by Lian Dolan
But then, Liza, Maggie, and Tricia had disarmed her in the meeting. They were the ones asking the questions, skillfully and sincerely. With their pressure, Serena had opened up about her job, the latest boyfriend who was not exactly divorced, the ski club trips, her favorite antiques shop in Georgetown. It was like the book club she attended, but without the wine or any pretense of reading a book. Serena was flattered by the attention; she wanted in on this club.
She only had a small cadre of female friends, a few from college scattered around the country now, and some work friends collected over the years who might be posted in DC or in some foreign land. None of whom she thought of as a sister. But now she had three sisters. She had initially thought the headline coming out of the DNA reveal was that her father was William Sweeney, but, maybe, it was that she was one of the Sweeney sisters now.
She sat in the front seat of the rental car, trying to remember how the keyless ignition worked, shaking and shaken. Her decision to take a leave of absence and stay in Southport was a no-brainer. She’d made it in a snap second when Lucy Winthrop offered the guesthouse, but, in truth, she knew she was on an epic journey the moment she boarded the train in DC after hearing about the death. Yesterday, she was confident in her plan to spend the summer in Southport, getting to know her sisters and working on a book proposal. Yes, she wanted to write about this. She had a right to tell her own story, didn’t she? It was a worthwhile story to tell.
But today, having sat at a table with the Sweeneys for more than an hour, sharing stories and laughs, she had to admit, she liked her half-sisters. Writing a book about them might be a betrayal. Liza was cultured and inquisitive. Maggie was earthy, warm, and a bit bawdy. And with Tricia, it was like looking in a mirror, in terms of physical appearance and personality. She appreciated that Tricia was standoffish and skeptical. That was how Serena felt when she’d walked in the conference room. Only she’d succumbed to the Sweeney charms while Tricia remained her own person. Serena admired her.
She pulled into the parking at the Delamar. In the morning, she’d be back on the train to collect her car and her belongings for the summer. She would resign from her job before Straight Up closed down for good, as Tricia had suspected. She’d find a house sitter, probably that nice editorial intern who lived with four other broke college-educated interns in a two-bedroom in Hays Adams. She’d jump at the chance. Plus, she was quiet and smart, not a party girl at all. Then, she’d contact that agent, Susie Burns, from New York, who’d said to her at a party for yet another political tell-all at the National Press Club, “If you ever have a book idea, let me know. I’m interested in anything you have to say.”
And maybe, just maybe, she’d return the call from her mother, who’d left a brief message yesterday, saying, “Serena, it’s Mother. I hear you are in Southport. Call me. Please.”
Chapter 9
About two hours into the hunt for the manuscript, Liza, Maggie, and Tricia figured out that all the sisters searching in one small space was not going to work. The three of them bossing each other around in the boathouse had produced only the password to Bill Sweeney’s computer (Sunkissed1147, the boat’s name plus the Willow Lane house numbers). Tricia had spent several hours searching the hard drive with Liza looking over her shoulder, an arrangement that wasn’t sustainable for either of them. Tricia was searching systematically by key words and wondering how a guy whose computer security system could be compromised by a Post-it with his password stuck to the side of the monitor could possibly have gotten rid of all digital traces of the memoir. Liza felt that reorganizing the file system on the computer would be a better place to start than with what she called “completely random word searches” that her lawyer sister was insisting upon.
Maggie, as per usual, was sitting on the couch thumbing through old magazines and texting somebody with frequency and delight, piping up every few minutes with “Need anything?” or “Let me know what I can do.” When they were growing up, the only time Maggie showed leadership or initiative in a family project was if it involved boys or shopping for clothes; otherwise, she focused on what worked for Maggie.
Once they realized that the manuscript hunt wouldn’t be as easy as logging on and printing it out, it took them about ten minutes to devise a plan of separate but equal distribution of work, at least on paper. Tricia would take the boathouse and its contents, including boxes and boxes of old papers that might be the perfect hiding spot for a mystery manuscript. Maggie would take the library and conservatory to do a backup manuscript search and gather any additional documents that might have migrated inside and should be included with the rest of the papers. And Liza would get the house ready to sell by cleaning out closets, drawers, and entire rooms that hadn’t been touched in years, packing or donating everything in sight.
“I wish Julia was here. I bet she knows where the damn book is,” Tricia said. The sisters had shared a tearful goodbye with the housekeeper. She was thrilled with the money. Clearly, she believed she had earned it but was also grateful that “Mister Bill” had come through in the end. Her plan was to sock most of the sudden windfall into a retirement account like Liza suggested, but splurge a little and spend the summer back in San Juan with her own family, including her aging parents. In the fall, she’d return to her tidy little house in Bridgeport and find a new family to care for. But she had told the sisters she would help pack up Willow Lane before leaving for Puerto Rico. “I can’t let you girls do this all on your own.”
“Absolutely not. You’ve already done too much for our family,” Liza had insisted. “Go be with your own family and enjoy the summer.”
They were missing Julia now, though. Tricia was right. She might know exactly where the manuscript was stashed. “I’ll text her and ask,” Liza offered. Julia responded immediately with the word No followed by a string of question marks. “We’re on our own.”
“So, we’re all settled, then. Everyone knows what they need to do. Maggie?”
Maggie looked up from her phone. “Yeah, all good. Do we have enough boxes? Should I run out and get packing stuff at U-Haul?” Liza and Tricia practically did a double take at Maggie’s pragmatism and offer of aid. “What? Come on, give me some credit.”
“Knock yourself out,” Liza said. “Go get some boxes, but not the huge ones. We need to be able to lift them. Most of this stuff is either going to Goodwill or the dump. Except the papers, which are all going to Yale.”
“And some of the personal stuff. We can divvy that up later.”
“No tagging any artwork until I get back,” Maggie said, half joking. She didn’t think her sisters would hide pieces from her, but she wasn’t a hundred percent sure.
Tricia welcomed the silence in the boathouse. She had always excelled at tasks that were focused and intense, but today, she needed to be alone with her thoughts. The sudden death of her father and the unexpected arrival of this new sister had thrown her ordered world into chaos. Her strength was wrangling facts and details into order and shaping them into a narrative she could spin, but people had always given her issues, especially when they did anything out of character. That was a factor she couldn’t work into her equation. Her father, a man who had spent a lifetime spinning tales, had died without a word, leaving his greatest secret unspoken.
And this secret, this Serena, looked to be a formidable person. For the last two nights, Tricia had crawled into her childhood bed with her laptop and researched Serena. She had no doubt that Serena had done the same and was months ahead of what she called, in her business, “discovery.” She started by reading Serena’s archived articles, including a whole series on Cambodia-Thailand relations, which was a real snooze. Then she moved on to analyzing Serena’s social media, depressing in its geopolitical focus except for a clear love of CSI, Serena Williams, and musical theater, the latter of which seemed out of character. In the Class Notes section of the Vassar Magazine of spring 2014, there was mention of several journalism awards she’d won for a Slate piece about
the Catholic Church sex-abuse scandal and the International Criminal Court’s refusal to investigate, and a recent trip to Greece with her mother, Class of 1973, but no picture. Finally, Tricia dug up a Tucker family photo from the summer of 2005 in the local newspaper, of a library fundraiser, where Birdie Tucker was being honored for her twenty-five years of service and philanthropy.
There were the Tuckers in black tie, all three of them smiling for the camera. In the middle was Birdie the honoree, stick thin in a well-cut bright pink dress that made her look even tanner and her lipstick even frostier, her hair secured in the classic helmet-head pageboy that had served the local women well for decades. To the left was Mitch, stuffed into his tux with some sort of cummerbund that featured penguins drinking martinis and appeared to be needlepointed, if that was possible. Serena stood to her mother’s right, tall and regal, in a gold diaphanous one-shoulder dress with simple drop earrings and her hair slicked back in a bun. Tricia’s first thought was that she loved what Serena was wearing.
Then, she thought: Of course. The library.
Her father had been actively involved in the library from the moment he had arrived in Southport. It made sense, as he was already a well-known writer and the Pequot Library was a cultural beacon in the area, as their website said. It was a special spot, both architecturally and intellectually. It was certainly a community hub for books, theater, a dancing school, adult education classes, and afterschool programs. But Pequot had a veneer of prestige that few public libraries in small towns could match. It had extensive rare book, manuscript, and historical archive collections, assembled by notable local women in the early nineteenth century and still vibrant today. Prominent authors made it a stop on any national book tour and local authors supported the library efforts whenever possible, serving as honorary chairs of benefits, working the summer book sale, donating signed first editions or “Lunch with the Author” to auction efforts.
William Sweeney was one of those authors. He loved libraries, all libraries, having taken refuge in reading rooms during his rough childhood as a place to escape the brutality of his home life. But he particularly loved Pequot Library and his support was genuine. The question of how he and Birdie Tucker crossed paths beyond the view of their respective spouses became clearer to Tricia as she studied the photo.
Definitely, a one-night stand after some fundraiser.
Liza welcomed the silence in the kitchen. The last week had been too much—too sad, too unexpected, too stressful, too exhausting. She needed a few hours of quiet to process everything that had happened. She was happy to let Tricia take the work in the boathouse. Being in her father’s office was more than she could stand emotionally. Some of her happiest memories were of hanging out in the boathouse when she was younger, doing her homework alongside her father who was pounding away at his keyboard. He was a physical writer, standing up, sitting down, hitting the keys with gusto and intention. He allowed Liza to sit at a little table and chair in the corner, plowing away at the tediousness of workbooks and flash cards while he wrote. The other sisters were too noisy (Maggie) or too young (Tricia), so Liza felt special to be allowed into the sanctuary.
When she was older and her father worked on the weekends, she’d read on the couch or do her SAT prep alongside him, not that she was very attentive to either. By then, her mother was sick and Liza was more interested in boys than books, but she loved the winter afternoons shared with her father. Now that was tainted, knowing Serena was probably sitting in her room, just on the other side of the hedgerow, reading or writing away and doing a better job than she.
Let Tricia unearth the memories, Liza thought. I’ll deal with sending the thirty-year-old couches to Goodwill. There was nothing in the house Liza wanted or even deemed worthy of passing down to the twins—well, almost nothing. There were a few pieces of art, some books and signed first editions, her mother’s fondue pot and an ancient Salton yogurt maker, maybe some of the pillows or blankets for sentimental reasons. But the furniture was heavy, worn and scratched; any china or glassware was reduced to mismatched sets of three or four; the lamps and fixtures were nothing special. Maybe there was a rug or two that was worth the effort, but Liza already had a rug-addiction issue, with several perfectly fine Turkish beauties rolled up in her attic. I’ll leave the rugs here for the staging and then Maggie can have them, Liza thought, because her mind worked in to-do lists that extended into the abyss. Either Maggie can use them or sell them and keep the money. Another habit Liza couldn’t break, trying to save Maggie from financial ruin, like she’d been doing since they were in college and Maggie took her housing money for the semester and bought a stupid VW Bug. Liza made up a fake student fee and told her parents she needed the money or she wouldn’t be able to register. She cashed the check and sent the money to Maggie, who had moved off campus at RISD, an experiment in living and education that only lasted about six weeks after Liza bailed her out. But she owned that car for years.
And now she drives the car our father bought her, Liza thought. Has she ever paid for her own car?
Liza poured her fourth cup of coffee for the day and walked through the house with a pad of sticky notes and a pen. Her first order of business would be to collect the sure things for the junk man. The only helpful gesture Whit had made in the last few days was calling 1-800-JUNK-GUY and scheduling a pick-up at the end of the week. “Everything in that place needs to go. Get rid of it. Don’t let anyone talk you out of that, Liza,” Whit had advised while he was packing his bag last night. “Please, I don’t want all that stuff ending up in my garage.” Ah, Whit’s real reason for the call to the hauling company: to make sure Sweeney junk didn’t become Jones junk. Liza had been too drained from the conversation at Cap’s office to protest. Plus, Tricia was in total agreement. “Liza, don’t overthink this. We have more important issues to deal with than dining sets from the eighties. Clean house and move on.”
Liza wasn’t really that kind of person, though. She didn’t move on quickly; she didn’t let go easily. She suspected she’d never understand her father’s betrayal of her mother. Yesterday’s bombshell was taking hold in her psyche and she didn’t see herself getting over it anytime soon.
She wasn’t deluded that her father was a role model of morality; God knows there had been enough days when she’d pulled up to Willow Lane to drop off something only to run into some woman coming out the side door. And she assumed similar behavior went on during their marriage. But, like Maggie, she was surprised that a few years after the wedding her father had cheated on Maeve, and the fact that he’d conceived a child on the side made it a hundred times worse. She could feel the anger and resentment building inside and knew from previous experiences that this was not a healthy way to process negative information. At least, that’s what her yoga therapist had been preaching.
She had no need for some older, smarter sister like Serena Tucker showing up and taking her place as the first-born. Liza had earned that spot over the years, leaving college to be there in her mother’s waning days, caring for her father for years, hosting all those family birthday parties, organizing family Christmases. For God’s sake, she married Whit to do the right thing before her mother’s death and that had to count for something. Serena Tucker wasn’t going to walk into their lives and take that spot away from Liza because she’d been born fourteen months earlier. No way.
Liza stopped in front of the Robert Motherwell print that hung in the front hall. It had always been her favorite piece in the house, a bold abstract in orange and blue that reminded her of those bunny ears TV antennas she’d seen in old sitcoms. This was hers. She slapped a sticky note on it that said, “Liza.”
Maggie welcomed the silence in her car. Jesus, she thought, I don’t know if I can take one more minute of Tricia and Liza. The two of them tended to ignore her completely when they were facing off in the “let’s do it my way” competition that had been going on for the last decade. Maggie’s opinion rarely counted, which didn’t really bother M
aggie. Let somebody else deal with the hassle.
But she certainly didn’t want to get cut out of the loop so completely that she was cut out of the money. Maggie had spent last night mindlessly scrolling through social media and formulating her strategy. She had enough awareness about her mental health to know that her father’s death could affect her deeply, striking her like a lightning bolt and knocking her back off her feet for weeks, maybe months. It was a familiar pattern, one Maggie realized she shared with her father, a cycle of creativity, depression, sexual neediness. Of course, with male artists, there was a sort of “comes with the territory” acceptance that Maggie had never found herself. She knew people judged, including her sisters. As her therapist in Los Angeles had told her, “You can change your patterns, but you can’t change society’s perceptions. So, work on you and don’t get hung up on the others.”
Maggie had worked on herself and knew she needed to stay strong until the estate was settled, the manuscript found, and this Serena complication was worked out. Then she could return to her free studio space in East Nowheresville and check out for a while. In the meantime, her goal was to focus and move forward.
Still, Maggie was more intrigued than terrified of Serena Tucker and how she might infiltrate their lives. As long as Serena didn’t enchant her sisters in some weird way that would relegate Maggie to second-tier status, that was, with her cool looks and her media job. Maybe her connections could help Maggie somehow; maybe Serena would like Maggie more than the others and that would drive Liza and Tricia a tiny bit crazy. Maggie considered analyzing people on the spot as one of her special skills. It was clear from the meeting yesterday and the way Serena went on and on about the smallest details that Serena wanted a friend, a confidant. Maggie could be that person and use the relationship to her advantage.