The Space Between Sisters (11 page)

“I wasn't planning on it,” Win said, though now that Poppy had mentioned the linen closet, she was tempted. The last time she'd gotten a towel out of it she'd noticed that the pale yellow towels were beginning to mix in with the pale green ones.

“Well, even if you were, you might not have time to do it,” Poppy said with a sly smile.

“What do you mean?” Win asked.

“I got a text from Everett this afternoon. He's at his cousin's cabin on Birch Lake and he wanted to come by and drop something off.”

“Poppy, how many more boxes did you leave in his car?”

“None. It's not a box. It's a bottle of wine. He says he owes it to you from the last time he was here.”

Win shook her head. “Poppy, he's using that as an excuse to see you.”

“I already told him I'm not going to be here.”

“But I am?”

Poppy nodded.

Win frowned, feeling pensive. “What if he wants to wait for you to come back?”

“Win, don't overthink things. He's bringing you a bottle of wine. Just take it and say ‘thank you.' And, if you want bonus points for being polite . . .”

“Yes?”

“Ask him if he'd like to stay and drink it with you.”

W
in, it turned out, did Poppy one better: she invited Everett to stay and drink the bottle of wine with her, and, when they'd finished it, she invited him to stay a little longer and drink
another
bottle of wine with her. Of course,
that
bottle was the same one Poppy had bought at Birch Tree Bait and, as Win sat beside Everett on the boathouse roof, watching him open it, she felt compelled to say, “I can't vouch for this one. I mean, look at it. It's all dusty.”

“That means it's aged,” he pointed out.

“Maybe,” Win said. “But I think there's a difference between aged and old.” She didn't really care whether the wine was any good or not, though. She was having too nice of a time.

Everett finished uncorking the bottle, and Win held out the wineglasses for him. “You go first,” he said, after he'd filled them.

“I don't think so.”

He shrugged good-naturedly, and took a drink from his. “Oh, my God,” he said, wincing. “This is
really
bad.”

Win laughed. “Should we just . . . pour it out?” she asked, gesturing at the water beneath them.

“That is
the last
thing we should do. I mean, this is obviously toxic,” he said, holding up the bottle. “If we pour it in the lake, we could upset the entire ecosystem. I think we're just going to have to do the responsible thing and . . . drink it.”

Win smiled and took a tentative sip from her own glass. She shuddered. “I thought I'd had bad wine before,” she said. “But I can see now it was just a lead-up to this.”

“Sometimes, if you keep drinking it, it starts to taste better,” Everett said, taking a fairly decent sized slug from his glass.

“Any better?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Actually, no. I think it's getting worse.”

They laughed, and set their glasses aside. They didn't need more wine, anyway. Nature promised to provide the entertainment tonight, since the sky, even by Butternut standards, was spectacular. Why did the stars look so much closer here than they did in the city? Win wondered, idly. There was less light pollution, of course, less air pollution, too. But still, their apparent closeness seemed to defy logic. Each star seemed so distinct against the inky blackness of the night that Win could remember, as a very young child, reaching her hand up to touch one and being disappointed to discover that she couldn't reach it.

“If we'd stayed up here for another hour the last time I came, is this what we would have seen?” Everett asked now, gesturing at the sky.

Win nodded.

“Why would anyone ever come down from here?”

“I don't know,” Win murmured, and she smiled as she remembered that during one childhood summer she'd told her grandfather, whom she'd adored, that she was going to move up onto the boathouse roof. And her grandfather, never one to discourage her dreams, had found just the right words to dissuade her,
gently, from doing this. But he'd understood the desire behind it, and so, apparently, did Everett.

She watched Everett, in profile, as he brushed his hair out of his eyes in what Win now knew was a habitual gesture. She wondered why he didn't just get it cut but decided she was glad that he didn't. She liked it when he did this, liked it when he pushed aside his longish light brown hair and his sleepy light brown eyes came into view. Did his eyes always look so sleepy? she mused. Or did she only see him when he was tired? She almost asked him, but then she lost her nerve.

Still, looking at him, she had to admit that her first assessment of him as “geeky-cute” hadn't done him justice. He was just plain cute. No, he wasn't cute, he was handsome, handsome in a low-key, pleasant, unobtrusive way that perfectly suited his personality. So why didn't Poppy find him attractive? And, more than that, why didn't she find him kind—which Win, intuitively, knew that he was—and funny, and easy to be with? God knows, Poppy could do worse. Poppy
had
done worse, she was sure of it. Like right now, for instance, with Sam. He was a great guy, as far as Win was concerned, but he was Poppy's
boss
. She
worked
for him. And if that didn't complicate things enough, he was divorced, with a very attractive ex-wife (Win had seen her at school functions) and three children who obviously demanded a lot of time and attention.

She sighed softly, still awed by the crystalline beauty of the night. No more worrying about Poppy, she decided. She'd done enough of that for one day. And besides, if Poppy couldn't see everything Everett had to offer, well, that was too bad for her. But what about . . . what about Everett? Was he waiting, even now, for Poppy to come home, waiting for her to give him some sign that she might be interested in him? She frowned, slightly, think
ing about this. Poppy wouldn't lead him on, but she wouldn't necessarily give it to him straight, either. After all, she'd already told Win how much she hated giving the “let's just be friends” speech, though by now she must surely have had the thing copyrighted. And, stealing another sideways glance at Everett, Win decided that he deserved better.

“Everett?”

“Yes?' he said, turning to her.

She bit her lip and tried to think of a way of saying this that would take the sting out of it, before deciding that there probably wasn't one. “Everett,” she said, “this thing, with you and my sister, it's . . . it's probably not going to work. I don't think she likes you that way.”

She waited for the disappointment to register with him, but he only shrugged. “I know that.”

“And you're . . . okay with it?”

“Yeah, I'm fine. I mean, I'm not going to throw myself off this roof or anything,” he added, feinting a movement towards the lake.

She laughed. “You'd only get wet if you did.”

“I'm still not going to do it,” he said, smiling.

He was taking it well, she thought, with relief. But still, it couldn't be easy on his ego. “It's nothing personal, really,” she said. “It has nothing to do with you. It has
everything
to do with Poppy. She . . .” Win struggled here. “She's not a bad person . . .”

“I never thought that she was. Honestly, when I used to see her at the coffeehouse, I used to feel sorry for her.”

“You did?” Win said, looking at him sharply.

He nodded.

“That's a first,” she said, shaking her head. “I mean, of all the feelings she's inspired in people, I don't think pity has ever been one of them.”

“
Pity
's too strong a word. It's more like . . .” Everett paused. “It's more like I've seen the downside, for her, of the way she looks. It gets her a lot of attention, yes. But I don't think it's necessarily the kind of attention she wants, do you?”

Win hesitated. Everett was right, in a way. Poppy could feel self-conscious about attracting attention, and she could get tired, too, of having to deflect that attention. At the same time, though, Win had never felt
sorry
for her because of this. She'd assumed it just came with the territory. It was an inconvenience, yes, but an inconvenience that Win, when she was younger, would gladly have tolerated if she could have been as beautiful as Poppy.

Now, the breeze that had been blowing off the lake all day strengthened, sending little waves scudding over the dark water and breaking against the sandy shore. Win shivered, a little, though the wind was keeping the mosquitos away, and its coolness felt good on her sunburned skin.

“Do you want to go inside?” Everett asked.

“Not yet,” Win said, glad that the subject of Poppy seemed to be closed for now. “Let's stay here a little longer.”

He pointed at the opposite shore, where there were flashes of light and muted crackling sounds. “I guess you're going to see some fireworks after all,” he said, as a small-scale rocket shot up above the tree line, leaving a trail of sparks behind it.

“It looks like it,” Win agreed, over a distant volley of firecrackers.

“You don't mind?” Everett asked.

She looked at him quizzically.

“When your sister texted me back today,” he explained, “she said you were staying home tonight because you hate fireworks.”

“Oh, no. Not these do-it-yourself ones. I don't mind them. And I
love
sparklers,” she added. “But the professional fireworks dis
play they have at the fairgrounds every year? Yeah, I straight up hate that. I haven't been to it in years.”

“Is it the noise?”

“No, it's not that. It's . . . it's complicated,” she said.

“In what way?”

“In
every
way.” She chuckled. But then she turned serious. “When I was kid, we used to come up here for the Fourth of July. I mean, my
parents
used to come up here. Poppy and I were already up here. We spent the whole summer with my grandparents, who were both, just . . . salt of the earth kind of people. I still think, to this day, that whatever is good in my life and Poppy's life, we have them to thank for it. Anyway, my grandparents took the Fourth of July very seriously. If they could have wrapped this entire cabin in red-white-and-blue bunting, they would have. So when my parents would come for the holiday it was understood they would both be on their best behavior. Whatever else my grandparents tolerated from them for the rest of the year, there was an unspoken understanding that they wouldn't tolerate any of it over the Fourth. This meant my dad was sober, or
reasonably
sober, anyway, and my mom was . . . well, my mom was still my mom, but she tried, at least, to put a good face on their marriage, even if it was only for a couple of days.

“The night of the Fourth,” she continued, “We'd go to the fairgrounds, and my grandfather would spread blankets out on the grass, and my grandmother would unpack this amazing picnic, and my dad would light sparkers for Poppy and me, and . . . and there we were, the six of us, like any ordinary family, any
happy
family. And just when I thought it couldn't get any better, the fireworks would start. For the first five minutes, I'd enjoy them, I'd think how wonderful they were, how wonderful
we
were, and then I'd start thinking about them ending, and all of us going
back to our real lives. You know, with my dad drinking, and disappearing for weeks at a time, and fighting with my mom when he came home, and my mom . . . well, again, just being my mom: flighty, self-absorbed, and generally unreliable. And watching those fireworks, I started to get anxious,
very
anxious. I wanted them to last longer, so we could all stay the way we were right then, but that's the problem with fireworks, they last, what, fifteen or twenty minutes? They never last long enough. And that's why I stopped going to see them. As soon as they start, I think ‘Oh, they're so pretty,' and ‘This is so much fun.' And then, it never fails, a few minutes later I start getting anxious about them ending. In the end, it just isn't worth it.”

She looked down at the dark water and felt her face get warm, but not from her sunburn. What was it about Everett that made her reveal so much about herself, and her life, when she knew so little about him? “Okay,” she said, looking up again. “It's your turn. Tell me something about you.”

“Like what?”

“Like . . . why do you look tired all the time?”

“Oh. You mean, why are my eyes like this?” He shook his head. “I don't know. They just came that way. Ever since I can remember, people have been asking me if I'm tired. Or worse. In high school . . . well, you can imagine what my teachers thought. My locker was always being subjected to ‘random' drug searches.”

“But . . . it didn't have drugs in it, did it?” Win asked, not sure why it was suddenly so important to her that it didn't.

“No.” He smiled. “I think the worst they ever found was a moldy ham sandwich.”

“Well, that's good. At the high school in Minneapolis I was a student teacher at, they used to bring drug-sniffing dogs in, but that doesn't happen here, not at the K–8, anyway.”

“That must have been a big change, to go from teaching in a city to a small town.”

“It was.
It is
. I didn't plan it, though. I didn't plan on moving up here, either, at least not year-round. My dad, of all people, was the one who gave me the idea for it.” And she told Everett another story, a story that began the day of Kyle's memorial service. She hadn't seen her father at the first part of the service—the part that took place in the church. He'd probably sat in the back. He'd never been comfortable with organized religion. But she'd seen him afterwards, at a reception friends of hers had hosted at their house, and she'd been both touched and surprised by his appearance. He was clean-shaven, and he'd bought (or maybe borrowed) a jacket and a tie. What was more, he wasn't drinking anything stronger than coffee. As things were winding down that afternoon, and the other guests were leaving, he'd asked Win if he could speak to her alone.

They'd gone into another room, and he'd taken an envelope out of his pocket and handed it to her. She hadn't wanted to read it then, but he'd insisted that she at least look at it, and when she did, she realized that it was a quitclaim signing her grandparents' cabin over to her. He father had inherited it a year earlier when Win's grandmother had died. She'd tried to argue with him, she'd told him that his parents had left it to him, that
he
should keep it. But he'd said no. That he'd only sell it, or lose it. That he couldn't hold on to anything. Not his wife, not his daughters, not even his guitar. And when Win had pointed out that if he was going to leave it to her, he should leave it to her
and
Poppy, he'd disagreed again. Poppy, he'd told her, was like him. She wouldn't know the value of something until it was too late, until it was already gone.