The Space Between Sisters

by Mary McNear

  He laughed and pulled her into his arms. “I miss you already,” he said. “Which reminds me . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “When can I see you again?”

  “Soon,” she said, resting her cheek on his chest.

  “How soon?”

  “Very soon.”

  “Good,” he said, pulling her closer. “I want to tell my kids that we’ll be seeing each other. And I should give Alicia a heads-up, too. I told her I’d let her know if I had a girlfriend.”

  “Okay,” she said, relishing the idea of being Sam’s girlfriend. It was juvenile, perhaps, but she couldn’t help it.

  “I gotta get going,” he said then. “In case I hit traffic.” And he kissed her, a long, lingering kiss that felt more like a hello than a good-bye.

  Afterwards, he opened the car door for her. “Drive carefully,” he said.

  “I will,” she promised, as she slid behind the wheel.

  But as she started to pull out of the parking lot, he called after her, “Poppy! You forgot something.” She stopped the car, and Sam brought her the urn with Sasquatch’s ashes in it.

  “Thank you. I can’t believe I forgot this,” she said.

  “What are you going to do with it?” he asked, leaning on the car.

  “Well,” she said, setting the urn on the floor of the passenger side. “I was going to keep it on my bedside table, but now I’m not so sure. I might sprinkle the ashes near my grandmother’s begonia garden out behind the cabin. That’s where he used to like sunning himself in the late afternoon. He was happy there, I think.”

  He smiled. “That sounds like a good place for them, then.”

  CHAPTER 24

  When Poppy pulled up to the cabin Win was sitting on the front porch steps waiting for her.

  “Are you home already?” Poppy asked her, getting out of the car.

  “I just got back,” Win said.

  “You didn’t need the car, did you?” Poppy asked.

  “No-oo,” Win said, looking at Poppy a little strangely as she climbed up the steps.

  “Well, I hope you weren’t worried about me,” Poppy said, sitting down next to her. “I would have called you, but I thought . . .” She stopped. “What?” she said. “Why are you staring at me that way?”

  “No reason.”

  “Win.”

  “Okay. I’m staring at you because I’m wondering where you were last night. I’m guessing it was in somebody’s bed. And I don’t think you were sleeping the whole time.”

  “Is it that obvious?” Poppy asked, astonished.

  “To me it is.”

  “But, I mean, how can you tell?”

  “Well, let’s see. Your hair looks like you’ve been in a wind tunnel,” Win said, and Poppy immediately reached up to touch it. It was completely disheveled. It hadn’t even occurred to her to try to do anything with it before she’d left Sam’s house. “And you’re not wearing a bra,” Win continued. Again, true. Poppy’s bra was in her handbag. “And . . .” Win studied her. “This one’s harder,” she said. “I can’t quite describe it. You look . . . glowy. You look totally relaxed, the way you would after a night of, well . . . great sex.”

  “And a morning, too,” Poppy said, laughing. She was surprised by her own openness.

  “I want details,” Win said, playfully bumping her knee against Poppy’s knee. “I mean it.”

  “Um, all right,” she said. “Well, first of all, I was with Sam,” she began.

  “I hope you were with Sam,” Win teased.

  “And we met up at the Mosquito Inn—”

  “What were you doing at that dive?”

  “I didn’t know it was a dive.”

  “Poppy, someone got stabbed there last spring.”

  “Oh. That’s why the bartender wasn’t that welcoming. I think he wanted me to leave, and I did, eventually, with a little help from Sam. But before that—”

  “You know what?” Win said. “Skip this part. It’s taking too long. Just cut to the bedroom. Or the kitchen, or the stairs, or wherever you were.”

  “Win,” Poppy said, laughing. “We were in a bed.”

  “Okay, so you don’t get any points for creativity there. But keep going.”

  “It was . . . it was amazing,” Poppy said, shaking her head.

  “That’s it? That’s all you’re going to give me? You talk to me about your sex life, what, once in twenty-eight years, and you’re going to use a single adjective to describe it?”

  “I’m sorry,” Poppy said, tucking a strand of her wayward hair behind one ear. “It’s nothing personal. I just don’t know how to talk about it. You know that.”

  “I know,” Win said. “But can you learn?”

  “I’ll try.” Poppy smiled. And then she yawned. “I promise, Win, I’ll tell you more about it later. Right now, though, I’m starving.”

  “Come on inside, then. There’s some leftover pasta in the fridge.”

  Poppy started to go, but something stopped her. She stood there for a moment, and then she sat back down on the step beside Win. She took a deep breath. She didn’t want to do this, especially now. She was exhausted, for one thing. And it would completely dispel her blissful happiness, for another. But she knew it was necessary. Last night, she’d told Sam. And this afternoon, she would tell Win. She’d kept this secret from her sister long enough, and she understood now that in keeping it from her sister, she had somehow kept it from herself as well. But not anymore. Today was a new beginning for her, and she wanted it to start with the truth.

  “Win, I need to tell you something,” she said now.

  “About last night?” Win smiled.

  Poppy shook her head. “No. It’s about something that hap-pened . . . a long time ago.”

  “Poppy, you look so serious.” Win frowned.

  “That’s because what I’m going to tell you is serious.”

  “You’re scaring me.”

  “Don’t be scared. It’s going to be okay,” Poppy said, slipping her arm around Win’s shoulders, and she wondered, as she did so, if her reassurance was as much for herself as it was for Win.

  Fifteen minutes later, Poppy and Win had moved inside the cabin and were sitting together on the living room couch. Poppy was crying. Win was not. Win’s reaction, in fact, had been completely unexpected. Poppy had imagined telling her about the incident many times over the years, but it had never occurred to her that Win’s response to hearing about it would be anything other than to comfort her and console her. To play, in short, the motherly role she’d always played with Poppy, even though she was a year younger than her. But there was nothing maternal about Win now. There was instead something almost . . . homicidal about her. Poppy had never seen her like this before. She was practically incandescent with anger.

  “I’m going to kill him,” she said, her body shaking all over. “I am. I swear to God, I’m going track him down and kill him.”

  “Win, calm down,” Poppy said, though she was having difficulty getting her own emotions under control. “Just . . . calm down. This is not who you are. And I wouldn’t have told you if I thought you were going to do something crazy. You’re supposed to be the logical one, remember?”

  “I’m not feeling very logical right now,” Win said, still shaking. She must have seen the expression of alarm on Poppy’s face, though, because she took a deep breath as if to steady herself and reached out to pat Poppy’s back. “It’s all right,” she said, “I’m not going to kill him, obviously. I couldn’t even kill the spider I found in the bathroom last night. I had to put it outside. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to see that man punished for what he did to you.”

  Poppy shook her head. “It’s too late,” she said, wiping at a tear.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He can’t be charged with . . . with it,” she said, stumbling over the place that word should have gone. “The statute of limitations is nine years in Minnesota. And even if it wasn’t, Win, I don�
�t have any evidence. I didn’t go to a doctor and I didn’t, you know, save my clothes or anything.”

  Win was silent for a moment, thinking this over, and when she set her jaw, and narrowed her eyes, Poppy knew she’d made a decision. “I know what we’ll do,” she said, in a voice that was eerily calm. Poppy almost shivered. She’d hate to be the person on the receiving end of that look, and that voice. “We’ll track him down, and we’ll punish him ourselves. I read an article about this once. A woman couldn’t get justice through the legal system, so she took matters into her own hands. She spray painted ‘rapist’ on this man’s car and then she handed out flyers to his neighbors, and—”

  “Win, we don’t know where he lives,” Poppy interrupted. “We don’t even know his last name.”

  “We’ll hire a detective,” Win said.

  Poppy swiped, impatiently, at another tear. “And say . . . what? That all we can tell them about this man is his first name and an address where he lived thirteen years ago?”

  “And we can tell them he’s a photographer,” Win reminded her. “You know what,” she said, suddenly animated, “maybe I’ll start looking for him myself, online. After all, how many professional photographers can there be named Rich?”

  “Um, I don’t know, thousands?” Poppy suggested, quirking an eyebrow. “And even if there weren’t, Win, how would you be able to recognize him from an online photo? When I first brought him up, you barely remembered him.”

  “So . . . you’ll help me.”

  Poppy shook her head. “No, I won’t. Believe me, Win, I regret not going to the police. I do. And I know that because I didn’t, he might have done this to someone else. I wish I had understood that then. I really do. I didn’t, though, and I have to live with that. But finding him, or confronting him, or whatever, it’s not going to change what happened. Besides, I don’t want it ruling my life anymore. I’m going to try to get past it, and now, you’re going to have to, too.”

  “I can’t,” Win said, helplessly, and she sagged back against the sofa cushions as though all of the anger had suddenly drained out of her, leaving nothing in its place. And then, much to Poppy’s astonishment, Win began to cry. Not the hot, silent tears Poppy had been crying, but great, gasping sobs that racked her whole body. Poppy hadn’t seen her cry this way since Kyle had died.

  “Hey, Win. It’s okay,” Poppy said, gathering her into her arms. “I’m all right. I wasn’t always, but I am now. I must be stronger than I seem,” she added, patting Win on the back.

  Win started to say something, but it was lost in a sob. She took a deep, shuddering breath, and tried again. “I’m sor-sor-sorry,” she said, with great effort.

  “Win, you don’t have anything to be sorry for,” Poppy said.

  Win nodded an emphatic yes. “I’m sorry for cr-cr-crying,” she said, sobbing harder. “This happened to you. Not me. I need to be st-st-strong for you.”

  “Oh, that,” Poppy said, with a teary smile. “That’s okay. I don’t mind your crying. It’s better than your being angry. I mean, you scared me for a minute there. I thought you were going to go all vigilante on me. You know, like Dirty Harry, only if Dirty Harry had been a middle school social studies teacher with no knowledge of firearms.”

  Win laughed, a little, through her tears, and Poppy took this as a good sign. She got up to get a box of tissues, and Win took it from her, gratefully.

  “I’m still angry,” Win said, when she was able to. She mopped at her tears with a tissue.

  “Not at me, I hope,” Poppy said.

  “No, of course not. I’m angry at him, mostly. But I’m angry at Mom and Dad, too.”

  “Oh, God,” Poppy said, “leave them out of this.”

  “Why should we?” Win said, stubbornly. “We always let them off the hook. If they’d been around more, if they’d known what was going on in our lives, this would never have happened. Or, if it had, you would have told them it had happened.” Win paused, and blew her nose. “And I’m angry at myself,” she continued, going to throw her tissue away.

  Poppy started to protest, but Win, sitting back down on the couch, waved her off. “No, I am. I remember that time. How strange you were acting. You had nightmares, and you started sleeping all the time, after school and on weekends. I thought you were being . . . lazy. I knew something was wrong, though. I knew it. Why didn’t I put all the pieces together?”

  “Because you were a kid, Win,” Poppy said, taking a tissue from the box, too. “Because you were fifteen years old, and, like me, you were basically on your own already. It wasn’t your responsibility to take care of me. But you know what?” she said, putting her arms around Win again. “You did take care of me. In a lot of ways, you did. Afterwards, just having you there helped me, whether you knew it or not. I remember that night, after it happened, I kept taking showers. I was such a wreck. And you asked me if you could brush my hair, and you did. You brushed it, for a long time, and it made me feel better. It was a little thing, maybe, but in a way, it saved me. You did a lot of little things like that over the years, Win. A lot of big things, too.”

  “I don’t know,” Win said, doubtfully. “I just wish . . . I just wish you’d told me . . .”

  Poppy sighed. She had known this would come. “Are you angry at me?”

  “No. I’m not,” Win said, shaking her head. “And I don’t want you to think that, either. But I am trying to understand, Pops. We were so close then. So close. I would have done anything for you. I still would.”

  “I know,” Poppy said, softly. She felt another tear running down her cheek now, and she caught it with the crumpled tissue in her hand. “I know that. The not telling you, though, it’s hard to explain. I was ashamed, I guess. I thought it was my fault. First I’d gone into a stranger’s apartment, and then, well, I’d done something else, too. I wasn’t really sure what that something was, but I felt like I’d given him the wrong idea, or sent him the wrong signal. But it wasn’t until years later that I realized I hadn’t done anything wrong. That nothing I’d said or done that day could have given him the permission to do what he did to me.

  “And then, then there was another thing, too,” Poppy said, looking down at her lap and tearing the sodden piece of tissue in her hands into tiny shreds. “I honestly believed if I never told anyone, and I never thought about it, it would be like it never happened. I could just . . . make it go away. Stupid, I know,” she added, crumpling up the slivers of tissue in her hands. “That was the plan, though. It was years before I realized how badly it was working.”

  “Oh, Pops,” Win said, hugging her. “It’s okay. You did all right. And things are going to be different for you now, aren’t they?”

  Poppy considered this. “Yes,” she said, “I think so. Twelve hours ago, I hadn’t told anybody this, and now I’ve told two people. And, Win? I feel different already. I do. And not just because of what happened between Sam and me,” she added, flashing on an image of Sam in bed that morning. He’d been propped up on one elbow, and smiling at her, his hair tousled, his blue eyes heavy-lidded after their lovemaking.

  “Will you promise me something?” Win asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Promise me you’ll tell someone else about this, too. Someone who knows more about it than I do, like a therapist or a support group leader or something. Because Pops, as much as I wish it were possible, one night of great sex isn’t going to resolve all of this for you.”

  But it wasn’t just great sex, Poppy almost said. And she thought about the tenderness with which she and Sam had made love to each other. And she thought about that moment, right before it was over, when they’d held on to each other, and it was as if they were falling, falling together, falling through space, but then they had landed, softly, right back in his bed. And she thought about afterwards, about the way he’d run his fingers down her back, over and over again, until she’d fallen asleep to this sensation. It was much more than just great sex. It was the beginning of something. Bu
t she didn’t know how to put this into words for Win. Besides, her practical sister had a point.

  “You’re right, Win,” she agreed. “I need to find someone—a professional, or a group—to talk to about what happened. I’ve put this off long enough. Right now, though, all I want to do is get something to eat and crawl into bed.” The combination of sex, and crying, had been cathartic, Poppy thought. Cathartic but exhausting.

  Win nodded, seemingly satisfied. But then Poppy saw a tremor go through her again. “You’re still angry,” she said.

  “I am. At him. And I will be, for a long time. Maybe forever. What he did to you, Poppy, he took so much away from you . . .”

  “He did,” Poppy said simply. “But you know what? He’s not taking anything more.”

  CHAPTER 25

  With Labor Day weekend fast approaching, Sam and Linc were working late one night at Birch Tree Bait, inspecting the rental equipment. All of the canoes, kayaks, and life jackets needed to be checked for damage, and, if necessary, repaired before the third-busiest weekend of the summer arrived. Sam didn’t mind the work. It was kind of nice, actually, to have a distraction, however small, to take his mind off Poppy. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to think about her. He did. All he wanted to do was think about her and the night they’d spent together that past weekend. But while he was fantasizing about her—the silky little dip at the small of her back, or the slightly sweet, slightly salty taste of her collarbone as he ran his tongue along it, or the sound of her breathing, soft and rhythmic, as she slept beside him—the demands of his life continued unabated. And those demands, which included running a business and raising three children, showed no signs of letting up.

  “Look at this, Sam,” Linc said in disbelief, holding up a life vest that had an enormous gouge in it. “Did somebody try to . . . eat it?” he asked.

  Sam looked up from the kayak hull he was inspecting. “We can’t repair that,” he said. “Throw it away.”

  Linc sighed with disgust and tossed it aside. “A little respect, people,” he mumbled, picking up another life vest. “Oh, guess who I saw last night?” he asked Sam, testing its straps.