The Secrets Sisters Keep

by Abby Drake

Jarred? Who the hell was Jarred? Apparently the boyfriend’s name had changed along with his suit of clothes.

  “Well,” Amanda said, avoiding the melodramatic or the reactive, “that’s nice. Have you seen my sisters?”

  “No. I’ve been inside with Martina. Helping her stuff mushroom caps. But what about Uncle Edward?”

  Amanda shrugged. “Who knows where the hell he is,” she said, then resumed her hustle toward the house. After all, she only had a short time to change into her cherry halter and preserve what was left of her dignity.

  Inside the house, she was about to mount the stairs, when she spotted a clipboard next to the front door. A few sheets of paper were held under a wide silver spring. Two columns of type were printed on page one.

  “The guest list!” Amanda said in a hush, then grabbed it. If she was privy to who would be coming, she’d be better able to position herself in the crowd, to spend time with those folks who might be relevant to her future.

  Her eyes searched up and down, as if she were a man checking out a woman.

  Antoine, Mark and Sybil.

  Athas, Bob and Laura.

  Custer, Rodney and wife.

  The names weren’t familiar, but then, it had been years.

  Goldsmith, Farrington, Lyons.

  She flipped the page.

  Slater, Toomey, Williams.

  She stopped. Williams?

  Ray Williams.

  She sucked in her breath. “Holy shit,” she said, just as Carleen rounded the corner.

  “Interesting reading?” the prodigal sister inquired.

  Amanda dropped the clipboard. She laughed. “It is as if you’re shocked that Ray Williams was invited.”

  A wave of distress flitted across Carleen’s face. Amanda did little to hide her amusement.

  “Ray Williams?” Carleen finally asked. “Oh, no. Does Babe know?”

  Amanda tossed her a satisfied look. “I have no idea. But something tells me I doubt it.”

  “Oh, no,” Amanda heard Carleen say again, but by then Amanda was ascending the staircase, hopefully leaving Carleen to feel as upset as she deserved.

  Ellie decided to call off the search. Whatever Edward was up to, he apparently was up to it with forethought and reason. Wherever he was, he wanted to be there. Later she’d decide what to do about the hurt that she felt because he hadn’t told her about the cancer.

  Cancer.

  Uncle Edward?

  Uncle Edward.

  She shook her head, as if the act of shaking would dispel her distress. Adjusting Babe’s scarf around her neck, Ellie decided that yes, the scarf added a healthy glow to her cheeks. Perhaps it would help others think she was happy, relaxed. She checked her watch: it was after eleven. Less than an hour until the party.

  It would be strange not to have the guest of honor, but those who’d been invited knew Edward and should not be surprised. They might expect that later he would leap from a cake, which Ellie highly doubted under the circumstances with the cancer.

  Oh! she thought. Stop thinking about that!

  Making her way downstairs and through the kitchen, she stepped out to the backyard, where everything had magically come to life. Two jugglers paraded past her, their colorful props dancing lightly in the air; a gold-painted Statue of Liberty took a practice stance atop an orange crate; a strolling musician tuned up his banjo and harmonica simultaneously. Over by the games the young woman floated and spun and swung from the ribbons; a young man lined up bowling pins; a clown of questionable gender tested the dunking booth with the help of someone who looked like Heather’s boyfriend without biker-wear or tattoos.

  Edward would have loved the action.

  With a small sigh, Ellie turned her attention to the caterers. She’d helped select the menu. Edward had requested simple fare: a barbecue with chicken, ribs, corn on the cob and slaw. And baked beans, his favorite, though he preferred them from a can. For a man of sophisticated tastes in art and literature, sometimes he gravitated toward being common.

  Then she smiled as she remembered that he had insisted on Dom Perignon, because even Edward Dalton had a limit to his folksiness.

  Ellie meandered among the tables, checking the linens and place settings and the “six chairs per table” per Uncle Edward, who’d always felt that too many people at a table discouraged conversation except between the loudmouth (there was always one of those) and the busybody (ditto). There would be no table for gifts: Edward had insisted on no gifts. “If you feel you must,” he’d asked Ellie to write on each invitation, “then please make a donation to the Actors’ Equity Association. God knows everyone is underpaid, compared to the players for the Yankees and the Mets.” He often enjoyed weighing the contributions to society made by Broadway versus baseball.

  Henry was near the cake table, looking forlorn, despite having changed into a crisp linen suit. Ellie joined him. “He still might show up,” she said.

  But he looked bewildered and wandered from her, the way Edward had wandered from the estate.

  Ellie sighed again. More than anything, she wanted this day to be done—even more when she saw Carleen approach.

  “Have you given up looking for him?” Carleen asked.

  Ellie’s mouth went dry, but she answered anyway. “Yes. We are going to let Edward be. I’ll tell Babe’s husband and Jonathan and Amanda as soon as they come back.”

  “Amanda is back. That’s why I thought the search was called off.”

  “I didn’t see her.” Ellie suspected her tone sounded like a challenge.

  “Oh, she’s here, all right. She’s in the house. The way she stares at me makes my whole body shiver.”

  Ellie ignored the comment. “So they didn’t find Edward?”

  “I didn’t see him. Besides, Amanda was more interested in conveying the auspicious news that Uncle Edward invited Ray Williams.”

  Oh, Ellie thought. Oh, dear.

  “I thought she was testing me,” Carleen continued. “But she was holding the guest list and wearing a smirk. Does Babe know?”

  Ellie’s mouth was parched now. “No. I hope he won’t come.”

  “Well,” Carleen said, “I’ve never seen a party where people who are wanted aren’t here, and others who were invited aren’t really wanted.” She turned away.

  “Carleen,” Ellie said. “Wait. Where are you going?”

  “First, I am going to set something straight. Then I am going to find Edward.”

  “I meant what I said. I don’t want anyone else looking for him. You don’t have all the facts.”

  Carleen stopped; she spun around. “Then share them with me.”

  “I can’t. Not right now.”

  Carleen leveled her gaze with an icy look. “Then you do what you want, and I’ll do what I want. It’s a free country, remember?”

  So, Ellie realized, it seemed that the old Carleen still simmered beneath her timid ponytail and her hand-quilted purse.

  Chapter Twenty

  At three minutes before noon, a dark green, vintage Jaguar delivered the first guests: David and Myrna Goldsmith, who, like Edward, once had been young but now were not.

  Ellie stationed herself at the front door with her game face and her clipboard that held a list of names of everyone who’d been invited. She did not expect to recognize them all, so Edward had prepared her a line: “Hello, thank you so much for coming! Uncle Edward will be so pleased that you’ve come all this way.” The remark would suit everyone, because most of the guests were from Manhattan and most were over sixty, seventy, and more, and traveling twenty-eight miles for a party had been a commitment.

  It was nice, however, that Ellie could easily identify the first arrivals. She checked their names off on the list, set down the clipboard, then went outside to the top step. “David! Myrna!” she exclaimed. “Thank you so much for coming!”

  Heather’s boyfriend had volunteered to valet park the vehicles, for which Ellie had been both surprised and appreciative. He scooted around her
now and jumped into the driver’s seat that David Goldsmith had vacated. Thankfully, the boy did not look as if he might make off with the car, and he didn’t tattoo the driveway with rubber as he wheeled away.

  Ellie directed the Goldsmiths past the arborvitae and the burgundy roses, then toward the peonies and through the gate that led to the backyard. “Uncle Edward will be so pleased that you’ve come all this way.”

  “I know he said no gifts.” David patted the pocket of his seersucker jacket, which looked like a Ralph Lauren. “But I’ve brought Havanas. I was hoping Edward would join me in a smoke before the party gets under way.”

  Oh, great, Ellie thought. The first guests, and already she would have to lie. “Actually,” she said, shielding her eyes against the sun that seemed to grow brighter in the summer sky, “Edward isn’t in the garden yet.”

  “Oh?” David and Myrna Goldsmith asked in unison.

  Realistically, Ellie knew the Goldsmiths would not have any cause to think something was wrong or that Edward was gone. Still, Ellie knew David had once been a celebrated playwright for several of Edward’s productions and was therefore a smart man who knew her uncle quite well. When Edward had packed up and left Broadway, David had tried negotiating numerous futile tricks to change his mind.

  “Actually,” Ellie said carefully, “we think Edward is planning to stage a grand entrance later, so please enjoy yourselves until then.” She smiled, as if she were part of a glorious scheme. To seal the deal, she winked.

  God, had she really winked?

  The Goldsmiths studied her briefly, then chuckled simultaneously. David put his hand at his wife’s elbow and guided her toward the champagne.

  So far, so sort-of-good, Ellie thought as she returned to the driveway at the front of the house. Only one hundred and ninety-eight people left to greet.

  And then a Rolls pulled in, followed by a stretch Mercedes. Ellie took a deep breath and made ready to lie again.

  Carleen needed to find a way to make this right. She needed to find a way to prove to Ellie she was not the old Carleen, that she had grown, she had changed, and, above all, she could be trusted. She was a mother of two! She was a wife! A freaking algebra teacher! What made Ellie think she would stoop so low as to prowl through her box of junk jewelry?

  Because she caught you, Carleen reminded herself.

  It didn’t matter that Carleen hadn’t intended on lifting a brooch or a bracelet or two. Seeing was believing, and Ellie certainly knew what she’d seen.

  And what was this business about Edward being missing? Did they blame her for that? Why was he gone? Because of her? Had he kept tabs on her all these years so that one day he could lure her back, then thrust her into the claws of her unforgiving sisters?

  Obviously, it was time for Carleen to come clean with them.

  Trudging along the lake road from the house toward her first destination, she reminded herself that the outcome of this weekend shouldn’t matter. She and Brian were fine. They didn’t need her family and they didn’t need Edward’s money. They didn’t need her to do this to make their life right.

  But she did.

  As she slipped out of her sandals that were not made for walking, Carleen tried not to think about the party sounds wafting behind her: the music, the laughter, the people having fun. She tried not to feel the loneliness those sounds once evoked.

  Long ago, fun had seemed like the answer to her loneliness, to the fact that she’d never felt she’d fit in. Not before the fire, when competing for attention was mandatory; not after the fire, when she was alone in a world where most people honored their fathers and mothers, not caused their deaths.

  One night in Boston, the fun stopped. It was during her first semester in college, her first weeks since being banished from the family and all things familiar. During the night, Carleen woke up sick. Her belly and her head ached with distress; her heart compressed in pain. She blamed the cheap wine she’d consumed at a frat party. She reached across the mattress for the boy she’d brought home. John. Jahn. Not that his name mattered, because he had left.

  She climbed from her bed and crawled to the window, clutching her midsection. Outside, snowflakes danced in the streetlamp; the ground was blanketed by two or three inches, maybe more.

  Another pain stabbed her. Carleen knew she needed a doctor. She couldn’t call her landlady because the woman was probably drunk. It was after midnight, after all, and this was Back Bay, where the only thing more predictable than the narrow streets and brick brownstones and too few parking spaces were the Irish pubs on every corner.

  She could call an ambulance. But to get to a phone she would need to make her way down the carved mahogany staircase that had been majestic in the 1890s but now seemed steep and foreboding.

  That’s when Carleen realized how alone she really was. She knew all she could do was wait to see if the pain would pass. Wait to see if she would live or die. There was no other choice.

  She sank onto the window seat, staring into the night. “Make something of yourself,” Uncle Edward had said. In that moment, on that window seat, Carleen understood that her future was up to her.

  She kicked a small stone away from her footstep now. As difficult as that lesson had been, it had been her turning point. She’d made it through that horrid night and had been able to get to a clinic in the morning.

  “You have the flu,” the doctor had said. An ordinary flu.

  To her, it was not ordinary.

  The following week she moved into a boardinghouse for women—a place she would have laughed at before. But it had security and a housemother and someone to be there if needed. No smoking, no drinking, no drugging allowed. It hadn’t been easy, but she’d succeeded.

  And now, as Carleen took another step, she knew it was time for amends. She hoped Ray was home. It would be better to see him before he showed up at the party and shocked the hell out of Babe.

  ***

  By twelve twenty, dozens of people combed the backyard of Kamp Kasteel, telling tales, reliving good times, sipping Dom as if it were midnight and they still were players on a big, SRO stage. Kamp Kasteel. Babe smiled at the name the girls had once given their home away from home, their exclusive playground.

  Happily for her, Wes was garnering more attention than she was. Then again, he was putting himself in that position, shaking hands, introducing himself as Edward’s nephew-by-marriage, showing his sparkling teeth, poised (posed!) with his champagne glass, schmoozing Hollywood schmooze at which he was so adept.

  “Nothing’s the same,” she could hear him say, and his listeners agreed, perhaps because they were of a similar generation. “We shoot in Canada today. Or New Zealand. Imagine that. It costs less to ship essentials than to hire stateside.” He adjusted his sunglasses frequently for emphasis. “Those of us who made our money in the eighties and nineties are grateful we don’t have to jump through those exhausting hoops.” He spoke with authority, as if it had been his choice to shrink his career.

  Babe took a step back, closer to the roses, though she would have altered her direction if she’d seen Amanda standing there.

  “I suppose your husband will sign autographs next.”

  “Amanda,” Babe said, “I don’t know why you don’t like me, but we’re adults now. Can’t you let it go?”

  Amanda kept her eyes on Babe’s husband and snorted. “Don’t take it personally, kiddo. I don’t like most people these days.”

  Babe didn’t know how to respond. “Well,” she said, after a few seconds. “It isn’t very becoming.” If Babe hadn’t let Carleen scare her off, surely she would not let Amanda. “Not to mention you’re not setting a very good example for your children. How would you feel if one day they behaved like this toward one another?”

  Amanda folded her arms in a haughty stance. That’s when Babe noticed how thin the woman was, perhaps more from worry than dieting. Amanda had always been such a worrier.

  “Have you had anything to eat?” Babe suddenly asked
.

  With a flick of her head, Amanda sized up her sister. “Who can eat with this turmoil?”

  Babe laughed. “It’s a party, Amanda-Belle. It is supposed to be fun, not tumultuous.”

  One eyebrow cocked. “Aren’t you worried about dear Uncle Edward? Apparently your husband’s recent expedition with my sons has yielded nothing.”

  “I agree with Ellie. Edward will find his way home when he’s ready.”

  Amanda scanned the crowd. “In the meantime, Carleen seems to have gone into hiding. Let’s hope she stays where she is and saves us from mortification.”

  “Apparently Edward doesn’t think she is mortifying.”

  “He must be losing his marbles. It would be just like Ellie not to tell us. That way, she could control his estate.”

  A whoop of delight rose from the arena where Wes was entertaining. “Okay,” he said (too loudly) to a woman. “One more glass of champagne, and you can try to dunk me.”

  The woman whooped again as if he’d agreed to seduce her, which, of course, she did not know was not possible, at least not in the traditional way.

  “Amanda,” Babe said, turning back to her sister. “Why on earth would you care whether or not Ellie controls the estate? I’ve always had the impression Jonathan does very well.”

  Amanda rotated her chin in an upward direction. “It’s not the money, Babe. It’s the principle.”

  “Ellie has more principles than the rest of us put together.”

  “Don’t count on it. It’s usually the ones you least expect to betray you who will.”

  Babe got the impression Amanda was referring to someone other than Ellie. “Well,” she said, “I don’t need Edward’s money. Did you know I’m planning to start my own fragrance line?”

  Amanda laughed.

  For a moment, Babe thought Amanda must have been laughing at something she’d overheard one of the guests say. The announcement of a fragrance line wasn’t grounds for laughter, was it? Then Babe remembered that Amanda had rarely been supportive of anything any of her sisters had done or had wanted to do.

  “My agent is trying to convince me to add a clothing line,” Babe added, not caring that it was a lie. “And handbags. They are so popular today.”