The Sweeney Sisters

by Lian Dolan

  Serena set up an appointment with Cap Richardson for the next week. She wanted to meet her father, although she’d seen him dozens of times in the past. He was the local celebrity. When Bill Sweeney was around, people noticed. Serena had, for sure. At the neighborhood Christmas party. Walking his dog down the lane and giving Serena a little nod and a quick word. She’d seen him at half a dozen library events, as he charmed the audience with his storytelling and humor. But she needed to talk to him in this new context. Serena wanted to meet her father, not the local celebrity.

  Like any decent reporter, Serena knew she was sitting on a blockbuster story, maybe even a memoir of her own. Certainly, it was enough to get a publisher interested and that would be enough to get her out the door at Straight Up before it went under. She came to Southport to assess whether the truth would be worth telling to the world and what that would cost her in her life. She needed to understand what she might be losing and that involved the Sweeney sisters. Serena set to work investigating each of them. They each had a story to tell.

  Serena hadn’t seen them in years, since she’d graduated from college and left Southport. Watching them dance together at the wake to an ancient Boz Scaggs song, laughing and playing off each other, Serena could remember them as teenagers walking down the lane on their way home from the pharmacy in the village or sailing lessons at the yacht club. You could hear them first, either singing the Spice Girls at the top of their lungs or Liza screaming at Maggie about something she did or didn’t do and Tricia pleading with them to stop fighting. Serena would look up from the big chair on the porch where she’d be reading the paper. The Sweeney girls always walked right in the middle of the road, oblivious to the few cars that might turn down their dead-end street. The cars can wait for us, their attitude seemed to say. To Serena, an only child who stuck to the sidewalk, the confidence of the younger girls was striking.

  But it wasn’t admirable to Serena’s mother, who had no patience for the carefree Sweeneys. She would beep at them in her car and shoo them over to the sidewalk, remarking to her own daughter, “Those Sweeneys, they seem to think the moon and the stars revolve around them.”

  It’s true. They did.

  Serena would have expected them to have changed so much more, in their thirties having lost both their parents, to have taken up this heavy burden and wear the pain on their faces. But instead, she found herself amazed by their lightness, their collective energy. (Another reason the whiskey and the dancing had seemed like a good idea. Who could compete with these sisters?)

  Liza, with her deep auburn hair and pale complexion, was petite and had matured into the classic preppy style she’d always worn. Serena had envied Liza growing up, pulling off dark blue jeans, her French striped sweaters and vintage Pappagallo espadrilles. At the wake, she was in a simple black dress, three strands of pearls, and flats for the lawn and she looked perfect. Serena was surprised to hear that she had married Whit Jones, a dull but solid guy, who predictably became his father, complete with golf tan and a receding hairline. Liza had always been surrounded by much cuter boys at regattas or cotillions. And then there was the rumor that she’d been involved with Gray Cunningham, town bad boy and the first person she’d ever known to sell prescription meds. (It must be true because Gray was here tonight and he looked fantastic, like Jake Gyllenhaal on a good night.) And yet, Liza had married Whit, raised twins, and lived in the big Victorian nearby with the decorative wreath on the front door, like a proper Southport girl. There must be something more to that story, Serena thought.

  Then there was Maggie, wild Maggie, “Mad Maggie” she had heard Bill Sweeney call her once at a neighborhood Christmas party. Maggie looked so much like their mother, it was uncanny. She hadn’t changed a bit with her strawberry-blond hair, tan shoulders, and wrists filled with silver bangles. She still turned heads. Serena remembered being at the market when a seventeen-year-old Maggie Sweeney had swept in to buy a Diet Coke and all the men in the store watched her in her short sundress, floppy hat, and scrunchy suede boots as she sauntered out. Serena stood at the register, mid-transaction, waiting for the clerk to recall that she was there at all. She was something then and she was something now. Taller than Liza and curvier, she looked like she’d stepped out of an Anthropologie catalogue in her black maxi dress dotted with white stars and a pink-and-orange scarf in her hair. Who has the guts to wear that to a funeral? she thought.

  Finally, Tricia, who surprised Serena most of all, probably because she had been in braces the last time she had seen her. Now she was tall and athletic looking, like she could run a million miles before needing a drink of water. It made sense. Serena recalled that little Tricia was always running or jumping. The Sweeneys had a giant trampoline in their backyard and while Serena was upstairs in her bedroom grinding away on her homework, she could see preteen Tricia jumping up and down all afternoon. Now she was a grown woman with straight red hair in a chin-length bob, wearing an expensive sheath dress and simple diamond earrings. There was no wedding ring on her finger, so Serena guessed she had bought the diamonds herself. She knew Tricia was a lawyer and she had acted the part of family spokesperson for the last few days, speaking to the press, doing interviews laced with funny and charming stories while reminding everyone of her father’s tremendous legacy.

  During the wake, Serena had watched Tricia circulate through the guests like a politician, a species with which Serena was familiar, shaking hands warmly with her father’s colleagues or hugging the neighbors and close friends, maintaining eye contact with everyone she encountered, working her way through all the mourners turned revelers. Tricia had a job to do and she was thorough. Serena had fled to the ladies’ room inside the house when Tricia was making a beeline for the group from Yale that Serena had attached herself to. There was no way she could talk to Tricia or any of the sisters.

  What had she been thinking? She was Serena Tucker, former neighbor and never really a friend to the Sweeneys. When the New York Times alert flashed across Serena’s phone screen, she had felt compelled to return to Southport, to be a part of saying goodbye to the man she barely knew, except from his writing. She imagined there would be some gathering at the library or the yacht club she could attend. When Lucy Winthrop told her about the invite-only celebration at Willow Lane, she thought, I have a right to mourn, to be there.

  Serena hopped aboard the Acela at Union Station in DC. She had stared out the window thinking of nothing, a rare occurrence for her busy mind, as the train made its way through Baltimore, Delaware, Philly, Newark, Penn Station, and, finally, Stamford. She rented a car at the station and drove the scenic route to Southport.

  But now that she was back, she thought of what her mother Birdie had said about “those Sweeneys” and the moon and the stars. This was their universe and Serena had no business at Willow Lane.

  As the bartender put down her chowder, her phone buzzed. It was a text from Cap Richardson. The sisters would like to meet. Please call me in the morning to set up a time.

  “Anything else?” the bartender interrupted Serena’s thoughts.

  “You know what? I think I will have a glass of wine. Do you have a good red?”

  Chapter 8

  Liza, Maggie, and Tricia sat around the mahogany conference table in the law offices of Richardson & Blix waiting for last-minute instructions and gathering their courage. Serena would be walking through the door any minute and, despite their differences in careers, marital status, and degree to which they were concerned about this woman’s motives, the sisters were united on one issue: Do Not Blurt Out Any Family Secrets.

  Cap kept referring to the event as a “Meet and Greet,” as if Serena were a potential new client and the Sweeneys were offering their services in closet organizing or home decorating. “This is the first step. You don’t have to make any decisions or form any lifelong bonds today. Meet her and then decide for yourselves about how you’d like to proceed. But understand that she has legal rights here. You will have to deal wit
h her in the future. I suggest that you be polite and positive. Don’t antagonize her . . .”

  “Tricia, did you hear what Cap said? No antagonizing!” Maggie said.

  “I’m not the wild card here,” Tricia responded, implying it was Maggie’s personality, not Tricia’s, that was the most unpredictable.

  “Let Cap finish,” Liza said.

  Cap was firm, but spoke more softly when he cautioned the sisters, “Whatever anger or disappointment you might feel toward your father, try to put that aside when you speak to Serena. I know you have memories of her from years ago, when you thought of her only as a neighbor. But she is a formidable person as an adult. And now, she is a relative, so bear that in mind.”

  Tricia knew she could keep a lid on the situation, but was worried about Liza, who got emotional and defensive about her father and her mother, and Maggie, who, when agitated, lashed out at the agitator. Tricia wanted the meeting to feel more like a deposition than a cozy family reunion. “The key is to get Serena to talk about Serena. Ask her questions about her life, her work. Be curious about her, so she won’t ask too many about us. Or Dad. I can do all the talking, if you want.”

  “You’ve told us this, like, ten times. We get it,” replied Maggie, rolling her eyes like a teenager, which was probably why Tricia was treating her like one. “And I think Liza and I can handle asking a few questions ourselves. She’s our half-sister, too.”

  “Oh, please. This isn’t about sisterhood. She’s a journalist and we don’t know how she’s going to process all of this,” Tricia explained, sweeping her hands around the room to mean the legacy of the deep relationship between Cap and Bill Sweeney, and the cozy relationship that the three of them had with Cap and all the people at Richardson & Blix (except Blix, who’d been dead for decades). “She could have a story online tomorrow about her true parentage. For all we know, she’s been working on something for months, so let’s not get all ‘Oh, she’s my sister.’ She’s probably on the hunt for a story, not a sister.”

  Rose, the firm’s administrative assistant and one of Tricia’s classmates in elementary school, popped her head in the door. “Serena Tucker is here.”

  Cap stood and straightened his tie. “Please show her in, Rose.”

  Because of her work, Serena had walked into rooms with high-ranking diplomats and generals. She’d met with war lords, Nobel Peace Prize laureates, even Pope John Paul II as a young reporter on a pool trip to the Vatican. But nothing had quite prepared her for this moment, knowingly meeting her three sisters for the first time. She had watched tearful family reunions on daytime television for years as she’d killed time in hotel rooms before an evening press event. This was not going to be that, she knew. The sterile law office setting and the formal greeting from Cap Richardson made that clear. Even still, the emotion, the prick of tears, surprised her as she entered.

  She had been so nervous about making the right impression that she had made a last-minute shopping trip to Main Street in fashionable Westport to buy something, anything that wasn’t black, even if it was overpriced (which it was). She found a charcoal gray sheath dress, a Marimekko scarf, and a dark jean jacket that looked less severe than her usual uniform of black pants, black sweater or T-shirt, black leather jacket, or black Patagonia down vest. As part of the print media, she didn’t have to worry about looking good on camera, so she dressed functionally, as if at any moment an international crisis might break out and she’d have to run for cover. But today, for this meeting, she wanted to put aside her reporter instincts and be in the moment. New clothes helped her do that.

  She entered the conference room with false confidence, taking in the scene: Tricia, at the far end of the table, in a blue suit jacket, hair up in a messy bun, smart glasses pushed up on her forehead and lips done in deep rose lipstick, looking like a TV lawyer, sitting in front of a legal pad with notes on it already; Maggie, wearing a peasant blouse and her hair up in a scarf, could have been headed to the farmers’ market; and Liza was suburban chic in one of those floral print dresses that all young mothers seemed to live in, but Serena had no idea where they could be purchased. These are my sisters. She hoped she could find her voice. “Hello, it’s good to see you again. I’m Serena Tucker.”

  Liza and Maggie stood up to greet her. Maggie reached her first and gave her an authentic hug, enveloping her in warmth and her signature scent of orange blossoms. (“I’m a citrus,” Maggie had announced when she’d returned home from California. “I had my essence analyzed and I’m a tangy sweet citrus fruit.”) Serena responded in kind with a real hug. Liza stepped in with a cooler version of Maggie’s embrace, but as she pulled away, she smiled, her eyes bright with emotion. “This is quite a surprise. We have a lot to catch up on.”

  Serena responded to Liza’s light touch. She relaxed as she made her way to a seat at the far end of the table.

  Tricia stood up and reached across the wide table to shake Serena’s hand. “Thanks for coming in today. It’s very helpful to meet face-to-face.” Serena could appreciate Tricia’s manner. She had used the veneer of politeness many times in her career when interviewing celebrities or well-known political leaders. Being hyper-professional helped Serena to avoid getting sucked into their charisma vortex. Tricia was using the same tactic.

  “Of course,” Serena replied, settling into her chair and wondering where the conversation would go from here.

  But she didn’t have long to process as Tricia jumped in. “So, Serena, we thought we’d start by giving you an update on everything that’s happening now with the estate, covering the legal issues first. Then we’re happy to answer any questions you may have. Obviously, this is an unexpected situation for us and not something we anticipated when we arrived in Southport, so feel free to jot down any thoughts on the pad in front of you and we can address them at the end.”

  Liza and Maggie locked eyes. This was so Tricia, managing the conversation as she had outlined in advance to her sisters. Tricia insisted on a scripted opening, while Maggie and Liza wanted a more organic interaction. “Why don’t we feel the moment and see what works?” Maggie had suggested to which Tricia responded, “That’s a terrible idea.” Tricia won and then brought along her own yellow pads to prove it. Maggie caught Liza’s eye, mouthing the words, Here she goes.

  But Serena surprised them all by cutting off Tricia’s opening statement with her own. “I hope you don’t mind, but before we get to anything formal, I wanted to let you know how much I’ve always admired your family from afar. I know we weren’t great friends and our families weren’t close, but I could hear the sounds of laughter and music next door and thought of how lucky you all were to grow up in a house like that. Your mother was beautiful, a lovely person. I was sorry for her passing at such a young age. She always had something kind to say to me. I admired her spirit and loved running into her at the market or anywhere in the village. She was different, special. And your father, I admired his work so much and have read or reread almost everything he’s ever written since . . .” Serena stumbled for the right phrase. “. . . since I’ve known. He was a brilliant writer. I really wish I’d had a chance to speak to him before his death, but we hadn’t been able to set up a time. It would have meant the world to me.”

  None of the sisters could respond to Serena’s last statement, knowing that their father never intended to acknowledge Serena publicly, or even in private, during his lifetime. They each sat quietly, avoiding her eyes. No one felt the need to tell her the truth. She took the silence as an invitation to continue.

  “But my most vivid memories of him are on Halloween every year when he dressed up like King Lear with that smoking cauldron, and your mother with the eye of newt bit. I always saved your house for last because it was so magical. I know this isn’t what any of you anticipated, but I hope you understand how much I admired your family and am honored to be a part of it.”

  Maggie dropped her head and let out a sob; Liza stared straight ahead, trying hard not to cry. The Hal
loween memory got them in the gut, the recollection of their father embracing the holiday, playing the part of the disillusioned king with gusto and their mother dressed as a terrible witch, stirring the cauldron and serving hot apple cider and doughnuts to the brave souls who wandered down their long, dark driveway. Amidst the sadness and sickness in the house some years, Halloween was the one day where everyone rallied. It wasn’t as if Maggie and Liza had forgotten, they simply hadn’t remembered the wonder of that day in years.

  Tricia, on the other, kept her head, thinking to herself, Damn, she’s good.

  Serena let the revelations of the will wash over her. Cap presented the details and Tricia provided additional information when necessary. Serena had called a lawyer friend on the premise of researching a story and understood what her rights were before she walked into the conference room, but was flabbergasted that she was mentioned in the will. All she had wanted was to meet with William Sweeney. Her intention was never to go after any part of the estate. But now, her journalist’s skepticism emerged. Why would Bill Sweeney refuse to meet her, but include her in his will? But her only response was, “I’m truly shocked and humbled by this. I never expected to be named an heir. I will do my best to work with all of you on this.”

  Serena could feel Maggie and Liza studying her, and it made her self-conscious. What could they be thinking? She didn’t know them well enough to presume anything at all. Finally, a question from Tricia snapped her back to the room. “Can you tell us about your immediate plans?”

  For a second, Serena struggled to understand the question, thinking that it was about lunch or what she was going to do this afternoon. Then realized it was about The Announcement: what she was going to tell the world and when. She didn’t get caught in that quicksand. “I’ve decided to take a sabbatical from my job at Straight Up. I’ve been grinding along for fifteen years without a break from deadlines and work. I ran into Lucy Winthrop yesterday and it turns out she has a guest cottage available. She’s a close friend of my mother’s. It was a spur-of-the-moment opportunity and I grabbed it. I’ll be here all summer figuring out what’s next for me. This is the right place to do that.”