The Sisters Hemingway

by Annie England Noblin

  What happened to those pages?

  When she glanced up, she saw Lafayette sitting in the doorway, staring at her. Unable to be mad at her for her earlier behavior, she beckoned for the dog to come inside. “Come on,” she said. “It’s okay.”

  The dog obliged and plopped herself down next to Pfeiffer. Pfeiffer began to give her head a scratch. As her fingers ran up under her ears, she felt something bumpy on the inside—something very bumpy. When she turned the ear over, she gasped. There were ticks all over. Hundreds of ticks, it looked like, attached to the dog.

  “Oh my God,” Pfeiffer said aloud.

  She scrambled up and knocked on the bathroom door. “Martha?” she called. “Martha, is it okay if I borrow the car?”

  “Mmmflorph,” came the muffled reply.

  “I’m going to take that as a yes,” she said, and hurried downstairs.

  Hadley was sitting at the kitchen table and looked up when she saw Pfeiffer. “Where are you going in such a hurry?” she asked.

  “I’m going to the store,” Pfeiffer replied. “Lafayette is covered in ticks.”

  “What?”

  “There are tons of ticks under her ears,” Pfeiffer said. “I don’t know how I didn’t notice them before.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Hadley said, standing up.

  “I’m okay,” Pfeiffer replied.

  “I want to go,” Hadley said. “I don’t know what else to do besides sit here, and it’s driving me crazy.”

  “Fine,” Pfeiffer replied. “Leave a note for Martha, though. I don’t want her to freak out when she gets downstairs and realizes we’re both gone.”

  Hadley pulled a pen and paper from her purse and scrawled a note. “Do you have the keys?” she asked.

  Pfeiffer held them up for her sister to see. “Where do you think we should go?” she asked. “Walmart?”

  “I guess,” Hadley replied. “It’s getting late. I don’t know what else is going to be open.”

  “I haven’t been to a Walmart in years,” Pfeiffer said, heading out the door. “It’s been since college.”

  “I go to Costco sometimes in D.C.,” Hadley replied.

  “You don’t have a personal assistant to do that for you?” Pfeiffer asked, getting into the car and raising an eyebrow. “I can’t believe you do any of your shopping by yourself.”

  “I’m a congressman’s wife, not a Disney princess,” Hadley said.

  Pfeiffer ignored her sister and tried to ignore the dirt pile that used to be the garden. Instead, she concentrated on maneuvering out of the driveway and down the dirt road. It was a twenty-minute trip into town, and she had no idea what she was supposed to talk about to Hadley for that long without Martha as a buffer.

  “So, did you get ahold of Mark?” she asked after minutes of silent driving in the fading daylight.

  “No,” Hadley replied. “And I was afraid to leave a message. I mean, this isn’t the kind of news you can explain over a voice mail.”

  “You’re right,” Pfeiffer replied. “It’s not really the kind of news you can explain in general.”

  “This is going to complicate everything,” Hadley said, leaning her head against the passenger’s-side window.

  “Imagine how the dead guy feels.”

  “I don’t want to,” Hadley replied. “Do you think the body has been there since . . . since we were kids?”

  “I don’t know,” Pfeiffer said. “Brody seems to think it’s been there awhile.”

  Hadley shuddered. “Did you call anybody in New York?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t you think you need to?”

  “Why?” Pfeiffer wanted to know. She kept her eyes focused forward, afraid if she looked at her sister she might tell her everything.

  “Surely someone at Henry Brothers should know.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Pfeiffer replied.

  “Why not?”

  “It just doesn’t,” Pfeiffer said, feeling herself lose patience. “I don’t have a husband or an agent to keep tabs on me. I don’t have to tell anybody anything if I don’t want to.”

  “Fine,” Hadley replied, raising her hands into the air.

  Pfeiffer sighed. “I don’t want to fight with you,” she said. “I really don’t.”

  “I don’t want to fight with you either,” Hadley replied. “It just seems like I don’t know how to talk to you without fighting.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  “We didn’t always use to fight like this,” Hadley replied. “Did we?”

  Pfeiffer shook her head. “No. I mean, you’ve always tried to boss me around,” she said with a sly grin.

  Hadley was quiet for a moment before she said, “Do you really hate me for leaving?”

  “I don’t hate you,” Pfeiffer said.

  And it was true—she didn’t hate Hadley. She’d resented her, she’d been angry with her, she’d been envious of her, but she’d never once hated her. The hardest part about Hadley’s leaving was that it made Pfeiffer feel exposed and vulnerable. Always before, she’d had Hadley, despite her constant protests to the contrary, to protect her and her sisters. Pfeiffer hadn’t known how to take care of Martha, and it was a failure for which she’d always feel guilt.

  “How can this place be so crowded?” Hadley asked as they pulled into the Walmart parking lot. “Are there even this many people in Cold River?”

  “It’s probably the only Walmart for miles,” Pfeiffer replied. “I bet people come from all over.”

  “I kind of miss the little Walmart we used to have,” Hadley said. “You know, before it was a supercenter.”

  Pfeiffer pulled into a parking space and put the car into park. “Remember that year Mama got her income tax return and she let us all go to Walmart and pick out whatever we wanted?”

  Hadley grinned. “Yeah, because Martha filled her Caboodle with makeup and then didn’t understand that Mama had to pay for what was inside of the Caboodle.”

  “I thought Mama was going to have her hide,” Pfeiffer replied. “And seriously, what twelve-year-old girl knows more about eyeliner than her teenage sisters?”

  “Martha was an early bloomer,” Hadley said. “And I guess you and I were late bloomers.”

  The fluorescent lights of the Walmart beckoned to them as they entered, and Pfeiffer wasn’t even sure where to begin. “Where do you think the dog stuff is?” she asked Hadley.

  “It’s in aisle thirteen,” the door greeter replied, stepping up to them. “Over here on the left side of the store.”

  “Thanks,” Pfeiffer said. She pushed a shopping cart down the middle of the store, with Hadley trailing behind her.

  “Does it feel like people are staring at us?” Hadley whispered.

  “Kind of,” Pfeiffer replied. “Maybe it’s because they’re wondering where Martha is.”

  “That could be it,” Hadley said. “At least here, I don’t have to worry about people coming up to me and asking me about how Mark is going to vote,” she said.

  “It was pretty genius of him to move to Kansas and establish residency,” Pfeiffer said. “Now Kansas can hate him instead of Missouri.”

  “They don’t hate him too much,” Hadley said. “They keep electing him. We keep a house in Topeka, of course, and we visit a couple of times a year. I never leave the property for that entire week.”

  “I was always kind of sad that I didn’t ever get the opportunity to vote against him,” Pfeiffer replied.

  Hadley leaned in close to her sister and said, “I’ve never voted for him.”

  Pfeiffer let out a burst of laughter so loud that even the people who weren’t already staring turned to look at them. She grabbed Hadley’s hand and pulled her into the dog supply aisle. As they giggled with each other, Pfeiffer put into the cart some dog shampoo that boasted the ability to kill both ticks and fleas.

  “Don’t you think she probably needs a collar and a bed?” Hadley asked. “And maybe a toy or two?”

 
; Pfeiffer did the math. There was no way she could afford all of that. “I can come back for it later,” she said.

  “Nonsense,” Hadley replied.

  “It’s just . . .” She trailed off. She really didn’t want to tell her sister about her poverty in the middle of Walmart.

  Hadley stared at her for a second before she said, “Don’t worry about it. It’s my treat.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” Pfeiffer said. “Really, it’s fine.”

  “I want to,” Hadley said. “If it hadn’t been for me, you wouldn’t have to be buying anything, anyway.”

  “But you saved that dog,” Pfeiffer replied.

  “You can pay me back later,” Hadley said. “Besides, it’s Mark’s money. Doesn’t that make you feel better?”

  Pfeiffer grinned and considered her sister. She was looking at her in a way that said she understood everything. She felt like she might cry. Clearing her throat, she said, “Thank you.”

  Hadley waved her off. “What about this?” she asked, holding up a pink-and-gray gingham bed. There’s a collar that matches!”

  “Hadley? Pfeiffer?”

  The women looked up from the dog bed to see Luke Gibson beckoning to them from the end of the aisle. He pushed his cart toward them, a wide smile on his face.

  “Oh, hi, Luke,” Pfeiffer said. “What are you doing here?”

  “Same as everybody else,” Luke said. “Selling my soul to a giant and greedy corporation. Did you get a dog or something?”

  Pfeiffer nodded. “A basset hound.”

  “I love those dogs,” he said. “I have a beagle named George. He’s about out of food, and if I let him run out, he will make me pay for it.”

  “Can you recommend a good bed?” Pfeiffer asked.

  Before Luke could answer, Hadley interrupted them. “I think I’m about out of shampoo,” she said. “I’ll be back.” She gave her sister a wink before sauntering off.

  Pfeiffer knew good and well that Hadley didn’t need shampoo. And if she had needed it, she wouldn’t have bought it at Walmart. All of the beauty products currently in the bathroom at the farm came from someone’s very expensive salon. Pfeiffer knew, because she’d been using them.

  “So how is everything going?” Luke asked. He nodded his approval at the pink-and-gray bed.

  Pfeiffer eyed him skeptically. “You’ve heard, haven’t you?”

  “Everybody has heard.”

  “How?” Pfeiffer wanted to know. “It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours.”

  “Apparently half the town heard it over the scanner,” Luke replied. “I heard it from my neighbor Mrs. Sutherland. She called me over to listen to it.”

  Pfeiffer rolled her eyes. “So that was why everybody was staring at us.”

  Luke nodded. “As your lawyer, I’d advise against speaking about it with anyone, though.”

  “This is such a mess,” Pfeiffer said. Her face crumpled. She’d been holding everything back for so long that she wasn’t sure she could continue to do it for another solitary second.

  “Hey,” Luke said, reaching out and taking her hand. “It’s going to be okay.”

  Pfeiffer allowed herself to be drawn into him, and she rested her cheek against his white button-up shirt. He smelled like Zest soap, and she breathed him in. She knew it was probably weird to be losing it on the shoulder of a man she hardly knew, but in some ways, not knowing him made losing it just a bit easier.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, composing herself and pulling away from him. “This day has been more than a bit overwhelming.”

  “It’s fine,” Luke said, his eyes crinkling around the corners.

  “Do you have hysterical women crying on your shoulder all the time?” Pfeiffer asked. “God, I’m such a stereotype right now.”

  “Having an emotional response to an emotional situation isn’t stereotypical,” Luke said.

  “You don’t even know the half of it.”

  “I’d like to hear about it sometime,” he said. “You know, if you’d like to—oh, I don’t know, maybe . . .”

  He trailed off when Hadley came racing around the corner, charging full speed toward them. “There’s . . . a . . . whole . . . aisle . . . of . . . people . . .” she huffed, doubled over. “They keep following me. Asking me questions about Martha and the farm. I can’t . . .”

  Luke tore his eyes away from Pfeiffer. “You two go on,” he said. “I’ll hold them off. I’ll use some of my fancy lawyer language and scare them.”

  Pfeiffer smiled up at him gratefully. “Thanks,” she said.

  “Come on,” Hadley said, grabbing at Pfeiffer. “I am not going to answer any more questions about whether Aunt Bea was a secret serial killer.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll tell you about it later,” Hadley said, looking over her shoulder. “Let’s just go.”

  Pfeiffer followed her sister, pushing the cart as fast as she could toward a checkout line, the entire time wondering if maybe Luke Gibson really was going to ask her out on a date.

  Chapter 20

  Martha

  MARTHA SAT ON THE COUCH WITH LAFAYETTE NEXT TO her, wondering what was taking her sisters so damn long. Hadley left a note telling her they were going to get some kind of dog shampoo, but that had been nearly two hours ago. She hated being alone, and being alone at the farm was no different from being alone in her house in Nashville, except there were decidedly no dead bodies in her yard in Nashville.

  God, she wished she could have a drink. The conversation she’d had with her agent hadn’t exactly been comforting. He’d told her she should come back to Nashville to mitigate the damage. She told him under no circumstances was she leaving her sisters, and even if she could, she doubted very much that the Cold River Sheriff’s Department would appreciate her departure.

  Besides, she didn’t want to leave. Yes, she wanted a drink, but she knew the urge would have been worse back in Nashville. So instead, she busied herself with an old VHS copy of St. Elmo’s Fire and gave the dog belly rubs.

  Martha jumped when she heard the door slam, and she turned around to see Hadley and Pfeiffer, laden with bags, coming inside.

  “What took you so long?” she asked.

  Her sisters shared a look.

  “Everybody knows about the skull,” Pfeiffer said, setting the bags down on the floor by the couch. “Hadley was practically mobbed in the shampoo aisle.”

  “Great,” Martha replied. “How long do you think it’ll be before it’s all online for the world to see?”

  “Well, since it happened on the property of a country-music star and a congressman’s wife, it’s probably already online,” Pfeiffer said. “And there was a truck parked at the bottom of the driveway when we pulled in.”

  “What?” Martha asked. She turned her full attention to her sister. “Like someone was watching us?”

  “I don’t know,” Pfeiffer replied. “But there didn’t appear to be anyone inside.”

  “I bet somebody got stalled on their way to the river, and they pulled in our driveway rather than leave it in the middle of the road,” Hadley suggested. “It looked local—it had Missouri plates.”

  Martha felt herself relax. “Oh, okay.”

  Pfeiffer picked up one of the bags and took out a handful of bottles. “Where’s Lafayette?”

  “Right here,” Martha replied, pointing down to one of the couch cushions. “She wanted up.”

  “She’s full of ticks,” Pfeiffer said. “Help me get her upstairs to the bathroom.”

  “Ew!” Martha squealed, pushing herself up from the couch. “Gross.”

  Lafayette must’ve known what she was in for, because she jumped off the couch and cowered in the corner while Pfeiffer and Martha coaxed her out with a piece of cheese.

  “I’ll go upstairs and start the bath,” Martha said. “Can you get her up the stairs?”

  “Hadley will help me,” Pfeiffer replied.

  Hadley shot Pfeiffer a look that said she was absolu
tely not helping her, but she gave in when she saw Pfeiffer struggling at the foot of the stairs.

  “You take her front end,” Hadley said. “I’ll take her back end.”

  Together, taking the steps one at a time, they got the dog upstairs and into the bathtub, which caused Lafayette to let out the most sorrowful excuse for a bark that any of them had ever heard.

  “She sounds like we’re trying to kill her or something,” Martha said, shaking her head. “You suppose she’s never had a bath before?”

  “I wouldn’t doubt it,” Pfeiffer replied, taking the tweezers to a colony of dead ticks on Lafayette’s ears. “Look at her.”

  “She’s pretty beat up,” Martha agreed. “But she’s the sweetest thing. How could someone not take care of her?”

  “You didn’t see her former owner,” Hadley replied. “I don’t think she’s ever taken care of anything in her entire life.”

  “In my experience, it doesn’t matter what you look like,” Martha said. “I once toured with this woman back when I was just an opening act. Anyway, she thought I was a glorified dog sitter for her two Pekingese terrors. She let them use the tour bus as a bathroom, she never cleaned up after them, and she actually left one of them in a dressing room in Poughkeepsie!”

  “Why even have a dog if you’re not going to take care of it?” Hadley asked, presenting a towel to Pfeiffer so she could dry the now-soaking Lafayette. “It doesn’t make any sense to me.”

  “People don’t make sense sometimes,” Martha replied.

  Lafayette allowed Pfeiffer to dry her for approximately fifteen seconds before she darted out of the room, and the sisters heard her padding down the stairs. Pfeiffer, Martha, and Hadley looked at each other.

  “She’s going to jump on the couch!” Pfeiffer said, attempting to get up from the floor, and slipping in the soapy mess they’d created.