Sisters

If you can get beyond the fact that he was twenty years older than she was and ugly as a troll, he was kind to my mother and the tale of how she hooked up with old Chester is kind of a Cinderella story.

Skye and I left home right after high-school graduation. She went to college at Florida State University and I left for New York to model. Ginny was working at Joe’s Fountain over on Main and Dune. The way Ginny tells it is that Chester had just moved to Dahlia Springs from a town in the midwest—why he chose to move himself and his fortune to Dahlia Springs of all places is a mystery. There are many prettier beaches for a person with unlimited resources, but he moved here and soon he became one of Ginny’s regulars at the diner. Three months later she called from Vegas to announce that she was pregnant and they were married. Skye was just as surprised as I.

Ginny was only thirty-seven. She’d waited this long to get married and the lucky guy was ugly, old Chester Hamby? She had this incredible, fragile beauty that men found irresistible—still does. She could’ve had any man she wanted if she’d just gotten the hell out of Dahlia Springs. But he adored her and he never asked questions. She told me he wasn’t interested in her past. It didn’t matter who or what she’d been before they met. All that mattered was that she loved him from that moment forward.

And she did.

He freed her from the diner, gave her financial security for the first time in her life, encouraged her to get involved in charity work (she started the Galloway-Hamby Foundation and over the years has become quite a philanthropist). He left her a wealthy woman when he died.

Who am I to argue with that? Death separated Chester and Ginny. He didn’t walk out on her like Nick left me.

Nick….

I think about calling him, but it seems futile. What’s the use of dredging up the past? Maybe Ginny has the right idea finding herself a gorgeous, young thing—

“Does Raul live here?” I ask.

Skye shakes her head. “Of course not.”

I give her a knowing smile. “Oh, come on. She’s not making the houseboy work overtime?”

Skye tries unsuccessfully to suppress a smile. I can almost see her biting the insides of her cheeks, but the smile wins, and I grin, too.

“I thought so, too, at first, but there’s no trace of him in the house and she’s still got all these photos of her and Chester all over the place. Don’t you think Raul would be a little more… I don’t know…concerned if they were involved? I just don’t get that vibe from him.”

We get out of the car, and I carry my bag inside. I park my suitcase in the cavernous foyer and look around. A huge mirror in a gilded frame hangs on the wall directly across from the front door. It must be at least seven feet tall by five feet wide. To my right is an open door. I can see into a formal dining room that looks like it might have been modeled after a king’s dining hall.

“Let’s go in the family room where it’s more comfortable.”

Family room? I didn’t realize castles had family rooms. Skye ushers me into a space that’s less formal. There are floral arrangements on nearly every surface.

“Look at all these flowers,” I say.

“From Mama’s admirers—charities and local businesses. She can’t have them in ICU so they sent them here.”

The room is elaborately decorated—a large, fashionably worn leather sectional is the centerpiece. A sturdy mahogany coffee table sits in front of it; matching end tables with brass handles sit at each end. The largest television I’ve ever laid eyes on occupies the wall to my right. The east wall is all French doors out to a deck that overlooks the beach. The setup reminds me of a common area in an expensive resort. I wouldn’t be surprised if Ginny had it designed that way on purpose.

It’s a lot of house for one woman—and her boy-toy. I walk over to the French doors and look out at the sea. It’s high tide, and the water is lapping the shore in furious slaps. Despite how we struggled while Skye and I were growing up, I know I shouldn’t begrudge Ginny a good standard of living or a young boyfriend. It’s just a lot to digest all at once.

She offered to give me money once. It was after Chester died, and the estate was settled. Of course, I declined. I’m forty years old and I know better than to accept a handout from her. Anything from Ginny comes with a stipulation. As much as some extra cash would have helped, the price of getting tangled up in her web of manipulation was too high.

I scan the impeccably decorated room and something that looks out of place catches my eye. It’s a display of cards on a shelf on the wall directly across from me.

Jane’s birthday cards? Has to be.

I walk over and pick them up one by one. Happy birthday to me! inscribed in childlike script on the inside (Jane’s writing)—and turning them each over to see the date, city and state printed meticulously on the back (Ginny’s writing). It’s always struck me as incredibly cheeky, Jane sending cards on her own birthday, especially when she never remembers Ginny’s birthday. Still, our mother is always overcome to receive the cards. She calls Skye and me the moment she gets them and weeps with joy.

The first year Jane sent the card, she was still calling home every once in a while, but Ginny would get overwrought and demand Jane tell her where she was so Ginny could come get her. That’s when Jane cut ties with her—except for the annual card. I must admit I always breathe my own sigh of relief because it means Jane’s alive. Even if the postmark is the only clue to her life. But this year’s card was postmarked Chicago. Hmm…

“Interesting you found her in Springvale.” I finger the slick cardstock. “That’s where Ginny was born and raised.”

I glance at Skye, who’s made herself at home on the couch. She’s thumbing through an issue of Better Homes and Gardens that was on the coffee table.

“I know. I thought about that.”

The thought of my little sister living in a homeless shelter floors me. I suppose the safety net in my mind’s eye wouldn’t let me imagine her anywhere worse than a succession of small, cheap, rent-by-the week apartments. I’m sickened by the thought of her in a shelter with the lice and the smell of unwashed bodies. I shudder and want to beat myself up for letting her sink to this depth.

But how do you help someone who refused all your earlier attempts of help beyond free-flowing cash?

“You never told me how you found Jane. Did you hire a private investigator?”

Skye shrugs but doesn’t look up from the article she’s perusing. “You know I have lots of resources through Cameron’s firm.”

“If you had to pay anything, I want to contribute.”

Skye tosses the magazine back on the coffee table. “Don’t be silly. I didn’t have any expenses.”

The subtext is, I wouldn’t tell you if I did, but I let it go.

“So what are we going to do about this road trip Ginny wants us to take?”

Skye bites her bottom lip and picks at her cuticle. “I don’t know. With you leaving on Monday I just don’t see how we can do it. I’m certainly not going with her by myself.”

I put the card back in its place on the shelf, walk over to the sofa and sit down on the section across from her. I’m surprised how calm she is talking about it, given her dramatics when I tried to change my flight today. Then again, that was before Ginny started talking road trip.

“I’ll have to discuss it with Cameron. A neighbor’s minding the children while I’m gone. I told her it would only be a few days. I don’t want to take advantage…”

Her voice trails off, and we sit in silence. Then she shrugs again. “Raul left us a note.”

She picks up a piece of paper I hadn’t noticed on the coffee table and hands it to me.

Good evening, ladies. Please make yourselves at home. Upstairs, I had the second room on the left made ready for Summer. If you’re hungry, I ordered a lasagna and salad for your dinner. Please help yourselves to that and anything else you desire.

“Why don’t you take your stuff upstairs? Get settled in and freshen up,” she says. “I’ll get dinner on the table.”

I carry my suitcase up the marble staircase. My footsteps echo, and despite its grandeur, the big house feels empty. Maybe I’m just tired. It’s been a long, emotional day.

At the top of the stairs, I turn right down a long hallway and, as I head toward the second room on the left, I notice a grouping of large photographs hanging on the wall a few feet down.

I stash my suitcase inside the bedroom Raul readied for me. It’s large and beautiful, with a king-size bed with a gossamer canopy. The space is decorated in white and gold—white carpet, white furniture, white fabric with gold accents scattered here and there. It looks like a page out of Architectural Digest. But I am drawn to the photos grouped down the hall. The first cluster is an arrangement of Ginny and Chester kissing; Ginny and Chester raising a toast to each other; Ginny and Chester wrapping their arms around each other.

On the wall directly across from the Chester collection hang four photos—one each of Skye, Jane and me. And a fourth picture—the three of us with Ginny. It was taken in Tallahassee right after Skye’s third child, Cole, was born.

Jane was young. Probably nine or ten because Nick and I were still married when I made that trip. Of course, he didn’t come with me. He was probably away on a photo shoot or came up with some other convenient excuse to stay away.

I run my finger along the edge of the silver frame. It may be the only photo of the four of us together. We’re all smiling. If someone didn’t know better, they might think we looked…happy?

I walk down the hall, opening doors and peering in until I come to Jane’s room. It looks as if Ginny left it untouched since the last time Jane walked out. Rock-and-roll posters on the walls, hot-pink carpet that must have been a special order, a fuzzy black duvet over a queen-size bed, little piles of clutter on every surface. I’m tempted to go in and sift through the remnants of my little sister’s life to see if I can find clues that point to why she’s chosen to live the way she has. Why she’d opt for a homeless shelter over a castle, but then images of the monster Ginny can be explode in my brain. I shut the door against the room’s aura of sadness and walk away.