by Dianne Dixon
“Ali? The gorgeous girl who caught the bouquet?”
What was left of the fire in Morgan turned to ashes. She knew it was irrational, but it was in moments like this that she felt crushed by Ali and hated her.
Logan sat looking at Morgan with an unreadable grin, saying nothing.
She tightened the sash of her bathrobe. Nervous, babbling. Telling him things he probably already knew. “Your new wife and my sister are best friends. One of the bridesmaids dropped out at the last minute. I think the only reason I got to take her place was because I wore the same size dress she did. And I’m pretty sure Ali asked Jessica to let me fill in. Maybe not. I don’t know. But anyway, my sister’s not here. She’s with her boyfriend. It’s a big anniversary for them, and she’ll probably stay with him tonight so—”
She stopped talking because the groom had leaned forward and kissed her—long and hard. A kiss that left Morgan dizzy.
He took hold of the sash on her bathrobe, waited for a fraction of a second, and then tugged. Morgan looked at his new wedding ring as he pulled the sash away, opening her robe. The moonlit ring was giving off a muted gleam. A warning light.
But Morgan was already on her back—with Logan above, lowering himself toward her. And she reached for him eagerly. It was like being swept away by magic.
Then, without warning, the magic was gone. Replaced by stomach-churning panic. “Somebody’s here!” Morgan started to sit up—frantically telling Logan, “Wait! Wa—”
His hand clamped down on her mouth, shoving her back onto the sofa.
While Morgan was still trying to free herself, there was a loud noise in the guest room, and the terrace was flooded with light.
Logan vanished into the shadows, nervously buttoning his shirt, zipping his pants. Morgan scrambled off the sofa, hurrying toward the guest room’s open terrace doors.
When Morgan walked into the guest room, Ali was already in there, in her rumpled shirt and grass-stained jeans. Tightly gripping the blue gift box. Her voice was rasping, furious. “Why? Why won’t you ever stop?”
The wildness in Ali scared Morgan. “I was only trying to be nice,” she told her sister. “I was trying to help. I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong.”
But the truth was that the item in that blue box was intensely personal, and Morgan knew, without a doubt, what she’d done was wrong.
Now Ali was asking, “Why can’t you ever fucking go out and get anything of your own?”
I tried, but you took him away from me, the minute he saw you in that stupid Williams-Sonoma store. Morgan was ashamed as she said, “I only wanted to know what kind of anniversary gift you got for Matt. When I looked in the bag, I saw you’d just stuffed his present in with a bunch of tissue paper. There wasn’t even a card…so I made it nice…with the blue box and the velvet ribbon. Then I wrote the note. I—”
Morgan stopped. Silenced by words she didn’t have the courage to say. I was jealous, Ali. I wanted to show you how careless you are with something I’d have been so careful with. I wanted to prove how much better I’d be at loving a man than you are.
“I didn’t blindside you. I tried to explain,” Morgan told Ali. “I said I had something to say to you, when you were leaving, when I was in the shower. But you didn’t come in and—”
Ali threw the blue box, and it hit Morgan full force. “This was mine,” Ali hissed. “It was personal.”
The box bounced off Morgan’s shoulder and landed a short distance away. Now Ali threw the note at her, too. It fell at Morgan’s feet, displaying the message Morgan had written with such care: Sealed with a Kiss.
Morgan looked away. A pair of silk boxer shorts had fallen out when the gift box hit the floor. The boxers—creamy white—were stamped across the fly with a lipsticked imprint of Ali’s mouth.
The stare Ali gave Morgan was murderous. “Get your own life. Stop eating at mine like a greedy little termite.”
The hurt Ali inflicted was unbearable. Morgan ran for the safety of the bathroom, where she could slam the door on her sister and lock it.
When she came into the marble-floored bathroom, Morgan was still running from Ali, and the smooth red sole of her shoe shot out from underneath her like an ice skate. Slamming Morgan headfirst into a glass shelf near the sink. Before the shelf shattered, its beveled edge plowed open a wound that traveled from Morgan’s hairline to the top of her skull.
For a second or two, the shock kept Morgan on her feet, slack mouthed and stunned. Then she fell into a sea of broken glass. Landing facedown, in a pool of blood.
Ali
In the three days since Ali had watched her sister fall onto that spill of broken glass in the Newport mansion, Ali and Morgan hadn’t spoken to each other. Now they were in Maine, in a little house that was old and weathered. The farm that surrounded the house was a green-earthed, sea-swept place called BerryBlue, near the coast. Not far from the town of Kennebunkport. Ali was sitting across the table from Matt in the farmhouse kitchen.
“What time is it?” she asked.
“Still early,” Matt said. “A few minutes before six.”
Ali and Morgan’s grandmother had died. After the funeral, the mourners had gathered at the farm to talk about old times and shed a few tears. Now that the guests were gone, Ali and Matt were sharing leftovers. It was what remained of the good, simple food Ali had prepared for the post-funeral reception—homemade rosemary-raisin bread spread with sweet organic butter, citrus-roasted chicken, field greens tossed with herbed goat cheese, cranberries, and apples.
The loss of her grandmother was still fresh and the memories were flooding in. Ali pushed her plate aside. Her voice was quiet as she told Matt, “Grandma MaryJoy was Irish. She believed life was a celebration. She said the heartbeat of that celebration is in the kitchen. In the joy people have when they’re sharing good food and good wine.”
Ali paused and smiled. “I loved everything about her, especially her name. MaryJoy O’Conner. It sounded just like who she was. Like a party. Remember what a great time she had at her birthday dinner last summer at that Irish pub? Nobody in the place could believe she was ninety-three.”
Matt nodded. “I’d just met her, but I was crazy about her. And her eyes, they knocked me out. They were the color of violets. I remember her dancing with the waiter, a huge grin on her face, and the band playing ‘When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.’”
Ali was caught between grief and sweet remembrance. “She always said that when her time came, the only thing she wanted on her headstone was ‘This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.’ That’s what she was all about…rejoicing, being glad.”
Suddenly, there was an odd expression in Matt’s eyes—something restless. Ali reached for his hand. “Are you okay? What’s going on?” She suspected he was wrestling with ghosts from his past, the emptiness of being without any family at all. Things he didn’t know how to talk about.
Matt looked around the room at the whitewashed walls, the waxed pine cabinets, and the copper-bottomed pots hanging above the old-fashioned gas stove. “This place is almost too good to be true, isn’t it?”
“BerryBlue Farm is where Morgan and I had the best times of our lives,” Ali said. “We spent every summer here when we were kids. The first day of vacation, Dad would always drive us up here, Mom and Morgan and me. He’d get us settled and turn around and go right back home, back to work. But he was always here on the weekends. Every single summer. Then…”
“Then what?” Matt asked.
Ali shrugged. “Then they split up. After the divorce, Morgan and I would be so sad when we first got here, but then we’d slide right back into the magic of summer at BerryBlue…sailing Grandpa’s little beat-up boat, riding our bikes, picking blueberries.”
“Sounds like little kid heaven.” There was something in Matt’s expression that seemed envious, almost cold
. “Lucky you. The lovely girl who summered at BerryBlue.”
Ali hadn’t ever seen that kind of bitterness in Matt. It sent a shiver through her. “Talk to me. What’s going on?”
Matt gestured toward the kitchen counter. “I think we’re ready for dessert.” He said it very quietly. Matt and Ali had been keeping their voices low because Morgan was asleep upstairs and Ali’s mother was nearby, grieving, on the back porch. Ali’s grandfather, the owner of the farm, was a few feet away in the living room.
As Matt left the table, Ali was aware he hadn’t responded when she’d asked what was going on with him, and she knew his silence had been deliberate. There were places in Matt no one would ever be allowed to go, places that were closed and locked. Ali had recognized this from the very beginning, and it had intrigued her. But a second ago, his tone, and his attitude, had made her uncomfortable.
Matt was deftly taking a tray of sugar-crusted lemon tarts from the kitchen counter, studying them in amazement, his mood brightening. “These things are like something out of a magazine. You’re unbelievable!”
There was a quality in Matt that was so guileless at that moment, so full of love and admiration, that Ali wondered if she’d simply imagined the darkness she’d just seen in him.
“When we’re married, Al, you’ll come up with this kind of awesome food every night, right?” As he asked the question, he kissed her.
And Ali marveled, as she always did, at how tender Matt’s kisses were.
In response to his food inquiry, she gave him a teasing grin. “After we’re married, the cuisine will be awesome for the first month or two, then I’ll probably nose-dive right into tuna sandwiches and canned soup.”
Ali playfully tugged on Matt’s shirt, pulling him closer. “And speaking of getting married, guess what? I already made an appointment with Reverend Miller to talk about the wedding.” She flashed an apologetic grin. “I know we have a year to make plans, and I want a really simple ceremony, but I’m excited. I can’t wait to get started.”
Matt stroked Ali’s hair—his voice soft, full of affection. “How many kids should we have?”
“I’m not sure. What do you think?”
His answer was another kiss.
It was a moment of sweet connection between them.
But when Matt said, “I don’t care how many kids we have, just as long as they’re all exactly like you,” the atmosphere in the room changed.
The sweetness was gone.
Morgan
Morgan had slept for hours, out like a light, as if she’d been in a coma. She came downstairs staggering and groggy. And now she was in the shadow of the kitchen doorway, hearing Matt murmur to Ali, “I don’t care how many kids we have, just as long as they’re all exactly like you.”
The tenderness in his voice, the adoration, set off raging jealousy in Morgan. It combined with her grief about her grandmother’s death and sent her storming into the kitchen.
“You want your kids to be exactly like Ali?” Morgan said. “Good luck, pal. What you’re asking for are little rug rats who’ll be smart. And beautiful. And mean as hell.”
For a minute, nobody moved. Then Ali asked coldly, “What are you doing down here?”
The simple answer was I’m here because I needed something to eat. But the jealousy and blame between Morgan and her sister were running too deep for simple answers. And a vindictive lie came flying out of Morgan’s mouth: “I woke up and thought I’d had a nightmare. Then I turned on the light and looked in the mirror.” Morgan glared at Ali, wanting Ali to see the network of cuts covering her face. “And you know what? It wasn’t a dream. My face really is sliced to bits.”
You stole Matt from me, Morgan thought. And if you hadn’t been screaming at me for making his present nice, I never would’ve gone facedown into a pile of glass. You owe me, Ali. I have the right to make you squirm.
But Ali didn’t squirm. She calmly turned her back on Morgan and began rinsing dishes in the sink, her voice flat and toneless, saying, “I’m sure you’ll feel better soon.”
Ali’s indifference made Morgan furious. “Really? That’s all you have to say? Well, fuck you!”
The loudness of her shout startled Morgan. The words I’m sorry were already at the back of her throat. But she didn’t get the chance to say them. Matt crossed the room, blocking Ali from Morgan’s view. “What happened to you was an accident,” he said. “Don’t even try to make it Ali’s fault.”
Matt’s anger hurt every bit as much as Ali’s indifference. Anxious to leave the room, Morgan turned around so quickly she almost lost her balance.
Ali grabbed her, kept her from falling.
Morgan was afraid to look at Ali, scared that this time she’d gone too far, made Ali too angry, and there would be no coming back.
“You’re all right. The doctor told you…you were lucky,” Ali said. “None of the cuts are going to leave scars.”
Morgan could hear the caring in Ali’s voice, yet Morgan couldn’t let it go. She had to make her point. She needed to remind Ali of the debt she owed for always getting the lion’s share and leaving Morgan with the crumbs.
“You think it’ll be okay?” Morgan asked. “You really think you haven’t left scars? Let me tell you about the scars you’ve left, Ali.” Without meaning to, Morgan glanced in Matt’s direction, then quickly looked away.
After taking several steps backward, to put some distance between herself and Ali, she said, “How do you think I feel, coming all the way up here and not getting to be at Grandma MaryJoy’s funeral?” Morgan was upset, shouting. “Do you think that doesn’t hurt, Ali? She was my grandmother, too. She was—” Morgan stopped. She was suddenly aware that her fight with Ali had brought her grandfather and her mother into the kitchen.
Her mother took a box of tissues from a shelf and put it onto the table in front of Morgan, quietly saying, “The reason you didn’t go to my mother’s funeral, Morgan, was because you chose not to.”
Her mother’s voluptuous, dark-haired, green-eyed beauty had always made Morgan feel inadequate and awkward. She was the last person in the world Morgan wanted to deal with right now. But Morgan’s anger needed someplace to go, and she turned it on her mother.
“Open your eyes and, for once in your life, look at me, Mom. I couldn’t go to the funeral. Everybody would’ve been staring at these cuts all over my face.”
Her mother didn’t give an inch. “You told us you were running late, and you’d meet us at the church. Then, after we left, you walked upstairs and went to bed.”
No, that’s not what happened. I really did go upstairs and get dressed. But my bedroom window was open, and there was a soft, warm breeze… The thought stayed trapped in Morgan’s head; the words wouldn’t come.
“Morgan. You deliberately missed your own grandmother’s funeral.” Her mother’s expression was pure frustration. “What in the world were you thinking?”
Morgan didn’t know how to respond.
The breeze coming through the bedroom window took me back in time to when I was five. And seven. And ten. I could feel that soft breeze on my little-girl skin as Ali and I tumbled out of the back of Daddy’s car, already in our bathing suits, eager to start the summer at BerryBlue. While Grandma MaryJoy, with her beautiful smile and violet eyes, was hurrying toward us, saying, “There they are. My girls!”
Then there was that awful stab of jealousy when Ali got the first hug. Because Ali ran ahead, and I was hanging back, waiting. Wanting Grandma MaryJoy to move Ali aside and come to me. To choose me. But it never happened. And while I was seeing little Ali getting that long-ago hug, I shouted through the open window to the Grandma MaryJoy ghost in the yard below: “I loved you just as much as Ali did. It’s not fair she was your favorite.”
And then I caught sight of my face in the here and now, my reflection in the mirror near the window, the disgusti
ng web of half-healed cuts.
The humiliation of having to go out in public looking so ugly, and how sad I was about Grandma dying, and the unfairness of Ali always getting that first summer hug—all of it exploded. And I went a little bit crazy. I yanked off the black dress I was wearing and grabbed my pajamas, slamming the window shut and heading for bed. As much as I wanted to be there, I was convinced I had to boycott Grandma’s funeral as a protest. To say to everybody that it isn’t fair for grandparents to have favorites. It just isn’t fair.
“Morgan! I asked you a question. Why did you go back to bed instead of showing up at your grandmother’s funeral?”
Morgan closed her eyes. Shook her head. And said nothing. There was no way to explain. It was too complicated.
Her mother seemed to be fighting tears. “What you did broke my heart, Morgan.”
Morgan let out a groan. She was embarrassed, and tired. Tired of all the ways she kept getting things wrong. Weary of not knowing how to get them right. And the weariness was making her cynical, pushing awful things out of her mouth. “Ali was at the funeral. She was Grandma MaryJoy’s favorite. So me not being there to say ‘bye-bye’? Trust me, the old girl won’t lose any eternal sleep over that one.”
Morgan’s grandfather frowned, silently telling Morgan she’d crossed the line.
Her mother seemed ready to slap her. Morgan shot her a look that challenged her to do it.
But all her mother did was sigh—and walk out of the kitchen.
Morgan’s grandfather took a container of ice cream from the freezer and a spoon from one of the kitchen drawers, saying, “Let’s go outside, Morgan, you and me, and sit quiet for a while.”
“There’s nothing to talk about, Grandpa.” Morgan wanted to stop fighting, with everybody. But she was cornered and couldn’t back down. “Mom knows how horrible I’m feeling because of what happened to my face. And this morning, before the funeral, it took her an hour to come up and check on me. And when she did, all I got was a couple of minutes of conversation and a kiss on the cheek.”