Sisters

Oh, yeah? Watch me. I long to say the words, but my throat feels like it’s closing up.

“How can you do this, Summer?” Skye glares at me, her chin jutting forward. “I cannot believe you’re leaving….” She puts her hands on her temples, like the drama queen she is. “No, wait, yes, I can. It’s just like you to hightail it when things are tough.”

Oh. I’m tempted to slug her. My mouth is so dry, but I manage to choke out, “Now you wait just a minute.”

Skye throws up her hands. “Go your merry way and leave it all to me. You are undoubtedly the most selfish woman I’ve ever known.”

All I can think of as I watch her walk away is No one knows you like a sister.

Unless your sister doesn’t know you at all.

Nancy Robards Thompson

Award-winning author Nancy Robards Thompson is a sister, wife and mother who has lived the majority of her life south of the Mason-Dixon line. As the oldest sibling, she reveled in her ability to make her brother laugh at inappropriate moments and soon learned she could get away with it by proclaiming, “What? I wasn’t doing anything.” It’s no wonder that upon graduating from college with a degree in journalism, she discovered that reporting “just the facts” bored her silly. Since hanging up her press pass to write novels full-time, critics have deemed her books “…funny, smart and observant.” She loves chocolate, champagne, cats and art (though not necessarily in that order). When she’s not writing, she enjoys spending time with her family, reading, hiking and doing yoga.

Sisters

Nancy Robards Thompson

From the Author

Dear Reader,

Before I started writing fiction full-time, I worked as a reporter for a Central Florida business newspaper. While there, I wrote a story about a local chef who’d organized a food bank that served the area’s homeless shelters and soup kitchens. Talking to him was a real eye-opener. He pointed out that in many cases people don’t choose homelessness because they’re lazy, that often mental illness plays a large role in the downward spiral that lands someone on the streets.

In my book Sisters, which is adapted from my manuscript that won the 2002 Romance Writers of America Golden Heart Award, a mother and her twin daughters set out on a road trip to find the youngest sister, who ran away from home when she was sixteen and chose to live on the streets despite numerous offers of family help. In the process, they confess secrets that heal wounds that have kept them apart for years and discover how compassion and understanding can lead to a richer purpose in life.

I hope you are inspired by their journey and that life brings you many blessings.

Warmly,

Nancy Robards Thompson

This book is dedicated to my wonderful brother,

Jay Robards, whose gentle ways and compassionate heart

set an example we should all live by. Thanks for helping me

with the details of homelessness and shelters.

Jay, your work changes lives. I am so proud of you.

Thanks to Gail Chasan and Tara Gavin for seeing

the vision in my work; and to Michelle Grajkowski for your

sage advice and unwavering support.

Thanks to my father, Jim Robards, for mapping

out the route from Florida to Missouri.

Thanks to Robin Trimble and Susan Pettegrew for educating me on the ups and downs of bipolar disorder.

Thanks to Pamela LaBud for teaching me

about coma recovery.

Deepest appreciation to Brock and Sarah McClane

for input on fractures.

Love and thanks to Teresa Brown, Kathy Garbera,

Elizabeth Grainger, Catherine Kean and

Mary Louise Wells for reading chapters at a moment’s notice,

for helping me when I’ve plotted myself into a corner

and for your constant friendship.

As always, deepest love to Michael and Jennifer.

You make my life complete.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER 1

Skye

Most people aren’t doing anything special when bad news barges in. It’s usually just a regular day.

The call comes on an ordinary Monday. The kids are at school. My husband, Cameron, is at work. I’m bringing in groceries from the SUV, hurrying because it’s going to rain. I can smell the showers moving in, that loamy-earth scent of decay and renewal, wafting from the back burner of summer’s last days.

I set the plastic bags on the granite-topped island in the kitchen and turn to go back out for the rest when the phone rings. I almost don’t pick up. But something—I’d call it a sixth sense, if I believed in such hooey—compels me to answer.

“Hello?”

“May I talk to Skye Woods?”

It’s a man’s voice I don’t recognize. Traces of a Spanish accent. I’m guessing he’s a solicitor and I get ready to tell him that we’re on the State of Florida’s Do Not Call list, that his company could receive a hefty fine.

“Who is calling, please?”

“Skye, it is Raul Martinez.”

My breath catches. Raul is Mama’s personal assistant. He’s a jack-of-all-trades, keeping her appointments for the foundation she’s set up to help the needy and making sure her life runs in order.

His voice is tight and low, and it raises gooseflesh on my arms. The spaces between his words hint at something ominous, like the angry clouds rolling in across the flat afternoon sky. I walk over to the sink and stare out the window.

It’s getting darker outside. The interior light of my vehicle glows like a beacon reminding me I left the lift gate open.

“There was an accident. Your mama, she is not doing so well.”

My hand flutters to my cheek and a strange tingling erupts inside me as if his words cut the vein of decades of bad blood built up between Mama and me. In an instant the poison rushes out of me like watershed, and I hear myself stammering. “Oh my—is she okay? Raul, is she alive?”

As I grip the edge of the sink, beads of rain on the window come into sharp focus. It makes patterns that shape-shift each time a drop breaks free. I get the strangest sensation that each time it changes, another minute of Mama’s life has slipped away…if she’s not already dead.

“It’s too early to tell,” Raul says. “She is in a coma. So you should get here pretty fast.”

I can’t believe this. Mama. In a coma? Ginny, hippie mother earth—the eternal free spirit who collected love children like genetic souvenirs. But in all fairness, Summer and I are twins. So technically, Mama only got pregnant twice. Still, no matter how you slice it, there’s nothing normal about having two different men father your children when you have no idea of one man’s identity. Last time I asked, she had it narrowed down to a list of about ten or fifteen candidates.

“After all, the sixties was the era of free love,” she always said. “At least I gave you life.”

But that’s not the issue right now. All of that and the upheaval it’s caused seem so insignificant in the face of…this.

I realize Raul just said something and is waiting for me to answer.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Can you telephone your sisters? I cannot find their numbers. The doctor said the next twenty-four hours are critical. So if you are coming, you should get here as fast as possible.”

Summer

I haven’t been back to Dahlia Springs in twenty-two years. Frankly, I haven’t had the time, money or the inclination. But when my sister, Skye, calls to inform me that our mother’s in a coma… Oh God.

What choice do I have? And it couldn’t come at a worse time.

I suppose if I were completely honest, I’d admit I don’t want to go home. Because Dahlia Springs isn’t home. Never was.

My home is here in New York. My job is here, my friends are here.

Who was it that said friends are the family you choose?

Whoever it was hit it dead on. I wouldn’t choose my family if I had the choice. But for some masochistic reason, I can’t cast them off, either. Despite the fact that my sister and I don’t see eye-to-eye on most issues. And our mother, Ginny, has had long-standing differences with Skye and me over the years.

Still, she’s my mother. That’s why I decide to purchase a plane ticket I can’t afford and travel to a place I don’t care to visit. Because the woman with whom relations have been strained at the best times and worse on other occasions is lying in a hospital bed in a coma.

“It might be a couple of days before I can get there. I may have to work a couple of days to give Gerard time to make arrangements. He’s behind schedule with the spring collection and—”

“Summer, I don’t think you understand the gravity of the situation.” Skye’s pitch veers into a sharp upper register and she’s slipped into that drawl she uses when she’s irritated, which is more often than not when we talk. “Mama may not last a couple of days.”

My stomach clenches, and I take a deep breath.

“Look, I’ll get there as fast as I can. I’d be there now if I could. But I can’t just drop everything. I have a job. I need to make arrangements for Gerard to get someone in here to fill in for me.”

I don’t have a husband to support me.

“What about Jane?” Skye asks. “Don’t you think we owe it to her to tell her about Mama?”

The irony of Skye’s words makes me laugh, but it sounds brittle. Even to my own ears. “Isn’t that the story of her life? The whole damn world owes Jane, the one who’s had everything.”

Jane is our younger sister. Half sister, to be exact. We share the same mother. Ginny married Chester Hamby, Jane’s father, after she got pregnant. Skye and I were nineteen and out of the house. So really it was a different chapter in Ginny’s life. A chapter from which we were largely absent.

Our little sister’s had all the advantages we didn’t have growing up—a father for one. And a wealthy father to boot.

Before Chester met Ginny, he made millions off an invention—something to do with farming. I was never clear on what the gadget was, but it brought in a boatload of money.

Jane’s twenty-one and to say she’s a handful is an understatement. She ran away from home the first time when she was fourteen, about six months after her father died. She stayed away about a month. Of course, Ginny welcomed her home like the prodigal daughter. I can understand that. Jane was upset over losing her dad. Ginny was glad to have one of her daughters back.

But then Jane did it again when she was sixteen. Said she was going downtown. Three days later she called Ginny from New Orleans to tell her she’d gone on the road with her boyfriend, Rad Farley, and his band, Flaming Skeleton, to be the “wardrobe mistress.”

Ha. It didn’t take a genius to conclude that “wardrobe mistress” was really just code for glorified rock-and-roll groupie.

Ginny was beside herself and called begging me to do something. When I wouldn’t go rushing down to New Orleans to whisk Jane back to Florida, my mother took all her anger out on me. I was in New York, for God’s sake. And to be honest, if Ginny was even half the mother to Jane that she was to Skye and me, I didn’t blame Jane for wanting to get the hell away from her.

Even though I want to be irritated with Skye for pressuring me to drop everything and come, a pang of guilt needles me. The truth is, it won’t be that difficult for my boss to replace me while I’m away.

For the past seventeen years, I’ve been a house model for the designer Gerard Geandeau. The oh-so-glamorous job boils down to serving as a human mannequin on whom he fits his samples. It requires spending hours a day, nearly naked on my aching feet. Not a plum modeling job by any standard. Still, there’s plenty of fresh meat clamoring for my position.

Gerard was not very compassionate about my asking for time off. He had no time to listen to my reasons.

Accident-smaccident. He had no sympathy.

It’s the studio’s busiest time of year, planning the spring collections. Work cannot come to a screeching halt because I must take personal leave for something so trivial as my mother being in a coma.

He didn’t say it that way, but he might as well have. He’s always been the temperamental creative type, prone to temper tantrums and flippant remarks, but he’s never thrown a flaming arrow at me.

His lack of understanding hurt.

As a compromise, I stay so he can finish the piece he’s fitted to me. It’s two days later before I get to Dahlia Springs.

I hope once I get back, he won’t have decided to keep my replacement on permanently, leaving me out in the cold.

Sometimes when the spotlight hits just right, all the style and beauty can’t disguise that the under-belly of the fashion world is a very ugly place.

I’m reminded daily that I am a forty-year-old woman competing with fresh-faced babies. Just the other day, I was talking to an eighteen-year-old who came into the studio for a fashion-shoot fitting. She couldn’t believe I was still modeling at my age.

“How have you managed to work so long?” It was all she could do to keep her mouth from gaping. “I’m not half as old as you and my agency’s telling me to lie about my age.”

She hasn’t even hit her stride as a woman and already she’s over the hill. Where does that put me?

“That’s why you’re doing the print work and they fit samples on me in the back room,” I told her. “Just don’t get fat and you’ll get work.”

And don’t get old.

I didn’t say that. But it’s the truth. I was young and hot once. To be working at forty, I’m the exception, not the rule. I have no idea how I’ve managed to pull it off this long. Every day I wake up fearing the other Manolo will drop.

Sometimes I detest this business. But what else would I do with myself?

Skye picks me up from Dahlia Springs Municipal Airport. It’s the first time we’ve seen each other since she and her husband, Cameron, and their gaggle of kids came up to visit. How long has it been now—five years?

Waiting to disembark the small commuter plane, I stand last in line behind the ten people who were on my connecting flight from Atlanta. Who would’ve thought such a crowd had reason to come to Dahlia Springs? Had the entire population been on a field trip?

Everyone except for Nick Russo, my ex-husband.

My stomach pitches at the thought of being within miles of him. Okay, I’ll confess, I’ve never gotten over him. I’m not morose about it, but of all the guys I’ve been with since Nick and I split up eight years ago, none has compared.

It’s like being infected with a virus (as unromantic as that sounds). For the most part, I live a satisfying life—have the occasional date or lover, and then comes the Nick outbreak and I realize I’m better off on my own.

I called him to let him know I was coming.

To warn him? Ha.

But he did sound happy to hear from me, even suggested we get together.

Oh, God, it’s been a long time.

Don’t get too carried away. People change.

Yes, they certainly do.

I’m dying for a cigarette, but I know it might be a while, since you can’t light up inside the airport, and I know Skye will have a fit if I ask her to wait while I smoke.

I take a deep breath and hitch my purse up on my shoulder, mentally preparing myself for what I’m about to walk into. Like a prisoner marching to her death, I follow the person in front of me as we walk single file down the metal steps onto the tarmac.

Humidity envelops me, and I can feel my hair expanding with each stride across the hot pavement. It’s hot in New York, but God, there’s nothing like the Deep South in the dead heat of August.

Geographically speaking, Dahlia Springs is in north Florida—just over the Georgia line, but it’s the unofficial southernmost border of the Deep South. That’s not an insult. The fine people of Dahlia Springs pride themselves on being the deepest of the Deep South.

As you travel farther into Florida, the less Southern it becomes, until around Fort Lauderdale, it’s almost as if you’ve crossed the border into a different country.

When I finally enter the tiny airport, it’s eerie how it looks exactly as it did that day I flew out all those years ago. It even smells the same—a blend of Juicy Fruit gum, jet fuel and floor wax—for a moment, it takes me back to the day I left. That day when for the first time in my life, the world held so much possibility.

Well, Toto, I’m certainly not in Oz anymore. It’s confirmed when I look over and see Skye waiting for me on the other side of a cordoned-off area that separates the gates—all two of them—from ticketing and baggage claim.

There she is: Skye Woods, my twin sister. Once upon a time we looked so much alike people couldn’t tell us apart, but that’s where the similarity ends. We’re as different inside as summer and winter. In fact, I always used to tease that Ginny misnamed Skye. She should have called her Winter. Apply that any way you choose….

Yes, we’re that different. We never had that twin-bonding thing going on; never could read each other’s minds; never shared a secret twin language or anything cute like that. Until we were about six years old, Ginny used to dress us alike—as if we were her very own living baby dolls. But right around that time is when everything changed, including my sister and me.

Skye sees me walking toward her, but she doesn’t smile. Oh, great. For a split second I worry that she has bad news, but there’s something in her icy expression that says she’s mad because I didn’t drop everything and get here sooner.

I did the best I could. She better get over it.

She’s changed her hair. It’s a brick-red bob. The color reminds me of the redhead on Desperate Housewives. That character always makes me think of my perfect sister and her Southern belle Cinderella existence.

Skye’s life seems like a ball and chain to me. I’d take being happily single—well, unhappily divorced—and living in the city over her perfect life, with her perfect lawyer husband in their perfect three-quarters-of-a-million-dollar Tallahassee ivory tower. Her existence is so—perfect—even Martha Stewart would gag.

Unfair of me, I know. I guess that makes me the evil twin. That’s fine.

“I’m glad you could finally make it.” She leans in and air-kisses my left cheek. “Let’s get your bags and we’ll go right to the hospital.”

“How’s Ginny? Any change?”

She shakes her head. “Mama’s still the same. We’ll talk to the doctor when we get there. He’s usually in around three o’clock.”

A sound like a foghorn blasts, signaling that the baggage is ready to start its turn around the carousel. Skye walks ahead of me toward it.

As I follow, I notice with perverse satisfaction my sister’s put on weight since the last time I saw her. She’s a little fuller in the hips. Her waist is less defined. I suppose that’s what happens after popping out three kids.

It’s a wonder she hasn’t had work done. You know—a nip here, a tuck there. She and Cameron have the money.

Since they can afford it, my sister’s probably staunchly against it. I’m just surprised Cameron hasn’t insisted. A high-profile attorney doesn’t want a fat wife.

Skye turns around and catches me eyeing her.

“What’s wrong?”

I shake my head. “You look…tired. Are you okay?”

She smoothes a strand of hair behind her ear, smiles her gracious Junior League smile. “I’m fine. Just concerned about Mama.”

My bag appears around the bend and I grab it.

As we walk out the door into the muggy Dahlia Springs afternoon, a feeling of dread washes over me. Coming home is going to be harder than I ever imagined. Maybe that’s because no matter how I’ve tried to kid myself since I purchased the ticket, I know you can’t go home again.

Skye

On the trip from the airport to the hospital, the conversation goes something like this:

Summer (digging in her purse): “Do you mind if I smoke?”

Me (gripping the steering wheel at ten and two): “You can’t smoke in here.”

Out of my peripheral vision I see her pull out one of those nasty things despite my request. She doesn’t say anything for a few beats, just looks at me like she smells poop on my shoe.

My blood pressure rises. If she has the audacity to light up in my SUV, I will stop this vehicle and put her out along the side of the road.

Summer (sighing a long, exasperated sigh): “Fine.”

Me (offering nothing but a short, oh-well shrug): “If it’s so darned urgent, why didn’t you have a smoke before we got in the car?”

She doesn’t put the cigarette away. She fidgets with it as she stares out the passenger window. Her silence annoys me, and I know I shouldn’t say it, but—“I can’t believe you’re still smoking. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you how bad it is for you.”

“No, you don’t.” Her words are a warning.

I smooth a wrinkle out of my polished cotton skirt. I know the cigarette lecture presses her buttons. But she’s pressing mine sitting there so smug in her haute couture with her expensive haircut—I’m sure it’s expensive. I can just tell. The color’s beautiful—shiny, rich mink with chestnut highlights. And it’s a good cut, even if the style’s too long for a forty-year-old woman.

I know what I pay to have my hair done in Tallahassee—certainly not New York City prices—and that costs a pretty penny. I don’t begrudge my sister her luxuries, but I do take issue with her taking her sweet time when I asked her to come to the table during a family emergency. Still, she’s here. That’s all that matters.

I turn on the radio. Willie Nelson’s “Georgia On My Mind” is playing.

“Did you know Nick’s back in town?” she says.

I dart a glance at her. She’s looking at me with eyes just like mine—same shape, same slightly faded shade of green-blue.

A shiver courses through me.

“I didn’t know that.”

I do know he’s here. Mama told me, but I don’t care. I relax my grip on the steering wheel and signal before I turn left onto Orange Peel Street.

“I just thought you might like to know.”

Well, you thought wrong. I don’t give a darned dried apple about your ex-husband’s whereabouts.

Why would she bring up Nick? Because I won’t let her smoke? Well, too bad.

She twirls the cigarette between her fingers. The odor of tobacco and her spicy perfume waft toward me. There’s another note in the air I can’t quite put my finger on, but if I had to name it I’d call it eau de holier-than-thou.

I stop at a red light and steady myself before I look at her. “Are you going to look him up?” Even as much as I don’t want to know, I want to know.

“Maybe for a conjugal visit.”

Well, that’s vulgar. “Maybe not. I heard he’s involved with someone.” I don’t know if he is or not. I just say it to be spiteful and I know I should be ashamed of myself. I don’t know why this unbearable urge to one-up my sister takes over when we’re together.

Summer snorts. It’s amazing what she can imply in the resonance of a single, unladylike sound. Suggestions that tempt me to retort, Why, are you still trying to rub my nose in the fact that you stole him from me? That was another lifetime ago and you’re not even together anymore.