by Luanne Rice
“That's true. Does it bother you?”
“Just that I always think sisters should be exactly alike. But they're not—at all! Sometimes it seems we're not even from the same family, and that's how it looks with you and Elizabeth. See, I want to be like you when I grow up, but I'm afraid I'll be like your sister.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, Allie and I are as different as you guys. We have totally separate personalities…She's the nice one—-just like I bet you were the nice one when you were our age.”
“You're nice,” Rumer said. “Among other things.”
“Yeah, but she's the Nice One—that's what people say about her. There's a difference.”
Rumer glanced over at an old photo of her and Elizabeth. “That's the thing about sisters,” Rumer said, “that I wish were different. Why does there have to be such separate ‘territory’? As if only one can be the nice one, one the pretty one, one the smart one…”
Quinn cocked her head, watching Rumer. “I'll bet that your sister was ‘the pretty one’ when you were little.”
“She was,” Rumer said, feeling surprisingly hurt.
“Yeah, well now you're the beautiful one,” Quinn said. “Your sister's still pretty, but you're beautiful. I'll bet she knows it too.”
“I don't think she sees it that way,” Rumer chuckled.
“Oh, I do. She can't miss it. Her prettiness—I don't know how to say this… or even if I should.”
Rumer laughed. “Quinn, you've never been one to hold back. Don't start now. Go ahead.”
“Well, her prettiness is all in her face. In her skin, eyes, nose… on the surface. Yours is a lot deeper. It's in your eyes. I know it's weird, me noticing that about you, but I can't help it. It's just so there—and Mr. Mayhew sees it too.”
“He does?”
“Oh, yeah. He stares at you like he wants to drink you in.”
“Well, Quinn,” Rumer began.
“He does. He's in love.”
But just then Elizabeth drove up, climbing out of her Porsche with an armload of presents, and began to walk up the hill.
Zeb and Michael came in from the terrace, where they'd been setting up the telescope Zeb had given him as his big gift.
“It's amazing,” Michael said. “It's computer run, with a motor that keeps it following the stars all night. You can set it on Saturn and watch till the sun comes up. Practically as cool as the one he's going to have in his new observatory.”
“See the rings and everything?” Quinn asked.
“Certainly,” Zeb said. “Wait till dark, and we'll show you.”
“What about opening my presents?” Elizabeth asked, walking in. She spilled them on a side table and pulled Michael over.
Rumer had set white candles in her mother's crystal and brass candlesticks; the flames flickered in the breeze. While Michael sat in Sixtus's armchair, Rumer felt a pang for her father. He should be there for his grandson's eighteenth birthday—and to see his daughters here together.
“Should we call the Coast Guard?” she asked, drifting toward the window.
“Why?” Elizabeth asked. “Dad's a great sailor. Let him have his adventure.”
“Aren't you worried?” She looked around the room.
Michael and Quinn both nodded. Elizabeth busied herself with arranging the pile of presents. Zeb said nothing, but Rumer saw him glance over. He caught her gaze, his blue eyes holding her with humor and something else—a sort of teasing that sent goose bumps up her arms.
“Zeb?” Rumer asked. “What do you think?”
“Tell her, Zeb,” Elizabeth laughed. “That he's a big boy.”
“I think he's fine,” Zeb said quietly, still staring at Rumer with eyes filled with heat.
Elizabeth laughed smugly.
Rumer's stomach clenched. She knew that Zeb wasn't siding with her sister, but Elizabeth thought so. Rumer shook it off and glanced at the phone. Maybe she'd call the Coast Guard on her own; if she still felt this way in a little while, she'd make the call regardless of what her sister and Zeb thought. Her father had promised he would phone before leaving for Ireland; while she didn't think he was midway across the Atlantic without checking in, she did wonder about his reason for staying silent so long.
Elizabeth placed her hands on Michael's shoulders.
“We've waited long enough,” she said. “The suspense is killing me! Open your gifts… which package do you want first?”
“ Quinn's,” he said, eyes gleaming as he looked at her.
“Well, mine's kind of little…” Quinn said, handing him a small package.
“Isn't that cute?” Elizabeth said wryly.
“I was thinking you could open it later,” Quinn said.
“Do you want me to?”
Zeb still hadn't looked away. Was he thinking of them at that same age? Rumer shivered, thinking back, recalling how many young birthdays they had shared together—she remembered Zeb always standing by her side to help her blow the candles out on her cake.
Quinn nodded. “It's… personal,” she whispered.
“Keeping secrets,” Elizabeth said in a funny, displeased voice.
“Mom—” Michael warned sharply.
“Fine, fine. I'm just the mother! Okay—which present first?”
“This one,” Michael said, choosing Rumer's package. Opening it, his eyes lit up to discover a fountain pen and a bottle of ink. As Rumer showed him how to fill it, she kissed him on the cheek.
“It was mine in college,” she explained. “My parents gave it to me my freshman year. I used it to write papers for a while, but it was a little too distracting—I'd get sidetracked trying to do calligraphy—but I did use it for my journal, my life list of birds, letters home…”
“Oh, God, Rue—” Elizabeth laughed. “It has your initials on the side! RGL.”
“What's wrong with that?” Michael asked.
“Just… it's so used looking.”
“I like it,” Michael said, feeling the pen's weight in his open palm. He grabbed a piece of paper and started to write, practicing on the name Quinn, but his mother took hold of his wrist and gave him a killer smile.
“There's time enough for your memoirs,” Elizabeth said with dark humor.
“It's a love letter,” he said, looking her straight in the eye.
“In any case, pick another package. One of mine!”
Michael reached for one off the top of the pile. Working his way down, he opened a Tag Heuer watch, a set of studs, and monogrammed cuff links, “for when you take me to Jeffy's Oscar party,” his mother joked—a new laptop computer, and a black lambskin jacket.
“Wow, thanks, Mom,” he said, reaching up to hug her.
“Good thing your father thought to drive out from California,” his mother said. “In a big car—so you can haul all your loot back home.”
Quinn let out a small squeak, and Rumer watched Michael attempt to suppress a smile. The harder he tried, the bigger it got.
“More secrets,” Elizabeth said. “It's not very polite to leave everyone else out in the dark—you're hurting my feelings. Quinn's gift next.”
Zeb smiled, casting a reassuring glance Quinn's way.
“It's nothing much,” Quinn said quietly as Michael slowly, carefully, untied the bow. “I made it myself.”
“Homemade presents are the best kind,” Zeb said.
Elizabeth's lips thinned as she glanced at the stack of gifts Michael had dutifully opened yet left lying on the table. He hadn't even tried on his watch; Rumer felt a burst of sadness for her sister.
The ribbon was rough twine and the wrapping paper was actually a section of newspaper. Peering over Michael's shoulder, Rumer saw it was the front page of the New London Day.
“From June 16,” Quinn whispered.
“The day we met!”
“I had to go through all the papers in our garage to find it; luckily Aunt Dana was so busy getting ready for her wedding, she forgot to recycle.�
�
Now Michael's fingers moved faster, breaking the tape and untying the twine. He got it open, and the paper fell away, revealing a brown diary.
“What have we here?” Elizabeth asked as Michael guarded it in his lap.
“Maybe it's private,” Rumer said softly, watching Quinn's eyes.
“Nonsense,” Elizabeth said. “Right, Quinn?”
“It's private and public at the same time,” she whispered. “The thoughts are mine, even though I didn't write them.”
Rumer, knowing what an avid diarist Quinn was, felt eager to see what was inside. Zeb had stepped back from the table to circle behind everyone else and slide his arm secretly behind Rumer's back. She tingled under his touch, and from the anticipation of what was in Quinn's book.
Now, slowly, Michael opened the front cover.
Quinn had drawn several scenes of stick figures: Michael—unmistakably him because of his red bandanna—pulling lobster pots with Quinn—unmistakably her because of her frizzy hair—at the helm; the two of them sitting side by side, reading books; on an airplane flying over the ocean, their faces in one window; and last, most tenderly, the stick-girl bending over to kiss the forehead of the stick-boy
“It's us,” Michael whispered, taking her hand.
“But there's more,” Elizabeth said, reading over his shoulder. “Words… from the Bard… oh, my God!”
“What is it?” Michael asked.
“My dear!” Elizabeth said. “It's Juliet! Act Three, Scene Two—my favorite in all of Shakespeare! ‘Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds,’ “ she sang out.
“Blue,” Zeb whispered in Rumer's ear.
“It doesn't say that, Mom,” Michael said. “It says—”
“I know what it says, dear. I know exactly what it says—I was just giving you the lines that precede it in the text. Do I know this scene, or what, Zeb?”
“You know it,” Zeb said quietly.
“Romeo and Juliet,” Elizabeth said, her eyes sparkling. “Our finest hour…” She touched the pin on her collar. “Remember when you found this for me? In the gutter! Of all the streets in all of New York; when I think of the hours it had been lying there… and you just bent down and picked it up as we passed by.”
“I remember,” Zeb said. “Amazing coincidence…”
“Meant to be,” Elizabeth laughed. “Losing it that night, I thought I'd never see it again.”
“But Dad found it,” Michael said as if the story were an old and precious family legend.
“I'm still wearing it,” Elizabeth said, glancing down. “How ‘bout you, Rue? Do you still have yours?”
“Of course,” Rumer said.
“Our special pins. They're different from eachother; one of them has a secret…”
“What's the secret?” Quinn asked.
“I don't know. Our mother always said she'd tell us someday,” Rumer said. “But she died first; she never did.”
“Show Quinn,” Michael suggested. “She'll get it, I bet.”
While Rumer went upstairs to get her pin, she heard Elizabeth take the book Quinn had made and start reading. The scene, Juliet in the orchard, was intense, passionate, filled with the anticipation and excitement of waiting for Romeo. The words stirred Rumer, reminding her deeply of how it had felt to wait for Zeb—as children, teenagers, all through her life.
The thing was, she couldn't bear to face her sister acting it out now, downstairs, as if she were speaking of Zeb—with him standing right there. It felt like an arrow through her heart—and she couldn't get away from it. Zeb's body and Elizabeth's body had joined together and produced Michael—eighteen years and nearly nine months ago today.
Elizabeth delivered the speech masterfully, her voice ringing through the old house as if she were standing on stage at the Lark Theater. Her skin crawling now, Rumer remembered the night when she and Zeb had gone to see her perform.
Returning downstairs with the gold lighthouse pin in her hand, Rumer was just in time to hear her sister get a huge round of applause. Quinn was clapping the loudest, her face radiant with the joy of hearing such beautiful words read by Michael's mother.
Rumer's stomach dropped, remembering how Elizabeth had given that speech at the Lark Theater; listening in the audience, Rumer had thrilled to it, feeling it was about herself and Zeb. Yet by the end of the night, while she was on the train home, Zeb would have found Elizabeth's pin in the gutter, and the two of them would have become lovers.
“Bravissimo!” Quinn called, still clapping.
Walking over to her, Rumer put the lighthouse pin in her hand. Quinn smiled into her eyes, her hand chapped and rough from lobstering.
“Look at Mom's too,” Michael said.
Quinn looked from one pin to the other. Rumer had long since stopped wondering what made them special, different from each other. Perhaps her mother had just bestowed particular blessings—one for each of her very different daughters—on the jewelry the day it was made.
Each pin was about an inch high. The lighthouse looked exactly like the Wickland Rock Light—made of bricks, straight and narrow, with four small windows, one over the other, rising to the lens on top. The rock island spread out from its base, made of individual tiny gold nuggets.
“The island looks so real,” Quinn said, tracing the surface of each pin with her index finger.
“What makes us think Quinn will know the difference between these two pins?”
“Because Quinn is very good,” Rumer said, her hand on the girl's shoulder, “at seeing the truth of things. She always has been. As far as I know, she's the only one who's actually encountered Mom and Mrs. Mayhew's unicorn.”
“I have,” Quinn said quietly. “On foggy nights.”
“You said I saw one,” Michael said. “The day of your aunt's wedding.”
“Don't tell me you've started smoking pot,” Elizabeth said to her son, but no one reacted. Everyone was watching Quinn, but no one—besides Rumer— recognized the moment when she discovered the secret. Not even Michael.
But Rumer had known Quinn since she was born. All her years of science had taught her to observe the moments—big and small—of discovery. That single instant when the click occurs, when all the facts fall into place, when everything suddenly makes sense. In the biology lab, in the field, in her surgery.
A blush spread up Quinn's neck into her cheeks. Blinking, she shook her head, handing the two pins back to their rightful owners. “I'm sorry,” she said softly. But as she did, her eyes met Rumer's and flashed with excitement. Rumer saw Quinn's gaze flick toward Zeb, and the blush increased even more.
“Well. You gave it your best try,” Elizabeth said. “Okay. What about cake?”
“Not yet,” Michael said. “One more thing…”
“Anything, darling. You're the birthday boy.”
“I want Quinn to read her present to me.”
“Read it?” Quinn asked, smiling.
“Yeah. The lines… Act Three, Scene Two,” Michael said, smiling back.
Elizabeth laughed. “Out of the mouths of babes,” she said. “Not to blow my own horn, but you did just hear the Juliet-to-end-all-Juliets… tell them, Zeb.”
Zeb ignored her, watching Quinn, nodding with encouragement. “Go on, Quinn.”
“I can't follow such a wonderful performance,” Quinn said.
“Sure you can,” Rumer said. “Let it come from your heart, just like when you copied the lines into the diary.”
“You can do it, Quinn,” Zeb said, passing the girl Rumer's lighthouse pin. “You can wear this for luck.”
Although she didn't pin it on, Quinn held the pin in her hand. She closed her eyes, and Rumer could see her drawing strength from the gold, the love, and the nearness of Michael. Rumer felt the anticipation that sometimes precedes a stunning performance, and she knew even before Quinn opened her mouth that it was going to be great because it was going to be true.
Come, night; come, Romeo!
The passion in her
voice shook Rumer to the core. Quinn continued, speaking straight to Michael:
Come thou day in night;
For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night,
Whiter than new snow upon a raven's back.
Come gentle night, come loving black-browed night,
Give me my Romeo, and when he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine,
That all the world will be in love with night.
As Rumer wiped the tears from her eyes, she expected to see Quinn doing the same. But her attention was caught by Michael instead. He was gazing at Quinn with bright eyes and all the love the heart of an eighteen-year-old man could hold.
“You're awesome,” he said.
“That was for you,” Quinn replied, grinning.
“Little stars,” Michael said. “I'll give them to you when we get married.”
“What?” Elizabeth asked.
“We're getting married,” Michael said.
“You're out of your mind,” his mother said, her voice rising.
Zeb stayed calm. He watched the drama unfold, tension in his face. But right now his son had a new and different seriousness of purpose about him, as if the first order of business of being eighteen was going to be marrying Quinn Grayson.
“Talk them out of this,” Elizabeth said sharply to Zeb. When he didn't respond, she turned to Rumer. “Do you hear me? Tell them they're wrong—it's illegal.”
“Marriage isn't illegal,” Rumer said.
“When you're this young it is!”
“Young?” Zeb asked.
“Yes! Let them court for as long as they want. Beach movies, boat rides, Little Beach, messages in the drawer at Foley's, the Indian Grave… innocent things that won't ruin anyone's life.”
In the midst of her tirade, Elizabeth looked Rumer straight in the eye, and then she looked sharply away. Mystery filled the air. Rumer's heart began to speed up, and she knew it was time for her to see the truth of something she'd always wanted to hide from. Elizabeth's glance had hit Rumer like a knife, and it took all her effort to breathe normally.
Michael and Quinn held hands, huddling together by the chair. Rumer watched them, so wrapped up in their own love that they couldn't hear or see what was going on. She listened to her own blood pounding in her ears, and she held herself with arms crossed over her chest.
