The Year that Everything Changed

by Georgia Bockoven

  “I wasn’t, but I saw something that was so perfect I couldn’t resist.”

  “Me, too,” Rachel admitted.

  “And you didn’t tell me? What if I hadn’t found something myself?”

  She pulled into the driveway and parked next to Elizabeth’s car. “I knew you would. But just in case, I signed the card from both of us.”

  “What about Elizabeth?”

  Rachel smiled. “Same thing.”

  “Me, too. Do you think they got something for us?”

  “Elizabeth, yes. Christina, no.”

  Christina met them at the door wearing a sweater with a grinning black cat sitting in the middle of a box of broken ornaments. “Merry Christmas.”

  “The house looks beautiful,” Ginger said.

  “Wait till you see the tree. It’s incredible. I found this amazing Christmas shop and went nuts buying ornaments. Rhona helped, of course. There’s no way I could have done it without her. I’ve never had a tree over two feet tall that took me more than five minutes to decorate. And all I ever used were those glass balls you get at the drugstore for a couple of bucks. I threw them out with the tree every year, but there’s no way I could throw any of this stuff out.” Christina moved toward the living room. “Rhona did the outside while I was at work, and it looked so cool I said we just had to have a tree—so we did.”

  “How many cups of coffee have you had today?” Rachel asked.

  “Why?”

  “You seem a little . . . wired,” Ginger answered.

  Christina laughed. “I know. I’ve been this way for days.”

  Elizabeth came out of the kitchen carrying a tray with coffee and mugs. “Did you tell them?”

  “Not yet,” Christina said, leading the way into the living room.

  Rachel stopped in the doorway to look at the tree. It was indeed spectacular, covered in lights and ornaments and filling the room with a dense, fragrant pine scent. There were three elegantly wrapped presents sitting on the red velvet cloth circling the base. “Wow.”

  “You wouldn’t believe how long it took us to put it up,” Christina said.

  “Well, it’s spectacular,” Ginger said. “But I want to know what Elizabeth’s talking about. What haven’t you told us?”

  Christina couldn’t contain the grin that split her face. “I’m back in the moviemaking business.”

  “Here?” Rachel asked. “I thought you said you had to move to L.A. for that to happen.”

  Christina told them about her partnership with Dexter. “We start principal photography in Vancouver on February tenth.”

  “I love Ian Grayson,” Ginger said. “I have never been as turned on by a guy in a movie as I was by him in Another Harvest.”

  Elizabeth laughed. “You and a hundred million other women.”

  “Have you met him yet?” Ginger asked.

  “Once.”

  “And? ”

  “He’s nice.”

  “That’s it? That’s the best you can do?”

  Christina’s grin broadened. “All right—he’s a hunk. Spoiled but not obnoxiously so—he ate the whole bowl of M&Ms and didn’t discriminate. He’s really funny and self-deprecating but serious about the business. The reason he took this role and agreed to work for scale is he’s terrified of being typecast and having his career end at thirty.” She paused. “Before I forget—on a completely different subject—I have something I want to talk to all of you about. Since I’m going to be based in Sacramento for the foreseeable future, I was wondering if anyone would object if I bought this house.”

  “I think it’s a great idea,” Elizabeth said after taking a couple of seconds to absorb the news.

  “I do, too,” Ginger added enthusiastically. “I love knowing this house is staying in the family.”

  Rachel nodded and mentally stepped away from the discussion that followed. She surreptitiously looked at the women who had gone from adversaries to reluctant friends to sisters. They were all like blocks on a quilt, Jessie’s slowly unfolding story the thread that bound them together. In ways that were both painful and comforting she’d grown to love the flawed, caring man who was their father and to envy Elizabeth and Christina the time they’d had with him.

  “Let’s not wait until after lunch to start the tapes,” Rachel said impulsively.

  “I was thinking the same thing,” Elizabeth said.

  Ginger took her usual seat, and Christina picked up the manila envelope Lucy had dropped by earlier. She opened it and reached inside. “There’s only one,” she said with obvious disappointment.

  Rachel warmed her hands on the coffee mug while Christina dropped the tape into the player and hit play.

  Jessie’s Story

  That’s it, Lucy. You know the rest of the story because you were there for it. As usual, you outsmarted me. I couldn’t see the sense to telling you my life story when I made that deal with you over lunch, but I think I understand what you were after now that I’ve reached the end. I was afraid of what I’d find if I let myself look back, but it wasn’t near as bad as I’d thought. I made a lot of mistakes, none of them intentional, but that didn’t stop them hurting people I never meant to hurt. If saying I’m sorry would change anything I’d put it on a billboard. My girls had a right to expect more than they got. I just didn’t know how to give it to them.

  They’re fine women. I’d tell them how proud I was of the way they turned out, but I have a feeling it’s not something they’d welcome coming from me. It’s too soon. Maybe one day when you think they’re ready, you could tell them for me.

  Take care of yourself, Lucy . . . and, if it’s not asking too much, take care of my girls.

  The tape ended. A stunned silence followed. Rachel couldn’t believe what she’d heard and considered asking Christina to play it again. “These tapes weren’t meant for us,” she murmured, not realizing she said it aloud until Elizabeth looked at her.

  “You think Lucy did this on her own?” Ginger said. “That it wasn’t in the will?”

  Elizabeth shook her head, disbelieving. “Do you know what the consequences are for something like that?”

  “What?” Christina asked.

  “Disbarment for sure,” Rachel said. “Possibly jail.” She recoiled at the idea. “This can’t be what it seems. Why would Lucy take that kind of risk just to get us to listen to these tapes?”

  “That’s obvious,” Christina was the first to answer. “She was in love with Jessie.”

  That was the key, one Rachel would have recognized in the beginning if she hadn’t been so blinded by hatred and anger. “Lucy could manipulate us, but she couldn’t lie to us. That’s why she gave us this final tape. Now the question is, what are we going to do about it?”

  Christina looked at each of them in turn. “My vote is that we send her flowers—the biggest bouquet we can find.”

  “No,” Elizabeth said softly. “It should be four roses, one from each of us.”

  “Yellow ones,” said Ginger. “I have a feeling it’s what Jessie would have chosen.”

  “Roses it is,” Rachel said.

  Epilogue

  Caught up in her musings about time travelers and butterflies, Elizabeth missed seeing Christina enter the cemetery. Moving carefully between the headstones to avoid stepping on a grave, Christina didn’t look up until she was within the canopy of the massive heritage oak shading Jessie’s grave. The hug she gave Elizabeth lasted longer than their usual greeting, a silent acknowledgment of the reason they were there.

  “Where’s your car?” Elizabeth asked.

  “I decided to walk. I’ve been trapped in that editing room for over a week and needed some exercise.”

  “How’s it coming?” Christina and Dexter had trouble letting go of a film, often tinkering with it until the studio threatened legal action to get it into theaters by the announced release date. The result was an ever-growing number of awards crowding the photographs on the fireplace mantel.

  “Another week
and we should be there.”

  “And how’s the back?”

  Christina put a protective hand on her softly rounded belly. “Better. I saw the doctor yesterday, and she said that we’re both fine.” She gave Elizabeth an unexpected, excited grin. “I was going to wait until everyone was here. . . .”

  “But?” Even guessing what was coming, Elizabeth drew the word out, filling it with expectation.

  “Do you have any idea how hard it is for me to keep a secret from you?” Not waiting for an answer, she took a deep breath and blurted, “It’s a girl.”

  Elizabeth let out a squeal of delight and hugged her again, this time with joy. “Dexter must be in the clouds.” After two boys Christina had been ready to call it quits. Then, as a joke, Dexter gave her a statue of a South American fertility goddess guaranteed to produce girls. She put the unbelievably ugly statue in their bedroom and forgot about it. Four months later they were in the middle of their current movie, in contract negotiations for another, and she was inconveniently and ecstatically pregnant.

  “Not only in the clouds, he’s started a campaign to get me to marry him.”

  “And this is a bad thing?” Elizabeth asked, repeating a phrase she’d been using with Christina ever since she and Dexter got pregnant the first time seven years earlier. It wasn’t a moral judgment, it was a legal one, the same one she’d used when, at Stephanie’s graduation, she and David announced they were moving in together and would postpone marriage until they were financially ready—or pregnant with their second child.

  “I don’t know. . . . In a way it’s like saying what we have now isn’t good enough or that this baby is more important somehow.”

  “You’re kidding—who would think something that dumb?”

  “Dexter’s mother.”

  “Yet another reason not to like that woman.”

  A white Prius nosed through the heavy iron gates that guarded the entrance. “Here comes Rachel and Ginger,” Christina said.

  “Are you going to tell them about the baby?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Later, when we’re all back at the house.” She glanced at the brass marker on her father’s grave. “This is Lucy’s time. And Dad’s.”

  Another strong flash of guilt came over Elizabeth as she thought about the potential consequences to her sisters if they were caught. But they all insisted they owed this to Lucy. All she’d ever asked of them was to be reunited with their father when she died—any way they could arrange it.

  “I’d understand if you didn’t want to be here,” Elizabeth said. “Dexter must have had a fit when you told him what you were going to do, especially now with the baby.”

  “It’s not as if we’re talking actual prison time,” Christina said. “Besides, he doesn’t know.”

  “Well, that’s one way to handle it.”

  “What about Sam?”

  Elizabeth smiled. “He doesn’t know either.”

  “Wanna bet Jeff and Logan are just as clueless?”

  “Yeah, can you imagine Jeff doing damage control with headlines like ‘President of the Anna Kaplan Foundation Arrested for Criminal Trespass’?”

  “Is that what we’re doing? Criminal trespass? Shouldn’t it have a more beefy sound to it—something like ‘Malicious Mischief with Malice Aforethought’?”

  “Too wordy. They’ll go for something short and pithy when they file charges.”

  “Lucy would never agree to this.”

  “Maybe,” Elizabeth said. “But only for our benefit. I have a feeling she’d be secretly pleased with the irony of her and Jessie’s story coming full circle this way.”

  Christina’s eyes pooled with unshed tears. “I’m going to miss her.”

  Elizabeth nodded. “I know,” she said softly, reaching for Christina’s hand. “Me, too.” When Ginger got out of the car Elizabeth saw that she’d brought flowers. Yellow roses.

  “Do you think Logan knows?” Elizabeth asked Christina. She wished she knew Logan and the boys better, but with two sets of twins born less than two years apart, their conversations, when they did all get together, rarely moved beyond teething or terrible twos or preschool. Sam knew him better from the times they golfed together and liked him a lot, saying Logan was the stereotypical firefighter, the epitome of the quiet, self-effacing hero. Ginger plainly adored him and Logan plainly adored her—for now it was all Elizabeth really needed to know.

  “If he did, he’d be here.” Christina opened her arms to her sisters. They exchanged hugs and kisses and quick updates about airport delays and traffic. The ordinary, the fabric of their daily lives, they exchanged in phone calls and email and text messages.

  Ginger looked around, and let out a quick, nervous sigh. “Are we ready?”

  “She’s been hyperventilating since I picked her up at the airport,” Rachel said.

  Ginger didn’t even try to deny it. “You have to remember I’m from the Midwest. We walk a pretty straight and narrow path out there.”

  Elizabeth reached in her purse and brought out four plastic bags, gently, reverently distributing them. “I thought we could try to cover this whole area—the tree and the grass. Just be as subtle as you can. The last thing we want to do is draw attention.”

  Rachel cupped her hands around her bag. “I hate having to do this. We should be—” Her breath caught in a sob and she couldn’t finish. Finally, she managed to say, “It would have been so simple just to open the grave and let us scatter Lucy’s ashes over Dad’s casket,” Rachel said.

  “Policy,” Elizabeth said to a question she’d fielded a dozen times. “Very, very rigid policy enforced by people with sticks up—” She reconsidered the crudity. “People with no imagination and an icy lack of compassion.”

  Rachel put her arm around Ginger’s shoulder. “The more I thought about what we’re doing, the more right it felt. Lucy knew what she was doing when she asked us to take care of her.” She purposely looked at Ginger and then Elizabeth and Christina. “She knew no matter what, we’d find a way.” Now she smiled. “After all—we’re Jessie Reed’s daughters.”

  Saying she would catch up with them at the house, Elizabeth lingered to say a final, private farewell.

  She glanced around the area where they had scattered Lucy’s ashes and saw only faint traces of color. The sprinklers would come on in a couple of hours and finish the work they’d begun.

  In death Lucy would nurture and shelter and envelop her beloved Jessie the way she had in life. She would become a part of the grass that covered him, and the heritage oak that provided shade in the sweltering summers. She would be integrated into new branches where finches and doves perched to celebrate spring with song. Eventually new roots would reach down and embrace Jessie’s casket, and he and Lucy would be together again.

  Forever.

  Acknowledgments

  As always, John Morelli, M.D., is there for me when I have medical questions. Though reality doesn’t always fit the way I’d envisioned the story going, I’m incredibly grateful for the number of times he’s saved me from writing something that would frustrate anyone in the profession. If mistakes still managed to make it into the book, it’s my fault. Thanks, John. You’re the best!

  Sadly, my knowledge of schizophrenia is intimate and ongoing, and didn’t need research. I have a brother who has suffered from this illness since he was a young man. While I accept and take care of the man he has become, I will forever miss the big brother I knew as a child. I wish you peace and gentle roads, Fred.

  A+ AUTHOR INSIGHTS, EXTRAS, & MORE . . .

  FROM

  GEORGIA

  BOCKOVEN

  AND

  Author’s Note

  There were three children in my family, two boys and one girl—me. While I never had to share a bedroom or wear hand-me-down clothes, I would have given up all the privileges that came with being the only girl for a sister. Older or younger, didn’t matter. A twin would have been perfect. My imagination ran wild with ways to fit that scen
ario into our family. Plainly, I’ve been spinning tall tales for a long, long time.

  In that light, The Year Everything Changed was even more fun to write than usual. I was able to answer every “what if” sister question I’d ever imagined. While it was a challenge to come up with background stories for these women and to create the father who could bring them all together, the hardest part by far was letting go when I finished the book. I came to love these characters and wanted to know what happened to them after the last chapter. Thanks to my wonderfully understanding editor, Lucia Macro, I was able to add an epilogue that answered my questions and what I believed would be readers’ questions, too. (Yes, writers really do become this invested in their characters—at least this writer does!)

  Although I never got the biological sister I yearned for, I’ve been blessed with women in my life who are like sisters to me. We share important and inconsequential moments together; we laugh at the same silly situations, cry obnoxiously during sad movies, listen when it’s important to hear, and hug each other when a touch is what’s needed most. We celebrate accomplishments and feel profound sadness over loss. Thank you Karol, Kathy, Lu, and Susan. My life is infinitely richer because of you.

  And there’s another woman who makes my life richer every day and who has become the daughter I never had, my daughter-in-law. Thank you, Patty.

  Questions for Discussion

  1. In The Year Everything Changed, Jessie’s story covers more than six decades of significant change in moral and social attitudes. In particular, a father’s role in the family and in his children’s lives has been completely rewritten. Did you find it difficult to judge Jessie’s behavior by those previous standards?

  2. Is being a sister always a blood bond or can it be a state of mind? If you were suddenly presented with previously unknown adult siblings, how do you think you would react? Do you believe it’s possible to develop a true familial bond without a shared history? Would the genetic link be enough encouragement to make you want to try?