The Green Knight!”

The women in the front seat ignored her. “Think of the poor guy stuck with this route,” Rainey said. “Having to lift up that visor and shove his hand in just to deliver the mail.”

The gravel drive was so long Rainey was on the point of turning back when she saw the house—tiny, made of weather-grayed stone, like hermits’ houses in fairy tales. The two barns, one behind and one to the left of the house, were far larger. The barn on the side was the newer one—Ken and Grace had built it themselves and painted it a ferny green instead of traditional red, so it blended with the woods that encircled the property and stretched beyond sight. The older barn, as old as the house, was tar black, and, though taller and wider than the stone dwelling, the barn would have been nearly invisible behind it, easily mistaken for a hollow in the woods, were it not for the slender windows that wrapped the building just below the roofline.

Rainey recalled now that this was Grace’s workshop. She hadn’t really looked at it on the day of the funeral, but she remembered Grace’s excitement over the phone, just after it was finished: “You have to see it. We took out the loft so the whole center fills with light all day. We’re building worktables and benches with the wood from the loft floor. It was all Ken’s idea.”

“It must get awfully hot with so many windows,” Rainey said.

“Oh, no,” Grace insisted. “You’ll see that when you come. The afternoon sun filters through the trees. It’s perfect.”

Rainey could sense Grace waiting for her to say something else, but she couldn’t think of a thing. Not one thing. Far from planning a visit to that godforsaken place, back then she was still waiting for Grace to come to her senses, leave Ken, and get on with her life.

“He’s good to me, Mom,” Grace said to the silence. “Ken loves me.”

Yes, Rainey now thought. Loved her so much that not a year later he went and killed himself. She still despised him for hurting her daughter that way, leaving Grace to deal with the shock and embarrassment of his suicide. Disloyal, that’s what it was. Selfish.

How she had longed to wrap Grace in her arms then like an infant and carry her back home to Newman to take care of her. But Grace had not wanted her comforting. Four or five times since then, Rainey had been on the point of giving Grace her father’s potsherd—the jagged little triangle with its faded black lines, diverging paths—but the moment had never seemed right. Why, she couldn’t say. Rainey loved her younger daughter more than anyone else in this world, but Grace remained a mystery to her, a puzzle she would live out her life without ever solving.

Two immense white dogs, their coats stuck all over with bits of twigs, leaves, and mud, leapt around the car and barked, their noses high in the air. Lynn sighed in irritation, Taylor tapped at the window, calling, “Hey, doggies!” while Rainey sat rigid, her fingers white-knuckled around the steering wheel. What was Grace thinking, letting those beasts run loose like that?

Grace came jogging down the path from the house, calling, “I’ve got them!” She whistled and the dogs bounded toward her. Somehow she made them sit, lie down, then rise and follow her in relaxed walks toward a fenced area where thick straw lay around a pair of doghouses. Once past the gate, Grace pointed at the openings to each of the doghouses, and the dogs went in, turned around, and poked their heads out to wait for Grace to hug each of them around the neck and plant kisses on their giant brows.

Only after Grace had twice tugged at the gate to prove the latch was secure did Rainey open her car door. She was barely on her feet when she was nearly knocked off them again by Grace’s running hug. “Hi, Mom!” While Rainey brushed dog hair and God knows what else off her blouse, Grace turned to her sister. “Lynn, I’m so glad you’re here!” Rainey watched as her elder daughter awkwardly patted Grace’s back.

“Now,” said Grace, holding her arms open to Taylor. “Here’s our family star!”

They clapped each other in a tight hug, rocked together, then pulled back to smile into each other’s faces, and, as if signaling in secret code, they began to giggle and jump, arms still locked.

“Let me in!” cried a young voice, and a slim girl with what appeared to be shining blue hair sprinted towards them.

Grace and Taylor opened their arms to the girl and the three linked hands and pulled one another around in a circle.

“Whoo!” cried Grace. “I have to stop.” And she did stop—abruptly—pulling her laughing companions onto the ground with her.

Rainey and Lynn stood over the group, staring at the girl with the blue hair. She flashed a smile at them and held out her hand for someone to pull her up. “It’s a coif. I made it—almost all of it,” she said. “Grace helped me get the shape right.” When she twisted her head back and forth, the light caught the electric blue links, turning her into a sparkling waterfall.

“Isn’t it heavy?” Lynn asked, for something to say.

“Lift the end,” said the waterfall, leaning her head toward Lynn. “It’s titanium. Very light—but strong.”

“I’m Lynn.”

“I figured.” The girl bowed. “I’m Sarah. And you’re Aunt Rainey. I mean Great-Aunt Rainey.”

Seeing Rainey’s look of alarm, Grace put her hands on Sarah’s shoulders and said, “We’ve been working on a family tree. For Girl Scouts, so Sarah’s trying to get all the labels right.”

They all turned toward the sound of an approaching car. “Grandma!” Sarah darted toward it and started chattering at the window before Alma had completely stopped.

As Lynn had only a moment before, Alma expressed her worry about the weight of the coif, whether it would damage Sarah’s fine blond hair or scratch her scalp.

“Do take it off, sweetheart,” Alma said. “We’ll get a wig stand so you can put it up in your room. It’s really just meant to be looked at.”

“I want to wear it all the time,” said Sarah. “It’s pretty.”

“No, Sarah.” Alma was already lifting the head covering, catching the clinging hairs in her fingers to keep them from pulling out. She’d barely slept for the last eleven days, worrying what Grace might lead Sarah into. Today at last she could collect her child and begin restoring a little order. Not that she didn’t think Grace meant well—Alma was sure she did—but her niece had never been a mother and couldn’t be expected to know when she was getting carried away.

There was nothing to do about it, of course, but facing this particular truth was a disappointment to Alma. She should have trusted her first impulse, the impulse that cried
No!
when Sarah had brought up the idea of spending time with Grace. As part of her strategy to get her way, Sarah had pulled up Grace’s Web site on the computer and then made Alma sit beside her at the desk. “Look,” Sarah had said, pointing to the screen, “she let all these Girl Scouts blog about the things they did there. In a week, I could earn enough badges to go up two ranks—easy!” Looking at Sarah in that moment, a child on the verge of adulthood, Alma had taken herself in hand, recalling that it was she who had urged Sarah to become a Scout, with the hope that her granddaughter might grow into a responsible young woman. She would simply have to stand aside and let Sarah do this.

So Alma had made the long drive from Ohio to drop Sarah off. She’d even stayed overnight in Grace’s little house, doing her best to behave as if it were a charming country inn rather than the primitive hut it more closely resembled. During the visit, she had chatted with her niece and smiled, admiring what she had the strength to admire—like a blossoming pear tree in the front yard—keeping her fears to herself. But she had concealed her hopes, as well.

On her next birthday, Alma would be seventy-eight, and while she remained in good health, she had to face facts. Gordon had died suddenly eight years ago. What if something like that happened to her? What would become of Sarah? Ever since they’d been released from prison—Penny after eighteen months and Milton after three years—her son and daughter-in-law had suffered the twice-yearly visits to Sarah as if these were extensions of their sentences. And while Alma had taught Sarah to behave warmly toward her parents, she knew the child felt nothing for them because they made it so clear they felt nothing for her.

Who was she to look to? After Milton was arrested, the news spread all over the state, and on the day Alma and Gordon returned to McAllister to make final arrangements for selling the house, people stared at them from a distance, whispering to each other and nodding toward them. Then, when the trials were over and her son and daughter-in-law had gone to serve their sentences, Alma and Gordon had taken Sarah and moved to a simple house in a town they’d picked randomly from an Ohio state map. It had been impossible to make friends. Those first several months, whenever she would fill out papers in a doctor’s office or write a check at the grocery or print her name on a raffle ticket, she felt sure the person behind the desk or the cash register or in the booth at the fair was looking hard at her name, was longing to know but trying not to ask if it was really her—the mother of Milton Crisp, convicted and sentenced for insurance fraud.”

By the time Alma realized the case was not so widely known as she had imagined, she had been marked by her new neighbors as prim and standoffish. It was a small town, and labels were hard to overcome. Once or twice, she had suggested to Gordon that they invite a few people in for coffee or dinner, but he’d just glared at her, fixed another drink, and started again on his lecture about all the ways she had gone wrong with Milton and all the ways she was sure to go wrong with Sarah.

People at Sarah’s school and the parents of other children were nice enough to her granddaughter, but there was no question the child had suffered from Alma’s lack of social connections—around others, Sarah was clumsy with pleasantries, fidgety, liable to blush without reason. The Girl Scouts had helped with that, but then as Alma had watched Sarah begin to find her way, she had begun to worry about the future. No matter how kind a teacher or Scout leader or friend’s mother might be, they couldn’t be relied on to look after Sarah. If Sarah was not to be lost to foster care, Alma had to think of family—but what family? She’d never seen eye-to-eye with Rainey, and though she admired Lynn’s drive, her elder niece had provided only the most grudging help years ago when Alma needed her. There was no one except Grace.

With Sarah beside her now, dragging her toward the others, breathlessly reciting all the things she’d done on the farm, Alma felt glad her girl was happy, but also dismayed to recognize that Grace—her one hope—several years past forty, was just an overgrown girl, clearly not at all a suitable guardian for Sarah. Not permanently.

Grace’s hug caught Alma by surprise, and when she managed to release herself from the embrace, she nodded her hellos to Lynn and Rainey. Grace’s gesture was only more evidence of how childlike she was—unable or unwilling to recognize that hugs were too intimate to be proper greetings among family become strangers.

But—seeing them now, together. When Sarah looked at Grace, she beamed. And Grace beamed back.

“Aunt Alma,” Lynn said, drawing forward a beautiful, caramel-skinned girl. “This is Taylor. My daughter.”

As Grace led them toward the house, the women asked each other about their general health, the length of the drive, the price of gas, and whether it might rain tomorrow or the next day.

“Sarah,” Grace said, draping her arm around the girl’s shoulders, “how about if you show everybody around? I want to borrow Taylor for a few minutes.” She smiled at the others. “Sarah knows the place almost as well as I do now.”

Sarah, clearly delighted with her task, announced she would begin her tour at the duck pond and motioned for the others to follow her.

“Lynn, wait,” Grace called. She jogged a few yards to a covered porch and brought back a pair of rubber clogs, the once-brilliant yellow stained with dirt. “My garden clogs,” she said, offering them to her sister. “I don’t want you to ruin your shoes.”

Lynn hooked her finger into one of the clogs and held it, dangling, at arm’s length.

“They’re clean,” Grace said. “I hosed them down this morning.” She laid the other clog at her sister’s feet, then turned to Taylor and took her hand. “Come with me to the workshop.”

When Grace pulled open the wide door to the old barn, Taylor blinked in the light and then stood openmouthed, her eyes traveling the walls, covered nearly to the high windows with pieces of armor.

“It’s mostly commission work,” Grace said. “Pays the upkeep on this place.”

Taylor traced the intricately etched design on a silver breastplate. “It was your husband’s, wasn’t it? The house, I mean. Mom told me.”

Grace nodded and said, “That’s a French pattern. See the fleur-de-lis?”

“And you made all this?”

“And more. But then, I’ve been doing it for years.” She gestured toward a dull shape that hung beside the door, so different from everything else in the shop, Taylor had to ask what it was. “That’s my first piece.”