The Geometry of Sisters Read online

  “Why? You don't get along with your family?”

  “I get along with them fine. I just don't like living here. I want… more.”

  “More?” she laughed. “How could there be more?”

  He laughed too. “All this gets in the way,” he said. “Of what I want.”

  “What do you want?”

  He stared at the house, then turned to her. “Real life,” he said.

  “Is that why you made the iron gate?” she asked. “Instead of letting your parents hire someone to do it?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “That's exactly why.”

  “That's why you didn't want to drive into the front driveway,” she said. “With me … I'm too ‘real life’ for this place.”

  “That's not the reason,” he said. He stared at her, blue eyes burning through the fog.

  “Then what is?”

  “You're going back to Ohio,” he said. “You haven't told me why, or who's waiting for you there. Is it that guy?”

  “Stop, J.D.”

  “Look, I know you had a boyfriend,” he said. “Katharine told me even before you got here. But that's changed.”

  She'd clamped her mouth shut, unable or unwilling to talk about it. She couldn't think about Andy or talk about him to J.D.

  J.D. held her, pulled her close.

  “You know you can't go back,” he said.

  “We can't talk about that,” she said.

  “Maybe not now,” he said. “But we will. Because I'm not letting you go.”

  “Shhh,” she'd said, letting him kiss her.

  “And then,” he said, stopping, “we'll find a place—not the warehouse, and not here. A house. We'll live together, and I'll bring you here to meet my parents. You'll be the first girl I've done that with.”

  “Shhh,” she'd said again, and he'd kissed her again as the fog swirled around them.

  Eighteen years later she strode with Stephen through the mist; he took her along a bluestone path to the cliff. They passed trimmed hedges, overgrown vines, wind-twisted cedars. They took the path down to the beach, and Maura hugged herself to stay warm as they walked along the hard-packed sand. Off the cliff, away from memories of J.D., she began to breathe easily again.

  “It feels good to get away from school,” she said.

  “I know what you mean,” he said. “The walls can really close in. The academy is its own little world…. Besides, I've been wanting to talk to you.”

  “About what?” she asked.

  “Well, why you're here. In Newport.”

  “Sometimes I wonder why we left Columbus,” she said.

  “Why did you?” he asked slowly.

  “A lot of reasons.” She thought of Beck's stealing. “It was too hard to stay in our house. We missed them—my husband and daughter—all the time. I… thought it would be easier on the kids to have a fresh start. Easier on me too.”

  “I'm sorry for what you've been through,” he said.

  “Did the Davis girls tell you?” she asked, assuming. He didn't reply, and she went on. “Beck's been getting close to Lucy. They always seem to be doing math homework….” She pushed windblown hair from her eyes and glanced at him. “Beck gets lost in it.”

  “She's very good. I'm trying to test her, to see exactly how good. I want the kids, especially the girls, to get past the idea that math is just calculating numbers. When Lucy was younger, after her mother left and her father got sick, I happened to mention something about counting the number of angels who could fit on the head of a pin, and she jumped on it. I realized I was onto something.”

  “Like what?” Maura asked, head down as they walked through the fog.

  He paused; his eyes tightened, and she had the feeling he was weighing what she could handle. The fog surrounded them, made her feel they were in a private capsule. She could see only ten feet in each direction. The sand at her feet was strewn with broken clam shells. She bent down, picked up the perfectly curved outer edge of a quahog.

  “Infinity,” he said. “Math helps us describe nature in a precise, universal language. Physical nature. Forces of gravity. Architecture is all about math. The angles, how a certain column supports weight. The speed of light is math. Death is math. What happens to the soul after it departs the body. And love. The rate at which you can get it back after it departs the marriage.”

  “Seriously?” she asked.

  “Why not?” he asked, giving her a wry grin.

  “Is it working for you?” she asked.

  “No,” he said. “Not the last part, anyway. Patricia's with someone else now. We were only married five years when she said she needed time apart. The divorce happened fast, just two years ago— she went to the Dominican Republic. Met someone at the resort, and is married to him now. Her third.”

  “I'm sorry,” she said, and they walked in silence for a minute, the only sound their feet crunching shells on the packed sand. “You never had kids together?”

  “Nope,” he said. “I wanted to, but it didn't happen. I have Pell and Lucy to care for, though. They're the closest I have to children of my own.”

  “You must have been really close to their father,” she said.

  “I was,” he said, nodding. “All four of us were like brothers. Truly, we'd do anything for each other. Me, Taylor, Ted, and J.D.”

  “You're very lucky,” she said, J.D.'s name giving her a jolt as intense as her memories of their walk in the fog.

  “Earlier,” he said. “You said you wonder why you came from Ohio.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “You know the real reason, don't you?” he asked.

  She glanced over at him, and through the gloom she saw color rising in his face.

  “It's because you were recruited,” he said. “Ted sent you a letter asking you to apply.”

  “Along with how many other new teachers?” she asked.

  “Your letter was special,” he said.

  She gave him a look, but he just kept walking. Hands deep in his jacket pockets, he frowned at his feet. Waves advanced up the hard pewter sand, the tide coming in, starting to cover the shattered shells.

  “It was a form letter,” she said.

  “That's what you were supposed to think,” he said.

  “What are you talking about?” she asked.

  Stephen took a few more steps, realized Maura wasn't moving. He paused, facing away from her. Even just a few feet away, the lines of his body were blurred by fog. Then he turned and came toward her, staring into her eyes. His face looked pale and tense.

  “I just told you my friends and I are as close as brothers. We'd do anything to help each other. See, I know everything about you,” he said. “And so does Ted. That's why he recruited you to teach here … Last night, when you climbed to the fourth floor… what made you do that, Maura? It's almost as if you were drawn there.”

  “I was,” she said, her voice trembling.

  “Do you know why?”

  “I had to know who was up there, watching me out on the cliff. Someone in the window…”

  “You know who it was, don't you?”

  Maura suddenly felt afraid. She took a few steps backward, then turned to run. Stephen caught her arm, stopped her. Yanking away, she started to fight. But then she caught sight of his eyes—there was nothing frightening about them: just sadness and compassion.

  “Carrie,” she whispered. “For a minute … I thought I saw her at the game. It made me a little crazy; last night I felt her there, watching me.”

  “No,” Stephen said.

  “Tell me,” she said, unable to stand the look in his eyes.

  “It was your daughter's father in there last night. It was J.D.”

  She stared at him.

  “He lives close by, on Shepard Avenue. He was swimming here that night. We filled the pool for him. We thought… if you were close to him, if you came to Newport, it might help him. That's why Ted sent you that recruitment letter.”

  “I have to see
him,” she said.

  “It's just… I have to warn you,” Stephen said.

  Maura felt her heart thudding as she waited for him to go on.

  “You know how badly he was injured, right? He's not the same as you remember him, Maura. You have to be prepared.”

  “Take me to him,” she said.

  News alert: something's going on between my mother and Mr. Campbell.

  Here's what happened. I was just getting out of History when I looked out a window on the second-floor corridor and saw my mom bundled up in her coat, sitting on a stone bench out on the lawn.

  I stared out at her. I had this strange feeling I was at the movies—the window glass and thirty yards separated me from her, and she didn't know I was watching. But I saw the way she pulled her coat tight, crossed her arms across her chest, tilted her head back to stare up at the sky.

  Or maybe not the sky—possibly the fourth floor.

  I've heard what everyone is saying, that my mother went up there to see Mary. I asked her about it when I saw her at lunch, and it went like this.

  “Did you find her?”

  “Find whom?”

  “You know. Mary Langley The girl who died.”

  “Honey no. It didn't have anything to do with ghosts. This school is new to me, just as it is to you. I felt like exploring a little, that's all. Just because a person grows up doesn't mean she stops being curious.”

  I liked that. It's true that my mother has always seemed young because she never stops looking around. She's not one of those mothers who points her car toward the grocery store and just buys the family's food. No. My mother wanders. She'll head toward the market, and get sidetracked by a rainbow. Next thing you know, we're stopped by a field, and she's staring at the arc in the sky, quoting some haiku her mother wrote:

  Light splits the dark cloud

  Silver pours down from the sky.

  Rain stops for today.

  And then we just drive on, maybe to the market or perhaps she gets inspired to go to the library or art museum first. That's just how she is. Look how we came to Newport! She got sidetracked from our life in Columbus, decided to come see the sea, teach at a fancy private school. So it's not at all surprising she'd climb up to the fourth floor just to see what was what.

  And maybe that explained why, standing in the second-floor corridor today I saw my mother sitting there in the fog, eyes trained on the top windows. She barely noticed as the school door opened and Mr. Campbell walked out. I saw him head straight for her. He didn't look left or right, just made a beeline for my mom.

  And the minute she saw him, she jumped up. He'd startled her. That's what I thought at first. But then I saw how glad she was to see him. They talked like old friends. Through the glass I couldn't hear her words, but I saw her mouth moving—fast. Plenty to say.

  Mr. Campbell looked up at the fourth floor too. As if he could see someone up there. Mary? Who else would it be? It seemed he was checking to see if they were being watched, him and my mother.

  Knowing my mother was occupied, I felt like walking home to go through her things. Don't ask me why, because I can't explain it. We live together, she's right there under the same roof, but looking at everything she owns makes me feel more secure. As if she's not going anywhere. I learn strange things too. Like yesterday, I rummaged through the pockets of her jacket and found a baby's pacifier. Can you imagine that? It didn't weird me out, though. In fact, I found it kind of comforting.

  Considering how she's been acting lately, the fourth floor and all, a pacifier is nothing to worry about. Anyway, I didn't walk home. The bell rang, time for math lab, independent study, a quiet hour by ourselves, to roam the plains of geometry. We were explorers in a wild world. Lucy came running down the hall, linked her arm with me, spun me around.

  “Well, you're a happy little thing,” I said.

  “I just got an A on my history project,” she said.

  “Take it handy,” I said. I've been on a slight Irish kick, because it turns out Redmond's father is from Ireland, and sometimes his Boston accent goes all schizo and he uses these weird Irish expressions.

  “I have to ask Stephen if I can miss lab,” she said. “Because Mrs. Merrill is free right now and she says she wants to enter my project in the New England Schools Comp…”

  “You can't miss math,” I said. “And besides, Stephen's not around.” Because he's with my mother…

  “Even better! He won't miss me. It's just lab,” she said. “I can do my homework later. You can help me!”

  “No,” I said, feeling panicked. Didn't she realize that time was of the essence? She's the one who got me started thinking about the possibilities of infinity, of seeing beyond what's obvious, of finding what they tell us is no longer here. I had to see my father, I had to find Carrie. My chest ached. If a fourteen-year-old could have a heart attack, I was having one.

  “What do you mean, ‘no’?” she asked, and she laughed a little.

  “I mean we have to work together now! Now!”

  She backed off as if I'd scared her. Maybe my voice was a little loud, because other kids in the corridor turned to look. She calmed down. Stepped close to me, gave me a little hug. I felt her breath on my ear.

  “You're right,” she said. “I'm sorry.”

  “I'm happy about your history project,” I said, trying to sound normal.

  “I know. You're my best friend,” she said, and I saw her gather herself, smile, wanting to reassure me. I saw that and even as I loved her for it, I worried that I would drive her away, that my stealing heart would take more of her fatherless self than she could spare.

  “You're mine too,” I said.

  Best friends. Yes. We were that. But even as I gave her a hug, I felt dominoes tumble inside me, click-click-click, a whole long line of them falling and demolishing the order.

  No friendship could be enough. Lucy had Pell. And I didn't have Carrie. A friend was wonderful, but my broken heart ached for my sister. My mother was acting odd; it scared me. The world was going crazy, and I wasn't sure how much of it I could take.

  11MAURA AND STEPHEN CROSSED THE FOG-shrouded campus and hurried along the trail that led into the woods behind the athletic fields, skirting the football field in mist that drifted through the long row of poplars. Leaving the school grounds on a path between two granite pillars, they walked a few blocks from the ocean into a neighborhood of still-large but not palatial houses.

  When they got to a stone house with formal landscaping, Stephen steered her up the driveway. She saw by the sign on the lawn that this was the headmaster's house: the Shannon family lived here. But instead of going up the front steps, Stephen led her around back to a separate building, to an old ivy-covered fieldstone carriage house or garage.

  She spotted Angus coming out; he hadn't seen them yet. His van was backed in to the massive barn-style doors; Maura saw that it had a wheelchair lift, and that it had obviously just been used. Angus pushed the button to raise the lift into the van and close the door.

  “Hey,” Stephen said.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Angus asked, his glare shifting from Stephen to Maura as he blocked their way.

  “They need to see each other,” Stephen said.

  “That's not what he says….”

  “And you think he knows what he's doing?” Stephen said.

  “I've got my orders,” Angus said, squinting at Maura. “I'm in enough trouble because she broke through the fourth-floor door last night.”

  “You can blame this on me,” Stephen said. “But we're going in to see J.D.”

  Angus was puffed up, ready for battle, but something in Stephen's face wore him down, and he shrugged with frustration. “You'll do what you want to do. The four of you always have. This time, it'll probably get me fired.”

  “As if that would ever happen,” Stephen said. “This is for J.D., Angus. I'm doing this for him, okay? You know that.”

  Angus's eyes burned, and his mouth wa
s tight with disapproval. But turning away, he let them pass. Maura watched him climb into the van, start it up, and pull down the long driveway.

  “Angus is loyal to the Blackstone family,” Stephen said. “He worked for J.D.'s father and grandfather on the docks. His greatgrandfather worked for James Desmond. Their families go way back….”

  But Maura wasn't listening. She knew that Stephen was just making conversation, wanting to distract her. She stared at the barn doors, at the wrought-iron latch. Stephen lifted his hand and knocked.

  “Who is it?” came the voice.

  “Me,” Stephen said.

  Maura heard rustling behind the heavy door. The iron hinges creaked as the door opened. And her heart turned over.

  He was strong, powerfully built. Anyone could see that he worked out—he wore a thin gray T-shirt, just as he always had, and his upper body was lean and muscular. His graying brown hair was very short, almost a buzz cut. His blue eyes were as bright as ever, full of humor as they looked at Stephen. That changed when they swept over Maura.

  She felt every minute, every year disappear. His eyes were the same, and when he looked at her she felt loved in a way that didn't come with words or sense. He knew her then, and he knew her now.

  “Maura,” he said.

  “J.D.,” she said, crouching down to look him straight in the eyes. He touched her cheek. The contact was light but so intense she couldn't breathe. If she focused on his face, she wouldn't see the chair. Metal glinting, surrounding him. But she had to look, forced herself to see the wheels, the armrests. She fumbled to take his hand.

  “You came to see me,” he said.

  “It took me a long time,” she said. “I'm so sorry.”

  “I didn't want you here.”

  She heard Stephen slip out the door, the latch close behind him. J.D. and Maura held hands. He had workman's hands, even now. They felt strong, lean. She stared at them.

  “I'm so sorry about what happened to you,” she said.

  “It was a long time ago,” he said.

  “I should have…” she began.

  “Maura, don't start that, okay?”

  A lifetime had passed; their lives had unfolded without each other. From the minute they'd met, something had been set in motion. Passion, the inability to regulate anything at all. Feelings, behavior, kisses, despair. The realization disturbed her, and she pulled away. Withdrew her hands, stood up, and looked around.