The Sisters Hemingway

by Annie England Noblin

  I went downstairs, careful to skip the squeaky step toward the bottom. I found my boots and buttoned my jacket around my nightgown. I know I probably should have changed my clothes, but I didn’t want to take a chance that Will might think I was ignoring him.

  It was so cold, and Will wasn’t wearing a jacket. I asked him what he was doing, and he said of course he’d come to see me. He said he remembered it was almost my birthday, and he’d come to give me a present. I wished Anna could have been there—she would have been so jealous. The only boy to ever give her a present was Marty Walters, and it was a rock shaped like a toad.

  Anyway, he pulled a package out of his pocket, all wrapped up pretty and tied in twine with a bow. He told me to open it, and so I did. My hands were so cold, I didn’t think I could do it, but when I did, I gasped. It was a brooch with two hearts on it, and it shone in the moonlight like nothing I’d ever seen before. Will said I should pin it to my dress at my birthday party so that when he was working, he could come in for a drink and see me wearing it. I told him I would.

  We decided to keep our meeting a secret, because Daddy wouldn’t like it if he knew. I don’t think Mama would mind so much. She seems to like Will. But Daddy says he’s lazy and that if he doesn’t start working harder, he’s going to send him right back to where he came from.

  I told Anna about Will, because I tell her everything, and she agreed to tell Mama and Daddy, and anybody else who asks, that she gave me the brooch. Maryann says all women ought to have a secret or two, and for now, Will is mine.

  Pfeiffer closed the journal and held it on her lap for a long moment. She wished she could stay and read more, but she knew that her sisters would be up looking for her, and for some reason, she didn’t want to share what she’d just found. She tucked the journal between the mattress and box spring and allowed herself to stroke the length of the dog’s back. It let out a sigh and rested its head on her lap.

  “Come on,” she said, standing up. “Let’s go.”

  To her abject surprise, the dog followed her down the hallway, down the stairs, and right out the front door. She, Hadley, and Martha watched it trot away, down the dirt road and out of sight.

  “What just happened?” Hadley asked, her coffee cup halfway to her lips.

  “I don’t know,” Pfeiffer replied. “But I’m pretty sure I don’t believe it.”

  Chapter 8

  Pfeiffer

  CARS LINED THE STREET OF THE METHODIST CHURCH, people in their Sunday best streaming inside the wooden double doors to the front entrance of the sanctuary. The last time Pfeiffer went through those doors was for a wedding when she was seventeen. The name of the bride escaped her now, but she’d been the daughter of one of her mother’s friends, just a couple years older than she. Pfeiffer remembered the groom and how his face had been mottled and pitted with acne, and it had reminded her of a scene in a high school play rather than an actual wedding.

  “There are tons of people here,” Hadley said. “Way more than were there for the family night.”

  “I know,” Martha replied. Her voice was barely above a whisper as they entered the sanctuary. “I didn’t realize Aunt Bea had so many friends.”

  “We’ve been gone a long time,” Pfeiffer said. “I guess anything is possible.”

  “She did grow up here,” Martha added.

  It was true; they often forgot that their aunt grew up in Cold River. She’d moved away to St. Louis long before the children were born, but the farmhouse had been in the family for generations. The only reason they lived there to begin with was that there was no one to take care of it except their mother.

  From the front of the sanctuary, Anna was waving at them. “Y’all come on down here. We’ve saved seats for the family.”

  Pfeiffer rolled her eyes. The last thing she wanted to do was sit at the front. “I’ve never seen so many old people in one place,” she said, and was immediately shushed by Hadley. “What? I was just commenting.”

  “Well, don’t,” Hadley replied as they took their places next to Anna.

  Pfeiffer fought the urge to stick her tongue out at Hadley, realizing just how juvenile a reaction it would have been. Besides, her sister was no longer paying attention to her, as she was staring straight ahead at the front of the sanctuary, where the now-closed casket of their aunt had been placed.

  Beside her, Martha was also sitting still and staring straight ahead. Pfeiffer wondered if she was the only one who felt fidgety, as if she just might jump right out of her skin as everyone sat chaste around her. She slid her hands underneath her legs in an attempt to keep still, and when the organ music started, she was relieved to have something else to listen to besides the sound of her own breathing.

  Pfeiffer closed her eyes and thought about New York. She wondered what everyone in that great city was doing. She wondered if her former colleagues were gulping copious amounts of coffee and slogging over slush piles as they complained about their workload. She wondered if someone was at this moment discovering the next New York Times bestseller and congratulating herself on her find. She wondered about the editor who’d taken her place—a fresh, new set of eyes hungry for praise and not yet sarcastic in her replies to literary agents and writers.

  She wondered, too, about her apartment. She’d dropped the keys off at the super’s office before she left when she knew he would be out. The only thing left in that apartment was the couch, which, despite its expensive fabric, had managed to look grubby against the gleaming hardwood of her bare floors. Surely the furniture men had come and taken it away by now, having been alerted by the super of her sudden disappearance while she still owed months in rent.

  The pastor, a younger man with a clean-shaven face, droned on and on about how Beatrice James had been an absolute pillar of the community. He talked about her good works in the community and how much she loved Cold River. As the pastor continued to talk, Pfeiffer realized that much of what he was saying was generic—it could have been written about anybody, and she began to wonder how much anybody really knew her aunt. She’d been such a quiet, unassuming woman. She kept to herself on the farm, and with the exception of the ladies’ auxiliary meetings, she never went anywhere Crowley couldn’t drive her.

  Pfeiffer couldn’t help but wonder the same thing about herself. She had never been able to make friends the way most people did. Most of her socializing took place at work, with colleagues. When she lost her job, nobody but Seth even bothered to call. He was probably her only true friend, and she didn’t know if he would still want to be friends with her once she told him that she’d practically ruined his car.

  She thought about her aunt’s journal. Even though Bea was dead, it still felt a bit wrong to be reading something so personal that belonged to someone else. Always before, at work, she’d had permission to read the things other people wrote. Pfeiffer had never heard her aunt speak. She didn’t know what her voice sounded like, but reading the journal gave her a sense of the young woman her aunt had been, and there was something almost comforting about it.

  She looked over at Anna, who was sitting on the other side of Hadley, and she wondered if she was the same Anna her aunt mentioned in her journal. Surely, she had to be. She wondered, too, what happened to the man named Will who had worked on the farm—she knew that her aunt never married, so something must’ve gone wrong in their relationship. Maybe the journal would tell her something. The thought gave her a buzz of excitement, and she made a mental note to ask Anna more about Aunt Beatrice later, and she wished, not for the first time, that she’d been there when her aunt died. She should have been there, she knew, and it was one of many regrets Pfeiffer knew she’d live with for the rest of her life.

  Chapter 9

  Martha

  MARTHA WAS RELIEVED WHEN THE SERVICE WAS OVER. She stood in the receiving line with her sisters and allowed people she barely knew or remembered to kiss her cheek and tell her how sorry they were. Some of them, mostly the younger people, told her how much th
ey loved her music. Kelly and Katie were both there, and Martha was glad they’d been ushered away before either of them had a chance to mention rehab or Travis or anything else they’d likely read in Star magazine.

  “Honey,” a middle-aged woman in a Chanel-style suit asked when she reached Pfeiffer, “what happened to your face?”

  “I got hit with a door,” Pfeiffer replied grimly.

  Martha had to stifle a giggle. Pfeiffer did indeed have two black eyes, and for once in the last fifteen years, people were paying more attention to her sister than they were to her. Pfeiffer, for her part, did not seem to be enjoying the attention.

  “You sure that’s what happened?” the woman asked, raising her eyebrow. “My cousin’s daughter looked just exactly like that when her husband caught her with his brother at the Ramada Inn. Took three people to restrain him.”

  “I’m sure,” Pfeiffer replied, her teeth gritted together so tightly she looked like she had a serious case of lockjaw.

  “You think that big publisher you work for up there in New York might be interested in a story like that?” the woman continued. She was holding up the line now, and people behind her were starting to grumble. She didn’t seem to notice. “My cousin is writing a book, you know.”

  “No,” Pfeiffer replied. “I didn’t know.”

  “Think you’d have time to take a look at it?”

  Martha braced herself for her sister’s response. She’d seen Pfeiffer in action when presented with a request to read an unsolicited manuscript. She was never cruel, but she always told whoever was asking that on no uncertain terms would she entertain working on a manuscript not presented to her by a literary agent—an agent she already knew.

  Instead, Pfeiffer took a deep breath and said, “Maybe.”

  “Oh, Janice will be so happy to hear that,” the woman said. “I’ll have her look you up on Facebook. She’s got her own page and everything.”

  Martha stole a glance at Hadley, wondering if she’d caught this decidedly un-Pfeiffer-like display of benevolence, but beside her, Hadley was rigid, her gaze focused on something or someone at the back of the line. A few inches shorter than her sister, Martha had to stand on her tiptoes to see on what it was her sister was concentrating.

  Toward the back of the crowd, there was a man standing a head above the rest. His sandy hair was falling slightly over his eyes, making him appear younger than he actually was, but Martha knew him immediately. His name was Brody Nichols, and he’d once been the love of Hadley’s life. In fact, Martha couldn’t remember much of her childhood without Brody. He’d once been like a brother to her.

  The line lurched forward, and Brody came closer to them. Martha could feel Hadley’s breath become raspy beside her, and she snuck a glance up at her sister. She’d probably thought when he wasn’t at the funeral home the night before that he wouldn’t be at the funeral today, but Martha knew better. He’d always managed to turn up wherever Hadley was.

  “Hello, Martha,” Brody said, suddenly standing in front of her. “You’re certainly all grown up.”

  Martha grinned and reached up to hug him. “So are you.”

  “I’m old,” he whispered.

  “Not so old,” she replied.

  Martha was about to say something else when she realized Brody’s attention had already turned to Hadley. He was standing in front of her, his smile lopsided, as if he wasn’t sure if he ought to be smiling at all. It might’ve been because it was a funeral after all, but Martha thought it probably had more to do with the stricken look on Hadley’s face.

  “How are you, Hadley?” Brody asked. “I mean, besides your aunt being dead.”

  Martha stifled a giggle. Brody always did have a way with words. He’d always known how to make her and her sisters laugh. It was one of the things she most appreciated about him.

  At last, Hadley pasted on a smile and said, “Hello, Brody. It’s so good of you to come today.”

  “Yes, very good,” Pfeiffer chimed in, rolling her eyes at Hadley’s sterile greeting. “You’ll have to excuse my sister. She’s been stuck in Washington, D.C., greeting the wives of dried-up politicians for far too long.”

  “Not all of them are dried up,” Hadley said, defensive.

  “You’re certainly not dried up,” Brody replied; this time, his whole face lit up in a smile. “You look just the same as the last time I saw you.”

  Martha watched as Hadley’s grimace gave way, and she finally relaxed. Martha had never known exactly what happened between the two of them. She’d just been fourteen the summer they broke up—the same summer her mother and sister died—and in some ways, the loss of the relationship between the two of them—Brody and Hadley—felt like a death as well. Martha wondered what he’d been up to all these years.

  As if reading her mind, Brody said, “I’m sorry I can’t stay for the potluck, but I’ve got to get back to the farm. We’ve got a broken-down tractor and nobody else to fix it.”

  “The farm?” Hadley asked. “What farm?”

  “I bought the old Richmond place a few years ago,” he replied. “Been trying to make a go of it ever since.”

  “You’re a farmer now?” Pfeiffer asked.

  “Not all of us can be big-shot book editors in New York City,” Brody said. “Some of us have to get our hands dirty to make a buck.”

  “Editing is dirty enough,” Pfeiffer muttered.

  “Oh, I’m sure,” Brody replied. “Just not the same kind of dirty, I reckon.”

  “Where’s your farm?” Martha asked, not anxious to hear any more about books.

  “Just about five miles down the road from yours,” Brody replied. “I offered to help your aunt out with the house and the yard a few times, but she always said no. Now that the farm is yours, my offer still stands. It needs some work, from what I’ve seen.”

  “It’s not ours,” Pfeiffer said.

  “It’s gotta be yours now,” Brody said. “Nobody else on this earth she could have left it to.”

  The sisters shared a look.

  “She wouldn’t leave it to us,” Hadley said quickly. She glanced between Martha and Pfeiffer. “I just figured it would go to auction or something.”

  “Why would it go to auction?” Brody wanted to know. “When your aunt has three real-life heirs here to take care of it.”

  Hadley opened her mouth to reply, but Martha cut her off. “It looks like the line is getting pretty backed up. It was good to see you, Brody.”

  Brody nodded. “I guess that’s my signal.” He reached out and cupped Hadley’s elbow with his hand. “It was nice to see y’all, too. And I truly am sorry about your aunt Beatrice.”

  “Do you think Aunt Bea really left us the farm?” Martha whispered once Brody had ambled off.

  “I don’t know,” Hadley replied, smiling at another familiar face.

  “What will we do if she did?” Martha continued. “There’s nobody else to leave it to, like Brody said.”

  “Let’s not talk about it here,” Hadley said.

  “Brody looked good, don’t you think?” Pfeiffer asked, her gaze sliding over to Hadley. “I swear, he hasn’t changed a lick in twenty years.”

  “He’s a farmer now,” Hadley replied. “That’s changed.”

  “It’s an honest way to make a living,” Pfeiffer said.

  “His dad can’t be too pleased,” Hadley said. “He always used to say that Brody was going to be a veterinarian. Remember?”

  “I remember,” Martha chimed in. “I guess he never did take over his dad’s practice. From what I hear, Amanda is the vet now.”

  Martha had been a friend of Brody’s younger sister, Amanda. She’d been at family dinners when Dr. Nichols would come in, still dirty and bloody from helping a farmer pull a calf, waxing poetic about the miracle of birth. “It’s the same for all animals,” he’d say, winking at the girls. Martha thought it was pretty gross, but not any worse than Mrs. Nichols’s meat loaf.

  “Let’s go,” Pfeiffer said. �
�We’re finally at the end of the line.”

  “Should we go say good-bye to her?” Hadley asked, turning her head slightly toward the front of the sanctuary and the coffin.

  “I think we should,” Pfeiffer replied.

  “It almost seems wrong not to,” Martha said.

  “Don’t you feel like we should?” Hadley asked again, as if trying to convince herself. “Just for a minute?”

  “I do,” Martha said, even though it was the last thing she wanted to do. She held up her hand for the pallbearers to give them a moment, and then she followed her sister. “What are you going to say to her?”

  Hadley shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  Martha looked down at the now-closed casket. She hadn’t been brave enough to walk this close the night before. In fact, she’d wanted to leave with Pfeiffer, but she couldn’t abandon Hadley. So much of her wished she’d just stayed back in Nashville, despite how hard it was there for her right now. At least she could have gone back into a studio, any studio, and tried to record. In rehab, the only thing besides clothes she’d taken with her was her guitar. She’d written fifteen new songs during her stay there, and some of them, she thought, were pretty good.

  Her aunt hadn’t liked it when she played music. Aunt Bea liked things to be quiet, which was no easy task when there were three teenage girls living underneath the same roof.

  After both of her sisters left for college, Martha came home one day to find all of her musical instruments locked away in the attic. Aunt Bea left her a note to say that the music gave her headaches. Unlike her sisters, it wasn’t in Martha’s nature to protest, so she went back to her room, pulled out a miniature bottle of whiskey her twenty-three-year-old boyfriend bought her, and began to plot her escape. The day she left home, her aunt was supposed to go into town with Old Crow to buy groceries. But for some reason, Old Crow was held up, and when Martha’s boyfriend pulled into the drive, Aunt Bea had gone outside expecting it to be Old Crow. She’d sat down on the front porch and watched Martha leave, her bags packed, with her boyfriend. She hadn’t made a sound.