THE SISTER
Abigail Barnette
For my girls. #BestofFriendsBestofWomen
Copyright © 2017 Abigail Barnette
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Epilogue
Chapter One
I will not throw up on this woman. I will not throw up on this woman.
The studio lights were way brighter than I remembered from last time I was on the Wake Up! America set. I’d been auditioning for a job at the time, but somehow, I was more nervous today than back then. A very blonde woman of indiscernible age sat across from me on the bright orange curved sofa. I followed the line of her gaze to the teleprompter and accidentally caught sight of myself on the monitor.
The shade of blue they put me in flattered my suddenly green complexion, and my long, dark hair seemed too meticulously curled. Like, approaching uncanny valley perfection.
“And we’re live in five, four, three…”
“Welcome back, America,” the anchor said. “It’s eight forty-six here on a beautiful sunny morning in New York. I’m Amanda Tanner. If you’re just joining us, we’re about twenty minutes from Ariana Grande rocking the block as part of our Rock The Block summer concert series. But right now, we’re talking to Sophie Scaife, founder and co-editor-in-chief of Mode magazine, as well as author of the new memoir, Does She Have to Call Me Grandma?, which is out tomorrow. Sophie, It’s a pleasure having you with us this morning.”
“You, too.” You, too? You, too! Why did you say that, Sophie? Why? You’re going to have to go into hiding after this.
“You have quite a unique story, here. You’re twenty-eight years old. Never thought you’d have children. And now, you find yourself a grandmother. How did that happen?”
I laughed nervously and tried to remember what the answer was supposed to be. I’d rehearsed all of this with a production assistant in my dressing room. “Well, my husband is older than I am, and he has a daughter who’s my age. Olivia is her daughter.”
“But you’re not a grandmother?” Amanda teased, in that friendly, but not overly familiar way that interviewers generally had.
“No, Olivia doesn’t call me grandma. She calls me Sophie.” And sometimes, mama, which really creeped me out, so I tried hard to curb that.
“Now, your stepdaughter and her husband tragically passed away over a year ago, and you talk about that in the book. Can you tell us a little about what happened?”
A little? I could tell anyone hours of information about Emma and Michael. About their love story, about their desire for children and their struggle that seemed hopeless. About how cruel life was to give them the thing they wanted most, then snatched them away from it.
But I was getting better about not doing that. “Emma and Michael died after a car accident when Olivia was seven months old, and my husband and I are her guardians now.”
“Your husband is Neil Elwood, correct?” Amanda asked, and when I answered in the affirmative, she followed-up, “So, here you are, running a brand-new online magazine, you have a very successful husband, and suddenly, you’re mothering this child—”
“I wouldn’t say I was mothering.” It might break protocol to interrupt an interviewer, but I didn’t care. If there was one thing I always wanted to keep clear, it was that. “I’ll never be able to replace Emma.”
“Of course not,” Amanda said, taking control once more. “But you talk in the book about making that transition from, as you described it, ‘Long Island trophy wife who identified as child-free’ to a more parental role. And it hasn’t been all that easy, has it?”
“Well, obviously losing Emma and Michael was very hard for us as a family. And Neil and I never planned to have children. We still don’t. But I don’t see this as taking on a maternal role or being a stand-in for Olivia’s mother in any way. I see it as doing something out of love for Emma and Michael. Olivia is a part of our family. The way I was raised, you take care of your family.” I’d written something similar in my book, and I’d meant it with all my heart. “There’s no way we could refuse to care for a child we love, regardless of what our plans were.”
“What’s that old saying, life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans?” Amanda joked mildly. I nodded and laughed in agreement, but inwardly, I cringed at hearing one of the most difficult times in my life reduced to a trite coffee mug quote.
That was the last hard question. The rest of the interview coasted by so easily, I was startled when Amanda thanked me again for being on the show and directed viewers to buy the book.
Before I had time to barf on her, it was all over.
I shook her hand and thanked her, and a woman in a headset put her arm protectively around my back without touching me to herd me away from the set.
I exited through one half of a double door and ran directly into Neil waiting in the hallway. Even after five years of all the joys and heartbreaks our life together had given us, his smile still swept me away like it had on the first day we’d met. In his arms, Olivia squirmed and fussed, until she saw me.
“You were wonderful, darling,” he said, leaning in to kiss my cheek as Olivia situated herself between us.
“No, no, no,” she babbled sternly, pushing Neil’s face away from mine. She was going through this phase where she didn’t want Neil and me to kiss, ever.
Children were so weird.
The headset woman directed us back to my dressing room, where I changed into the tight black jeans and oversized pink cashmere sweater I’d arrived in. As I pulled my boots on, I watched Olivia methodically jerk diaper after diaper out of my alligator leather Birkin, wondering when Neil would notice what she was up to. But he was too lost in his own thoughts.
“Hey,” I said softly. When he looked up, I asked, “Are you okay?”
Talking about Emma would probably always be hard for him, but it seemed more so recently. The book coming out and the interviews I’d been giving about it had him a little more shaken up than usual.
“Hmm?” He snapped back to reality. “Oh, yes. Fine. Everything’s fine.”
“Did you take that second Xanax today?” I asked casually, not trying to sound overly concerned. He’d been hospitalized for two months at an inpatient psychiatric facility following a suicide attempt the year before. Emma’s death had almost been his, too, and in some ways, he was still recovering.
He shook his head. “No, really, I’m fine. I haven’t felt that I needed it.”
I pulled up the zips on my calf-length boots and stood. “Good to know. I feel really guilty that this is so hard on you.”
“It isn’t,” he insisted, stooping to gather up the diapers Olivia had strewn across the floor. “Truly, it isn’t. I love that you’re writing, again. It seems as though it helps you.”
“It really does. It helps me to sort my thoughts.” It would be nice if I could drum up enthusiasm for it without requiring some major tragedy to get the creative juices flowing. “But I’m going to be glad when the release stuff is over.”
“What time is your signing tomorrow?” he asked, handing me the bag.
I slung it over my sho
ulder and reached for Olivia’s hand to hold so she could toddle along beside me. “Eight to nine-thirty. I’m debating just staying in town after and meeting you at the airport in the morning.”
When we reached the elevators, Neil scooped Olivia up in his arms; she couldn’t be trusted not to bolt the moment the doors opened. “You don’t sound terribly enthusiastic. Is it the signing you’re dreading, or the trip?”
“I’m not dreading the trip.” Not all of it. Olivia had never met my family before, and I wanted them to get a chance to know her. And I wanted her to grow up knowing that not everyone lives in a thirty-five thousand-square-foot house and travels by private jet. Neil had never even been grocery shopping on his own until we moved in together, so he was hardly up to the task of keeping her grounded.
“I’m just kind of dreading the whole class reunion thing,” I told him as we stepped into the elevator and the doors closed.
“This, again?” Neil rolled his eyes. “You’re not seriously still worried about this.”
“I can’t help it,” I protested. “What if I go back and nobody talks to me because they think I’m… I don’t know. Full of myself? Like I think I’m better than everyone?”
“Are you going to act full of yourself or like you’re better than everyone?” he asked, his mildly condescending tone enhanced by his posh English accent. Sometimes, I felt like I was being scolded by the male version of Mary Poppins.
“Obviously, I’m not. But it’s a small town. People talk. And I know I would have been a little intimidated and envious if one of my friends had moved to New York and become some rich asshole.”
“Language,” he reminded me, reaching up to cup Olivia’s ear.
The not-swearing was the worst part of raising a child.
“Sorry. Some rich…apple…core.” Not my best. I cursed under my breath.
“Doing splendidly as always, darling.” Neil smiled. “Are you coming with us or going to the office?”
“I’m going to work.” For once. Lately, everything else in life seemed to get in the way of work. For most people, it was the opposite.
“You are coming home tonight, though, aren’t you?”
“Oh, absolutely. I have to pack and stare at myself in the mirror and freak out because nothing fits me the way it used to.” I really didn’t need to lay it all out like that. He knew the routine by now. “But I’ve got to get back to work.”
We paused in the lobby to part ways; Neil would return with Olivia to our home in Sagaponack, while I caught a cab to my Brooklyn-based office.
“What time should I expect you? I’m cooking tonight.” He leaned in for a kiss that Olivia intercepted with a cranky whine and a hand over my mouth. Neil shifted her to his other arm and tried again, this time, more successfully.
“Around seven-thirty, god willing. I’ll call you when I’m in the car.” The commute was long, but Neil needed the helicopter more than I did. Trying to keep Olivia entertained in her car seat for two hours was a special kind of hell, and we were currently in an air traffic battle with the neighbors.
While Olivia was distracted by something across the lobby, Neil leaned in for another kiss. “I love you.”
“Love you, too,” I said, and quickly dropped a kiss on Olivia’s head. “Tell Tony five o’clock, okay?”
It kind of broke my heart to leave them. It always did. During the first year taking care of Olivia, I’d looked for any excuse to escape when I could. Not because I didn’t love her. I’d just been overwhelmed. After I’d gotten used to it, I hated to leave her and Neil for any length of time. I even had a picture of the three of us on my desk.
That was a future I definitely had never planned on.
The Mode office was in Brooklyn, in a brick building we’d previously rented, then bought when the opportunity arose. Though we’d started out as online only, we were trying to transition to a print version, as well. Which had created ten times the work for my co-editor-in-chief, Deja, and me. Luckily, we had a great assistant.
Mel looked up from her desk as I approached. As always, her eyeliner was preternaturally symmetrical, her outfit scorchingly stylish—she wore her YSL puff-sleeved black blouse as though it had been designed for her—and her manicure glistened as though the polish were still wet. Her heels were Louboutin; her hijab was Hermés.
“Good morning, Ms. Scaife,” she said with a big smile. “And good interview.”
“Thank you.” I did a little a curtsey. “I tried my very best.”
“Well, you succeeded.” She turned to her computer and typed with unnerving speed. She’d missed her calling as an airline ticket counter worker. “Okay, all of your messages have been forwarded, you’re late for the August pitches and you’ve got the run-through at eleven.”
I checked my phone and hissed through my teeth. “Yikes. That doesn’t give me a lot of time to pull the Michael Kors bags, huh?”
“I’ll put Patricia on it.” Mel’s fingers started flying, again. Those bags would be in my office within minutes. “Did you see Daisy’s new outfit?”
Mel had a Chihuahua named Daisy, and Daisy had her own Instagram account, wherein she posed in different, rarely repeated outfits, daily. Sometimes, she and Mel matched.
“I did not,” I admitted. “But I am going to look, right now.”
And that wasn’t a lie. Daisy’s OOTD—Outfit of the Day—was as essential to getting me through the morning as caffeine.
I dropped my purse and jacket in the office and headed straight for the conference room, where Deja and the four other editors—two for fashion, one for beauty, one for lifestyle—were seated around the table. Deja sat at the head, leaning her elbows on the table and fiddling with a stylus as she listened intently to Dana, our lifestyle editor. Always the epitome of cool, Deja had taken the bold step of totally shaving her perfectly shaped head.
I paused outside the glass door and waited, watching for a break in the conversation. When Deja looked down at the tablet in front of her and started scrolling, I saw my chance and pushed open the door.
“You’re late,” she said without looking up as she dragged the stylus over the screen.
“I have a good excuse today,” I reminded her. “I was on TV.”
Deja grinned at me. “I know. We were watching. ‘You, too?’”
Light laughter rippled around the table. I sank into my chair with a good-natured shake of my head. “Ugh, I know. I can’t believe I said that.”
“It’s like when you buy something at an airport kiosk, and the guy says, ‘Have a nice flight!’ and you’re like, ‘You, too!’” Stephenie, one of our fashion editors, said.
“Other than that, I think it went pretty well,” I said with mock—okay, and a little bit real—defensiveness.
“You did good,” Deja reassured me. “Okay, we were about to talk Gwyneth Paltrow.”
“Veto!” I said automatically, raising my hand. “I use my veto card.”
Deja arched an eyebrow. “You just walked into this meeting. Do you want to wait a second and see what’s going on before you jump right in?”
I made a sheepish, apologetic face.
“Yeah. Put that card back in your deck.” Deja cleared her throat. “Okay, on the subject of our lifestyle piece debunking several vaginal health claims made by Gwyneth Paltrow’s website…”
****
After the meeting, I slunk into my office and put my head down on my desk. I had about half an hour before the beauty editors would show me every single piece they’d picked to feature in the August issue, and I would sit and make notes and generally not feel like such a failure.
I’d known that running a magazine would be hard. I’d worked at one for long enough. But I’d been an assistant. My old boss, Gabriella Winters, had made the entire process seem effortless. And Neil was more than capable of managing the day-to-day at a magazine; his entire fortune was built on them. What was wrong with me?
Deja knocked on my door before she opened it and stuck he
r head in. “Hey, do you have the run through coming up? I thought you wanted to pull those Kors?”
“Mel got Patricia to do it.” I propped my elbows on my desk and rubbed my temples. “Deja, why am I such a fuck up?”
She sighed and closed the door behind her then leaned on it. “You’re not a fuck up. You’re just…really bad at coming to work and doing your job.”
“But I shouldn’t be!” I exclaimed. “I worked for the most demanding editor-in-chief at the most demanding fashion magazine in the world, and I survived for two years. I know how to do all of this.”
“You know in theory,” she reminded me. “Not in practice. You were Gabriella’s assistant. You kept track of things for her, but you never had to do them for her.”
“Ugh. She made it look so easy.” I dropped my head to my desk then looked up miserably. “You’re so good at this. I actually feel guilty dragging you into it with me.”
Deja rolled her eyes. “Oh, no, you dragged me into running an extremely lucrative fashion magazine. All of this financial security is unbearable.”
I snorted.
“Besides, I did kind of get the inside track,” she said guiltily.
I’d first met Deja when I was still the assistant to—and not yet girlfriend of—my husband. He hired her, she eventually fell in love with and married my best friend, and yeah, committed some corporate espionage for my old boss at the same time.
Things had gotten pretty messy for a while there.
But Deja was right. Her time as Gabriella’s mentee had prepared her far more thoroughly than my stint as Gabriella’s assistant had me. And that wasn’t something I should have been ashamed of.
What I should have been ashamed of was how little effort I’d put in to the entire magazine endeavor. We were a success, but I had very little to do with that aside from having a rich husband.
There was a lot I needed to think about, but my day was jam packed, and it was always easier to just ignore the big, scary life questions in favor of doing literally anything else. And there was plenty “anything else” that needed doing.
The Sister (The Boss Book 6) Page 1
