The Sullivan Sisters

by Kathryn Ormsbee

  Kerry’s words were in Claire’s ears: Leslie, she stuck to that boy through thick and thin.

  Leslie.

  Mom.

  Who had once been seventeen and overwhelmed.

  Claire knew a startling truth about Mark Enright. She’d been working it out on her run back to Laramie Court. Now, though, staring the truth in the face, Claire was breathless with inaction, incapable of reconciling any of it with this woman.

  “Mom,” said Claire, “why aren’t you in the Bahamas?”

  Mom stared at her folded legs, tucking her stringy hair behind both ears. “When we got to Florida,” she said, “I changed my mind. Actually, when we got to the dock. Melodie wasn’t happy, but I made her go on without me.”

  “I don’t understand,” Eileen said tonelessly. “Did you forget sunscreen?”

  Mom sucked in her lower lip. It was chapped, Claire noticed, and unpainted. In fact, Mom wasn’t wearing a dab of makeup.

  “I think,” she said slowly, as though testing the weight of each word, “it took getting there, being in a different place—or maybe it was the heat. It felt like … I don’t know, waking up from a hard sleep. I saw things clearly: I shouldn’t have convinced myself the trip was something I needed. I was wrong to pretend you girls were okay with it. And …” Mom looked up, locking her eyes on Claire and, in the process, nearly knocking the breath out of her. “I was wrong to drive off when you told me how you felt. I’d been telling myself for so long that I deserved that trip. That Murphy was in high school, and old enough that this one Christmas wouldn’t matter. And that the same held especially true for you girls.” She nodded to Claire, and then to Eileen.

  “Well,” mumbled Murphy, “we told you it was okay.”

  “I didn’t give you a choice.” Mom’s voice had grown firm. “I asked you, but I didn’t listen. I … don’t think I’ve been listening for a while. I guess you’d call it an epiphany, whatever happened in Florida. And then I knew I couldn’t live with myself if I got on that ship. It wouldn’t be vacation, it’d be torture. So, I came home.”

  “But,” said Claire, “that had to cost so much money.”

  “Southwest.” Mom smiled wanly. “No change fees. Only had to wait on standby for three different flights.”

  “And then we weren’t home.” Claire snapped the next piece of the puzzle into place. Her legs felt strained—a delayed reaction to the running before. She sank to the ground, sitting only a foot off from Mom.

  “I tried calling,” Mom began.

  “I broke my phone,” Claire replied.

  “I went searching your rooms for some kind of clue. I thought—my God, I thought someone had taken you.” Mom dropped her head in her hands. On its face the move seemed melodramatic, but Claire could see: This was true emotion. Her mom had been scared. Her mom had cared.

  “You found Knutsen’s letter?” Eileen was still standing, arms crossed, face devoid of feeling.

  Mom raised her head, revealing two splotchy pink patches around her eyes. “I can’t tell you how angry I am at that man. Just because you’re eighteen, Eileen, that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t have contacted me. That he’d go behind my back—well, I gave him a piece of my mind. I called the police, too, but all they did was ask about how we got along, and how likely it was that you three had simply run away, and—I guess I had a second epiphany then. Really, you had plenty of reasons to run. You ticked every box. And I had a pretty good idea of where you’d gone to. I came here, and the headlights caught Murphy on the beach. I thought …” Mom unfolded the fists in her lap, a helpless motion. “God, I don’t know what I thought. But you’re here. And you’re okay. Aren’t you?”

  Claire was attempting to take it in: Mom being here, worried, flying back from Florida. It was so much, and when combined with everything Claire had understood from Kerry, from what she’d seen in those PI’s photographs and read in John Enright’s obituary, the questions bubbled up in a rush, like soda fizz. Claire had to hiccup at least one of them out:

  “It was you, wasn’t it? You were the girlfriend who got Mark Enright off on the murder charge. Mark was Dad.”

  Mom blinked at Claire, wearing a hollowed-out expression. It was answer enough.

  “When you moved away from here,” said Claire, “he changed his name to John. I guess it was … a tribute?”

  She looked to Mom for confirmation.

  “I … ,” Mom said. “He looked up to John. And John hadn’t betrayed him the way Patrick had. That was his word: ‘betrayed.’ I think Pat was … very confused. He’d seen what had happened, when John had left the family for Boston. He’d gone against Mrs. Enright’s wishes, and she’d disinherited him. Pat was young, sixteen. I can only guess what she threatened to convince him to testify.

  “Sophia, his mother, was at the root of it. I saw the way she behaved for myself plenty of times, but the stories Mark told … She wasn’t well. I just didn’t understand, when he talked about her, how serious it was.”

  Mom grimaced, swatting at her face as though a fly had flown too close. Then Claire realized, she’d been wiping away a tear. Mom cleared her throat and went on:

  “Mark could have left the day he turned eighteen. Should have. He’d decided to stay through the summer for Pat, though. He didn’t want to leave him alone. So he still lived here in June, when it happened. Sophia went into one of her rages, only it didn’t end like the ones before. Mark thought—he really did—that she hadn’t meant to kill his father. Had he fallen down those stairs a different way, hit his head in another place … there’s no knowing. Mr. Enright did die, though, and by the time the police arrived, Sophia had a story. I still don’t know how she could’ve done that: tried to destroy Mark, turn Pat against him. Like I said, she wasn’t well.”

  As Mom spoke, Claire glanced at a saucer-eyed Murphy, and then to Eileen, whose crossed arms had slackened. These were, Claire knew, truths none of them would quickly recover from.

  “John didn’t come back from Boston—not for the trial, or the funerals. Your father didn’t blame him, though. He never blamed John for anything, up to the day we found out he had died in a car crash.” Mom shook her head. “Your father used to joke there was a curse on this house, that it followed him and his brothers wherever they went. I got angry when he said that. Maybe because I believed there was truth in it. We tried to escape the scandal. Went to a town off the map, where he could get work. It didn’t matter that he’d been acquitted; by then, the university had dropped its scholarship offer. So we both worked, and we thought we’d gotten far enough away from this place. I guess we didn’t escape the curse, though. Nothing went according to plan.”

  Claire was remembering the day her mother had, inexplicably, piled her and her sisters into the car and driven them to the coast. How could Claire have not seen it then? Mom had been trying to tell them. Maybe she’d meant to say everything and had lost the nerve. Maybe, as she’d said, she’d wanted them to see Rockport once, not knowing what it had meant to her, only digging their feet into the sand.

  And then there was Claire’s father: John, who wasn’t John, who’d died before his daughters got to know his real name.

  “Sophia killed herself after the trial,” Mom said, the words gone low. “But not before she’d changed her will and cut Mark out. She knew this town would talk, regardless of what the coroner said. If Mark had stayed here, he would’ve been harassed till his dying day. Pat got a guardian, the house, and everything in it, but that poor boy had lost his whole family in the process. So … you see, it’s difficult to blame him. All these years he must’ve felt ashamed about what he’d done. Too ashamed to reach out, until it was too late. I wish, when he’d found us, he would’ve called me. I guess he did what he thought was right. He must’ve thought that by leaving the house to you, he was making amends. And maybe he was. It’s a beautiful place.”

  Claire got the impression that Mom was beginning to ramble, unsure of what to say next, or how to make anything right.
How could you, after that speech? What could anyone say?

  “We thought we’d made the right decision,” Mom said. “We decided it’d be better not to tell you. Better for you. Less confusing. Or, if we did tell you, it’d be once you were old enough to understand. Then your father got sick and died. Life kept going on, and you kept growing up. The older you got, the more difficult it became. Knowing what I had to tell you, unable to do it alone. Soon it was hard to tell you anything. It was easier to take the extra shifts. At least then I knew I was doing something right as your mother: providing for you. But I wasn’t there. God knows what could’ve happened to you girls, traveling up here, with this weather and this town, and … all of that’s my fault.”

  No one told Mom it wasn’t her fault. No one said anything. The parlor was so deathly still that the pounding on the front door seemed amplified ten times, and terror shot through Claire’s veins when she heard a voice call out, “ROCKPORT POLICE.”

  THIRTY Murphy

  Murphy sat up straight on the couch, in spite of her frozen joints. She’d been cold before, when she’d woken on the beach with her face pressed into sand and her mother’s arms unexpectedly wrapped around her middle. Now, a different coldness filled Murphy, whooshing down her spine.

  “Rockport police!” the voice called again.

  They’d been caught. The jig was up.

  The voice was a woman’s, and it sounded weirdly familiar, like that of a teacher who’d taught Murphy way back in primary school, or a grocer she saw a lot at Fred Meyer, or—

  “Kerry?”

  Mom was looking to the threshold of the parlor, where a woman stood wearing a tan uniform. Her black hair was braided, and her face was more familiar than her voice. In another second, Murphy had it: This was the woman from Ramsey’s Diner. The Rockport sheriff. Kerry.

  But why had Mom said her name? Even weirder, why was Kerry staring at Mom as though she knew her right back?

  “Leslie?” she asked, sounding less ferocious than she had when she’d announced herself.

  “I don’t understand,” Kerry went on, approaching them cautiously, as though the Sullivans were a pack of wildcats that might pounce. “Leslie … what the hell are you doing here?”

  Mom was gaping at Kerry, a mirror image of shock.

  This wasn’t going anywhere. Murphy was going to have to speak up.

  “She’s our mom.” Murphy pointed to herself, then an immobile Eileen and Claire. “We, uh, kind of lied about who we were in the diner. Sorry. It’s not a crime to lie to a police officer, right? Not technically?”

  Murphy had no clue what she was saying. Why was she asking about lying, when they’d been caught, red-handed, breaking into a house? Had her brain stopped working? Had she gotten hypothermia out there on the shore?

  Kerry didn’t answer Murphy’s question. Her eyes stayed locked on Mom as she asked, “These … are your kids?”

  “M-my daughters, yes,” stammered Mom. “They received a letter from Pat’s attorney. God knows if it’s even true. It told them they’d inherited the house.”

  Kerry gave a slow blink. “I don’t understand.”

  “Welcome to the club,” muttered Eileen.

  “According to the letter,” said Mom, “Patrick willed the house to the girls. I was out of town, and they left home to come here and investigate on their own. I’m sorry if they’ve caused any trouble.”

  Kerry shook her head, pointing to Claire. “After I dropped you off, something didn’t feel right. I went home, tried to sleep it off. I couldn’t shake the feeling, though, after what you’d said in the diner about Patrick’s house. And your face reminded me … That’s why I came. Bonnie thought I was crazy. Turns out, I wasn’t.”

  Kerry was still shaking her head, but she seemed looser, like someone recovering during the credits of a horror show. “I’m trying to wrap my mind around this,” she said.

  Me too, thought Murphy. She was pretty sure everyone was: her sisters, Mom, and the sheriff Mom mysteriously knew. Murphy’s brain was pulsing with everything Mom had told them about the Enright brothers and the murders. The true story—the one she’d never been told.

  “I really am sorry, Kerry,” Mom repeated. “I know this is serious, and it’s my fault. I left the girls unsupervised. If I were at home, if I’d paid attention to what was going on …”

  “Enough of that.” Kerry waved a hand at Mom, looking almost angry. “We’re not talking about breaking and entering. There’s heavier stuff on the table here; don’t pretend there’s not. I mean, Leslie. God. It’s you.”

  “Me,” said Mom, hiking her shoulders, and she suddenly looked so young to Murphy—as young as Eileen.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t write.” Mom pushed off the couch to her feet. “Mark and I agreed, better to have a clean break. It’s not that we didn’t think it through, or that it wasn’t hard for us. It was hell, Kerry. And I could’ve used a friend.”

  “Where?” Kerry asked.

  “Three hours south. Mark got a lead, found an opening at a library. We figured it’d be a transition, a way to get on our feet before heading out farther—Sacramento, maybe, or LA. Then … well, life happened.”

  Murphy’s mind was reeling, but she understood at least what “life happened” meant: Eileen, Claire, and Murphy, and then their dad’s death. That was a lot of life to happen in a few years.

  “Mark?” Kerry whispered, like she already knew.

  “Leukemia.” Mom’s jawline was stiff. She didn’t talk much about Dad at home, but when she did, her jaw always locked into place, metal bar shut across a door, keeping bad things inside. “The medical bills were bad. There was no leaving after that.”

  “You could’ve written or called.”

  “I was … ashamed.” Mom broke then—voice and body, her neck bending sharply.

  “My God.” Kerry pinched the bridge of her nose. “This is a Christmas punch dream.”

  The parlor got quiet, and Murphy glanced around—first to Eileen, with her dark eyes and folded arms, then to Claire, sitting cross-legged by the couch, gaze vacant. She returned to Mom and Kerry, who were looking anywhere but at each other. They’d been friends, once upon a time. That’s what was going on here: Years ago, Mom and Kerry had lived in Rockport, teenagers together.

  Then the murders had happened.

  And now the past and present were colliding, exploding. Had Uncle Patrick known this would happen when he left his house to the sisters? Murphy wondered. It could be this was Patrick Enright’s own “ta-da” moment. That he, like Murphy, was a true magician.

  Because here were all four Sullivan girls together, and here were two old friends reunited. That was magical, wasn’t it? The good kind of magic. The Cayenne Castle kind. And even though Murphy was cold down to her muscles, and so confused her mind was whirling like a spinning top, she felt a sureness and safeness she hadn’t known before.

  “So,” she said, cracking the silence in two. “You’re not going to arrest us?”

  She smiled guiltily at Kerry, raising bent arms as though to say, It’s the holiday season, am I right?

  Kerry did something unexpected: She laughed. There were tears beaded in the corners of her eyes, and her laughing sent them streaming down her cheeks.

  “God,” she gasped. “God.”

  “Kerry,” said Mom, “we’ll clear out of here, I swear. If what this attorney says is true, the girls will go about things the proper way from here on out. No trespassing whatsoever.”

  Kerry wiped at the tears, her chest heaving. “It’s Christmas Day, Leslie. I’m not going to arrest you. I’m going to invite you to my home.”

  Murphy blinked, dumbfounded for the hundredth time that day.

  “I couldn’t impose,” said Mom. “This was a misunderstanding. We didn’t—”

  “You’re not arguing.” Kerry cut Mom off. “I always win an argument, remember? You called it my special skill.”

  “Is that why you went into law enforcement?”


  A funny, not-entirely-good look flitted across Kerry’s face. “Something like that. Now come on, the four of you. Bonnie’s cooking a massive Christmas brunch.”

  Brunch. The word elicited a ravenous screech from Murphy’s gut. When had she eaten last? She could remember what she’d eaten: live, wriggling maggots. Christmas brunch was the exact opposite of that. Christmas brunch was everything.

  “Please,” she said to Kerry. “We’d love that.”

  What else were they going to do, when the sheriff of Rockport made a demand? They simply had to obey.

  “It’s settled, then,” said Kerry. “Leslie, I’m guessing the Subaru is yours?”

  “It is.”

  “And …” Kerry tapped her thigh, surveying the sisters. “That abandoned Caravan that was called in yesterday belongs to you girls?”

  “Guilty as charged,” said Eileen, who hadn’t uncrossed her arms.

  Kerry nodded, businesslike. “We’ll take care of that later. For the time being, out we go. No arrests, but I won’t be facilitating a technical crime.”

  Kerry motioned for them to head out the door.

  “Murphy?” Claire was kneeling at her side. “You okay to walk?”

  Murphy rolled her eyes. “I’m just a little cold.”

  That didn’t wipe off the worry on Claire’s face.

  She feels bad, Murphy realized, as she got up under Claire’s watchful eye. She left, and now she feels guilty.

  There were two ways Murphy could use this information: She could make Claire feel worse, limp a little and chatter her teeth for dramatic effect. Or, she could make Claire feel better. Because maybe, when Claire had run off, she hadn’t really been thinking. Like the many times Murphy hadn’t thought to feed Siegfried.

  As they walked out of the house, Murphy took Claire’s hand in hers and squeezed, and she said, “I’m glad you came back.”

  Claire looked at her, startled, hot light in her eyes. By the time they had climbed into the back seat of the Subaru, she was wearing a small smile.

  Murphy put on her seat belt as Mom started the car and, waving to Kerry through the windshield, began to follow the sheriff’s SUV down the bluff. On instinct, Murphy pulled out the rope from her puffer coat pocket.