The Space Between Sisters (26 page)

“And that was it?”

“No.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Last year, I went to my ten-year high school reunion. And I saw this guy I'd had a crush on my junior year. He used to play the saxophone in the school orchestra.”

“So, he's a musician?”

“Now?” She smiled. “No, he's an insurance adjuster. I trusted him, though. I thought, ‘This guy's a good guy.' I could just tell. I mean, I didn't want to have a relationship with him. I just wanted to see if it could happen. So I asked him back to my apartment, and I told him this was a one-time thing, and he seemed okay with it. Later I was glad I asked him. Because it . . . it worked.”

“It worked?”

“It happened,” Poppy amended. “It was all right. It wasn't
great
. But I didn't freak out, either. I didn't want to see him again
afterwards—not that way, anyway—but I was okay with what happened. I was kind of testing the waters with him, I guess.”

There was a pause. “And me? Are you testing the waters with me?”

“God, no. This isn't some kind of experiment. Can't you tell that, Sam?”

He could tell. He could tell by the way she was looking at him right now. But that didn't mean that this should go any further tonight. “We don't need to do this, Poppy,” he said. “You know that, don't you? We can talk. Or sleep.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “No more talking.” And, as if to drive this point home, she placed her palms on his chest. She ran them, lightly, up and down. “We've talked enough for one night.”

Still, Sam hesitated, thinking about what she'd told him. He couldn't put it away now. It was too . . . too big. Too complicated. And it made him want to fix it, he realized. It made him want to make it right. But he couldn't. Not tonight, maybe not ever.

“Kiss me,” she said, softly, and the bedside table light seemed to be glowing all around her blond hair. He leaned in to kiss her. Maybe, he thought, maybe the best thing to do was to concentrate on the present. It was possible, he knew, in love as in life, to overthink things, to overanalyze them. What if all they needed to know right now was that they wanted each other, they cared about each other, and they trusted each other?

“I'll tell you what, Poppy,” he said now, savoring the silkiness of her skin against his. “We'll take it slowly. Very slowly. And if you want us to stop, at any time, you just say so. And we'll stop. Okay?”

“Okay,” she whispered.

L
ater, much later, as the morning sunlight began to slide, almost imperceptibly, over the bed they were lying in, Poppy tried to rouse herself. She'd been drowsing in and out of sleep, her cheek resting in the crook of Sam's neck, her arm thrown over his chest, and she had a vague sense of time passing, of seconds ticking by and minutes accumulating. She stirred in his arms, and tried to sit up, but her limbs felt so heavy,
so deliciously heavy,
that she gave up almost immediately and nestled against him instead.

“I can't move,” she murmured into his neck. She felt, rather than saw, him smile.

“So don't,” he said, tightening his arms around her.

“I'll have to, eventually,” she pointed out. She shifted her cheek, fractionally, so that it was now resting against the warm solidity of his chest. “I mean, I'll need to eat, won't I?”

“Hmmm,” he said, moving one of his hands to the small of her back. “I'll bring you breakfast in bed.”

“But then you'd have to leave me,” she objected, running a hand over his chest.

“You're right. I don't want to do that,” he said. He left one hand on the small of her back and raised the other hand up and ran it, languorously, through her hair. “Maybe we can get someone to bring us food.”

She smiled, stretched, and wondered, idly, how much longer they could reasonably stay here, hungry or not. “What time is it?” she asked, turning her head so that her lips could nuzzle his chest.

He took his hand out of her hair and lifted his watch up. “It's eleven thirty,” he said.

“Eleven thirty?”
She lifted her head up and stared at him in disbelief. “Don't you . . . don't you have to go to work?”

“Nope. I texted Byron early this morning and asked him to cover for me.”

“I don't remember you doing that.”

“You were sleeping, as I recall.”

“And you didn't wake me up?”

“No. Why would I have?”

“So we could have been doing something other than sleeping,” she said, raising herself on one elbow.

“We
had
been doing something other than sleeping.”

She smiled at his reference to their lovemaking. They had taken it slowly, at first, until Poppy hadn't wanted to take it slowly anymore. Her ardor had surprised her. Where had it come from? Had it been there all along, waiting for Sam? Maybe, she thought, remembering the skill and tenderness with which he had touched, and stroked, and kissed her. And suddenly she was impatient for more. She didn't want them to waste any time, and she told him that now.

He was amused. “Poppy,” he said, turning on his side so that
they were facing each other, with only a sheet covering them. “We still have four hours before I have to pick up my kids.”

“Four hours?
That's it?
”

“Yes, Poppy. Four hours. That's a long time.”

She shook her head. “It's not. Not when . . .”
Not when I've never made love like that before.
She tried to think of how to say this, but she didn't know how to. She'd never talked about sex with anyone before, not even Win.

But he was caressing her breasts now and she could feel her nipples hardening and the rest of her body tingling. He leaned down and ran a tongue over one nipple, and Poppy moaned and arched her back reflexively. She felt a rush of warmth spread through her whole body.

“Now, what were we talking about?” he said teasingly.

She smiled, but she didn't want to talk anymore. Still, he seemed to be waiting for some kind of an answer. “What I was
going
to say was that what happened last night was so . . .
so good,
” she said, moving her hands up into his hair and rumpling it. “I knew, of course, that it was
supposed
to be good, fantastic even, but hearing about it, and actually experiencing it? Those are two completely different things.”

Sam had been stroking the inside of her thighs, but now his hands stilled and his blue eyes were serious.

“What's wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing's wrong. I'm just . . . so sorry that happened to you,” he said, gently brushing hair off her face. “I wish I could make it . . . go away. Undo it.”

“I tried that, for a long time. I tried to make it go away. I tried to pretend it never happened. But it didn't work,” she said, reaching out to touch his face. “The talking about it, though, the
way we did last night, I think that might help.” She kissed him, tenderly, and then he ran his fingers through her hair, something she already knew he loved to do. And for a little while, as they held each other, it was as if everything else had dropped away from them. It was just the two of them, and this bed, and they had all the time in the world. Except that they didn't, of course. And as the tempo of their kissing changed, their hunger for each other returned.

“You're right, Poppy, four hours isn't a lot of time,” Sam said as he pulled away, and reached to open the bedside table drawer. But as he was doing this, Poppy, wanting him to hurry, made a small, impatient sound. He turned to look at her and smiled. He touched her hair, fanned out on the pillow around her. The noontime sunlight was pouring into the room now, filling it with a bright golden light.

“You are so beautiful. You know that, don't you?” he asked.

“People have told me that. But I've never felt that way before. Until right now.”

L
ater, Sam drove Poppy back to the Mosquito Inn to pick up Win's car. It was a lovely drive. The road was dappled with sunshine, and the warm breeze blowing onto Poppy's face through the open window was fragrant and sweet with the smell of wildflowers growing in the roadside ditches. The best part of the drive, though, was that for its entire duration, Sam kept a hand resting on her knee. It was a gesture that seemed to her to be both intimate and protective, and it had the added advantage, too, of carrying with it a faintly erotic charge. She could have quite happily spent the rest of her life driving down this road with Sam, she decided. The only caveat, of course, would
be that they would need to make frequent stops, pulling onto the abandoned logging roads that dotted the forest around them, and making love in the backseat.

Too soon, though, Sam was pulling into the Mosquito Inn's lot. “Well, Win's car is still here,” he said, stopping next to it. “That's a good sign.” And, with a final squeeze of her knee, he got out to inspect it. “It looks fine,” he said, turning to Poppy, who'd joined him. “A friend of mine got his tires slashed when he was parked here once, but it looks like you got lucky last night.”

“I certainty did,” Poppy said, with a mischievous smile. She faced him and slipped her hands into the back pockets of his blue jeans.

“Are you flirting with me?” Sam asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Definitely,” Poppy said.

He laughed and pulled her into his arms. “I miss you already,” he said. “Which reminds me . . .”

“Yes?”

“When can I see you again?”

“Soon,” she said, resting her cheek on his chest.

“How soon?”

“Very soon.”

“Good,” he said, pulling her closer. “I want to tell my kids that we'll be seeing each other. And I should give Alicia a heads-up, too. I told her I'd let her know if I had a girlfriend.”

“Okay,” she said, relishing the idea of being Sam's girlfriend. It was juvenile, perhaps, but she couldn't help it.

“I gotta get going,” he said then. “In case I hit traffic.” And he kissed her, a long, lingering kiss that felt more like a hello than a good-bye.

Afterwards, he opened the car door for her. “Drive carefully,” he said.

“I will,” she promised, as she slid behind the wheel.

But as she started to pull out of the parking lot, he called after her, “
Poppy!
You forgot something.” She stopped the car, and Sam brought her the urn with Sasquatch's ashes in it.

“Thank you. I can't believe I forgot this,” she said.

“What are you going to do with it?” he asked, leaning on the car.

“Well,” she said, setting the urn on the floor of the passenger side. “I was going to keep it on my bedside table, but now I'm not so sure. I might sprinkle the ashes near my grandmother's begonia garden out behind the cabin. That's where he used to like sunning himself in the late afternoon. He was happy there, I think.”

He smiled. “That sounds like a good place for them, then.”

W
hen Poppy pulled up to the cabin Win was sitting on the front porch steps waiting for her.

“Are you home already?” Poppy asked her, getting out of the car.

“I just got back,” Win said.

“You didn't need the car, did you?” Poppy asked.

“No-oo,” Win said, looking at Poppy a little strangely as she climbed up the steps.

“Well, I hope you weren't worried about me,” Poppy said, sitting down next to her. “I would have called you, but I thought . . .” She stopped.
“What?”
she said. “Why are you staring at me that way?”

“No reason.”

“Win.”

“
Okay.
I'm staring at you because I'm wondering where you were last night. I'm guessing it was in somebody's bed. And I don't think you were sleeping the whole time.”

“Is it that obvious?” Poppy asked, astonished.

“To me it is.”

“But, I mean, how can you tell?”

“Well, let's see. Your hair looks like you've been in a wind tunnel,” Win said, and Poppy immediately reached up to touch it. It was completely disheveled. It hadn't even occurred to her to try to do anything with it before she'd left Sam's house. “
And
you're not wearing a bra,” Win continued. Again, true. Poppy's bra was in her handbag.
“And . . .”
Win studied her. “This one's harder,” she said. “I can't quite describe it. You look . . .
glowy
. You look totally relaxed, the way you would after a night of, well . . . great sex.”

“And a morning, too,” Poppy said, laughing. She was surprised by her own openness.

“I want details,” Win said, playfully bumping her knee against Poppy's knee. “I mean it.”

“Um, all right,” she said. “Well, first of all, I was with Sam,” she began.

“I
hope
you were with Sam,” Win teased.

“And we met up at the Mosquito Inn—”

“What were you doing at that dive?”

“I didn't know it was a dive.”

“Poppy, someone got
stabbed
there last spring.”

“Oh.
That's
why the bartender wasn't that welcoming. I think he wanted me to leave, and I did, eventually, with a little help from Sam. But before that—”

“You know what?” Win said. “Skip this part. It's taking too long. Just cut to the bedroom. Or the kitchen, or the stairs, or wherever you were.”

“Win,” Poppy said, laughing. “We were in a bed.”

“Okay, so you don't get any points for creativity there. But keep going.”

“It was . . . it was amazing,” Poppy said, shaking her head.

“
That's it?
That's
all
you're going to give me? You talk to me
about your sex life, what,
once
in twenty-eight years, and you're going to use a single adjective to describe it?”

“I'm sorry,” Poppy said, tucking a strand of her wayward hair behind one ear. “It's nothing personal. I just don't know
how
to talk about it. You know that.”

“I know,” Win said. “But can you learn?”

“I'll try.” Poppy smiled. And then she yawned. “I promise, Win, I'll tell you more about it later. Right now, though, I'm starving.”

“Come on inside, then. There's some leftover pasta in the fridge.”

Poppy started to go, but something stopped her. She stood there for a moment, and then she sat back down on the step beside Win. She took a deep breath. She didn't want to do this, especially now. She was exhausted, for one thing. And it would completely dispel her blissful happiness, for another. But she knew it was necessary. Last night, she'd told Sam. And this afternoon, she would tell Win. She'd kept this secret from her sister long enough, and she understood now that in keeping it from her sister, she had somehow kept it from herself as well. But not anymore. Today was a new beginning for her, and she wanted it to start with the truth.

“Win, I need to tell you something,” she said now.

“About last night?” Win smiled.

Poppy shook her head. “No. It's about something that hap-pened . . . a long time ago.”

“Poppy, you look so serious.” Win frowned.

“That's because what I'm going to tell you
is
serious.”

“You're scaring me.”

“Don't be scared. It's going to be okay,” Poppy said, slipping her arm around Win's shoulders, and she wondered, as she did so, if her reassurance was as much for herself as it was for Win.

F
ifteen minutes later, Poppy and Win had moved inside the cabin and were sitting together on the living room couch. Poppy was crying. Win was not. Win's reaction, in fact, had been completely unexpected. Poppy had imagined telling her about the incident many times over the years, but it had never occurred to her that Win's response to hearing about it would be anything other than to comfort her and console her. To play, in short, the motherly role she'd always played with Poppy, even though she was a year younger than her. But there was nothing maternal about Win now. There was instead something almost . . .
homicidal
about her. Poppy had never seen her like this before. She was practically incandescent with anger.

“I'm going to kill him,” she said, her body shaking all over. “I am. I swear to God, I'm going track him down and kill him.”

“Win, calm down,” Poppy said, though she was having difficulty getting her own emotions under control. “Just . . . calm down. This is not who you are. And I wouldn't have told you if I thought you were going to do something crazy. You're supposed to be the logical one, remember?”

“I'm not feeling very logical right now,” Win said, still shaking. She must have seen the expression of alarm on Poppy's face, though, because she took a deep breath as if to steady herself and reached out to pat Poppy's back. “It's all right,” she said, “I'm not going to kill him, obviously. I couldn't even kill the spider I found in the bathroom last night. I had to put it outside. But that doesn't mean I don't want to see that man punished for what he did to you.”

Poppy shook her head. “It's too late,” she said, wiping at a tear.

“What do you mean?”

“He can't be charged with . . . with it,” she said, stumbling over the place that word should have gone. “The statute of limitations
is nine years in Minnesota. And even if it wasn't, Win, I don't have any evidence. I didn't go to a doctor and I didn't, you know, save my clothes or anything.”

Win was silent for a moment, thinking this over, and when she set her jaw, and narrowed her eyes, Poppy knew she'd made a decision. “I know what we'll do,” she said, in a voice that was eerily calm. Poppy almost shivered. She'd hate to be the person on the receiving end of that look, and that voice. “We'll track him down, and we'll punish him ourselves. I read an article about this once. A woman couldn't get justice through the legal system, so she took matters into her own hands. She spray painted ‘rapist' on this man's car and then she handed out flyers to his neighbors, and—”

“Win, we don't know where he lives,” Poppy interrupted. “We don't even know his
last name
.”

“We'll hire a detective,” Win said.

Poppy swiped, impatiently, at another tear. “And say . . . what? That all we can tell them about this man is his first name and an address where he lived thirteen years ago?”

“
And
we can tell them he's a photographer,” Win reminded her. “You know what,” she said, suddenly animated, “maybe I'll start looking for him myself, online. After all, how many professional photographers can there be named Rich?”

“Um, I don't know,
thousands
?” Poppy suggested, quirking an eyebrow. “And even if there weren't, Win, how would you be able to recognize him from an online photo? When I first brought him up, you barely remembered him.”

“So . . . you'll help me.”

Poppy shook her head. “No, I won't. Believe me, Win, I regret not going to the police. I do. And I know that because I didn't, he might have done this to someone else. I wish I had understood
that then.
I really do.
I didn't, though, and I have to live with that. But finding him, or confronting him, or whatever, it's not going to change what happened. Besides, I don't want it ruling my life anymore. I'm going to try to get past it, and now, you're going to have to, too.”

“I can't,” Win said, helplessly, and she sagged back against the sofa cushions as though all of the anger had suddenly drained out of her, leaving nothing in its place. And then, much to Poppy's astonishment, Win began to cry. Not the hot, silent tears Poppy had been crying, but great, gasping sobs that racked her whole body. Poppy hadn't seen her cry this way since Kyle had died.

“Hey, Win. It's okay,” Poppy said, gathering her into her arms. “I'm all right. I wasn't always, but I am now. I must be stronger than I seem,” she added, patting Win on the back.

Win started to say something, but it was lost in a sob. She took a deep, shuddering breath, and tried again. “I'm sor-sor-sorry,” she said, with great effort.

“Win, you don't have anything to be sorry for,” Poppy said.

Win nodded an emphatic yes. “I'm sorry for cr-cr-crying,” she said, sobbing harder. “This happened to you. Not me. I need to be st-st-strong for you.”

“Oh, that,” Poppy said, with a teary smile. “That's okay. I don't mind your crying. It's better than your being angry. I mean, you scared me for a minute there. I thought you were going to go all vigilante on me. You know, like Dirty Harry, only if Dirty Harry had been a middle school social studies teacher with no knowledge of firearms.”

Win laughed, a little, through her tears, and Poppy took this as a good sign. She got up to get a box of tissues, and Win took it from her, gratefully.

“I'm still angry,” Win said, when she was able to. She mopped at her tears with a tissue.

“Not at me, I hope,” Poppy said.

“No, of course not. I'm angry at him, mostly. But I'm angry at Mom and Dad, too.”

“Oh, God,” Poppy said, “leave them out of this.”

“Why should we?” Win said, stubbornly. “We always let them off the hook. If they'd been around more, if they'd known what was going on in our lives, this would never have happened.
Or,
if it had, you would have
told
them it had happened.” Win paused, and blew her nose. “And I'm angry at myself,” she continued, going to throw her tissue away.

Poppy started to protest, but Win, sitting back down on the couch, waved her off. “No, I am. I remember that time. How strange you were acting. You had nightmares, and you started sleeping all the time, after school and on weekends. I thought you were being . . . lazy. I knew something was wrong, though.
I knew it.
Why didn't I put all the pieces together?”

“Because you were a kid, Win,” Poppy said, taking a tissue from the box, too. “Because you were fifteen years old, and, like me, you were basically on your own already. It wasn't your responsibility to take care of me. But you know what?” she said, putting her arms around Win again. “You
did
take care of me. In a lot of ways, you did. Afterwards, just having you there helped me, whether you knew it or not. I remember that night, after it happened, I kept taking showers. I was such a wreck. And you asked me if you could brush my hair, and you did. You brushed it, for a long time, and it made me feel better. It was a little thing, maybe, but in a way, it saved me. You did a lot of little things like that over the years, Win. A lot of big things, too.”

“I don't know,” Win said, doubtfully. “I just wish . . . I just wish you'd told me . . .”

Poppy sighed. She had known this would come. “Are you angry at me?”

“No. I'm not,” Win said, shaking her head. “And I don't want you to think that, either. But I
am
trying to understand, Pops. We were so close then.
So close.
I would have done anything for you. I
still
would.”

“I know,” Poppy said, softly. She felt another tear running down her cheek now, and she caught it with the crumpled tissue in her hand. “I
know
that. The not telling you, though, it's hard to explain. I was ashamed, I guess. I thought it was my fault. First I'd gone into a stranger's apartment, and then, well, I'd done something else, too. I wasn't really sure
what
that something was, but I felt like I'd given him the wrong idea, or sent him the wrong signal. But it wasn't until years later that I realized
I
hadn't done anything wrong. That nothing I'd said or done that day could have given him the permission to do what he did to me.

“And then, then there was another thing, too,” Poppy said, looking down at her lap and tearing the sodden piece of tissue in her hands into tiny shreds. “I honestly believed if I never told anyone, and I never thought about it, it would be like it never happened. I could just . . . make it go away. Stupid, I know,” she added, crumpling up the slivers of tissue in her hands. “That was the plan, though. It was years before I realized how badly it was working.”

“Oh, Pops,” Win said, hugging her. “It's okay. You did all right. And things are going to be different for you now, aren't they?”

Poppy considered this. “Yes,” she said, “I think so. Twelve hours ago, I hadn't told anybody this, and now I've told two
people. And, Win? I feel different already. I do. And not just because of what happened between Sam and me,” she added, flashing on an image of Sam in bed that morning. He'd been propped up on one elbow, and smiling at her, his hair tousled, his blue eyes heavy-lidded after their lovemaking.

“Will you promise me something?” Win asked.