The Christmas Sisters (5 page)

That was it for Nic. As long as she could remember the Dorsey sisters were there for one another. She was not going to let her sister deal with her disappointment or the family difficulty alone now. “Hold up. I've changed my mind. I'm coming up there with you.”

Petie
paused in front of her wedding portrait hung between paintings of the kids when they were children. She made a striking image standing before her own image looking as tired and unsure in real life as she had looked vibrant and ready to take on the world in her portrait. “Nic, you don't have to...”

“I know, but what kind of sister would I be if I sent you into the fray alone? We're family, sugar. We're stuck with each other through thick and thin.”

“Thick and thin, sickness and health, Mother and her sisters- in-law.”
Petie
held out her hand as Nic jogged up the stairs to meet her. She gave Nic's hand a squeeze,
then
nailed her with a knowing look. “And money management and misguided ideas, we are in it for the long haul for
all of it
, you hear?”

“Let's deal with Mother and The Duets first.” Nic pushed on ahead. “And leave the rest to the Lord—and the people directly involved—to sort out.
You
hear?”

Petie
didn't answer, and the way she didn't answer told Nic that she heard but had no intention of paying the veiled demand any heed.

Nic would've stopped on the spot to make sure her sister understood that she had made up her mind about this issue. She would not go to Alabama this Christmas. Neither those proverbial wild horses nor her big sisters mule-headed stubbornness could drag her there. But before she could say so, their mother’s voice intruded.

“No, no, no, no, no! Now I mean that, Nan and Fran.
You, too, Bert and Lula.
No!”

“Mother, put that phone down. I'm coming to take care of everything.”
Petie
marched into her bedroom, her hand outstretched from the get-go to take the receiver.

“Just a minute, honey.”

“Mother, I love you and I love Daddy's sisters. But the mix of you all together is about as volatile as a firecracker in a fresh cow pie. And there
ain't
nobody in this family can run fast enough to get out of the way of that...fallout. So let me handle this.”

It did Nic good to see
Petie's
old fire resurface. She held in her grin, though, out of deference to their mother.

“Fine.
If you're going to start talking manure, I'll gladly let you handle it.” Mother thrust the phone toward her oldest daughter.

“Thank you.”
Petie
took the receiver and affected a voice so syrupy Nic figured she'd have to wipe down the mouthpiece afterward to keep bees from swarming to it. “Hello, darlings, this is
Petie
now. Ya'll hang on for just a sec while I tell Mother something, then I'll be right back to listen to every little thing you've got to say.”

Not one hair on Mother's bob so much as fluttered when she spun on her heel, but that did not mean she was retreating unruffled.

Petie
cut her off at the door, the phone pressed to her chest to keep the aunts from hearing. “Oh no, you don't.”

“Don't what?”

“Don't go down there to stir up sympathy toward your side in this, whatever it may be. We've had enough drama for this Thanksgiving already, thank you very much.”

“What are you driving at, sugar?”

“If I were driving anywhere, Mama, it would be away, far, far away.” She managed a smile and to kiss her mother on the forehead.

Nic knew exactly how her sister felt.

“But seeing as we are all stuck here, my goal is to get through the rest of this day without any further life-altering declarations.”
Petie
and Mother both shot Nic an accusing glare.

Nic feigned intense interest in the knickknacks on her sister's nightstand.

“You promise, Mother, not one word?”

She
pursed
her lips and acted out locking them tight.

“Good. Maybe we can get through the holiday then with some measure of civility, gentility, and whatever other
ility
is called for.”

“How about
senility
?”
Mother's eyes glittered with self-satisfaction. “They have really lost it this time.”

“You've been saying that ever since I can remember. After all these years, what could they possibly have left to lose?”

“How about the house, for starters?”

“They've
lost
the house?” Nic blinked.

“Apparently you do not fully grasp the concept of no more life- altering announcements, Mother,”
Petie
spoke through clenched teeth.

“We own the house.” Nic cleared her throat to chase away the hint of panic in her tight voice. She had staked far too much of her daughter’s future on that house and what would happen with it. She did not find her mother's joking about it one bit amusing. “They just look after it while we're away. How could they have lost it?”

“It's not lost as in gone, but just ask them what they've done. They might as well have lost it, and it's not something you're going to straighten out on the phone, either. Whether you want to or not, Nicolette, you and your sisters are going to have to go down there and sort this out in person.”

Four

Nobody listened to Sam.
Or talked to him, for that matter.
The regulars at
Dewi's
nodded and muttered greetings whenever he came in, but they never offered an invitation for him to join them over coffee, or shared any of the twice-told gossip that passed for news around the place. The church ladies had brought by some ham and a couple congealed salads in recycled whipped cream and margarine tubs, not their usual good plastic dishes with their names on the lids in permanent ink. Their gestures, Sam understood, only skirted the most basic level of good manners. It served to remind him that no one had asked him to come and no one expected him to stay long.

In the town where he had been born and raised, he remained an outsider. He'd thought that would change when he got settled into a place, started letting everyone know why he had come back and what he hoped to accomplish.

A blue-and-silver truck pulled in next to his battered pickup where he waited outside
Dewi's
. The door slammed so hard, Sam felt it through his worn seat springs.

“You just
gonna
sit there on your brains or you coming inside?” Lee
Radwell
, a fellow cottage kid who now owned the gas station stood on
Dewi's
porch, glaring through the windshield at Sam.

“Hello, Lee.” Sam rolled down his window. “
You inviting
me in to join the boys for coffee?” Sam knew better. Of all the people who held his past against him, Lee was the worst.

Lee grunted his contempt at Sam's suggestion. “Just saying
them
parking spaces are for paying customers.”

Sam chose not to point out how those paying customers often sat in
Dewi's
all day spending nothing but the price of a bottomless cup of coffee. “Not to worry, Lee. I'll gladly give up my spot if somebody comes along who needs it.”

“Too bad it
ain't
that easy to run you out of the pulpit.”

“I’m not running anywhere, Lee.” Sam shrugged, his shoulders rasping against the worn fabric of his truck’s seat. “I wasn't called to take the easy path. I wasn't called only to walk through friendly doors. I came here to help make things better for everyone, even those who don't want me, and I will be staying for a while.”

Lee snorted and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “We'll see about that.” As he walked inside, his heavy boots scuffed over the old boards like a schoolyard bully kicking up dirt on the playground.

Sam sat back and fixed his gaze on the steeple of the Persuasion All Souls Community Church. Big Hyde had tried to warn him. But that hadn't prepared Sam for the reality of the forsaken church or the coldness of the townspeople. What had he expected? The seed of the idea to come back to town and set things right got planted in his brain so long ago that he hardly remembered anymore where his realistic plans left off and his idealism took over.

The screen door of
Dewi's
opened and slammed shut again, but Sam had not noticed who had gone inside. Whoever he was, he had certainly not taken the time to offer a wave or invite Sam to come inside and warm up. No, warmth was one thing no one here extended to him. What had he been thinking coming back?

Maybe the real question was
,
who
had he been thinking about? He told himself he'd come back to serve his hometown, to try to build a future for children growing up here now, and to make amends with people he'd hurt when he was nothing but a troubled kid himself.

He ought to know by this stage in his life that the lie you tell yourself is the most dangerous lie of all.

He’d come back for her.
For Nicolette.

He could see her in his mind's eye just as clear this moment as she had been on the night he left her standing on Reggie
LaRue's
lawn on New Year's Eve. Nic had told her mother she was with a girlfriend, then sneaked over to Reggie's, the scene of wild goings-on the likes of which a girl like Nic would never have even imagined if she hadn't gotten hooked up with Sam. He had promised to marry her and take her away from Persuasion forever. That night, Nic learned once and for all how easily a man who made a promise in passion to a woman could break that promise, even if he knew it would also break her heart.

It was the lie he told himself that allowed him to do it. The means he found to justify his selfish behavior, to take the easy path instead of doing the right thing. Looking back now, he understood it had been a pivotal point in his life, the thing that had set him on a sometimes dark and ever twisting path. It was that night that had brought him back from the brink many times and brought him back to Persuasion in time.

There was nothing noble or forward thinking in his actions that night. He just got scared, and being a young man, became arrogant in his fear. So he ran off, telling himself he was doing it for her own good, and left the only girl he had ever loved standing in Reggie’s yard sobbing. He had not done it for her.

But he had moved back for her.
At least partly.
He moved back for all the fine reasons he'd recited again and again to the people he left behind. But in his heart, he always made himself add, and for Nic.
I'm moving back for Nic
.

And she didn't live here anymore.

Sam opened his eyes and sighed.

He tugged the collar of his black leather jacket up around his neck. He'd stay until Easter. If he hadn't made any headway by then, he'd just have to admit it wasn't meant to be and move on. In the meantime, he had
work
to do. He'd wasted too much time already.

He wasn't going to think about Nicolette Dorsey anymore. He started the engine. Wouldn't give her another thought.

He had a greater purpose for his homecoming, for his life as well, and he would focus on that alone. He stretched his arm over the back of the seat and turned to check behind him as he slowly backed the truck out of the space in front on
Dewi's
.

Beep. Beep.
Beeee
p
!
He heard the friendly warning blasts of a compact car before he caught the gleam of the front bumper followed by a flash of silver. Without thinking he lifted his hand to acknowledge and thank the driver but the car was gone. Almost immediately in its place, framed by the back window of his truck, another car appeared, one of those monstrosities of a vehicle that looked more suited for patrolling the wilds of Africa than tooling around the quiet streets of Persuasion. Following in short order, a dark blue station wagon whizzed by so fast Sam could not tell how many people were in it or who was driving.

But then he didn't have to get a good look to know, did he? The cars took the corner of Fifth and Persuasion with the skill and showmanship of NASCAR drivers roaring around a banked curve. They made the transition from paved to dirt road like they'd done it all their lives.

Because they had.

“Sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas a
person'll
look up and there they come, one, two,
three
.
Cars flying down the road.
Them
girls descend on that old place like a flock of snowbirds settling in for the winter.” Big Hyde's prediction rang in Sam's ears even as his own resolve faded to a sweet, aching memory.

Put Nicolette out of his mind? That was the last thing that could happen now, and he wasn't exactly sure what to think about it.