The Magnolia Sisters

by Michelle Major

  Her chest rose and fell as if she was having trouble catching her breath. When her mouth opened, he wanted her to contradict him—to tell him that she did care. Stupid on his part. He’d been on his own too long if he had to imagine a bond with a woman who wasn’t in town under the best of circumstances. Not to mention that she didn’t seem to like kids and Violet was the most important thing in his world.

  She set down her mug and flashed the sorriest excuse for a smile he’d ever seen. “Not really,” she said airily. “But thanks for the coffee. I’m not sure how long I’ll be staying here but try to keep your kid out of the carriage house while I’m around. Unlike my sister, I’m not sweet or the type to be universally loved.”

  No doubt, Gray thought as he nodded. He should have been relieved by her caustic words. Her bad attitude would make it easy to keep his distance. But, damn, if he didn’t hate watching her walk away.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  AVERY PULLED INTO the driveway of the enormous, almost antebellum-style house, checking the Fig Street address Carrie had given to her one more time.

  She wasn’t sure what she’d expected of Niall Reed’s home, but this structure seemed like a smaller, slightly more cared-for cousin of the famous Grey Gardens mansion. Vines trailed around the balusters of the front porch and the yard was badly in need of mowing. The stately home was painted a pale cream, or perhaps the color would be more aptly described as dingy white.

  The bones of the house were still impressive, with columns framing the porch and black shutters flanking the tall windows. She could imagine the house had once been the jewel of the town. From what she was coming to understand about her biological father, she had no doubt he reveled in what the house communicated about his status in the community.

  This was where Carrie had been raised. Jealousy spiked in Avery, even though she knew Niall’s one legitimate daughter was as much of a victim as her and Meredith. That was difficult to remember as she stepped into the quiet of this picturesque street.

  Growing up in a sterile condo in downtown San Francisco, Avery had always wished for a yard and trees to climb. She’d imagined having a swing hanging from a hundred-year-old tree branch, much like the one swaying slightly in the breeze in the center of the yard.

  Her father had owned her dream house, or close to it. Granted, the style was a bit lord-of-the-manor for her taste, as well as something of a cliché, since the home had been built atop a gently sloping hill. That put it higher than the other houses in the neighborhood, as if Niall had been the king of everyone around him. She could imagine that fit well with his image of himself.

  Had she gotten her taste for traditional style and overly romanticized daydreams from her father? As a kid, it seemed normal that she’d fantasize about manicured lawns and white picket fences. Weren’t those the stuff of the American dream? Not that Avery’s childhood had lacked any of the necessities.

  Her mother worked long hours as a neurosurgeon, pushing to raise the glass ceiling at her hospital, and providing Avery with a world-class education, the best nannies money could hire and a million-dollar view of San Francisco Bay. But there had been no running through backyard sprinklers or neighborhood sledding hills. Avery hadn’t been allowed to have friends over who might drip juice on the impeccable white carpet her mother favored. Everything had been perfect and pristine, and all the while Avery had longed for something she’d never known was within reach. All the while Carrie had been given this bucolic childhood. It was so damn unfair.

  Avery thought of what Gray had let slip about Carrie giving up her art to take care of Niall. She didn’t want to feel any sympathy for her sister. Carrie had lost a hobby. Avery felt like she’d been robbed of everything.

  Now she’d been given a block of failing businesses in this sleepy town, the home she’d always dreamed of still not part of her reality.

  It would be comical if it wasn’t so pathetic.

  She moved toward the front door, careful of the flagstone walkway that had seen better days. The cracked pieces of stone had grown uneven as tree roots infringed on their path. No one answered when she rang the doorbell, and then she heard a grunt and a crash from the back of the house.

  If the front of the house was mildly neglected, the back upped the ante to almost hoarder levels. Heaps of scrap metal and piles of decaying wooden pallets littered the lawn. She could see that the yard might have once been lovely. Tall maple trees canopied the edges and a wrought-iron fence had been erected around one section that looked like an overgrown garden.

  How could Niall have let this beautiful property fall to ruin?

  A scraping sound interrupted her musings, and she turned to see Carrie about ten feet away, balanced precariously on the highest rung of a ladder—the rung that Avery knew the instructions advised not to use.

  Carrie had on denim shorts, a thin T-shirt and beat-up sneakers, her hair pulled into a high bun on her head. She wore thick leatherwork gloves and made low-throated grunts of effort as she scraped a handheld shovel along the house’s gutter, flipping hunks of decaying leaves and debris onto the cobblestone porch below.

  “Are you trying to break your neck?” Avery called conversationally when Carrie paused in her heaving.

  Her new half sister gave a little shout of shock, and Avery rushed forward when it looked like Carrie might lose her footing.

  By the time Avery got to the ladder, Carrie had righted herself and was climbing down. “Are you trying to kill me?” she asked when she got to the ground, rounding on Avery.

  “No way.” Avery held up her hands, palms out. “I don’t want to deal with Niall’s mess on my own.”

  “Then maybe don’t sneak up on a person.” Carrie wiped a hand across her forehead. She was covered in flecks of dirt and who knew what else.

  “What are you doing anyway?”

  “Cleaning the gutters. What does it look like?”

  Avery gestured to the cluttered backyard. “This place is the second coming of the Sanford and Son junkyard. Why bother with the gutters? It’s like focusing on a splinter in your toe when your leg is broken.”

  Carrie frowned. “Who are Sanford and his son? Should I know them?”

  “Never mind.” Avery huffed out a laugh. “I watched too many reruns as a kid.”

  “Dad wouldn’t let us have a television,” Carrie told her, peeling off the leather gloves. “He wondered why I always wanted to go to my friends’ houses and not have them here.”

  “Once again I feel the need to mention...” Avery inclined her head toward the weed-infested lawn. “You’re telling me the lack of TV was your biggest deterrent to having people over?”

  Carrie followed her gaze and sighed. “It wasn’t like this back then. The yard was beautiful. My mom loved to garden, and she was OCD in her cleaning. It was another thing that drove her crazy about Dad. He was a bit of a slob.”

  “I think the word you’re looking for is hoarder.”

  “That happened more recently,” Carrie said quietly. “I moved out five years ago and basically stopped coming to the house. I didn’t realize how bad it had gotten.”

  “The neighbors didn’t complain?”

  “I’m sure they talked about him and his collections, as he liked to call them. No one would say anything to his face. Dad still wielded a lot of power around here, and he wasn’t opposed to making life difficult for someone who got on his bad side.”

  “Such an utterly charming man.”

  “Yes, when he wanted to be,” Carrie said, purposely ignoring Avery’s sarcasm. “What are you doing here?”

  “I thought I’d check out the house.”

  “What happened to it being weird?” Judgment laced Carrie’s soft tone.

  “I’m not moving in,” Avery said, not bothering to hide her defensiveness. “But I figure we need to take stock of all the assets before the meeting at the bank. I
t will help if I know what kind of work needs to be done on each property.”

  “The house doesn’t belong to you,” Carrie countered, brushing at the front of her T-shirt.

  “I get that.” Avery tried to imbue her tone with an equal mix of patience and empathy. “I thought I could spearhead the effort to sell.”

  “What if Meredith doesn’t want to sell the house?”

  “Why wouldn’t she? She doesn’t seem to want anything to do with our new sisterly connection.”

  “She wants the ranch, which belongs to me now. Maybe I’ll ask her to trade the house for the land out by the beach.”

  “So it’s a ranch, or is it beach property?” Avery asked.

  “Both.” Carrie placed the gloves on one of the rungs of the ladder. “There are photos of Last Acre in the house. You might as well come in since you’re here, but I’ll warn you it’s not pretty.”

  “Based on the backyard, I don’t expect it to be.”

  Carrie arched a delicate brow. “It’s worse than you think.”

  Before Avery could answer, her sister moved past her toward a set of French doors at the far end of the patio, under an awning attached to the house that, like most everything else belonging to Niall Reed, had seen better days.

  She noticed that heavy curtains covered every window on the ground floor, blocking the view into the house.

  “Was Niall a vampire, as well?” She lifted her sunglasses to the top of her head as she entered the back door.

  “Of course not. Don’t move forward until I get a light turned on.”

  “Then why is it so dark?” She squinted as her eyes tried to adjust to the difference between the glaring sun outside and the gloomy interior.

  “Less overwhelming that way. Ready?”

  A chandelier flicked on overhead, and Avery gasped. “What happened here?” she whispered.

  “I told you I hadn’t been to the house in years. Dad and I argued, and it was easier for both of us to see each other at the gallery or my place.” Carrie’s voice was apologetic, as if the mess that surrounded them was her fault. “He’d always been a pack rat. Things got out of hand.”

  “You think?” Avery shook her head. It was like she’d walked into an episode of a hoarding show on cable television. Newspapers and old magazines were piled in four-foot-high stacks all around the room, which looked like it had functioned as a den at one time. In addition to the piles of paper, there were art supplies, old easels and a variety of antiques jumbled on every available surface.

  A slightly hysterical laugh burst from Carrie, and she clasped a hand over her mouth. “I know it’s silly, but that’s why I’m working on the gutters. The rest of this is too overwhelming. I tried to start in the dining room the morning after he died, but hours later it was still so full of stuff.”

  “You need to call the junk people.” Avery walked forward carefully. A narrow path had been carved out amid the hoard. It felt like walking through a cave, only instead of the walls being formed by rocks they were made from paper and miscellaneous household items.

  “I can’t.” Carrie shook her head. “First, it would kill Dad for everyone to know this is what his life had come to at the end. I don’t expect you to understand, but he was a proud man.”

  “It’s difficult to kill someone who’s already dead,” Avery couldn’t help but point out.

  “Besides,” Carrie continued as if Avery hadn’t spoken, “I’ve found journal entries and sketches tucked into every pile I went through. Those need to be saved and preserved.”

  “Why?” Avery reached out to run her fingers along the edge of a stack of decades-old Life magazines. Suddenly her mother’s antiseptically clean condo didn’t seem so awful. Carrie claimed Niall had only developed this problem recently, but he’d probably always been a hoarder at heart. Maybe her half sister hadn’t lived the charmed life Avery wanted to resent her for after all.

  “His work was important. It might not have been appreciated during his lifetime, but Niall Reed’s legacy will endure.”

  “I never met the guy,” Avery said softly, “but I can imagine those words coming out of his mouth.”

  Carrie’s nostrils flared and she turned and disappeared into the next room. Avery followed her into the kitchen. At least that room was somewhat clean. Vitamin bottles of all shapes and sizes littered the counter, but there were no dirty dishes filling the sink or rotting food left out to draw bugs.

  “They aren’t his words.” Carrie pulled two glasses from the cabinet. The ice maker in the refrigerator scraped for several seconds before dispensing cubes into first one and then the other. “No one knows more about his art than me. I can tell you he’ll be remembered.”

  “Great,” Avery agreed. “Maybe his art will increase in value posthumously, and we’ll be able to afford to fix up the place before we sell.”

  “I’m not selling.” Carrie handed her a glass of water with a little more force than necessary.

  “It’s not up to you.”

  “Or you,” her sister shot back. “You don’t know anything about him or this place. Or me.”

  The long sip of water Avery took felt cool on her throat. Cool and clean, a contrast to the heavy weight of this house. “I’m working on that.” She tipped her glass in Carrie’s direction. “I heard you were an artist.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Is it true that your dad—our dad—discouraged you because you had too much talent?”

  Carrie barked out a laugh. “You’re a real piece of work. You come careening into town with a massive chip on your shoulders, and suddenly you want to know everything.”

  “I want to know about you.” The words were as much of a shock to Avery as they seemed to be for Carrie. She did want to know. This place—her history—was like a puzzle she couldn’t quite piece together. She didn’t want to believe it had anything to do with the yearning to belong that had always been her darkest secret. If Niall hadn’t wanted to acknowledge all three of his daughters when he was alive, why had he thrown them together in this way as part of his will?

  “I took art classes in high school,” Carrie said, wiping an invisible crumb from the counter. “Like lots of other kids. There was nothing special about me.”

  Avery knew the other woman was lying but didn’t push the subject. There was plenty of time for that. Time. The concept felt unfamiliar in Magnolia. In her old life, Avery stalked time like a ruthless predator, always trying to get the upper hand. Work more. Work harder. Prove that she deserved the success that came her way.

  “If you say so. Tell me about the beach ranch and why it’s so special to Meredith.”

  Carrie closed her eyes for a moment, pain shifting across her features like the waning light of afternoon making its way across the grass.

  Avery started to take a step forward before stopping herself. “What’s wrong?”

  “It must have been horrible not to know who your father was,” she said after a moment. “I can’t imagine why Niall and your mother kept that from you.”

  Avery’s mouth thinned. It was one thing to offer sympathy but quite another to accept it.

  “Meredith grew up here. She knew Niall. Her family hated him.” She shook her head, a strand of loose hair falling across her cheek. “I never understood why, but now I get it. Her dad must have known the whole time.”

  “He never confronted Niall?”

  Carrie shrugged. “I don’t know, but it’s complicated and the house at the beach is part of that.”

  “How?”

  “The property sits on twenty acres of waterfront property. The Ventners owned it for generations.”

  “That’s Meredith’s last name,” Avery murmured.

  “It had been her father’s family ranch.” Carrie shook her head. “The man she knew as her father. Carl is a former marine. He had some is
sues with PTSD after the Gulf War. Meredith has two older brothers, and everyone knew things were rough for the family. When her parents divorced, the mom moved to Florida but left the kids with Carl. Dad bought the ranch from Meredith’s grandma before she died. Carl didn’t know about the sale until after it went through. He was livid because he’d expected to inherit. But his mother put the money in a trust for the kids’ college. Meredith’s brothers, who were a few years older, left Magnolia and haven’t returned.”

  “So she was raised by a dad who wasn’t really her dad?”

  Carrie drew in a breath. “Carl eventually cleaned up his act. He owns a garage and auto parts store in town. Meredith was really into animals. She became a vet tech and works for the local animal hospital. A couple of years ago, she came to my dad—her dad—wanting to lease the property out by the beach for an animal rescue organization.”

  “She didn’t know she was asking her biological father to lease her the house that had belonged to the family of the father who raised her?”

  “No.” Carrie shook her head. “Looking at it from this side of knowledge, I wonder what Niall was thinking. It’s kind of...”

  “Sick and twisted,” Avery supplied.

  “Exactly.”

  Neither said anything for several moments. They stood in the silence of the kitchen, dust motes dancing across the sunlight that filtered in from the window above the sink. It wasn’t too late, Avery mused. She could still walk away. Even though she had nothing to return to, surely starting over someplace else would be easier than slogging her way through the family drama that was certain to ensue in the wake of Niall’s death.

  She’d been furious with her mom for keeping this secret. Now it occurred to her that, for once, Melissa might have acted with Avery’s best interest at heart. Probably unintentional but the result was the same.

  Then she noticed a single tear track down Carrie’s smooth cheek. Her sister. Despite everything else, she yearned for a connection. For a family. Carrie and Meredith shared her DNA, and she couldn’t turn her back on that.