Home with My Sisters (8 page)

“Don't give up,” Harrison said. “Maybe they'll come around.”

“And maybe Santa will bring us our coffee shop,” Joy said, laying her head on Harrison's shoulder. “And every angel will get her wings, and elves will picket Starbucks, my sisters will finally see me as the woman I am instead of the little girl I used to be.”

“Dang,” Harrison said. “All I want is a toaster.”

Joy laughed and kissed him. “Easy to please,” she said.

“A four-slicer. None of that two-slice nonsense.”

“A man needs his bread,” Joy said.

Harrison nodded and squeezed her tighter. “A man needs his bread.”

CHAPTER 9

Faith Garland turned to look out over Fisherman's Wharf just as her cell phone rang. It was a crisp day, and although the air had a distinct winter bite, the sun was shining full force. The ring of the phone melded with the sound of barking seals and the hum of voices along the wharf. Faith stared at her screen. Joy's nose ring and thick black eyeliner stared back at her as her finger hovered over DECLINE. She should find a less angry picture of Joy, but for that she'd have to go back to childhood. Faith answered the call.

“Guess who just ambushed me?” Joy plunged in before Faith could even say hello. Even though Faith already knew the answer she let Joy ramble on about Hope. “Either she really wants us to come, or she wants the inheritance all to herself. Which do you think it is?”

Faith was glad that Stephen was in the restroom and the kids were heading closer to the seals carrying on at the end of the dock. Faith didn't need to get any closer, she could smell them from here. She hated getting into arguments with her sisters in front of them. Her family unit—the one she'd created for herself—saw her as calm, put together, and in charge. Sometimes just a few-minute conversation with one of her sisters could make her feel irrational and totally out of control. If only Hope would stop pushing her sisterly agenda. “What inheritance?”

“She's got some kind of a house, doesn't she?”

“She probably owes on it. Believe me. We're poor going back many generations on both sides of the family tree.”

“You never know. Hope was just here, playing me.”

“I don't think Hope is playing you.” Hope, however awkward about her approach, was never diabolical. She was just needy. Needing for the three of them to have some kind of special relationship—the product of too many Afterschool Specials and novels where sisters giggled and painted each other's toenails and shared their deepest, darkest secrets.

“Now we have to go! I'm bringing Harrison.”

“You're going to our grandmother's house?”

“It's so weird to hear you call her that. We don't have to call her that, do we?”

“We don't have to do anything.”

“Good. Well, I'm going. Just in case.”

“Just in case there's a big inheritance.” Faith couldn't keep the disdain out of her voice and she didn't even try.

“I have a coffee shop to open. This could be fate.”

It wasn't fate. It was life being life. Faith didn't bother to say that; Joy was a spark plug, always ready to blow. “I'll think about it,” Faith said. She clicked off and dropped the phone back into her purse.

Brittany and Josh were close to the edge of the water now, a couple of upright humans amidst all those stinky, barking seals. She didn't know how Hope worked amongst stinky barking dogs all day. Couldn't be much better than the seals. She could not believe that both of her sisters were now planning on visiting this woman. What would their mother say?

Stephen finally emerged from the restroom and for a few seconds Faith wondered what he'd been doing in there so long. Not that it was any of her business anymore. She still found him attractive, that was the irony of all this. He'd maintained his athletic body with his daily runs, he didn't have any horrendous habits, he made great money but was still able to pull off a work-life balance, he moderated his extracurricular activities that didn't include her like golf and business dinners. As a rule he didn't come home late. On paper, he was perfect. She was the one who was finally accepting who she was and who she wanted to be with. She was the one driving their family off a cliff. Yet here he was, playing his part. He took one look at Faith and furled his eyebrows in concern. “What's wrong?”

He knows you. One look at your face and he knows something is wrong.
Would anyone ever know her like that again? A grenade of guilt exploded in Faith. He'd tried so hard to be a good husband, and she'd ruined it all. She hated seeing the pain in his eyes every time he looked at her. And something else. A bit of desperation. He wanted to save this marriage despite the fact that she was in love with someone else. She saw it every time she looked at him. If he hadn't walked in on her and Charlie in a compromised position, she probably would have never ended the marriage. That made her both sad and guilt-ridden. “Joy is going too. With her new boyfriend. They're both going to visit that woman.”

“Okay.” Stephen put his hands in his pockets. “I'm pretty sure I know what's coming.”

“I can't let them go without me.”

“The Garland Girls Reunion Tour,” Stephen joked. Faith tried to smile, but she didn't have it in her. Stephen ran his hands through his hair. The fact that he still had a full head of hair was reason enough to try to make the marriage work. What was wrong with her? “We're supposed to go to my mother's for Christmas,” she heard Stephen say. “It was going to be our last Christmas together as a family.” The bitterness crept into his voice. There it was. Faith had been waiting for it. She knew anger had to be simmering underneath his polite façade. She certainly couldn't blame him. Often she'd imagined this from his point of view.

How would she have reacted if she'd come home to find him on the sofa with another woman? She definitely wouldn't be taking it as maturely as Stephen appeared to be taking it. They'd agreed not to make any decisions or say anything to the children until after the holidays. They had no idea Charlie even existed. How strange. Was Faith really going to do this? Was she really going to follow her heart? Was that even wise?

That huge dilemma aside, Faith still didn't want to spend yet another Christmas with Stephen's mother, pretending everything was okay. The woman had never really accepted her as a daughter-in-law, and it was going to be even worse when she found out Faith was leaving her precious son, her golden boy. Stephen's mother had taken Faith in when she was seventeen and pregnant. Saw to it that they married. Helped raise Josh. Made sure Faith finished high school and even went to college. Yet the woman had never loved her. Faith didn't blame her, but she was tired of pretending. At least this year she wouldn't have to open yet another pair of socks from her mother-in-law and pretend that it was a fabulous gift. Especially when everyone else did get fabulous gifts. Maybe she was psychic, sensed that one day Faith would cheat on her darling son, and the years of socks had been punishment in advance.

“We went to your mother's last year. And the year before that.”

“Your sisters are welcome to come.”

“What part of dying grandmother do you not understand?”

“You never even met the woman.”

“Actually, I did. We did. We met her twice.” Faith didn't know she was going to say that until the words came out of her mouth. It was as if a veil lifted and the memory of meeting her a second time came pouring in.

She was inside a trailer. The smell of whiskey and cigarettes actually hit the back of her throat. She could picture her grandmother standing in the kitchenette with her hard, wrinkled face. A smoker's voice, low and gravelly. Oh, she remembered her all right. She'd called Hope chubby and pinched Hope's cheek until she cried out, asked their father when he was going to “shut that thing up” (Joy), and tried to get Faith—who was only eight years old—to run to the store to buy her booze and cigarettes. Her father laughed as if it were a joke, but Faith remembered the look in her grandmother's eyes. The woman had been deadly serious. And she'd had cash clutched in her hand. Instead, her father went to the store, leaving them alone with that woman. Faith couldn't even remember her looking at them or talking to them the entire time he was gone. If she had cookies she didn't place them on a plate in front of them; in fact, it was truly as if they weren't even in the room. Their grandmother stood staring out one of the windows in the trailer and began talking about their mother. Words Faith didn't even understand at the time, but she knew they were all bad. When her father came back from the store they left immediately. Once she had her cigarettes and her beer, the rest of them didn't exist. Nothing about that woman had felt like a grandmother.

So if she was summoning them to her home now, Faith knew there was a motive, and wanting to make up for lost time, or bequeathing them some generous gift, was not going to be it. Not even close. The truth was—no matter how much she complained about them—she couldn't let her sisters face that woman alone.

She had enough guilt over abandoning her sisters. At least that was Hope's version of what Faith had done to them. To this day there was this hurt, Why-did-you-leave-us? look in Hope's eyes. What was she supposed to say? She was their sister, not their mother. Yes, she'd taken on that role, but could she really be expected to carry it on forever? Didn't she have a right to live her life? Besides. It had all happened so fast. One summer. One summer had completely changed the trajectory of her entire life. That magic number seventeen. Seventeen-year-olds shouldn't hold the power to make life-changing decisions, but that's what happened when you didn't have parents. She loved her mother, but Carla Garland could not be called a parent.

There was so much about Faith's life that she'd kept hidden from her sisters. Not out of spite, but to protect them. She'd always wished she would have had an older sister to look out after
her
. Tell her everything would be all right. Back then Hope was so sensitive to change, so clingy, but Joy was independent. Faith knew Joy was going to be all right without her. And Hope was just going to have to learn. Faith didn't have a choice, she needed to look out for herself for once. It was just one night, one kiss. And it changed everything.

The barking of seals brought her back to the present. Stephen was watching her. She flushed as if he knew everything she'd been thinking.

“What?”

“You three should go,” Stephen said. “My mom will understand.”

I was already going. You just have to act like it's your idea.
“Thank you.”

“But you can't bring Charlie.” He spit out the name with the usual emphasis and sarcasm. “That's my only rule.”

My God. Who did he think she was? Why in the world would she want to drag Charlie into this? “You know I wouldn't do that.”

“I really don't,” he said. “Do I?” Just then, as Faith was watching and Stephen was shooting her with another little stinger, Josh turned and looked directly at her.
He looks sad.
Fifteen didn't seem to be an age he was enjoying. Was there any way that he knew about Charlie? No, it wasn't possible. She and Stephen had gone to great lengths not to let on. What was happening to her sweet little boy? He used to be a mama's boy. Always clinging to her. He was shy, and sweet, and thin and scrawny. He wasn't going to be a jock or the leading man. That filled her with pain for him. But he seemed content to be smart and kind. That is, until this year. The change that had come over him was so startling. Usually sullen, and sometimes angry. And then last month she'd actually walked in on him after he'd taken a few test swipes to his wrist with a razor. And although he had sworn up and down he was just goofing around, that maneuver had landed him in weekly psychotherapy. Faith was even more unsure now about splitting up. She loved Charlie, but Josh took priority. Faith couldn't help but feel like she was being punished somehow. As if she shouldn't dare to be happy.

Not that she had gone about it in the right way. But was there a right way to fall in love with someone outside of your marriage? If she had been honest, truly honest with herself, she never should have married Stephen. Was she supposed to just swallow those choices now for the sake of her children? Wouldn't it be better for them to have a happy mother?

“It's hormones,” Stephen said, watching her watch their son. “I was like that too.”

“Did you try to slit your wrists?” Faith snapped. Oh, she shouldn't have said that. This wasn't Stephen's fault. He was actually handling all of this much better than she was.
Be nice, Faith
.

“He said he wasn't really going to do any serious damage to himself.”

“And you believe that?”

“I want to,” Stephen said.

“It was a cry for help.”

“And he's getting help.”

“Mental illness runs in both of our families.”

“My family?” Stephen asked.

“Your mother.” All of Josh's traits both physical and emotional mirrored Stephen and his side of the family. Except for his eyes. He had her father's piercing eyes.
He's an old soul,
people used to say after looking into her father's eyes. Josh was an old soul too. And he was hers to protect.

“Are you sure Josh is better off with the crazies in your family rather than mine?” Stephen asked.

“Not sure whatsoever,” Faith said.

“So why do this? You never want to spend Christmas with your sisters—”

“Don't put words in my mouth.”

“Hope is always making an effort and you're always rejecting her.”

“Wait. Are you trying to get me to stay, or are you trying to get me to go?”

Stephen sighed. “I don't know,” he said. Seals barked in the distance. Josh and Brittany began running back to them.

“No matter what,” Stephen said, “this year just isn't going to feel like Christmas.”

Faith was sorry to realize that for once, she wholeheartedly agreed.

* * *

Hope and Austin were only half an hour from Leavenworth when Faith's name lit up the screen of her smartphone. “She's coming,” Hope said with a grin. Austin turned down the radio as Hope answered.