The Sisters Hemingway

by Annie England Noblin

  Hadley allowed the steam from her mug to warm her face and then said, “You’ll get no argument from me.”

  “That’s a first.”

  Hadley gave her sister a sideways glance. “I guess I should go out there and see if they need help.”

  “Do you miss him?” Pfeiffer asked her. Her voice was so low that it was almost a whisper. “I mean, even a little?”

  “Yes,” Hadley said, surprising herself with her answer. She hadn’t meant to say it, but the words just fell out of her mouth. “It was a long time ago, though. I don’t even know him anymore.”

  “I doubt he’s changed that much,” Pfeiffer replied.

  “I’ve changed,” Hadley said.

  “Everybody changes,” Pfeiffer said. “What I meant was that I bet he’s basically the same guy you’ve always known.”

  Hadley wanted to tell Pfeiffer that there were certain things that could change a person so much that they were never the same afterward. She figured Pfeiffer already knew that, considering they’d been orphaned. Losing both parents and a sister was enough to change anyone. But there were some things, or rather, the knowledge of things, that could whittle a person down so much that they wouldn’t even recognize the person staring back at them in the mirror every morning. Instead, she said, “We were kids twenty years ago. We aren’t kids anymore.”

  “Well,” Pfeiffer said, turning away from the window and heading into the kitchen, “he wouldn’t be outside with a Weed Eater, sweating with Old Crow, if he didn’t still care about you.”

  Hadley didn’t respond. She knew Brody would say yes to anything Crowley asked him. He’d helped work Crowley’s farm baling hay when they were teenagers, and the two were close. She wouldn’t be surprised if Brody was helping him pay the bills now that Crowley was older and unable to do most of the farmwork himself. That was just the kind of person Brody was. He was even the kind of person who would be nice to her when he saw her after twenty years of silence, but that didn’t mean he still cared for her. He’d never admit it out loud, but Hadley knew he was still angry with her. She knew, because she was still angry with herself.

  There was a knock at the door, vibrating Hadley out of her thoughts. Crowley was standing there, a small sack in his hands. “I brought this for yer dog,” he said. “Just some meat scraps.”

  “Thanks,” Hadley said. “Would you like some coffee? Just made a fresh pot.”

  “Thank ya,” Crowley replied. “But I can’t be havin’ too much a that or I’ll be runnin’ back and forth to my outhouse all day long.”

  While Hadley and Pfeiffer both tried to mask a response that was equal parts disgust and amusement, another voice echoed from the doorway.

  “I’ll take a cup,” Brody said. “If you’re offering.”

  “Okay,” Hadley replied. “Do you want cream?”

  Brody cocked his head to the side. “Black, please.”

  Hadley busied herself trying to find just the right cup for Brody so that she wouldn’t have to look at him. Pfeiffer had stepped outside with Crowley, and now there was no buffer between them. “Thanks for coming today,” she said, her back still turned to him. “It’s really nice of you.”

  “It’s no problem,” Brody replied easily. “Lucy is over at my parents’ house for a couple of days, or I would have brought her, and we’ve got everything covered over at the farm.”

  “How are your parents?” Hadley wanted to know. She truly did want to know. Despite Brody’s difficult relationship with his father, his mom and dad had always been nice to her. “I didn’t see them at the funeral.”

  “They were out of town,” Brody replied. “They just got back yesterday. Now that Dad’s retired, they travel a lot.”

  “So they’re doing all right?”

  Brody nodded. “They’re both just fine. Amanda has taken over the clinic.”

  “I never pegged Amanda for a veterinarian,” Hadley replied.

  “Me either,” Brody agreed. “But she’s great at it, and now my father finally has a child he can be proud of.”

  Hadley stopped what she was doing and turned to face him. “Oh, don’t say that,” she said. “He’s proud of you.”

  “You and I both know he’s not,” Brody replied.

  “I do not know that.”

  “You know what he said to me when I told him I wanted to buy a farm?” Brody asked.

  “No,” Hadley said. “I don’t know what he said, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”

  “He told me he didn’t spend all those years and money in medical school for one of his kids to go back to the dirt,” Brody replied. “What kind of a lousy thing is that to say? Especially when we both know the only way he even got through vet school was because my grandfather mortgaged the farm to pay for it.”

  “Well,” Hadley said, “your dad is kind of a jerk.”

  “You’re not telling me anything I don’t know already,” Brody said.

  Hadley turned to the window above the sink and watched Crowley work. She couldn’t imagine being as old as he was and still working so hard, but she knew there were plenty of men who were the same way. She supposed if her own father had lived long enough, he would still be working the farm. When she turned back around, she caught Brody staring at her. “What?” she asked, bringing her hand up to her face to check for breakfast crumbs. “What is it?”

  Brody gave her a shy grin, the kind he’d given her back when they were still children, and said, “Nothin’.”

  “Do you like being a farmer?” Hadley asked. “Are you glad you didn’t go to veterinary school?”

  “You know,” he said, “for a long time I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life. When Melissa and I were first married, I worked at the auto-parts store in town. Worked my way up to manager. But I hated it, and my marriage was a shambles. My dad reminded me every chance he got that I should have done what he told me to do.” He set his cup down and his hand brushed against Hadley’s. “There are a lot of things in my life I regret,” he said. “But being a father and buying that farm are not two of them.”

  “I’m glad,” Hadley managed to say. She moved her hand away from his and picked up her coffee cup.

  “Do you like being a congressman’s wife?”

  “It’s the choice I made,” she said.

  “But are you happy with it?”

  Hadley snapped back around to face him. She examined his face to see if he was making fun of her, somehow demeaning her choices, but she saw no mirth. His face was open, his eyes searching. She thought about telling him the truth. She wanted desperately to tell him everything she’d held inside for the last twenty years, but she couldn’t find the words. Instead, she said, “Why do you keep a picture of me at your hunting cabin?”

  Brody didn’t respond at first, but after what seemed like an eternity, he said, “I guess I better get back out there. Old Crow looks like he could use a hand.”

  Hadley followed him outside and down the steps to where Crowley was struggling with the Weed Eater. She watched as Brody took the equipment from the older man and told him to have a seat on the tailgate of the truck.

  “Take a break,” Brody said. “We’ve got plenty of work to do today. No sense in wasting all your energy before lunchtime.”

  “I ’preciate you pretendin’ I got any energy at all,” Crowley replied. “Where’s that kid of yourn?”

  “She’s with her grandparents,” Brody replied. “Next week they’re taking her to Branson to Silver Dollar City and White Water.”

  “Sounds awful,” Crowley said.

  “It will be,” Brody replied. “She’ll come back sunburned with taffy stuck in her hair, and we’ll spend the next three days covered in peanut butter and aloe vera.”

  Brody sounded annoyed, but the smile on his face gave him away, and Hadley felt herself soften to him the way she used to when he appeared gruff, because she knew his secret, the real person he was underneath the suntanned exterior. She wondered if he reall
y enjoyed being a father. He’d always said he wanted children, but as teenagers, neither one of them really knew what it meant to want a child. Now they were both adults with separate lives, and when Brody turned his smile on her, she felt herself ignoring the girl she used to be, instead turning around to go back inside.

  From the porch, Hadley could discern a pair of legs, seemingly hanging from the ceiling. As she stepped closer, she saw they were Martha’s legs, and Pfeiffer was standing behind them, trying to push them up into the attic.

  “What are you doing?” Hadley asked. “Why didn’t you pull down the ladder?”

  “Because it’s stuck,” Martha grunted from somewhere above Hadley and Pfeiffer. “I’m trying to get it unstuck.”

  “You’re going to break a rib,” Hadley cautioned. “Why didn’t you get a chair?”

  “This seemed easier,” Pfeiffer replied, trying to shrug and almost dropping Martha at the same time.

  “Easier than getting a chair?”

  “I got it!” Martha shouted. “Pull me down.”

  Pfeiffer let go of Martha’s legs, and Martha came crashing down onto the floor, landing in a tangled heap.

  “Are you okay?” Hadley asked.

  Martha pointed to where the ladder was now hanging. “It worked,” she huffed.

  “Why are you two trying to get up there, anyway?” Hadley wanted to know.

  Martha stood up and dusted herself off. “I want to see if Daddy’s guitar is still up there,” she said. “And Pfeiffer wanted to see if there was any of Mom’s stuff up there, too.”

  Hadley sighed. “Fine, but let me get a flashlight.”

  “I saw one underneath the sink in the kitchen,” Pfeiffer said. “It still works.”

  “Okay.” Hadley went to the kitchen and grabbed the flashlight.

  By the time she returned, her sisters were already in the attic. Begrudgingly, she climbed the rickety stairs, shining the light so that she could make out any errant cobwebs or—shudder—spiders that were lurking in the darkness.

  She found her sisters at one corner, huddled by an old guitar case. “Is that it?” she asked.

  “I think so,” Martha replied. She flipped the case and opened it up, causing dust to surge around them. “I haven’t seen it in years.”

  “Look at all this stuff,” Hadley said, shining the light around the room. “It’s like years and years’ worth of junk.”

  “It’s not all junk,” Pfeiffer replied. “And if it is, I bet a lot of it is our junk.”

  “I didn’t take anything but a suitcase when I left,” Hadley said. “I wondered what Aunt Bea did with all our stuff.”

  “I didn’t take anything but my wallet,” Martha replied. “And the forty dollars I lifted from Aunt Bea.”

  “I wondered what she did with it all,” Hadley said, sitting down in front of a box with her name labeled on it. “I figured she just threw it away.”

  “Me too,” Pfeiffer said. “I took almost everything with me, though.”

  “I wish I had,” Hadley murmured, lifting one of her yearbooks from the box. “But at the time all I wanted to do was get out of here.”

  “I came home one day, and all of your stuff was gone,” Pfeiffer said. “Your side of the room was just . . . empty.”

  “Really?” Hadley asked.

  Pfeiffer nodded. “It was awful.”

  Hadley motioned for Pfeiffer to sit down next to her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking about anyone but myself at the time.”

  “I know,” Pfeiffer replied. “And I was mad about it for a long time.”

  “You were mad?” Martha said. She walked over to where they were, wading through a sea of boxes with the guitar still in her hands. “I was completely alone after the two of you left. How do you think that felt?”

  “I had to leave,” Hadley said. “I couldn’t stay here. Not after . . . not after everything that happened.”

  “It happened to all of us, not just to you,” Pfeiffer said.

  “I know that.”

  “Do you?”

  “You two don’t understand,” Hadley replied.

  “Why don’t you explain it to us?” Pfeiffer asked, her arms now crossed on her chest.

  “It’s not that I didn’t love you,” Hadley said. “But I had to get away from everything.”

  “Including us?” Martha asked, looking more than a little hurt.

  Hadley wished they were having another conversation, any conversation except this one. “Including you,” she said finally.

  “Well, I’m glad you left,” Pfeiffer said, attempting to stand up in the cramped attic. “I mean, why not? We’d lost Mama and Mary. Might as well lose you, too, while we were at it.”

  “That’s not fair,” Hadley said.

  “No,” Pfeiffer replied. “It wasn’t fair. You left, and you didn’t come back. We were lucky to get a phone call from you on our birthdays. I was sixteen years old. Martha was fourteen. It wasn’t fair we had to raise ourselves.”

  “And it was my responsibility to raise you?” Hadley asked. “That became my responsibility when Mama died? Aren’t you the one always telling me that I’m not Mama?”

  “No, you’re not Mama,” Pfeiffer replied. “Mama didn’t leave because she wanted to.”

  “We all left,” Martha broke in. “We all left when we got the chance, didn’t we?”

  “That’s not the point,” Pfeiffer said. “Hadley left first.”

  “Grow up,” Hadley replied.

  “Oh, don’t worry.” Pfeiffer smirked. “I did that a long time ago.”

  Hadley was about to respond when she heard footsteps downstairs. After a few moments of silence, Brody called up to her.

  “Hadley?” he yelled. “Hadley, are you up there?”

  “We’re up here,” Pfeiffer answered.

  “Y’all need to come down here, quick.”

  “What is it?” Hadley asked, finally finding her voice. “There’s more coffee in the kitchen.”

  “It’s not about coffee,” Brody replied.

  There was an odd edge to his voice, something akin to panic, that Hadley had never heard before. “Is everything okay?” she asked, getting to her feet.

  “No. Get down here,” Brody replied. “There’s something . . . there’s something you need to see.”

  “Okay,” she said. “We’re coming.”

  “I’m taking the guitar with me,” Martha said, almost defiantly.

  The three women started down, Hadley still carrying her yearbook and Martha with the guitar. Martha motioned for Pfeiffer to grab the case, and she obliged, rolling her eyes only a little bit.

  “What is it?” Hadley asked as she inched down the ladder.

  Crowley was in the doorway, pacing back and forth and back and forth. His eyes were wild and he was muttering something to himself.

  “What is it?” Hadley asked again. “Did Crowley hurt himself? Should we go to the hospital?”

  “No,” Brody replied. “We found something, and you need to see it.”

  “Another dog?” Pfeiffer joked, her smile fading when she realized that Brody and Crowley were not smiling.

  “Seriously, what is it?” Hadley was next to Crowley, attempting to get him to look at her, but he wouldn’t. Instead, he was looking out into the yard, where their work had been halted.

  Brody motioned for them to follow. “We found . . . it . . . while we were digging up your aunt’s old flower bed. We were going to pull out all the weeds, and I was going to ask you to go get new bulbs later at the greenhouse, but then . . .” He trailed off.

  Hadley stopped short at the flower bed, where, next to the upturned earth and glinting into the sun, there were two shovels, two wheelbarrows, two cups of coffee, and one yellowed human skull.

  Chapter 18

  Pfeiffer

  PFEIFFER STARED AT THE GROUND IN FRONT OF HER, WONDERING if maybe her eyes were playing tricks on her. She had needed glasses, but refused to wear them, afraid the
y would make her look old. Now she hoped that her eyes really were that bad.

  “Is that a . . . ?” Pfeiffer trailed off.

  “Skull,” Martha finished for her.

  “We were digging in the garden,” Brody said. “I thought it might be nice to clear it out and start over, since all the plants are dead.”

  “We have to call the police,” Hadley said. “How much . . . did you find?”

  “We stopped digging after we found the skull,” Brody replied. “It was so dirty we thought maybe it was an animal.”

  “It’s not an animal,” Pfeiffer said, taking a step back from the overturned earth. “How long has it been here?”

  Brody shrugged. “I reckon a long time,” he said.

  “Jesus Christ,” Martha whispered.

  “Look,” Brody continued, bending down and gingerly picking up the skull with one of Crowley’s red handkerchiefs and wiping at it to reveal what looked like a jagged hole just above where the right ear would have been.

  “I don’t understand,” Pfeiffer said. “How could this . . . skull have been here all this time without anybody knowing?”

  “Somebody had to know,” Brody said, placing the skull back down onto the dirt. “It didn’t bury itself.”

  “Do you think someone in our . . . family . . . did this?” Hadley asked. “Do you think this is someone in our family?”

  They all turned their attention to Crowley, who had yet to say anything. He was staring at the skull, his face pale. He looked up at them but said nothing.

  “We need to call the police,” Hadley repeated.

  “They’re on their way,” Brody said. “I called them before we came inside.”

  “What did you tell them?” Pfeiffer asked.

  “I told them we found something they need to take a look at,” Brody replied. “I told them we might have found a body.”

  “Might have?” Pfeiffer said. “It’s pretty clear that we did.”

  “You want to call them back?” Brody asked. “Tell them there’s a dead person in your garden? Be my guest.”

  “It’s okay,” Hadley said, placing her hand on Brody’s arm. “Thank you for calling them.”