The Sullivan Sisters

by Kathryn Ormsbee

  Over, under, tug through and out.

  There was a lot to think about. So much to figure out. But for now, the rope would do the trick.

  THIRTY-ONE Eileen

  She’d been wrong.

  For two years Eileen had been wrong about everything.

  But she’d also been right.

  She was the daughter of Mark Enright, and she had been lied to. Those two truths remained unchanged. The details, though—she’d gotten those catastrophically wrong.

  As she sat at the dinner table, nodding along to Kerry and Bonnie’s small talk, every one of those details went off like tiny fireworks in her brain: Mark Enright’s name change, the truth about the murders, Sophia Eschenburg’s rages, Eileen’s parentage.

  The letters she’d found in the linen closet hadn’t been sent to a woman who’d had a fraternal affair, but to a girl who’d defended her innocent boyfriend in court. A teenager who’d left Rockport and gone to a place far enough away where she and Mark Enright could start again as Sullivans.

  An emancipated foster kid and a wrongfully judged high school graduate—those were Eileen’s parents. That was the story, monumentally different from the one she’d been telling herself over swigs of Jack Daniel’s.

  How could she have gotten it this twisted?

  “Leenie.”

  Murphy kicked Eileen’s boot under the table, returning her attention to brunch and the fact that Bonnie was asking Eileen a question, Pyrex dish in hand:

  “Sweet-potato casserole?”

  “Uh,” Eileen rasped. “No. Thanks.”

  The scents wafting down the birchwood table were unreal: honey ham, green beans, parmesan mashed potatoes, candied pecans. Kerry’s wife, Bonnie, was on MasterChef level, and Eileen was hungry enough after skipping out on two meals. Hunger and appetite were two different things, though. Eileen’s body was too busy pumping all its energy to her brain; there was no room left for digestion.

  Eileen looked across the table to her mother. She was wearing sweatpants and an oversize tee, her face unmade, and disheveled hair pushed behind her ears. She really must have booked it back to Oregon from Florida, not giving a damn about appearance.

  Mom had been asked a barrage of polite questions by Bonnie, and not-so-polite ones by Kerry, including “What the hell do you do?” and “You’re saying you visited once and never told me?”

  Mom had asked her own questions too, like “The two of you met in Portland?” and “What would bring you back here?”

  When Bonnie asked Mom about the sweet-potato casserole, she flinched. Was she always this jumpy? Eileen had stopped paying attention long ago to the little things Mom did. For one thing, she hadn’t been around the house much to be observed. For another, Eileen hadn’t wanted to look at her closely since the letters. Now, she was taking in everything: the creases around Mom’s mouth, the freckles on her hands, the chapped state of her lips. Here was her own mother, yet she felt so much like a stranger.

  Kerry and Bonnie had also asked the sisters questions—little inquiries about life in Emmet, which they had answered with vague, distant answers. Eileen knew Murphy and Claire were as dazed as she was, processing in the face of sudden news. There was no denying it: This was the most awkward Christmas brunch in the history of Christmas brunches. Eileen would stake her life on that. Sure, she didn’t have an experience to compare it to; “brunch” wasn’t in the Sullivan’s vocabulary. But what could be weirder than eating the food of the sheriff of a tiny town you’d only discovered a few days ago, courtesy of a letter from your heretofore unknown dead uncle’s attorney?

  And to top it off, Eileen had been wrong.

  How the hell could she be capable of small talk?

  All she was able to offer, when Bonnie asked if Eileen had enjoyed high school was, “Not really, but that’s kind of the norm, huh?” And then, “Could you tell me where your bathroom is?”

  An obliging Bonnie pointed down the hallway, telling Eileen it was two doors to the left.

  Eileen escaped and did her business. When she was through, though, she didn’t leave. She stood facing the oval mirror, studying herself as hard as she’d been studying Mom.

  Dark hair. Dark eyes. Tall frame. Different from her sisters and her mother, from the memories and the photos of her father. She’d first thought they were unique parts of herself. Then she’d thought they were signs of a murderer’s blood in her veins. The pieces seemed to have fit, so she’d insisted they would, ramming them together to support her truth.

  Now who was facing her in the glass? Her parents’ eldest daughter. Probably a surprise to them both, but not in the way she’d believed. She was just her parents’ kid. She was herself: Eileen Sullivan, who once upon a time had loved to make art.

  She needed a drink. She craved fire in her belly, fuel that could lift her brain above reality. She eyed the mouthwash sitting on the counter: LISTERINE FRESH BURST.

  What she’d give for a fresh burst of anything.

  She caught her reflection again, desperation etched on her bony face.

  God, Eileen, she thought. You’ve had a fucking revelation, and you remain goddamn predictable.

  She could say the word with more resigned conviction than she had this morning.

  “Alcoholic,” accused the girl in the mirror.

  She’d finally admitted the truth.

  The knock on the bathroom door sent Eileen stumbling away from the counter.

  “Occupied!” she called, reaching over to flush the already flushed toilet.

  “Eileen?”

  The door cracked open, and Mom’s face appeared, nose first. Aquiline, like Eileen’s. They shared that in common, at least.

  “Jesus, shit,” said Eileen.

  Mom opened the door wider, then stepped inside and closed it behind her.

  She said, “I wanted to be sure you’re okay.”

  “What, now you do?”

  The words came out involuntarily, and the moment they did, Eileen threw a hand over her mouth, cementing her lips. Like she was a little girl who’d said a bad word. She felt like a child, suddenly.

  If Mom was hurt by the words, she didn’t show it. She looked reflective, and then said, “No, actually. That’s not why I came. I thought, maybe, we need to talk.”

  “Do we?”

  “Eileen.”

  “What?”

  “You haven’t been doing well. I think … I’ve known. You haven’t been doing well for a while.”

  Did she know about the alcohol?

  Eileen could study Mom, but she couldn’t read her. And she didn’t want to talk about whiskey or wine right now. Instead, she blurted, “I read the letters. The ones you kept in the closet.”

  Mom’s eyes were unblinking. She didn’t look startled, and to her credit she didn’t say something banal, like, “Oh, sweetie, I’m sorry.”

  She said, “I shouldn’t have kept them there. To be honest, I’d forgotten.”

  “Why did you keep them in the first place?”

  Mom lowered her gaze to the pink bathroom tile. “I don’t know. Maybe I wanted evidence, if some vigilante tracked us to Emmet. Maybe a part of me wanted a reminder of Rockport—of what it had been, or a reason to stay away. I don’t know, Eileen. I don’t have a good answer.”

  “I didn’t know Mark Enright was Dad. I thought he was someone else. My dad.”

  Mom got it then. She parted her flaky lips.

  “I thought he’d committed the murders,” Eileen went on, and then, to her horror, she began to cry.

  “Leenie.” Mom’s arms were around Eileen. They didn’t squeeze hard—only a tentative hug. “There’s a lot I should have told you. There are so many things I could’ve done differently.”

  “Yeah,” Eileen agreed.

  Because this wasn’t the time to make Mom feel okay. This needed to happen. It had been building in Eileen for two years, fueled by liquor and uneasy silence and a locked bedroom door.

  “I got it wrong,” Eileen
said, wiping a hand beneath her nose, catching snot on her knuckles. “I guess it’s not surprising, though. Like, I totally bombed the genetics exam in biology.”

  Mom clasped Eileen’s elbows, looking her up and down. “Dad was your dad, Eileen. And he loved you beyond belief.”

  “I’m the reason you had to stay in Emmet, though, huh? Because you had a kid.”

  Mom said, “You came when we needed you most.”

  There was a blockage the size of a football in Eileen’s throat. She couldn’t swallow it down.

  She really needed a drink.

  But she needed this more.

  “Did you know?” she rasped around the lump.

  Mom’s brows contracted. “Know what?”

  That’s when Eileen understood that she didn’t. Mom had been that disconnected. And Eileen had done as good a job of hiding the drinking as she’d thought—not from Claire, maybe, but from her mom.

  That was a feat, though not one to be proud of.

  Eileen didn’t press the question. She hugged back. She placed her arms around Mom’s body-odor-stenched tee, and pulled close. This time, the hug wasn’t tentative.

  “Yoo-hoo!” called a voice down the hall. Murphy. “Mom! Leenie! You guys have to see the cake Bonnie made!”

  Neither of them moved just yet.

  THIRTY-TWO Claire

  Claire couldn’t keep her eyes off them: Kerry and Bonnie, and the looks and words they exchanged over Bonnie’s pistachio chocolate sponge cake, and then over the table as Claire helped them clear away the dishes, and then over the kitchen sink, as they loaded the dishwasher and dropped platters into sudsy water.

  She knew it was creepy, paying this much attention to practical strangers. Claire was careful about it, though, never allowing her gaze to linger too long. Meantime, she hung on every innocuous word the women spoke, from talk of cable bills to New Year’s plans to Bonnie’s work at Rockport’s bakery, the Rosy Warbler. Claire was riveted. Mystified.

  Because how could it work?

  How could two smart, accomplished women in love with each other be living in Nowheresville, Oregon? And, more important, how could they be happy about it?

  They seemed happy, even though their bungalow was small, and the kitchen was outdated. Even though they lived in a tiny town without even a Walmart to its name—a town full of close-minded people who had, at one time, practically banished Claire’s parents.

  Her parents.

  Leslie Clark.

  Mark Enright.

  Teenagers with a sordid story Claire had known nothing about.

  She should have been processing that: murder, scandal, a hidden history. The fact that Mom, who’d been distant for years, was suddenly back in Claire’s life, acting close and caring, the way she once had. And maybe that was the way she’d always been—it was just the merciless grind of life that had gotten in the way.

  Claire wasn’t thinking that through, though. Instead she was watching Kerry and Bonnie, leaving her mom to talk to Eileen in the hallway, as they had been doing for over an hour. Clearly, those two had their own issues to resolve. Murphy, meantime, had asked permission to turn on the TV and had settled herself in front of the TBS marathon of A Christmas Story. The world-weary narration of Ralphie Parker floated into the kitchen, where Claire was towel-drying the last of the serving dishes. Bonnie had left the room to take a phone call from her father, and Kerry had pulled the drain stopper from the sink. She rubbed her pruned hands against her jeans and gave an accomplished sigh.

  “Well,” she said, “that’s that.”

  “I’m … sorry,” Claire wheezed. For all her observation in the past hour, she hadn’t done much talking. Now her voice was dusty and uncertain.

  “What’re you sorry for?” Kerry asked, surprised.

  Dish towel in hand, Claire motioned in a wide arc, as though to say, for everything. “Lying to you about the house and who I was. Ruining your Christmas brunch. I’m sure it was going to be special, and you would’ve had leftovers. You could’ve—”

  Kerry interrupted Claire with a throaty blast of laughter. “You’re worried about leftovers?”

  “Among other things,” Claire mumbled.

  “Trust me,” said Kerry, “Bonnie and I are happy to have you. You don’t know what it means to me to have Leslie here. And you girls turning out to be her and Mark’s kids—well, it’s a lot. Not exactly a Christmas miracle, but a Christmas … something.”

  “Shock?” Claire offered.

  “Understatement,” Kerry replied.

  “We must’ve thrown things off-kilter,” Claire persisted, unable to bat off the need to have her apology heard. “I’m sure you had plans, and you didn’t know you’d have to, like, stop us from breaking into Uncle Patrick’s house. I should have been honest when you picked me up last night. I feel really bad about that.”

  “Why?” Kerry asked. “If I were in your shoes, I would’ve lied too. Anyway, you girls were on an adventure. You didn’t know who to trust.”

  “I guess that’s true,” Claire said weakly. “I just feel … silly. There was nothing in that house for us. It was only a house. I got caught up in the drama, you know? It’s not every day you find out you’ve got a mysterious uncle who left you his fortune.”

  “Very Charles Dickens,” Kerry agreed.

  Claire turned her attention to the dish towel, folding its terry cloth edges together, hanging it on the oven. She didn’t want to stop talking to Kerry, but she wasn’t sure she could ask what she wanted. She wasn’t even sure she knew what the question was.

  “Claire. You okay?”

  Claire continued to look at the towel, tracing its yellow floral pattern and damp green fringe. “You said something last night. That it was hard to live in Rockport. Do you still think that? I mean, why wouldn’t you stay in Portland?”

  “I told you,” said Kerry, “Bonnie likes the coast.”

  Claire looked up. “Simple as that?”

  “I didn’t say it was simple. You’re going to find intolerant people anywhere, though. Bigots, homophobes—they don’t have a monopoly on small towns. It isn’t fair, dealing with people’s bad behavior, but you also can’t let it stop you from living your life. So you choose the place you like best, and with any luck, you thrive. That looks different for everyone, and it can change. I needed to live in Portland in my twenties. These days, I enjoy Rockport. There are people here who knew me as a little girl, others who grew up with me. It’s not for everyone, but I find some satisfaction in being neighbors with people who know my dirt.”

  “People who know you’re not perfect,” Claire murmured.

  “Who said I’m not perfect?” Kerry deadpanned.

  Then a smile burst across her face, and Claire laughed.

  “Look,” Kerry said. “There’s no one way to do life right. That’s the one thing I can tell you for sure. Anyone who says different? Well, they’re full of shit.”

  Claire nodded unwillingly. Because this meant destruction. Walls she had built high in her head and heart—smooth, pristine—were showing their cracks. And the words Don’t plan for failure seemed so trite.

  It wasn’t Settlers versus Excellers. Who could be the judge of that?

  Claire thought of a girl her age named Leslie, with no parents and with a boyfriend on trial, scared out of her mind. She thought of the guts it would take to get on a witness stand and tell the truth, to leave for God knew where and start a new life.

  That wasn’t settling, even though anyone on the outside—Harper Everly, especially—would call her mom a settler, through and through.

  Claire had done that, hadn’t she?

  “Oh, gosh. Anything I can do to help?”

  Claire looked up, startled by the sight of Mom herself in the doorway. Though she was smiling, her eyes were rimmed red.

  “Uh-uh, good timing,” Kerry said, winking at Mom.

  “We finished everything up,” said Claire.

  When Mom’s eyes met hers, Cla
ire had a sudden, reckless thought: What if there had been a spell over that house in Emmet? A curse, like the one Mom had said was on 2270 Laramie—one that drove apart the Sullivan girls, banishing them into dark, lonely corners.

  A curse that had lifted, because Mom was looking at her.

  “You and Kerry probably have a lot more to catch up on, huh?” Claire spoke nervously, stepping away from the counter and heading for the door.

  As Claire passed over the threshold, Mom grabbed her hand. She gave it a single pulse and said, “Merry Christmas.”

  “Merry Christmas, Mom,” Claire said back, and she escaped to the den with tears gathered in her eyes. She remained in the hallway, out of sight, listening as Leslie and Kerry spoke in familiar tones, warm and worn. Standing there, Claire considered her life.

  Yale.

  Ainsley St. John.

  Her mom, and the Bahamian cruise.

  Shattered phones and broken dreams.

  The Enright brothers, the Sullivan sisters.

  She considered all the things she couldn’t control.

  Exceller status seemed out of reach in the face of all that. Maybe it always had been.

  Murphy was sprawled on the sofa in the den, hand in a candy dish filled with M&M’s. On television, a kid wailed in agony, tongue stuck to an icy pole.

  “Hey,” Claire said, taking a seat beside her, and for a moment they quietly watched A Christmas Story, the light of each shifting scene flashing on their faces. There was strange comfort in this, just watching TV with her sister. Claire couldn’t remember when they’d last seen a movie together.

  She wondered how many movies Murphy had watched on her own.

  “Want some?” Murphy surprised Claire by lifting the candy dish. “No maggots. I checked.”

  “I’m fine,” said Claire.

  Then she saw a flash of hurt in Murphy’s eyes. Like this question wasn’t about chocolate; it was a test. A turning point, a line between past and future.