The Geometry of Sisters (22 page)

“So,” Lucy was saying. “We're trying to move from the mass of those columns to the skinniness of the lines. With our proofs we just shrink and shrink and shrink them down to almost nothing, and then we'll…”

Pell was listening too, holding Lucy's ankle. The sight of it was a sharp thorn poking Beck's eyes, making them water. Tears bubbled up, the bottomless longing to have her older sister here to do something so simple as grab her ankle. She saw where Lucy was going with the proof, but suddenly she didn't care.

“They're just numbers on a page,” Beck choked the words out. “They can't bring anyone back.”

Pell met Beck's gaze, and that was even worse. There were good older sisters and bad older sisters. The bad ones made fun of you. They would never let you borrow their sweaters. If they saw you doing something wrong, they told your parents. They laughed at you for being stupid. Carrie was one of the good ones, and obviously Pell was too.

“Beck, I am in awe of your math skill—Lucy's too,” Pell said carefully. “If only you could just let it be that—learning everything you can, and excelling. But I know what you two are trying to do. You're on a mission to …”

“We're going to see Dad again,” Lucy said bluntly. “And Beck's going to see her father.”

“I know you want that,” Pell said. “So do I. But darling, it's not going to happen … not the way you hope it will.”

“You don't know,” Lucy said. She shook her head with resolution. Beck had seen her stubborn streak and admired it. But right now, watching her draw those spidery lines on the page, saying they were a way of finding infinity, a way to bring back their beloveds, she felt both she and Lucy were a little crazy.

“You have your sister right here,” Beck said. “You're so lucky.”

“But I want my father too,” Lucy said.

“Of course you do,” Pell said. “I do too. The closest I ever come to feeling his presence is when I talk to Stephen and Ted. They and J.D. were like his brothers; they loved him so much, and they bring him back for me. Don't you feel that with Travis, Beck? When you talk to him, you feel Carrie?”

Beck didn't reply. She sat by the fire, knees drawn up, staring into the flames. The mention of Stephen, Mr. Campbell, made her feel confused. Her thoughts raced with troubling images. Her mother had gone on that walk with him and she had been quiet and distant ever since. A knock sounded at the door, and Pell jumped to answer. Angus stood there with a big cart filled with logs.

“Need more firewood?” he asked.

“Yes, Angus, thanks,” Pell said, letting him in.

He hefted two armloads of wood, carried them in, dumped them into the wicker basket by the hearth. Then he went back, returned with a bundle of kindling. As he bent over in front of Beck, she saw a bunch of keys dangling from his belt. Her spine started to tingle; she felt the bad feeling begin to glow in her bones, and she tried to
clench her hands into fists to stop them from doing what they wanted to do.

The fire crackled, sparks spitting up the chimney then twinkling down, little orange stars of fire, back into the flames. Angus crouched, trying to fit more kindling into the iron pot beside the fireplace tools. Pell asked how J.D. was, and Angus grunted that he was fine, just fine.

Beck was in a bubble. It shimmered and wobbled, and she thought of her mother, that day they'd sat at the kitchen table talking about Dr. Mallory about trust. Then, with the picture of her mother crystal clear in her head, the worry in her eyes so visible, Beck hated herself even more as she reached forward, gently unclipping Angus's keys.

Before anyone noticed, she'd shoved them under the pillow she was sitting on. Pretending to be focused on her math work, she was actually hypersensitive to every detail going on around her. She felt as if she was watching her life on-screen. Girls studying by the fire, friends being nice to the gruff but kindly old school worker, school worker sweeping up bark and twigs before getting to his feet. Bitch of a loser Beck Shaw stealing, stealing.

“When is the Pumpkin Carve this year?” Pell asked.

“Same as every October… you'll find out at the Blackstone Blaze,” Angus said.

He brushed his hands off, said good night, and continued on down the hall delivering firewood. With Pell and Lucy still distracted, Beck transferred the keys to her backpack.

“Okay you have to tell us about Pumpkin Carve and the Blackstone Blaze,” Beck said, blackout mode coming on. Wipe the slate clean, feel the lovely numbness of post-thievery “Being as you're an older sister and upperclassman and all.”

“I'm not allowed,” Pell said, smiling. “They're secret school traditions.”

Traditions. Beck had heard about them, had yet to experience
one. Private schools like Newport Academy handed lore and rituals down through the ages. To Beck, they sounded so far-off and unattainable, more for the blue bloods like Lucy, Pell, Logan, Camilla, and Redmond than her and Travis … but at least her brother was a football star. They reminded her of when she used to lisp. Everyone had belonged but her, and maybe it was still that way.

She felt a jab of loneliness for home. She'd been thinking of Columbus that way—her friends, school, routines. But what she really missed was her family the way it used to be—her parents, brother, and sister, all together.

Beck turned her attention back to their math. She felt horrible to have swiped the keys, but at the same time, having them made her feel calm. Safe.

She almost relaxed in front of the fire and concentrated on velocities of the evanescent, working to find the magic formula to bring her family together again.

Providence wasn't a huge city, but there were plenty of places to hide if you didn't want to be found, especially when you had someone like Dell helping. Carrie knew how lucky she was to have found her. Dell Harwood was like a guardian angel, or the best housemother possible. After leaving Hawthorne House, Carrie had needed a place to live. Dell had helped her get this room with good light, a sliver of a water view, and peace and quiet.

“Well, she came around again,” Dell said, showing up at Carrie's door with a paper bag full of hand-me-down baby clothes for Gracie. The baby was asleep, so Carrie put her finger to her lips.

“What did she say?” Carrie whispered, and the two women walked to the far side of the studio, away from Gracie's crib.

“Same as before. Showed your picture, wanted to know if you'd been at Hawthorne House.”

“And you told her no?”

“I told her ‘no comment.’ Confidentiality! We're a home for unwed mothers, we don't give out any information. Nice picture of you, though.”

“Which one?”

“Looked like a school portrait. You were wearing a blue sweater, matched your eyes. Very pretty.”

Carrie's mother had always helped her get ready on school picture days. She'd brush her hair, help her pick out earrings, tell her how beautiful she looked. Then, when the photos were ready, her mother would always frame one and hang it on the kitchen wall with years' worth of other school pictures—hers, Trav's, and Beck's. She sent copies to Aunt Katharine.

“What else did she ask?” Carrie asked. “Or say about me?”

“Just that your family loves and misses you, and hopes you'll come home. They're in Rhode Island,” Dell said with a sideways look. Carrie nodded. “You know that, then?” Dell asked.

“I figured it out for myself,” Carrie said.

“Hmmm,” Dell said, starting to unpack the bag of baby things. “Most runaways don't keep such careful track of the family they've left behind.”

Left behind
. The words stabbed her. Carrie could never do that.

“Did my aunt say my mother sent her? Are they in touch?”

“What do you think, I had lunch with her? My job is to protect your privacy. If you want to know that, why wouldn't you just ask her yourself? She did leave this card for you.” Dell handed it over, and Carrie saw it was from the Rhode Island School of Design. “She's teaching a seminar at RISD, staying in a house on Benefit Street through the end of this week. After that, you can call her at home in Portsmouth.”

Carrie stuck the card in a book, slid it onto the shelf. She felt Dell watching her as she started to sort Gracie's new clothes. Carrie reached for a pair of little red corduroys.

“Why wouldn't your mother and aunt be in touch?”

“Something happened between them,” Carrie said. “A long time ago. And they stopped speaking.”

“That's very sad,” Dell said. “Life is so short. Well, maybe your mother and aunt will get together again someday. People do forgive each other, you know.”

“Sometimes,” Carrie said.

“Maybe things are already better,” Dell said. “Considering your aunt is wearing out her shoe leather looking for you. How do you think she knows you're in Providence?”

Carrie shrugged, although she knew. She'd been spotted at the hospital, watching over J.D. Either he'd really been awake that time and called Aunt Katharine, or one of the nurses had described her to him, and he'd put it all together. She'd been more careless than she should have been.

“I guess you came to Rhode Island for a reason,” Dell said. She stood by the small dresser, folding Gracie's new clothes and placing them into the open drawer. Propped up on it, in a cheap frame Carrie had bought on Wickenden Street, was a print of the photo she'd snapped of her mother at Travis's game. Carrie saw Dell notice, but she took care not to stare.

“Hawthorne House was a good place to stay while I waited to have Gracie,” Carrie said, drifting over to the crib.

“You could have had your baby anywhere, but you came here.”

“Rhode Island is pretty.”

“I don't think you came for the scenery. Family ties are deep. Just the way a root system sustains the biggest oak, family roots spread out and keep a person going when she's far from home. Your aunt has lived here a long time, hasn't she?”

“Yes. And my mother lived here before I was born,” Carrie said. “I was conceived here.”

“Well,” Dell said, as if her point had been made. Carrie stared at her, wondering how it could all be so painful and mysterious, how she could have come to this place, so filled with roots and personal
history, yet be hiding from her family. And she knew: she'd had to replace death with life.

“I came to visit someone in the hospital,” Carrie said.

“Yes,” Dell said. “And he's long since been discharged. I wonder how long it will take your aunt to bump into you at the diner. She's been there twice, but not your shift. The Half Moon diner doesn't have the same confidentiality that Hawthorne House does.”

“You own the Half Moon diner,” Carrie reminded her.

“I do,” Dell agreed, folding the last tiny sweater. “I guess you're lucky I know how to keep a secret.”

“I'm very lucky,” Carrie said, and she watched Dell pick up the framed photo of her mother, stare at the image as if looking for a resemblance between her and Carrie, and Gracie, and maybe even Katharine, the aunt who had been looking for her all this time.

J.D. had tea with Taylor Davis's daughter Pell. They sat in his garage apartment, eating chocolate chip cookies she'd brought from school. He poured them cups of Earl Grey her favorite. Cold air swirled around, under the garage doors. He handed Pell a spare sweater, to make sure she was warm enough.

“Thanks, J.D.,” she said.

“I don't want you freezing,” he said. “Catching a cold or something.”

“Don't worry about me,” she said. “You're the one I'm concerned about. Do you really plan to spend the whole winter in here?”

“Sure,” he said. “It's the best of all worlds. Ted and Stephen know where to find me, and if we grab Angus we've got a built-in poker game. I'm within shouting distance of you and Lucy, if you ever need me. Plus, it's pretty handy for you to bring me these excellent cookies.”

“I'm glad you like them,” she said. “We have the best cook at school.”

“Mrs. McFadden, the same as when your dad and I went there.”

She nodded and sipped her tea. For a long time he'd avoided mentioning Taylor to her or Lucy but he'd realized they liked it. Everyone wanted to know the people they loved most mattered.

“So tell me,” he said, refilling her cup. “What's new at school?”