Dedication
For Brittany
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1: Pfeiffer
Chapter 2: Martha
Chapter 3: Martha
Chapter 4: Hadley
Chapter 5: Hadley
Chapter 6: Pfeiffer
Chapter 7: Pfeiffer
Chapter 8: Pfeiffer
Chapter 9: Martha
Chapter 10: Hadley
Chapter 11: Hadley
Chapter 12: Pfeiffer
Chapter 13: Pfeiffer
Chapter 14: Martha
Chapter 15: Martha
Chapter 16: Hadley
Chapter 17: Hadley
Chapter 18: Pfeiffer
Chapter 19: Pfeiffer
Chapter 20: Martha
Chapter 21: Martha
Chapter 22: Hadley
Chapter 23: Hadley
Chapter 24: Pfeiffer
Chapter 25: Pfeiffer
Chapter 26: Martha
Chapter 27: Hadley
Chapter 28: Pfeiffer
Chapter 29: Hadley
Chapter 30: Martha
Chapter 31: Pfeiffer
Chapter 32: Hadley
Chapter 33: Pfeiffer
Chapter 34: Martha
Chapter 35: Hadley
Chapter 36: Hadley
Chapter 37: Pfeiffer
Acknowledgments
P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*
About the Author
About the Book
Praise
Also by Annie England Noblin
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
RACHAEL HEMINGWAY WATCHED THE CLOUDS GATHER overhead as she raced along the gravel path leading her away from her house. It was quiet, too quiet; not even the birds were chattering in the trees above her. If she hadn’t known better, she would have guessed it was winter instead of a mild spring day.
She knew what was coming.
Her eldest daughter, Hadley, was safe at her boyfriend’s house; at least, that’s what Rachael hoped. She hadn’t spoken to her since their argument earlier that afternoon. Moments ago, she sent her two younger daughters, Pfeiffer and Martha, to the cellar with the old transistor radio, forbidding them to leave. It was Mary, Rachael’s youngest, she’d set off to find.
When Mary first turned up missing, Rachael hadn’t thought much of it. Mary often disappeared into the woods beyond their farm. Their land bordered part of the Missouri National Forest, and Mary, quiet, dark, and thoughtful, loved the solitude of the thickest parts. At twelve years old, Rachael’s youngest daughter was so unlike her sisters. She was a force in her own quiet way, it was true, not unlike the storm that was surely coming to these Ozarks Hills, and that was what Rachael loved about her most. She was so like her father, Matthew Hemingway. He’d been different, too, not from here, probably that was what attracted Rachael to him in the first place.
It wasn’t until Mary hadn’t come home, not even for dinner, that Rachael began to worry. It wasn’t until she was frying chicken in her mother’s cast-iron skillet that she realized Mary must’ve overheard the argument between herself and Hadley. She’d likely been listening through the vent in her room, as it carried the sounds and smells of the kitchen right up to the second floor. Rachael couldn’t be sure exactly what Mary heard, but she knew now that it was probably enough. By the time she pulled on her boots and tied back her hair, the clouds were rolling in, thick and heavy, bringing with them the emotions she’d been carrying around with her all day long, and she knew it was a bad sign.
The wind picked up, and Rachael wished she’d brought along a jacket. She was sure Mary had neglected to bring one with her when she left the house that afternoon. Mary never thought of things like that—necessities such as coats or mittens or even shoes, for that matter.
When the rain started, Rachael picked up her pace, running through the forest, calling out for her daughter. Her voice was lost in the wind, and the branches scratched at her bare legs as she ran, but she didn’t let up, not even for an instant. If she could get to the white oak tree at the center, the oldest and tallest of all the trees in the forest, she knew she would find Mary.
Mary asked her once how old she thought the tree might be, if she had to guess. Rachael had stared up at it, as it was well over one hundred feet tall, and not known the answer.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “But it’s very old.”
“Ten years?” Mary asked. She was scarcely six at the time, and she must’ve thought ten years old sounded quite grown up.
“Much older than that,” Rachael replied, trying not to laugh. It hurt the little girl’s feelings when her mother laughed at her questions.
“Fifty years?”
“Older.”
“A hundred years?” Mary asked, her eyes wide. “Mama, do you think this tree could be a hundred years old?”
Rachael nodded. “I think this tree may be a hundred years old or more,” she said. “It’s been here a very long time.”
“Isn’t there a way to tell how old the tree is?” Mary asked.
“Not without cutting it down,” Rachael said. “The only way to tell how old a tree really is, is to cut it down and count the rings inside.”
“Rings?”
“Around the bark.” Rachael made a circling motion with her hand.
“But that will kill the tree,” Mary stated.
“It would,” Rachael agreed.
“Maybe I could just ask the tree,” Mary said, tilting her head to one side the way she often did when she was thinking hard about something.
“You could try.”
Mary let go of her mother’s hand and stepped closer to the tree. She touched her fingertips to the jagged bark and closed her eyes, whispering something that Rachael couldn’t quite hear. After a few moments, she fell back into place next to her mother.
“She says she’s awfully old,” Mary said. Her dark eyes were two shadows. They could see, Rachael knew, what others could not. “She’s so old that we wouldn’t believe her even if she told us.”
Rachael laughed at that. She couldn’t help it. She had to laugh to keep from being unnerved. Mary might’ve been a child, but Rachael never had any doubt that the tree was speaking to her that day, a spring day in March much like this one, when she’d been just six years old.
Now all Rachael could think about was getting to that tree. “Mary!” she shouted, the rain pelting against her face. “Mary!”
That was when Rachael saw her, right where she knew she’d be, her skinny arms wrapped around the tree, hanging on for dear life. Her hair was clinging to her face, and her jeans were ripped and bloodied at the knee.
“Mama!” Mary called when she saw her, not daring to let go. “Mama, I’m here!”
“Mary,” Rachael gasped, grabbing on to her. “Mary, we have to go. Now!”
“No!” Mary tightened her grip. “No, I won’t leave her.”
“The tree will be fine. Its roots are deep,” Rachael said. “It’s been through storms worse than this.”
“You’re a liar!” Mary screamed.
“I’m not lying,” Rachael replied, her voice hoarse from screaming through the wind and the rain and the forest. “The tree will survive.”
“You lied about everything,” Mary said. “I’m not going.”
Rachael closed her eyes to steady herself. There wasn’t time for this argument. Not now. “We have to go,” she said again.
“No!”
“Please!” Rachael grabbed at her daughter’s arms, tearing them away from the tree. “We won’t mak
e it back if we don’t hurry.”
Mary dug her fingernails farther into the bark, but it was no use. Her mother tore her away and dragged her from the tree while she shrieked, “Please don’t make me leave! Please!”
Rachael half dragged, half carried her daughter through the thicket, the storm upon them now, unrelenting. They were too far out into the country for the sirens, but Rachael knew they must be sounding in town, and she said a silent prayer that her other three daughters were safe.
When they got to the gravel road just beyond the house, they continued to run, Mary no longer having to be dragged, too terrified of the storm to protest. The rain came down in slanted sheets, and the sky was lit up with shades of green. Rachael saw the neighbor’s old rusted cattle gate, sliding along the road beside them as if it were floating down a river of dust. She knew the twister was behind them, moving far faster than they could ever run, and she knew there wasn’t time to make it to the cellar before it was upon them.
“Mama!” Mary stopped dead in her tracks and turned around to face what was coming. “Mama, it’s here!”
Rachael was in awe. In her fifty years on this earth, she’d never seen anything quite like it. The sheer magnitude of the storm overwhelmed her, and she was stuck in place for an entire lifetime before she felt Mary pulling on the sleeve of her rain-soaked T-shirt.
“Come on,” Rachael said, hurrying Mary down into the ditch. “Get down.”
“Mama.”
Rachael got down on top of her, covering as much of her daughter’s fragile body as she could, wrapping her arms around her. “I love you,” she managed to say before the wind knocked the breath out of her and the noise of the moment was there, on top of them, all the while, the great white oak tree, by now the very oldest in the entire forest, could do nothing but stay rooted into the ground as the rest of the world was carried off without it.
Chapter 1
Pfeiffer
PFEIFFER HEMINGWAY IGNORED THE DOORBELL. INSTEAD, she rolled over on the couch to face the back cushions. No good could come of answering the doorbell. Not now. There had been a time, in the not-so-distant past, when the sound of the doorbell meant delight. When there was someone standing outside her expansive Chelsea apartment, it meant there had been a package delivered or it was Benny with the takeaway pad thai or her friends were there to pick her up for a night out.
Now when the doorbell rang, it just meant there was someone standing there waiting to take something away from her. This time, she assumed that there were people here for her couch. After all, it was the only piece of furniture left. The only thing she owned that had not been repossessed in recent months. The last time the furniture men had tried to take it, she’d sat there in her nightgown with a can of Mace, bits of pad thai stuck to the corners of her mouth as she ordered them to try it.
Still, the doorbell persisted.
“Go away,” she muttered, pulling the blanket up over her head.
“Pfeiffer Francine Hemingway, you open this door right now!”
Pfeiffer sat up. She knew that voice. “Seth?”
“Open the door, Pi.”
Pfeiffer flung off the blanket and stalked to the door. “What do you want, Seth?”
“To make sure the smell emanating from your apartment isn’t your decomposing body,” he replied. “Let me in.”
“Fine,” Pfeiffer said, unlocking the dead bolt and pulling open the door. “Come in.”
“Jesus Christ,” Seth whispered when he stepped inside. “What in the hell happened in here?”
“Unemployment.”
“Pi, that was nine months ago.”
“Two hundred and seventy-two days ago,” Pfeiffer replied. “Apparently, that’s how long it takes to drain a savings account.”
“Have you even applied for another job?” Seth asked, leading her over to the couch and sitting her down. “Surely you’ve got a lead or two.”
“If I had any leads, don’t you think I’d be out pursuing them instead of hiding in a ratty nightgown on my couch?” Pfeiffer asked. “Nobody will have me. No one.”
Seth sighed, pushing his glasses farther up his nose. “Well, you can hardly blame them.”
In fact, Pfeiffer did blame them. She did blame Henry Brothers Publishers for firing her after almost a decade as an editor, after almost a decade of finding bestsellers for them, and after a decade of making them money. Sure, she’d made a mistake. In fact, she’d made the worst mistake an editor could make: she’d passed on a future bestseller.
She had been, of course, the one to send the agent of the aforementioned author an email, tartly telling her that her client ought not to quit her day job. That had been just a few weeks before editors at five other houses got ahold of the book and began a frenzied bidding war, causing the author’s name and title of the book, Aurora’s Artifacts, to be the most sought-after prospect since the Harry Potter series—not the first Harry Potter book. No, not that one. An editor had once told J. K. Rowling not to quit her day job, too.
It didn’t take long for the Henry Brothers to figure out Pfeiffer’s grievous error, and matters only got worse after that damned email made its way around the publishing world. In less than twenty-four hours, she’d become a pariah. No one, not even her oldest friends—save Seth—would return a text message. The next day, Pfeiffer Hemingway, senior editor, had been told not to let the door hit her where the good lord split her, and just like that—she was out of a job. Nobody, not even the lowest of the lowest publishing houses, would touch her.
“You’re taking a risk being here,” Pfeiffer said, eyeing the empty room wildly. “Did anybody see you?”
Seth rolled his eyes. “It’s not like there’s a hit out on you,” he said.
“Might as well be,” she grumbled. “Nobody will hire me.”
“Give it time.”
Pfeiffer opened her arms wide. “Does it look like I have any more time? The only reason I still have this couch is because I look half-rabid, and the men from the furniture store were afraid to get too close for fear I’d bite.”
“I have it on good authority that you do,” Seth replied with a wink.
“Shut up,” Pfeiffer replied miserably, a smile creeping onto her lips despite herself. “I’m serious. What am I going to do? I’m out of money. Out of friends. Out of a job. I’m screwed, Seth, and you know it.”
“Maybe it’s time to consider another line of work,” Seth said in earnest.
Pfeiffer sighed, pushing her wild, strawberry curls out of her face. “I don’t know how to do anything else,” she said.
“When you first showed up here in the city, you said you wanted to be a writer,” Seth replied.
“But I ended up editing other writers instead,” Pfeiffer replied. “I’m better at that. At least I used to be.”
Seth patted her knee. “Wow, that’s hairy,” he muttered to himself before saying, “What about going home?”
“Home?” Pfeiffer blinked up at him. “Home? I am home. Well, at least this is home until the end of the month.”
“You know what I mean, Pi.”
Pfeiffer sat back, exposing both of her hairy knees. If this had been nine months ago, she would rather have died than let Seth or anyone else know she even had hair on her knees, let alone any other part of her body. But today was today and not nine months ago, and indeed, she did know what Seth meant. He meant that maybe she should go back to her childhood home.
To Missouri.
To the Missouri Ozarks.
To Cold River.
Pfeiffer winced at the thought. “I haven’t been home in almost two decades,” she said at last. “I can’t go home.”
Seth looked at her, very serious for what seemed like a long time. “Pi, honey, how long have you had your cell turned off?”
Pfeiffer shrugged. “A couple of weeks, probably.”
“Well, you got a call at the office today—several calls, in fact—from your sister Hadley. I finally had to promise that I’d de
liver a message to you personally.”
Pfeiffer sat up a little straighter. “What are you talking about?”
“I don’t really know how to tell you this,” Seth said, scratching at his perfectly coiffed head. “But your aunt Beatrice is dead.”
“What?”
“Dead,” Seth repeated. “Your sister said it happened yesterday.”
Pfeiffer sighed. Hadley. She always knew everything first. Maybe, Pfeiffer thought, not for the first time, it’s because she was born first. It had long been a suspicion of Pfeiffer, the second sister, that the oldest sister knew everything first, and it was her responsibility as the oldest sister to hold that information over her younger sisters for all eternity. It had been nearly a year since she’d talked to Hadley, and nearly five years since she’d seen her, despite the fact that Hadley lived in Washington, D.C., which really wasn’t that far away from New York. Pfeiffer didn’t like Hadley’s husband, and she didn’t like the person Hadley became around her husband, and so instead of wasting her time arguing about it, she found it best to keep her mouth closed and stay in New York. Their relationship was tenuous on a good day, and today was not a good day.
“She said she would be on the first flight home tomorrow morning,” Seth said. “Red-eye from D.C.”
“Did you tell her I don’t work at Henry Brothers anymore?” Pfeiffer asked. She couldn’t stand the thought of Hadley or Martha learning that she’d been fired.
“Of course not,” he said. “You know I wouldn’t do that to you.”
Pfeiffer eyed her friend and former colleague. He looked uncomfortable, like he would do anything to get out of her barren apartment and away from her shabby-without-the-chic appearance. She bit at the corner of her lip and then said, “Seth, do you still have that old car? The one you drove here from Nebraska?”
Seth’s eyes darted around the room, as if he thought at any moment spies from Henry Brothers might pop up out of nowhere. “You promised never to speak of . . . Nebraska.”
“Oh, come on,” Pfeiffer said, standing up to stretch. “Everybody knows you weren’t born inside the Kate Spade on Fifth.”
“Well, they at least have the decency not to say that,” Seth said with a sniff. “What do you want with my car?”
The Sisters Hemingway Page 1