Someone Like You (13 page)

“That was a stroke of genius,” Joely said as she followed Cat back into the kitchen. “She was maybe ten seconds away from a major meltdown.”

“She’s tired and hungry. She’ll be fine once she eats.”

“I think I’m the one who’s supposed to say that.”

Their eyes met, and years of history rose up between them. The nights Mimi didn’t come home. The many times it was just the two of them huddled together in bed praying for the sound of their mother’s footsteps. The way her sister had been there for her every single day.

“Oh, Cat—”

Their hug was clumsy, more than a little awkward, but it felt so right to be there in her sister’s kitchen.

“Sorry.” She tried to pull away, but Cat wouldn’t let go. “I absolutely refuse to cry.”

“Me, too.” Cat’s own eyes looked suspiciously damp. “I’d rather eat dirt.”

“Nature or nurture,” Joely said with an embarrassed laugh. “Someone should study us and figure it out once and for all.”

Stupid nonsensical talk. What was wrong with her? She hadn’t seen her sister in five years, and she was shifting a warm, honest moment into a discussion of genetics versus environment.

“We’ve been studied before, baby,” Cat reminded her as they finally drew apart, “except it was by
Rolling Stone,
not the
New England Journal of Medicine
.”

“Before my time,” she said lightly.
Rolling Stone
belonged to a life the Doyle family had led long before she came along.

Cat fixed her with one of those speculative looks that had always made her feel painfully exposed and vulnerable.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Cat said. “I didn’t think you would come.”

“Neither did I. I guess I didn’t realize how good you are at wielding the guilt card.”

“That’s not what I was trying to do.”

“Don’t be modest, Cat. Of course it was.”

“Well, looks like it worked. I’ll have to figure out how I did it for future reference.”

“So how is she?” Joely asked as Cat pulled a grill out from under the sink and placed it on the stove.

“She came through surgery fine,” Cat said, “but she’s still not fully conscious.” Cat went on to explain—a little defensively, Joely thought—that she hadn’t been to the hospital to see Mimi yet today.

Joely was proud of herself for biting back a bitter comment, but Cat knew her too well. “Go ahead,” Cat said, ripping into a package of ground beef. “Say whatever you were going to say. Don’t censor yourself around me.”

“I don’t feel anything.” The words sounded cold and ugly, but she couldn’t stop them. “I know I should be feeling something—I mean, she’s my mother, for God’s sake—but—” She shrugged. “Nothing. I feel nothing.”

Cat, who was up to her wrists in forming burger patties, didn’t seem shocked at all. “There’s no law that says you have to. You’re here. That’s the important thing.”

“I didn’t come here for her,” Joely said.

“I know that,” Cat said, “and it doesn’t matter. The point is, you’re here, and I’m very glad.”

Nothing was going quite the way Joely had expected it would. She had been expecting a battle. She had been primed to go on the defensive, but there was no need. The sense of unity, of shared purpose, surprised her and left her slightly off balance.

Cat filled her in on the nitty-gritty details of their mother’s condition while she heated the grill pan and started the hamburgers cooking. She put Joely to work toasting buns, cutting slices of cheddar from a foil-wrapped block. Cat had always been a multitasker, but those skills had been refined into a daunting display of competence.

“We’ll need lettuce, tomatoes, and pickles,” Cat said, gesturing toward a wicker basket of produce on the far end of the counter. “Slice them up and arrange them on a platter. We’ll serve ourselves.”

“When did you turn into the Martha Stewart of Idle Point?”

“You’ve been gone a long time,” her sister said. “A lot’s changed.”

Joely rinsed a pair of tomatoes under the faucet, then dried them with a dish towel. “Annabelle is usually a very well-behaved child. I hope you won’t hold her outburst against her.”

Cat lowered the flame under the burgers. “She’s seven years old. It comes with the territory.”

“She’s just upset,” Joely went on. “I wish you could see her at home. She—”

“She’s
seven,
” Cat repeated. “You don’t need to apologize for a seven-year-old acting like a seven-year-old.”

She relaxed for the first time since the plane landed at Logan. “How did you do it?” she asked. “I mean, how did you know what to do when I was her age? You were only seventeen yourself.”

“You made it easy,” Cat said, flipping the burgers onto the toasted buns. “You were like a middle-aged woman in
Little House on the Prairie
pajamas. All I had to do was make up a list or post a schedule, and you jumped on board.”

“You make me sound like a nerd.”

“You were a nerd,” Cat said affectionately. “Our brilliant little nerd. Grandma Fran and I used to look at each other sometimes when you were doing your homework and wonder where in hell you came from. You were scary smart, honey. We were in awe of you.”

“And I was in awe of your artistic ability. I’d give anything to be able to draw or paint or do any of the things you do.”

“Right,” Cat said with an eye roll for good measure. “You’re out there helping people walk again. There isn’t much that compares to that.”

You wouldn’t be so proud of me if you knew I haven’t worked in almost six months, Cat, or that sometimes I don’t think I care if I ever work again
.

The fancy education, the freedom to go out and meet her destiny head-on that Cat had sacrificed to make possible for her—it had stopped mattering a long time ago. She felt ashamed and looked away.

Cat, however, had moved on to another topic.

“Tell me about Annabelle,” she urged. “Is she a logical type or more fanciful?”

“Fanciful,” she said as she helped carry the platters over to the table. “She has the most amazing imagination. She believes there are faerie children living in our side garden.”

“Maybe there are,” Cat said with a wink. “Just because you can’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t there.”

“You should have seen me yesterday—was it just yesterday? She had me out there trying to hang umbrellas over the heather so the faerie children wouldn’t get wet.”

“Saran Wrap,” Cat said. “That’s what I always used when I was a kid. All you have to do is drape it over the tops of the plants, and the faerie children will be just fine.”

“You’re scaring me,” Joely said, only half teasing. “Don’t tell me you believed in faeries when you were little. I thought we both had trouble believing in things we couldn’t see.”

“Faeries, leprechauns, trolls under Old Man Willis’s front porch. The things I couldn’t see were never a problem. It was the things I could see that gave me trouble.”

“Like Mimi?”

“Yeah,” said Cat with a wry smile. “Like Mimi.”

They were back on common ground.

“FOUR,” ANNABELLE SAID, holding up the correct number of fingers.

“Me, too!” Cat wrinkled her brow and pretended to think deeply. “Your favorite color.”

“Red!” Annabelle cried. “Red! Red!”

“Nope,” Cat said, shaking her head. “Yellow.”

“Nobody likes yellow best.”

“I do,” Cat said. “My workroom is yellow.”

“Can I see it?”

“Sure you can,” Cat said. “After lunch.”

“But I want to see it now.”

“Not now,” Cat said, winking at Joely, “but we’ll definitely see it after lunch.”

Joely held her breath. Annabelle was a good child, but she was most definitely mercurial. Her reaction could be anything from an eruption of giggles to a flood of tears.

“Okay,” Annabelle said then reached for the rest of her burger.

Cat definitely had a way with kids. Joely had been watching with undisguised admiration as her sister and Annabelle got to know each other over an all-American lunch of burgers with the works and cold glasses of milk. Joely bypassed the milk, but Cat didn’t. She was bending over backward to make Annabelle comfortable, and Joely found herself wondering why she had waited so long to bring the two of them together.

Clearly they were soul mates. Annabelle regaled her sister with tales of the faerie world in the garden, while Cat kept up her side of the conversation with a long and very funny story about the tiny troll who had lived under their front porch in Pennsylvania a million years ago.

She had always known her sister was good with kids—after all, it was Cat who had raised her—but she had never known it from the perspective of a grown woman. Annabelle was a mercurial little creature, and Joely had worried all the way across the Atlantic that she was making a terrible mistake. What if her sister looked at Annabelle and saw nothing more than a seven-year-old girl with an accent?

She wanted Cat to fall in love with Annabelle the same way she had. She wanted Cat to see all the wonderful things that she saw in that remarkable little girl. She wanted her sister to understand the choices she had made along the way, and Annabelle was the key.

Cat didn’t have children of her own. She had never shown the slightest interest in domestic entanglements. She had forged a supremely independent life for herself, if you didn’t count Mimi, one that seemed to suit her down to the ground. It was as if her maternal instincts had had a good enough workout when Joely was growing up and could now be set aside so Cat could get on with her life.

“I have a bit over,” Annabelle said, holding up a bite-sized piece of burger. “May I share with Trixie?”

“I think you should ask Cat,” Joely said.

Annabelle turned to Cat. “May I?”

“Oh, honey,” Cat said, “I know Trixie would just love to share your lunch with you, but she’s an old girl now, and she feels better when she eats simpler food.”

Joely’s heart swelled with pride as the child nodded sagely then suggested a soft-boiled egg and buttered toast to tempt Trixie’s palate. Cat’s eyes twinkled with delight, and the look the two sisters exchanged over the child’s head made Joely feel the entire trip had been worthwhile.

“Come on, Annabelle,” she said. “Cat was nice enough to make this delicious lunch for us. Why don’t we clear the table and do the dishes?”

Annabelle proudly carried her dinner plate over to the dishwasher, then went back to fetch her drinking glass. William would be so proud of his daughter. She found herself wishing she could share this moment with the one person on earth who would really understand.

“I’m going to head out to the hospital in a few minutes,” Cat said as she pressed the Start button on the dishwasher. “I should have been there a few hours ago. Do you want to come with me?”

Every cell in Joely’s body was urging her to flee, but she stayed put. “Is Mimi conscious yet?”

“I don’t know. She wasn’t when I called this morning.”

“Maybe I’ll skip it this time,” she said. “Annabelle’s going to crash any minute, and I’m not sure the hospital is the place I want it to happen.”

A perfectly reasonable, logical excuse to everyone but her big sister.

“You’re going to have to see Mimi sooner or later. You might as well do it now.”

“I’m not here for Mimi.” She wanted there to be no doubt about her position.

“If you’re worried about bringing Annabelle with us, we could ask Karen Porter to watch her while we’re gone.”

“Karen as in Karen and Danny?”

Cat nodded. “Karen homeschools her kids. Annabelle would fit right in. Besides, it would only be for a couple of hours. It might even be fun for her.”

“A couple of hours?” Joely felt like her scalp was on too tight. “I thought visitors were moved in and out of ICU pretty quickly.” She could manage fifteen minutes. Sixteen if she had to.

“So don’t go,” Cat said. “We can meet up at Grandma Fran’s later to take a look at the damage.”

“How bad do you think it is?”

“Karen said it’s pretty bad but . . .” Cat’s words trailed off into a shrug.

She wasn’t sure if it was a trick of the lighting or a shift in perception, but her strong, indomitable big sister suddenly looked fragile. Her blue eyes were ringed with shadows so dark they seemed almost violet. Worry lines creased her forehead. She looked like what she was: a woman of almost forty who had the weight of the world on her shoulders, the same weight she had carried since she was ten years old and their father walked out the door.

“Karen never liked me,” she said bluntly. “I don’t want Annabelle playing with her kids if she’s going to bad-mouth me.”

Cat looked at her and started to laugh. “You’re not in high school any longer, Joely. She’s married with three kids. I don’t think the fact that Danny took you to the prom instead of her matters anymore.”

“You’re right. I sound like an idiot.”

“I know what you’re really worried about.” Cat laid a gentle hand on her arm. “Nobody blames you for the accident, honey. I promise you the whole thing was put to rest years ago.”

“It’s just—”

“I know,” Cat said again. “But it’s time you put it to rest, too. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time. There’s nothing you can do to change the past. It’s over. Move on.”

She thought she had, but there she was in Idle Point once again looking for a way out.

 

“I’LL STAY HERE,” Joely said as Cat shifted the car into Park at the top of Karen’s drive. “It’ll be faster that way.” She was still reeling from the raucous reception she had received from the co-op of craftswomen who worked in Cat’s studio. Any hopes she might have entertained of slipping in and out of town quietly had flown out the window.