The Space Between Sisters

For Susie, Alex, and Amanda.

Sisters extraordinaire.

W
hen they turned onto Butternut Lake Drive that night, Poppy rolled down her window. She watched as the car's headlights glided over birch, pine, and spruce trees, and, after a bend in the road, she saw a deer standing, motionless and alert, in a clearing. Soon after that, a little cloud of white moths fluttered across the windshield. She could smell, too, something she could never quite define—some mixture of the air, the trees, and the lake.
Butternut Lake
.
This place is beautiful, even in the dark,
she thought. She hadn't been up here for almost thirteen years, but she still felt as though she knew it by heart.

“What did you say your sister's name is?” Everett asked, fiddling with the radio.

“Win. Her name is Win,” she said. She twisted around in the front passenger seat and reached into the backseat where her cat, Sasquatch, was riding in his pet carrier. She unlatched the door of the carrier and slipped a hand inside. “Poor thing,” she said, softly, stroking his fur. “You've been cooped up for too long.”

“Win?” Everett repeated, glancing over at her. “That's an unusual name.”

“Short for Winona,” Poppy explained, feeling the gentle vibration of Sasquatch's purr for a moment before easing her hand out of the carrier and latching the door shut again.

“Isn't there supposed to be a lake somewhere?” Everett asked, taking the car into a steep turn. “Or is ‘Butternut Lake Drive' a misnomer?”

“No, there
is
a lake, through those trees,” Poppy said, pointing to their left. “But you can't see it. There's no moon tonight.”

“No kidding,” Everett said. “The only thing that's missing is the fog.”

“The fog?”

Everett nodded, steering into another turn. “If there were fog, it'd be exactly like a scene out of a horror movie. You know the one. A college coed and her boyfriend are driving down a desolate country road at night, and the fog is closing in around them, and then, suddenly, somebody appears on the road, right in front of their car, and—”

“Okay, that's enough,” Poppy said. “We are
not
in that movie. I'm not a college coed—and that phrase, by the way, is totally outdated—”
And you're not my boyfriend,
she almost said. “Besides, this is not a desolate country road,” she continued. “Trust me. Butternut Lake is a very well populated summer community. There are
tons
of cabins in these woods.”

“I'll take your word for it. Four and a half hours ago, I didn't even know Butternut Lake existed.”

“Well, now you know,” Poppy said flippantly. And then she felt guilty. She hadn't been very good company on this drive. Everett, after all, was doing her a favor. “I haven't been much of a tour guide, have I?” she asked him now.

“It's fine.” He shrugged.

“The town of Butternut, Minnesota, which we drove through
ten minutes ago,” she began, in her best imitation of a tour guide's voice, “has a population of twelve hundred. It has numerous local businesses, including Pearl's, a world-class coffee shop, Johnson's Hardware, where my grandfather indulged his inner carpenter, and the Butternut Variety Store, where my sister and I once accumulated the largest collection of glass animals east of the Mississippi. Butternut Lake, approximately twelve miles in length, is one of the deepest, cleanest lakes in Minnesota and is a popular vacation destination for people from the Twin Cities, who come here to fish, canoe, kayak, water ski, and, sometimes, just to wiggle their toes in the water. Any questions?” she asked brightly.

“Yeah,” Everett asked, gesturing at a seemingly deserted stretch of road. “Where are all those tourists now?”

“They're here. Look, there's a driveway,” Poppy said. “And there's a cabin at the end of it, too. You can see its lights through the trees.”

“All right,” Everett said. “But if my car breaks down, I'm not knocking on that door. I've seen that movie, too. We spend the night there, and when we wake up in the morning, we discover that our kidneys have been harvested.”

“Ugh,” Poppy said, wincing. “I had no idea you were so dark, Everett.”

“No?” he said, with a trace of a smile. “It's amazing how much you can learn about someone on a two-hundred-and-forty-mile drive.”

“That's true,” Poppy mused. “So, what have you learned about me?” she asked. She wasn't being flirtatious. She was just curious.

“I've learned . . .” He looked over at her, speculatively. “I've learned that you think corn nuts are revolting.”

“That's because they
are
revolting.”

“Corn nuts,” Everett said, concentrating on another turn, “are the ultimate road trip food.”

“Not even close,” Poppy said. “Because that would obviously be Red Vines.”

“Yeah, I don't think so,” Everett said. “I mean, they have, like, zero nutritional value, unless you count whatever's in the red dye, and—”

“Oh, my God, look,” Poppy said, excitedly, of the driveway they were passing. Beside it a large sign with a wintery pinecone painted on it spelled out
WHITE PINES
.

“What's that?” Everett asked.

“It's a resort, and it means that we are now exactly three miles away from my grandparents' cabin. I mean, my
sister's
cabin,” she amended, feeling that familiar jab of resentment she felt whenever she was reminded of the fact that this beloved piece of family real estate had been passed down to Win, and only Win, three years ago. This resentment was part of the reason that Poppy had avoided coming to Butternut Lake since Win had moved here year-round a couple of years ago. But if there was any comfort to be found in Win being the one to own the cabin, it was in knowing that she would never sell it; it meant as much to her as it did to Poppy.

Poppy and Win had spent all of their childhood summers here until Poppy was sixteen and Win was fifteen (they were thirteen months apart), and Poppy, who was just shy of thirty, could still remember every detail of the cabin. It stood on a small bluff, just above Butternut Lake, and its dark brown clapboard exterior was brightened by cheerful window boxes that overflowed with geraniums. And the homey touches continued inside: colorful rag rugs, knotted pine furniture, red-checked slipcovers on
sofas and chairs. The living room, everyone's favorite room, was as comfortable as an old shoe, with its fieldstone fireplace, and its old record player and collection of albums (some of which dated back to the 1950s). In one corner, there was a slightly wobbly card table for playing gin rummy, and on the shelf next to the table, a collection of hand-painted duck decoys. Mounted on the wall above the mantelpiece was the prized three-foot walleyed pike that had
not
gotten away from their grandfather. The living room windows looked out on a flagstone patio, their grandmother's begonia garden, and a slope of mossy lawn leading down to the lake. And the kitchen . . . Poppy remembered it as though it existed in a perpetual summer morning: the lemon yellow cupboards, the row of shiny copper pans hanging on the wall, and the turquoise gas stove, a monument to 1950s chic.

“Do you think you should give your sister a call now?” Everett asked, interrupting her reverie.

“Why?”

“To tell her that we're almost there.”

“Oh,” Poppy said, momentarily at a loss. And then she tossed her long blond hair. “No. I'm not going to tell her,” she said. “I thought we'd surprise her.”

Everett stole a quick look at her. “But . . . she knows we're coming, right?”

“Not exactly,” Poppy said, feeling a first twinge of nervousness.

Everett was quiet. Then he asked, “Does your sister like surprises?”

“Not really,” Poppy said, and there it was again, that nervousness. She tamped it down, firmly, and said, “But what are sisters for if they can't just . . . drop in on each other?”

“‘Drop in'?” Everett said, after another pause. “It looks like
you've got a lot of your stuff with you, though, Poppy. Isn't it more like, ‘move in'?”

Poppy ignored this question.
Harder
to ignore were her suitcases, wedged in the trunk of Everett's car, or her boxes, stacked on the backseat beside Sasquatch's pet carrier. And it wasn't just
a lot
of her stuff, as Everett had pointed out. It was
all
of her stuff. Though, truth be told, that wasn't saying much. It had taken her less than an hour to pack everything up. Traveling light was a recurring theme with Poppy, and a necessary one, too, since her peripatetic lifestyle was the norm.

“Sisters don't have to call ahead. They're there for each other,” Poppy said now, though she was annoyed by the defensiveness she heard in her own voice.

“But do you think
your
sister—Win—will be home right now? It's ten o'clock on a Saturday night.”

“Oh, she'll be home. If I know her, she's probably . . . alphabetizing her spice rack,” Poppy said, “or color coding her sock drawer.” As soon as she said this, though, she felt disloyal. “Actually, she's a sweetheart,” she said, turning to Everett. “And I don't blame her, at all, for being a little . . . neurotic or controlling, or whatever she is. I told you about what happened to her, didn't I?” And Poppy pictured Win as she'd been the last time she'd seen her, her dark blond hair pulled back in a ponytail and her girl next door approachableness only slightly tempered by the wistful expression on her face.

“Yeah, you told me what happened to her,” Everett said. It was quiet in the car again as he negotiated another sharp turn, and as Poppy watched the car's lights skim over an entrance to an old logging road. She smiled. She and Win had driven down that road as teenagers, looking for bears at dusk.

“All right,” she said, after a few more minutes, “we're getting close. After this next curve, it's the first driveway on the left.” And, suddenly hungry, she added, “Here's hoping Win's got some leftovers from dinner.”

“Yeah, and here's hoping she's in a good mood,” Everett added wryly.