The Sisters Hemingway

by Annie England Noblin

  “I’ll get her!” Martha jumped up, and at the same time so did Hadley. They knocked into each other and landed on top of Pfeiffer, and in the end, the only thing louder than Lafayette’s barking was the Hemingway sisters’ laughing.

  Chapter 21

  Martha

  RACHAEL JAMES HEMINGWAY GAVE HER DAUGHTERS NAMES that would make them stand out from a crowd. At least, that’s what she always told them. The reality was that she’d named each of her daughters after one of Ernest Hemingway’s four wives, and although most people never noticed, boy, did it make an impression when someone did. Martha’s and Mary’s names were so regular that they hardly thought about the fact that they were forever linked with a brilliant and womanizing writer from the Lost Generation. However, Hadley and Pfeiffer had a much different experience. Martha always thought this was one of the reasons why Pfeiffer was so literary—it was in her name. She had to be.

  Martha had been closest to Mary—both in age and sisterly bond. Most of the time Mary knew what Martha was thinking and feeling, sometimes even before Martha herself knew. She’d known about her crush on Brody, even though Martha would have died before mentioning it to anyone. It was embarrassing, having a crush on her oldest sister’s boyfriend.

  The night Martha followed Hadley and Brody to the river, Mary found her on the stairway, hastily putting on her shoes.

  “Where are you going?” Mary asked.

  “Nowhere,” Martha mumbled. “Just out.”

  “Why do you have Mama’s car keys?”

  Martha stood up so that she could look down on Mary as she spoke. She was almost a whole foot taller than her baby sister, having gone through a growth spurt the summer before. “If you tell Mama, you’ll regret it.”

  Mary looked hurt. “Why would I tell her?”

  “Because you tell her everything.”

  “I do not.”

  “Yes, you do,” Martha replied smugly. “That’s why you’re her favorite.”

  “Well, I didn’t tell her you like Brody,” Mary said.

  “Everybody likes Brody,” Martha replied, trying to ignore the pounding in her chest.

  “Yeah, but you like him like him,” Mary said.

  “I do not.”

  “Yes, you do,” Mary replied. “I see you staring at him when you think nobody is watching.”

  Martha sighed and sat back down on the stairs. “Do you think Hadley knows?”

  “No,” Mary replied. “Hadley doesn’t notice anything but Brody.”

  “And you won’t tell her?”

  “I wouldn’t,” Mary said. “I wouldn’t tell her or Mama or Pfeiffer.”

  Martha smiled, relieved. “Thanks.”

  “I think Brody is too old for you, anyhow,” Mary said, sitting down next to her sister. “He’s eighteen.”

  “That’s only four years.”

  “But when you’re eighteen, he’ll be twenty-two,” Mary said. “That’s old.”

  Martha felt smug knowing that twenty-two wasn’t really that old in the grand scheme of things, but she didn’t say it to her sister. “I’m gonna be prettier than Hadley one day,” she said instead. “Lots of people think I’m older than fourteen, anyway.”

  “You’re already pretty,” Mary replied. “You’re just a different kind of pretty than Hadley.”

  Martha knew that Mary was right. She was a different kind of pretty than any of her sisters. Her sisters all had dark hair and eyes, where Martha’s hair was lighter, and her eyes were blue. She was tall like Hadley, but that was where the similarities ended. Hadley was tall and slender. Martha was tall, but full of curves from top to bottom, and boys were starting to notice. Sometimes full-grown men noticed, and she could tell it made Pfeiffer jealous, because Pfeiffer was still waiting for a growth spurt, and people often mistook her for younger than Martha, sometimes even younger than Mary.

  “I don’t want to be different,” Martha said.

  “You don’t have a choice,” Mary said. “And besides, you’re a good kind of different.”

  Martha looked over at her sister. Out of all of them, Mary knew the most about being different. She hadn’t even spoken until she was almost four years old, and then she began speaking in full sentences and reading on top of that. Her kindergarten teacher suggested skipping her up not one but two grades. Now twelve, Mary felt much more comfortable talking to adults than to children, and it was no secret she’d read more books than all of the Hemingway sisters combined.

  “I better go,” Martha said. “Don’t tell Mama if she wakes up.”

  “I won’t,” Mary replied. “And you better not let Hadley and Brody catch you.”

  “Who says I’m going to find Hadley and Brody?”

  “Just don’t let them see you,” Mary repeated, rolling her eyes and standing up.

  Now, nearly twenty years later, Martha wondered what Mary would have to say about the way things turned out. She wondered what life would be like. She knew the speculation was useless, but she couldn’t help it. She let her mind wander to the place it usually didn’t wander to—the place where she kept twelve-year-old Mary, her very best friend.

  She rolled over in bed, the light on the eighties-era alarm clock glowing 6:03 a.m. Light was finally beginning to peek through the yellowed curtains, and Martha forced herself upright, groaning slightly. She’d never been much of a morning person, and sleeping on a decades-old mattress wasn’t helping matters any.

  Martha crept out of the room and down the stairs, careful to skip the squeaky step, passing Pfeiffer and the dog sleeping at her feet, and wandered into the kitchen to make coffee. She opened the cabinet to grab the coffee can, and her hand brushed against the almost empty bottle of whiskey. Pfeiffer must’ve put it there for safekeeping, and Martha felt her heart pound at the thought of pouring just a tiny bit into her coffee cup. She didn’t see how a little bit could hurt. After the night she’d had, she doubted anyone could blame her.

  She removed the bottle from the cabinet and took one of the freshly washed coffee cups from the drying mat on the counter. As she turned around, she noticed her father’s guitar leaning against one of the wooden kitchen chairs. She hadn’t remembered removing it from its case, let alone leaving it in the kitchen, but she supposed quite a lot had been forgotten after the discovery of the body in the garden. In fact, she hardly remembered anything from the day before Brody called them down from the attic. Maybe one of her sisters put it there for safekeeping, she thought again.

  Martha looked carefully at the old guitar. It was her father’s 1967 Gibson Flat Top acoustic guitar. It was the guitar on which she’d learned to play, and she took it out of the case and cradled it in her arms as if it were a baby. Forgetting about the coffee and the whiskey, she took the guitar out onto the front porch and sat down on the top step. The guitar needed to be tuned and it needed a good cleaning, but Martha felt a sense of calm and relief the moment her fingers grazed the strings. Her shoulders relaxed and her mind went blank, and all she could see when she closed her eyes were lines of music.

  Slowly, as if moved by the hazy hands of summertime, she began to play. For the first time in a long time, Martha wasn’t trying to write a song good enough to sell or get airplay. She wasn’t thinking of catchy lyrics. She simply let the music guide her and allowed everything else to fade away. So involved in the music was she that she didn’t hear Brody’s truck roar up the driveway. She didn’t hear him park and get out, and she didn’t hear him sit down next to her until she felt his hand tap her lightly on the arm, and her eyes popped open, and she jumped back, almost falling off the top porch step.

  “How long have you been here?” she asked, straightening herself.

  “Long enough to hear you play that beautiful song,” Brody replied.

  “It’s not anything,” she replied, surprised to find that she was embarrassed he’d been watching her. “I was just playing around.”

  “Well, I liked it.”

  “Thanks.” Martha set the guitar o
ver to her left side. “What are you doing here so early?”

  “The coroner is coming to exhume the rest of the body today,” he said. “If there is a rest of the body. They should be here by eight o’clock.”

  “I know,” Martha replied. “But it’s barely seven.”

  “I thought you all might want me to be here,” Brody said. “Might make it easier in case there are more questions, since I was the one who found the body.”

  “You and Old Crow,” Martha corrected him.

  “I doubt we’ll be seeing him today.”

  “Why not?”

  “Pfeiffer asked me to go check on him last night before I left,” Brody said. “He was pretty shaken up when I got to his place. He wouldn’t let me inside. He wouldn’t talk about the skull. I told him to take a shower and go to bed. Everything looks better in the daylight, you know?”

  Martha nodded. “Except that crime-scene tape and pile of bones I’m sure they’re going to find,” she said.

  “Except that.”

  From the corner of her eye, Martha saw movement in Brody’s truck. A little blond head poked up and looked around.

  “Uh, is there someone else in your truck?” Martha asked.

  “My daughter, Lucy,” Brody said. “She fell asleep on the way over.”

  “You brought your daughter to the exhumation of a dead body?”

  “She insisted,” Brody replied, shrugging. “She wasn’t supposed to be home for two more days, but both of my parents got food poisoning from the new Chinese place in town, and Lucy said she wasn’t going to miss her chance to meet you, dead body or not.”

  Martha grinned. “So you can’t tell her anything, huh?”

  “Not a damn thing.”

  Martha watched as a pair of sunburned and skinny legs forced open the passenger’s door of the truck, and Lucy slid out, followed by a squat English bulldog with an underbite that made him look like a cartoon character.

  “Dad!” Lucy yelled, hurrying toward Brody. “I told you to wake me up when we got here.”

  “I tried,” Brody replied. “You kicked me.”

  Lucy opened her mouth to respond, and then saw Martha sitting next to her father, and clamped it shut, her face turning as red as her legs.

  “Hi,” Martha said. “I’m Martha. It’s nice to meet you, Lucy.”

  Lucy gave a sidelong glance at her father and whispered, “She knows my name.”

  Martha tried to hide her grin as she said, “My sister said she met you at the grocery store the other day.”

  Lucy nodded fervently. “Dad never told me he knew you, but of course I knew you were from here. I know everything about you!”

  “I’ve known him practically my whole life,” Martha replied. “In fact,” she said, leaning conspiratorially toward Lucy, “I used to have quite a crush on him.”

  Lucy wrinkled her nose and looked over at her dad. “Ew,” she said. “He’s old.”

  “He wasn’t always old,” Martha replied.

  “But you were married to Travis Tucker!” Lucy exclaimed.

  “And how old do you think he is?” Martha asked. “He’s almost as old as your dad.”

  Lucy sat down on the step next to her. “Well, you’re too pretty for my dad,” she said. “And Travis Tucker.”

  Martha grinned. “I like her,” she said to Brody.

  “So is that where the body is?” Lucy asked, nodding toward the garden.

  “I guess we’ll find out today,” Martha replied.

  “Dad says I have to stay inside when they get here to dig it up,” Lucy said. “He thinks it might traumatize me.”

  Martha shot a glance above Lucy’s head over at Brody. “Does he?”

  “Yup.” Lucy rolled her eyes. “But my friend Ava’s grandparents own the funeral home, and my stepdad is a cop. So I’ve seen plenty of dead bodies.”

  “Your stepdad has never let you near a dead body,” Brody replied. “And just because you’ve seen an open-casket funeral doesn’t mean you’re a seasoned criminal investigator.”

  “Ava’s grandma lets us watch when she puts the makeup on them,” Lucy said. “It’s super gross.”

  “I need to have a talk with Ava’s grandma,” Brody replied.

  Lucy ignored her father and turned her full attention to Martha. “My friends are going to be so jealous when they find out I got to meet you,” she said. “Especially if they see my picture with you in a magazine or something.”

  “Oh, I doubt they’ll see you with me in a magazine,” Martha said with a laugh. “Unless, of course, you come to visit me in Nashville, which you’re welcome to do anytime.”

  “Really?” Lucy squeaked.

  “Sure,” Martha replied.

  “Martha,” Brody said.

  “Don’t worry,” Martha interrupted. “I won’t let her near any dead bodies.”

  “No,” Brody continued. “That’s not it.”

  “What is it?”

  “What Lucy said about pictures made me think of something I saw as we were coming up the driveway.”

  “What did you see?” Martha wanted to know.

  “There was a truck parked kind of off to the side,” Brody said. “I thought maybe they were just lost—maybe got turned around looking for the river.”

  Martha shifted uncomfortably on the step. “But you don’t think so now?”

  “I don’t know,” Brody replied. “They didn’t turn around after we passed them. They were sitting there even as we pulled up to the house. I could see them in the rearview mirror.”

  “Shit,” Martha muttered. She stood up. “Are your keys in your truck?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “I’ll be right back,” Martha said.

  “You’re not wearing any shoes!”

  Martha ignored him, hopping into Brody’s truck and starting it up. She drove down the winding driveway to where she knew she would see a truck—the very same truck Hadley and Pfeiffer had seen last night as they were driving back to the farm from Cold River. She could see the long lenses of their cameras even before she saw their faces.

  “Hey!” she called, rolling down her window. “This is private property!”

  The men said nothing but continued taking pictures.

  “I’m going to call the sheriff,” Martha continued. “Get off my property. Now.”

  “Come on and smile for us, darlin’,” one of the men said. He pulled the camera down from his face.

  “I’m warning you,” she said.

  “You look real pretty this mornin’,” the other man said.

  Martha resisted the urge to jump out of the truck, grab the camera, and bash it over the man’s head. Honestly, had they no decency? Following her all the way to Cold River. She knew someone was paying them to be here, and she knew that they’d take hundreds of pictures before anybody could get there to stop them. Now they had pictures of her unwashed hair and bare face, and wearing no bra and one of Travis’s old concert T-shirts.

  “Hey!” came a voice from behind the truck. “Hey you, get out of here!”

  Martha looked in the rearview mirror to see Brody running down the gravel driveway. He stopped when he got to the passenger’s side of his truck and slid in next to Martha. “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Giving them one more chance to leave,” he said, opening the glove compartment. He pulled out a Ruger LCP pistol.

  “Brody . . .” Martha whispered.

  “Don’t worry,” Brody said, loud enough for the men to hear. “I’m not gonna shoot them. Not unless they force me to.”

  “We’re just doin’ our job,” the man behind the wheel said.

  “Your job is to trespass?” Brody asked.

  “Our job is to get pictures,” the other man replied.

  “Get ’em somewhere else.”

  With a grunt, the man in the driver’s seat dropped his camera and began to back the truck down the driveway while the other man continued to snap pictures.

  Once they were
gone, Martha slumped down in the seat, rubbing her temples with her fingers. “They’re going to have pictures of that,” she said. “They’re going to have pictures of me half-dressed, sitting next to you, while you pointed a gun at them.”

  “They were breaking the law,” Brody said.

  “You pointed a gun at them.”

  “And they left.”

  “I want to know how they found me,” Martha said. “I didn’t tell anybody besides my agent that I was coming here. I haven’t used social media since the day I left.”

  “Somebody in town must’ve tipped them off,” Brody said. “I reckon pictures like that will fetch a pretty hefty price.”

  Martha nodded miserably. “I hope you’re ready to be splashed all over the Internet.”

  “They’ll think I’m your new boyfriend,” Brody replied, a mischievous smile on his face. “I’ll be your mystery man of the week.”

  “Yeah,” Martha said, putting the truck in reverse and backing up the driveway. “It’s too damn bad that you’re still in love with my sister.”

  Chapter 22

  Hadley

  HADLEY STOOD BEHIND THE SCREEN DOOR AND WATCHED Martha pull into the driveway in Brody’s truck. Even more curious to her was that Martha was in her pajamas and bare feet. Her hair was wild, and she had a look on her face that she usually reserved for watching arguments between Hadley and Pfeiffer.

  “What on earth is going on?” Hadley asked, stepping out onto the porch to greet them. “Where are your shoes, Martha?”

  “You were being followed last night,” Martha said, stomping past Hadley into the house.

  “What do you mean?”

  “That truck you saw parked down at the bottom of the driveway was there when Brody and Lucy drove through. Those dumb rednecks were being paid by somebody to take pictures of me,” Martha replied.

  “Lucy?” Hadley turned her attention to Brody. “Where is Lucy?”

  “I’m here!” came a small voice from the side of the house. Lucy emerged with her dog in tow, an old garden hose in her hand. “Ollie was thirsty.”