The Geometry of Sisters (39 page)

And her blood. Why had neither of her parents been able to give blood for her transfusions after the accident? They had fought over it, and she'd assumed it was because they were so worried. She'd never suspected it was because she had a different father.

Her mother had slept with someone else.

You're just like your mother
, he had said.

Her mother got pregnant and didn't tell the father.
Her
father. It was because of
her
her parents had been fighting for months. Even in those first moments, alone on the island at the foot of the lighthouse, she was beginning to know the truth.

They rescued her. A boat, lights flashing, blankets. Took her to shore, to the arms of her mother. But Carrie was numb, and she didn't know her mother anymore. She heard people talking, saying they were searching the lake for her father. But he had drowned, and it was because of her, and he wasn't her father anyway. She was frozen solid, half dead. She wished she had drowned.

An ambulance came. She and her mother got in, Beck and Travis staying behind with the rescue people. Carrie couldn't think. She was a block of ice, wrapped in blankets. She heard someone say she was going into shock. She didn't care.

At the hospital, in the ER. Her mother stroking her head. Whispering that she loved her, that everything would be okay. A technician came in, said he had to take her vital signs. And that's when Carrie's mind began to work again. They were going to do tests on her. They'd figure out she was pregnant, but Carrie didn't care about that. She cared about her mother, how hard and fast her world was about to fall apart.

The picture of her father's face, disappearing under the waves. He was dead, and Carrie had done nothing to stop it. She was selfish, pregnant, “just like her mother.” Her chest nearly exploded, wanting to sob into her arms, tell her everything, repeat what her father had said to her. But if she told her mother that, that he'd
said those words with such hatred for both of them, Carrie thought her mother would die too.

Someone called her mother, said she had to fill out paperwork. Carrie felt her mother's lips on her forehead, heard her say she would be right back. The curtain closed behind her. And Carrie sat up. Put on her wet things. Walked out.

Never stopped walking. Here she was, so many months later, with Gracie. She'd found her real father, walked into a new hospital, stuck around until he got better. Her family was all in Rhode Island now, living in Newport. All she had to do was get there. She didn't have a lot of money, but she worked hard and could afford a bus ticket.

Carrie dressed Gracie as warmly as she could. She pulled on her own coat and boots, stuck the picture of her mother into Gracie's diaper bag. She had left home right after a storm, and she would return in this one. Suddenly she knew she couldn't wait another day, another minute. She lifted Gracie into her arms, ran down the hall, down the stairway, toward the pay phone on the first floor.

But she stopped on the landing. There, right in the hallway, in front of the phone, were two men. One big and burly, the other in a wheelchair. Her eyes lasered in on him, the man in the chair. The last time she'd been this close to him, he'd been lying in a hospital bed.

“You're all better?” she asked.

“I am,” he said. “Because of you.”

“No,” she said. “It was the doctors. I just wanted…”

“It was because of you,” he said gently.

“I've done so much to hurt people,” she said, clutching Gracie.

“Everyone loves you, Carrie,” he said, holding out his hand. “They just want you home.”

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“More than anything,” he said. She reached for his hand. He
held hers, and she felt tears overflowing. “Come on,” he said. “Let me take you home to your mother.”

Stephen knew the cops were on the case, but their fourteen-year-old quarry had given them the slip. They had checked bus terminals in Newport and Providence, train stations in Kingston, Mystic, and New London, even the T. F. Green Airport. Maura was despairing. The police were perplexed and frustrated. The administration of Newport Academy was vexed. But Stephen understood. Never underestimate a young math genius.

Redmond and Lucy had helped him out. Lucy gave him a list of friends on Beck's Facebook page, kids who lived in Columbus. Stephen had Lucy email them all, tell them to contact Beck's mother if they heard from her. Redmond told Stephen she'd always looked at two certain books up in the Blackstone Hall reading room, the biography of Rose Hawthorne, and a battered-looking old diary.

Redmond led Stephen upstairs to look at the books and seized the diary as if he was positive Beck had left a clue inside. All they found was a torn scrap of paper marking her place. There was her handwriting, but it seemed to be just a fragment of a proof she'd been working on. Nothing to reveal her plans.

“She's out there all alone,” Redmond said.

“I know,” Stephen said.

“She misses her sister so much.”

“You think she went to find her?” Stephen asked.

“I don't know,” Redmond said, sounding desolate. “My family never split up. Except for me and my brother going away to school. I don't know what she might be thinking.”

“Happy families are lucky,” Stephen said.

“I wish Beck were happy,” Redmond said. “And that she'd come
back. I wanted to show her around Boston. I could still do that, whether she goes to the math competition or not.”

“You could,” Stephen said, putting his hand on the young man's arm, feeling his own heart split as he considered how it felt to be faced with a woman whose feelings he wished he could change.

He stared at the book in his hand, at the notation Beck had made on the bookmark in it, and suddenly he knew exactly where she was.

“I have to go, Redmond,” Stephen said, edging toward the door. “But try not to worry about her. Everything's going to work out.”

“Thanks, Mr. Campbell,” Redmond said, sitting down heavily on the loveseat and staring into the fire, looking not at all convinced that anything in the world was going to be okay.

And then Stephen ran.

23
WHO KNOWS WHAT I WAS THINKING? THAT'S the crazy thing about me. Half the time I do things I don't want to do, for reasons I don't understand, just because I have to. Taking one single key off Angus's ring, just before I got caught trying to give it back, is the perfect example. Part of me knew I had to make my way up here, to Mary's room, before the rest of me had any clue.

I know the whole school was talking about me, what a thief I am, and I didn't feel very good about that. But is that the reason I came running upstairs, three flights, to let myself into Mary's quarters? Not really. Yes, it's a good place to hide out; I doubt anyone will look for me here. But there are stronger reasons.

Unlocking the door, closing it behind me, I found myself staring at the pool. There were fluted columns, big windows facing the sea, cream-and-honey-colored marble steps, but mostly there was water. Aquamarine water. Clear, still, with three curved steps leading into the shallow end.

My chest was thumping, my heart aching so hard I wanted to make it stop. I really just wished it would stop beating, stop hurting. I want to say I had thoughts, but I didn't—not any. All I had were feelings, and they didn't come with any words at all. They had to do with my poor father, drowned in that lake, and my mother, and the secret she'd kept so long, and my sister so far from all of us. And they had to do with J.D., and the fact that he swam here, and
the look in his eyes when I faced him—sorrow, regret, even something like love.

Those were the feelings rushing around in my body, and the only word I could think of came babbling out of my lips … “Mary.” I kept saying her name as if she was really there, in the room with me, as if she could hear me somehow.

Off came my winter boots and heavy socks, and I guess that's good. Because if I really wanted to go into that pool and never come out, I probably would have left them on my feet to weigh me down. Up, up, I rolled the legs of my pants. I put one foot onto the top step, into the water, then the other.

Mary had swum here. She and her sister had stood in this room, talking and laughing. I sat on the edge of the pool, feeling the warm water bathe my ankles, and I tried to surround myself with their sister love. Why go on? I was young, only fourteen, and already I'd lost so much of what I loved. Wouldn't life just keep taking things away?

Beautiful things that seemed so easily given, and so quickly and just as easily taken back? We'd been so happy, our whole family. We'd had those summers on the lake. The sunrises and starlit nights. The laughs and stories around the fire. My father's strong arm around my shoulders.

I no longer believed that Carrie was coming home. I stared down at my feet in the clear water of Mary's pool, and could almost see myself walking into the lake, my bare feet on the pebbly shore, water lapping against my legs. That water had taken my father; no matter where she might be that moment, it had taken my sister.

My eyes burned with tears so hot they hurt. J.D. was Carrie's father, not my father. My mother had lied and lied. Our family story dissolved like bubbles in the pool. What we thought had been real was false, what we hoped would last forever had never even existed.

How would it feel to drown? Would it hurt? Would it be like
going to sleep? I wanted Mary to hold my hand, help me stop the pain. I know it's crazy but I reached out for her. I closed my eyes, waiting for her to come for me. I must have sat there a few minutes like that. Then I heard the latch click, footsteps on the marble.

“Beck.”

The voice didn't belong to a girl, to a ghost. It was a man's. Mr. Campbell.

I looked up with what must have been a pretty funny expression on my face.

“How did you know I was here?”

“Redmond showed me Mary's diary,” he said. “And I looked inside and saw what you'd written.”

I remembered the scrap of paper I'd left there, notations from the work Lucy and I had done, trying to bring our dead back to life. We'd always imagined it happening right here, at the pool. I opened my eyes and looked at my feet, magnified by the water.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I said.

I looked up at him, saw him standing very close, as if about to grab me.

“I'm not going to jump in,” I said.

“That's good,” he said. Great timing: his cell phone rang. I watched him start to smile as he looked at the number on the screen. “Uh, I have to take this call,” he said. “Awkward timing.”

I shrugged in a very be-my-guest way. He talked in a low, excited voice. It did pique my curiosity, but I tried not to show it.

“Come on,” he said, pocketing the phone.

“Let me stay here awhile,” I said.

“I think you'd rather come with me. Don't you want to see your sister?”

I stared at him, feeling sad for him. I know he was concerned about me, hearing what J.D. said. He was such a teacher. He wanted
to get me all involved with solving the problem. Equations, axioms of proof. I just shook my head.

“You're giving up?” he asked.

“Giving up on what?” I asked. “There's nothing to do. We don't even know that she's alive for sure. Not for sure.”

“Maybe we do,” he said. Just three words, but they made the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

“What are you talking about?”

“Get your boots on, Beck,” Mr. Campbell said.

“But…”

“Hurry up,” he said. “We have to go
now.”

So I grabbed my boots, tugged them on over my socks, and rode Mary's ornate brass elevator with Mr. Campbell down to the school's first floor. The cables creaked. Wind whistled down the elevator shaft and I swear I heard it, or Mary, or Carrie, saying my name. And the elevator doors opened, and we ran through the marble hall and out the building as if someone's life depended on it.

And I'm pretty sure that someone's did.

24
STEPHEN AND BECK HURRIED DOWN THE STEPS of Blackstone Hall, through the falling snow. He opened the passenger door of his rusty red Panda, eased her inside. He locked the door behind her, just in case she had any notions of escape. Then he got behind the wheel, started the car, and turned the heat on full-blast. The salt air seemed to hold the cold, conduct it straight through his skin and into his bones. Glancing over, he saw Beck shivering wildly.

“Here,” he said, slipping off his down jacket. “Put this on.”

“No,” she said.

“Come on, Beck. You're freezing.”

Darkness had fallen fast, the storm had moved in. The wipers were working hard. Ribbons of head-and taillights streaked up and down Memorial Boulevard. He headed downtown, inching along the slippery pavement. If he hurried, J.D. would have a welcoming committee.

Stephen took his eyes off the road for a second, glancing over at Beck. She stared straight ahead, seeming almost calm. Snow mixed with sleet; a sand truck went by in the opposite direction, spraying a burst of grit against the car doors. Beck didn't react.

“Are you okay?” he asked.