Claire at Sixteen (21 page)

Sybil smiled. Knowing Claire, it was only a matter of time before everybody in New York would know her. “How's school, Thea?” she asked.

“I love it,” Thea said. “Of course, it's exhausting, and I can't wait until I actually start medical school, assuming I can get the scholarship aid I'll need.”

“That could be tricky,” Sybil said. “On paper we're worth a fortune now, because of this house. Nicky and Megs are already worrying about getting aid for me when I start college.”

“Aunt Grace was a demon,” Thea declared. “It was just like her to pull a stunt like this. I suppose all that money Claire wrangled out of the Hugheses is gone.”

“Long gone,” Sybil replied. “I stayed four months longer at the rehab place than anybody expected, and Nicky made a couple of investments that didn't pan out. We barely had enough money to move from Oregon to Boston. As it was, Megs had to sell practically all the furniture, so we could have some ready cash, and we wouldn't have to pay to transport stuff.”

“How much of the money did you keep, Claire?” Thea asked.

“Five thou,” Claire said. “Enough to pay for a quality portfolio and my move to New York. Both of which investments have paid off handsomely.”

“I'm sorry,” Thea said. “The whole business is still a sore spot with me.”

Sybil looked at her sisters, Claire, with her dark elegant beauty, Thea with her wistful blond loveliness. They didn't look like sisters, and they hardly acted like them, either. Sybil couldn't remember a time when they hadn't fought, in a way no one else in the family did. No, that wasn't true, either. Claire always fought with Nicky. But the battles were different between her and Thea, and the last, most bitter battle had taken place two years ago, when Claire had casually married, and equally casually annulled, Scotty Hughes. Scotty, who'd spent the previous two years pledging eternal love to Thea, who'd been busy pledging her eternal love to Kip Dozier.

Sybil was startled to realize how painful it still was to think about Kip. Thea had met him while doing volunteer work, visiting his kid sister Gina at the hospital. Gina Dozier, who had died of leukemia the day after the hit-and-run driver had hit Sybil, permanently crippling her, permanently crippling her family. Kip meant Gina to Sybil, and Gina meant hospitals and suffering. In a different lifetime, it would all be past history, but for Sybil, the memories were too much a part of her everyday existence.

Scotty Hughes was a whole other issue, though, one which Sybil had yet to figure out completely. She knew things were being kept from her, but what startled her was that the secretkeepers were Claire and Nick, the two people she was closest to. She suspected Thea didn't know much more than she did. They'd been fed the official party line. Claire had gotten carried away, eloped with Scotty, and then both of them came to their senses and agreed to an immediate annulment. Scotty's family was so grateful to Claire for bowing out quietly that they'd handed over fifty thousand dollars for use by Sybil for her rehabilitation. Trust Claire to get carried away with a rich boy. No penniless elopements for her.

“Scotty's in town this week, too,” Thea said. “I'm going to his family's for Easter dinner.”

“Sounds charming,” Claire said. “Give them all my love.”

“I think they'd prefer it if I didn't,” Thea said. “We all get along a lot better when they forget you and I are sisters.”

“Is Schyler in town, too?” Claire asked. Schyler was Scotty's older brother.

“I don't know,” Thea said. “You never know with Schyler where he's going to be.”

“Do you ever see him in New York?” Sybil asked. She wished she knew more about Claire's life in New York. There was a time when she knew everything there was to know about Claire. But that had changed with Claire's elopement, just as Evvie had become less open once she'd fallen in love with Sam. Only Thea had stayed the same, and Sybil suspected Thea was unaware of how much was going on that she wasn't privy to.

“He passed through last month,” Claire replied. “We got together for dinner.”

“Who?” Evvie asked. “What? Who had dinner?”

“Evvie!” Sybil shouted, and as they hugged, she could feel tears rolling down her cheeks. “I'm sorry,” she said, wiping them away. “Being such a baby. It's just seeing you all here together. It got to me.”

“We understand,” Evvie said. “You should have seen the three of us on the plane. The other passengers didn't stand a chance.”

“Four of you,” Sybil pointed out. “Sam was there, too.”

“Sam was very quiet,” Thea said. “I noticed that.”

“Sam's always like that after he visits his grandparents,” Evvie declared. “And what a visit it was. My first Passover seder as a full-fledged Jew. It drove them crazy. I'd been rehearsing for weeks. I knew prayers they hadn't even heard of. They wanted to quit after dinner, but I insisted we plow through the whole thing. It takes forever if you sing every song, pray every prayer. Sam wanted to kill me.”

“Did you have a good time?” Claire asked.

Evvie laughed. “I loved it,” she said. “Not just the driving them crazy part, either, although I admit that was fun. I'll always be the shiksa to them, at least until I give them some nice Jewish great-grandchildren. But I really felt part of something during the seder. You know how this family can be sometimes, so connected, so organic and whole? That's what it felt like. In a funny way, it felt like coming home.”

“I understand that,” Sybil replied. “This house feels that way to me, like it's where I've always belonged.”

“I always feel that way,” Thea declared. Her sisters stared at her. “Well, I do. I know you have Sam, Evvie, and, Claire, you've always tried not to fit in, but for me, Nicky and Megs and all of you, even you, Claire, you're perfect. You are my home, no matter how many different places we live in, no matter how our lives are changing. Sometimes New York seems so big to me, or hostile, or frightening, or I think about the pressure I'm under to get perfect grades, or, don't laugh, I think about Kip, or that house we had that year when things seemed so full of promise, and instead of getting scared, or sad, or lonely, I surround myself with you, all of you, and Nicky and Megs, and everything's all right again. I'm home. Megs is baking bread. Nicky's deal is about to break big. We're playing Little Women again, and I'm still Jo. And it makes everything all right for me and I can go on.” She looked almost defiantly at her sisters, but none of them said a word.

“Were things ever that good?” Sybil finally asked.

Evvie nodded. “They were,” she said. “Not consistently, but at their best, things were wonderful.”

“Until the accident,” Thea said. “That's when everything changed.”

“I think Sybil's aware of that,” Evvie said. “Besides, it isn't even true.”

“It's true enough,” Sybil said. It always came back to the accident. Four years before at Thanksgiving. The hit-and-run driver. No insurance to cover the costs of the operations and the physical therapy. Nick's obsessive need for Sybil to walk again. The constant moves from one rehab place to another, each one promising more than it ultimately could deliver. Meg growing weary, weary of the moves, the false hopes, the endless exercises she worked Sybil through. Meg growing weary even of Nick, the man who had been dearer to her than life. And Nick, losing his obsessive drive to make money, to make deals, to start all over, full of promise, full of potential. All he cared about was Sybil, so all Sybil cared about was herself. She couldn't let Nick down. She couldn't let the destruction of her family be for nothing. She owed them her health. She owed them an uncrippled body, two strong legs gliding through the hallways. She owed them for the jobs they'd taken to work their way through college, for Claire's elopement, and her giving up any thoughts of further education to earn money fast by modeling. She owed them for all those dreams of Nick's that had been smashed that day by some unknown driver. She owed them for the house they'd had to sell, for the piano Meg had never gotten to own. They might never ask a thing of her, or they might ask the world of her, and it didn't matter. Whatever she could offer would never be enough.

“Oh, no,” Claire said. “Can you hear it?”

“What?” Evvie asked.

“Nicky's playing with the radio,” Claire said. “Listen hard. You can hear him fiddling with the stations.”

“This was so much easier when we still had the stereo,” Thea said. “Sybil, are you ready?”

“Ready as I'll ever be,” Sybil said. She got up carefully off the bed, and flexed her legs. They were stiff from sitting in one position for so long, but the pain was manageable. Thank God it was a sunny, dry day.

“The birthday waltz,” Claire said. “I finally kicked Nicky in the shins when I was fourteen, and he stopped making me dance with him.”

“I always loved our waltzes,” Thea said, getting up and stretching with an ease Sybil envied. “It was the only time I could pretend Nicky loved me best of all.”

“We might as well get it over with,” Evvie said. “There's no stopping Nicky once he gets his mind set on waltzing.”

“If you're not up to it, don't do it,” Claire said.

“I'm fine,” Sybil said sharply. Last year, she'd waltzed on crutches. The year before in a wheelchair. She'd manage fine this year, if they'd just leave her alone.

The four sisters walked down the stairs, Sybil holding on to the banister and willing her legs to cooperate. Meg and Sam were seated in the living room, and Sybil noticed that Evvie walked immediately over to Sam. Thea and Claire moved to one side, and Nick strolled to Sybil's side and took her gently by the arm.

“You're sixteen now,” he said. “Sixteen is a special age in this family.”

Sybil nodded. She knew sixteen for her would never be the magical age it had been for Meg and Evvie. They had both fallen in love at sixteen. But that didn't mean sixteen couldn't be special for her, too. She had her family, she had her home. No wheelchair, no crutches. The world might not be perfect, but Sybil didn't expect perfection, never really had. All she wanted was a decent chance, and that she finally had.

The radio began a waltz, and Nick bowed his still-handsome head to Sybil, who smiled, secure in his love. It was their moment, their dance, and it was perfect.

C
HAPTER
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WO

“Have some more pancakes, Thea.”

“Megs, no, I couldn't eat another biteful.”

“I don't know what's become of you girls,” Meg declared. “It used to be you were each good for a half dozen or more pancakes. Now it's three bites and you're out.”

“I don't know what Thea's excuse is,” Claire said. “I have to watch every calorie for professional reasons.”

“My excuse is I'm full,” Thea declared. “Megs, your pancakes are as delicious as ever. I fantasize about them sometimes. Especially on Sunday mornings.”

Meg Sebastian rubbed her hands across her apron and smiled. Sybil couldn't remember the last time she'd seen her mother so happy. She silently thanked Claire for treating Thea to the trip, and then she thanked Aunt Grace for the use of the house. It was the one semi-nice thing Aunt Grace had ever done.

“Sybil, you can manage a few more, can't you?” Meg asked.

“I don't think so,” Sybil replied. “Thanks, anyway.”

“I wish Evvie and Sam had come for breakfast,” Meg said. “Sam at least has an appetite.”

“You should have had sons,” Claire said, and she gave her mother a kiss. “Lumberjacks.”

“Right,” Meg said. “Nicky would have loved that.”

The girls laughed, and Sybil marveled once again at how right everything felt. It wasn't as though this was the first time in years they'd been together. There had been Christmas after all, and Thea and Evvie had both gone to Oregon for Claire's high-school graduation. But this was better. This was home.

“When's Clark coming over?” Claire asked.

“Around two,” Meg replied. “I don't suppose I can convince all of you to change your plans for tomorrow. He was looking forward so to having us all over for Easter dinner.”

“Sorry, Megs,” Thea said. “I accepted the Hugheses' invitation ages ago without really thinking.”

“Clark'll be just as happy not to have me over tomorrow,” Claire said. “There's no love lost between us.”

“That simply isn't true,” Meg declared, but Claire merely smiled. Sybil, once again, tried to figure out what had happened at the elopement. Clark Bradford was a cousin of sorts to Scotty Hughes, as well as being Meg's oldest friend. Scotty had been staying at Clark's when he ran off with Claire. Knowing Clark, he'd been promoting a relationship between Scotty and Thea, just as a couple of years before he had promoted one between Evvie and Schyler. Evvie ended up with Sam, Scotty ended up, however temporarily, with Claire, and Claire, Sybil suspected, had her heart set on ending up with Schyler. Sybil grinned. Clark was never one for getting what he really wanted, but when confronted with Meg Winslow Sebastian and her four daughters, he really knew failure.

“What's so funny?” Claire asked her.

“I was thinking about Sam,” Sybil said. “And how much he'd enjoy Easter dinner with Clark.”

Even Meg laughed at the idea. “I suppose it's for the best,” she said. “You and Claire at Evvie's, and then Thea joining you there, while Nicky and I have dinner with Clark. We had to do something after all. It's our first Easter since we moved to Boston. I just hate the idea of us not being together.”

“You'll still be stuck with us Monday and Tuesday,” Thea pointed out. “And Monday Evvie's coming over for lunch all by herself. I don't remember the last time I saw her without Sam.”