The Christmas Sisters

by Sarah Morgan

  She’d thought the nightmares were the only reminder of that day, but it seemed she was wrong. It was never going to go away. The questions. The speculation. The blame.

  Her palms felt clammy and her pulse was pounding.

  Then she felt Stewart’s hand close over hers, strong and steady. He could have shut down this whole conversation, but he clearly thought it was something they needed to hear. And he was right, of course.

  Whatever this was, she’d get through it. They’d get through it—

  Posy half rose to her feet, ready for a fight. “Beth—”

  “Who are you writing for?” Hannah took over the interrogation. “Newspaper? Online blog? And what’s your angle? Twenty-five-year anniversary? Or are you going to pretend that being here is a coincidence? We’re not going to let you hurt Suzanne—please be clear about that.”

  Hannah was defending her? Despite the tension, Suzanne wasn’t oblivious to the irony. Her girls were joining together to protect her. She hadn’t seen such a display of teamwork or sisterhood for years. It was more authentic than the robotic interactions that had started the evening. If it hadn’t been for the subject matter, she would have considered it a breakthrough.

  But did it have to be this issue that brought them together?

  Did they really have to dig it up again?

  Luke put his fork down. “It’s not a coincidence.”

  Posy sat down hard on her chair, the fight draining out of her. “It’s not?” She was clearly as confused and shocked as Suzanne. “I don’t get it. You’re here because—What is going on?”

  Suzanne wanted to echo that question.

  Why did Luke want to talk to her about the accident? If he wasn’t a journalist, then what was his interest?

  “I’m not here to write up the story and I’m not here to interview anyone. And it certainly isn’t the reason you and I got together.” He held Posy’s gaze. “You know that.”

  “Do I?” Posy’s voice wavered. Evidently she was fighting a battle between what she believed and what she wanted to believe. “Did you call my sisters?”

  Suzanne was fighting a battle, too. She liked Luke, but now she was worried that her daughter was with a man who didn’t deal honestly with her.

  “He did,” Beth said. “His message said, ‘I’d like to talk to you about the accident and your parents.’”

  “And what I’d like to know,” Hannah said, “is that if you’re not a journalist, if you’re nothing like the other people who have contacted us over the years, then why are you interested?”

  There was a long silence, broken only by the almost-audible throb of suspense.

  “Because your parents weren’t the only ones to die in that accident,” Luke said finally. “Mine died, too.”

  Suzanne felt disconnected from what was going on around her.

  His parents died, too?

  But that would mean—

  There was a commotion, with everyone talking at once, and then a sudden silence when everyone turned to her to assess the extent of the damage caused by that unexpected revelation.

  Her mouth was dry. “Lindsey and David, the other couple who were climbing with us that day, had a son.”

  “That’s me.” Luke held her gaze. “I’m their son.”

  She felt Stewart’s hand tighten on hers, but she didn’t look at him. She was forcing herself to think back to that time. “Their surname was Palmer. Yours is Whittaker.”

  “I was adopted by my mother’s sister, Trudy. Her married name was Whittaker. There was a lot of interest in that accident. They wanted me to be able to have a normal childhood, leave it behind. They raised me as their own. Gave me their name and a home. They lived in Manhattan and that couldn’t have been further from my early life. I vanished off the scene. I wasn’t really the person the world was interested in.”

  “That was me.” Suzanne forced the words past dry lips. She knew the increase in her pulse rate had nothing to do with her illness. “I was the only survivor. I was the one they were interested in. I knew about you, but I didn’t know your name. I asked about you. I asked Trudy, but—”

  She was suddenly drenched in sweat and she knew it had nothing to do with the flu.

  She could still hear Trudy Whittaker’s voice as she’d hurled grief-laden accusations at Suzanne.

  How were you the only one left alive? How did you manage to save yourself and not my sister?

  She’d asked the same questions of herself, but that didn’t make them easier to hear.

  It was clear from the look in Luke’s eyes that he knew the details. “Trudy died a couple of years ago.”

  Suzanne took a breath. “She blamed me. She thought it was my fault.”

  “Which it wasn’t.” Stewart shifted closer and put his arm round her. “You know it wasn’t.”

  “My aunt knew that, too.” Luke was calm. “For years afterward, she’d talk about it. How she’d been so torn apart with grief that she’d taken it all out on you. She’d wanted someone to blame, and you were the only one left alive.”

  “If there was blame,” Stewart said, “it should have been laid squarely at Rob’s door.”

  Luke nodded. “I know.”

  That wasn’t the reaction Suzanne had been expecting. “How can you know?”

  “Because over the years I’ve talked to people. Done some research. There are people out there that knew him. Climbed with him. Rob had a reputation for pushing it further than was safe. He wasn’t just daring, he was reckless. He took risks. There were plenty who wouldn’t climb with him.”

  Stewart pushed his plate away. “Suzanne wouldn’t have climbed with him, either, if it hadn’t been for Cheryl.”

  “So basically you’re saying that our dad killed your dad,” Beth said in a small voice. The fierceness had been replaced by uncertainty.

  “Enough.” Suzanne pulled away from Stewart. She had to deal with this. She had to handle it. “Rob was their father. We shouldn’t be talking about this.”

  “I’d like to talk about it.” Posy’s cheeks were as white as the snow that lay beyond the window. “Is it true?”

  “It’s true.” This time it was Hannah who spoke and they all turned to look at her. “I used to hear them talking. Mom used to say, I want you to promise me you’ll turn back, Rob, if the weather turns, and he’d shrug her off and refuse to promise anything of the sort. She’d say, You’re a father now, and he’d say, I’m the man you married.”

  And that, Suzanne thought, sounded exactly like Rob.

  “So Beth is right. He killed them all,” Posy said flatly, and Suzanne leaned forward.

  “No, honey. The truth is sometimes these things just happen. There weren’t any red flags that day. If there had been, I would have turned back. There were niggles, that’s all. Things that didn’t feel right, but to be honest that was probably more about the way we were all feeling. There were tensions in the group, but I don’t believe those tensions played a part in the accident. In the end we were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “But you wouldn’t have been in the wrong place at the wrong time if it hadn’t been for my father.”

  Hannah straightened her shoulders. “Ninety percent of avalanches are a result of human triggers.”

  The fact that Hannah knew that statistic even though she had no interest in mountains said a lot about the trauma she’d suffered.

  Beth turned to Luke. “I’m sorry you lost your parents. But why would you come here and not say who you were? Why not just be straight from the beginning?”

  “I wasn’t sure how to approach it. It’s the reason I contacted you first, and not Suzanne. I wanted to talk to you about the right way to do it. That accident traumatized a lot of people, my aunt included. She behaved badly. She hurt you, and I didn’t want to waltz in here and add to that hurt.” He look
ed at Suzanne. “I know this apology comes decades too late, but she was ashamed of the way she spoke to you that day. She wanted to reach out herself and apologize, but she didn’t know how. She knew she’d caused you a great deal of anguish and she thought by getting in touch she might reopen the wound and make it worse. And that’s the reason I didn’t want to show up here without warning. I wanted to take my time and work out how much damage I’d do by suddenly appearing after all these years. I arrived here, expecting to stay a week at the most, but I fell in love with the barn, the place and—” he paused “—the life you have here.”

  Suzanne had a feeling he’d been about to say I fell in love with Posy.

  It seemed like hours ago that she’d been wondering about their relationship, not minutes.

  She glanced down at the food congealing on her plate.

  You did what you could to bury the past, and then something happened and you realized it was right there under the surface just waiting to be exposed. “I’m sorry to hear about Trudy, and sorry that we didn’t have a chance to talk. I didn’t get in touch with her, either, because I knew she blamed me and at the time I felt that blame was justified.”

  Stewart started to speak, but she reached out and touched his arm, silencing him.

  “After the accident, I asked myself time and time again what I could have done differently. Could we have taken a different route? Could I have tried harder to get Rob to turn round? I examined every option. I asked myself constantly whether I could somehow have avoided what happened. If I’d done something different, would four people now be alive?”

  Hannah stood up. “The facts seem to support the theory that they wouldn’t, and it’s the facts that we should believe. And here’s another fact. My father was a bully.” Her voice shook, as if it was taking all her courage to voice those words. “He wanted things his way, and when people didn’t fall in line, he got angry with them. Do not blame yourself, Suzanne. I don’t know if it was Dad’s fault, but I know for sure that it wouldn’t have been yours.”

  “I know that, too.” Posy walked round the table and hugged Suzanne. “We don’t have to talk about this. I know how much you hate it. Luke, I think you should leave now.”

  Luke hesitated. “Posy—”

  “I understand that this is personal for you, too, but it’s upsetting for Suzanne and I think you should go.”

  “I agree with Posy,” Hannah said. “I understand that you also had a trauma in your early life, but whatever you thought might be achieved by coming here now after all these years, it was selfish of you not to consider what stirring it all up might do to my mother. I won’t have you upsetting her.”

  My mother.

  Suzanne stirred. Had she heard correctly? It was the first time Hannah had ever referred to her as my mother.

  Her heart felt as if it was swelling. It pressed against her chest, pushed at her ribs and trapped the air in her lungs.

  And then she saw Luke’s expression and realized that this moment of joy was going to have to be postponed.

  “Luke—”

  “They’re right, I shouldn’t have come. It felt like the right thing to do, but I can see now it wasn’t.” He pushed away from the table and stood up. “I’ll pay the rent up until the end of February as we agreed, but I’ll leave tomorrow.”

  “Sit down, Luke. I’d like to talk to you.” She really did, although it was clear she was going to have to deal with her family before that was possible.

  Already Beth looked ready to pounce. “Mom, you don’t have to talk to him. This time of year is difficult enough for you without having to think about this.”

  “I agree with Beth,” Posy said, and Suzanne sighed. For years she’d been desperate for them to bond, and they chose this moment.

  “Girls—” Extracting herself from Posy’s hug, she stood up, too. Her legs felt shaky, and she wasn’t sure if that was the remnants of flu or a reaction to everything that had happened. “It’s my turn to say a few things. First, it’s true that I don’t generally like talking about the avalanche. It’s been my way of not letting it dominate my life. But somewhere along the way I’ve led you to believe that I’m fragile, and that’s not true.”

  Beth frowned. “Mom—”

  “I appreciate you trying to protect me, but next time you get a call from a journalist that concerns me, you’re to give me their number so I can speak to them direct. Are we clear?”

  “But—”

  “Are we clear?”

  Beth and Hannah exchanged glances. “Yes.”

  “Good. And now I’d like all of you to leave so that Luke and I can talk without interruption.”

  Posy dug her hands into the pockets of her jeans. “No way. I’m not leaving here. You’re going to have to drag me.”

  Suzanne looked at Stewart. He was quiet, thoughtful, absorbing it all.

  He was worried about her—she knew that. But he was also the one person who would understand why she needed to do this.

  He stood up. “I think we should leave your mother to talk to Luke.”

  Apparently his voice held more weight than hers, because the three girls looked at each other and reluctantly moved to the door.

  Beth hovered. “We’ll be right outside.”

  “You will not.” In other circumstances Suzanne might have smiled. “You will take your coats and go for a walk.”

  Hannah looked bemused. “It’s snowing.”

  “Then go to the Glensay Inn and have a drink by the fire. You’re only together once a year. I’m sure you’ll find plenty to talk about.”

  The three of them filed out of the room, leaving her with Luke and Stewart.

  She looked at her husband, who had supported her through all the difficult times that had followed the accident. “Stay,” she said, and Stewart closed the door and walked back into the room.

  “Wasn’t thinking of leaving.” He grabbed a bottle of single malt and set it down in the middle of the table along with three glasses.

  Luke pushed his plate away and settled back in his chair.

  He could have walked out, Suzanne thought. He’d been subjected to hostility, accusations and multiple questions, but he was still sitting here.

  He had strength, both physical and moral.

  His parents would have been proud.

  Luke pushed the sleeves of his sweater up to his elbows and leaned forward. “You have questions, I’m sure. There are things you want to know.”

  “I want to know about you.” Suzanne couldn’t believe he was sitting at her kitchen table, right across from her. “I’ve thought about you often over the years. I wondered how you were doing, and whether your life had been destroyed by what happened.” She’d worried and worried, and mixed in with the worry was the guilt. Always the guilt. It had gnawed at her gut like acid.

  Stewart sloshed whiskey into the glasses. “He doesn’t look destroyed from where I’m sitting. Drink, Luke?”

  “You think I’d say no to a single malt? Particularly that particular single malt.”

  It was all so normal. So relaxed.

  Suzanne watched as Luke lifted the glass and drank. She saw the movement of his throat and the glint of fire in his eyes.

  She realized she’d continued to think of him as a little boy. Orphaned. Vulnerable. Broken.

  But there was nothing broken about the man sitting across from her. He hadn’t hidden from life, he’d embraced every second. He radiated strength and energy. He was vital and alive, and seeing him so whole and healthy healed a few more of the cracks in her heart.

  “Posy says you climbed Rainier.” She couldn’t imagine it. She’d never wanted to set foot on the mountain again after what happened.

  “Oh yeah.” His smile was a bright light in a dark tunnel. “I laid that ghost to rest when I was eighteen.”

  Not scared,
or even scarred. Not damaged.

  “Tell me about yourself,” she said. “I want to know how you grew up in Manhattan but ended up a climber just like your parents. I want to know all of it.”

  It was time to stop letting her mind and her conscience paint a picture of his life. Time for reality.

  Time for the truth.

  22

  Posy

  “Well,” Beth said, plonking herself down at the usual table near to the fire.

  “Well,” Hannah said, lowering herself more carefully.

  “We were trying to protect her and she threw us out.” Posy gestured across the bar to Aidan. “Can you believe that?”

  “What I can’t believe,” Beth said, “is that Luke Palmer slept with you. That is a low thing to do.”

  “Whittaker,” Posy snapped. “And you’re assuming that his interest in me was part of some devious scheme.” She hadn’t had time to digest the revelations of the past couple of hours herself, and she certainly wasn’t ready to talk about Luke with anyone. She felt confused, angry, betrayed, affronted and, yes, maybe a little foolish. It was the first time in a while she’d been intimate with anyone, and with Luke she’d shared more than she ever had before. And now, thanks to Beth, she was wondering if anything they’d shared had been genuine. “Frankly I wish I’d never told you. Sisters are not supposed to betray a confidence. Nor are they supposed to make you feel like crap.”

  “These were exceptional circumstances,” Beth muttered. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I was protecting you. I’m not going to sit around and watch some guy take advantage of my baby sister.”

  “First, I’m not a baby. Second, I don’t see how something consensual and enjoyable can come under the heading of ‘taking advantage,’ and third, I do not need you or Hannah to protect me, although I have to say that the two of you working together is scarier than any rock face I’ve ever climbed.”

  Aidan approached, his usual friendly smile on his face. “Beer for Posy, white wine for Beth—” He put the drinks on the table. “What can I get you, Hannah?”