The Beautiful Daughters

by Nicole Baart

  Harper turned from the window, one set of false eyelashes in place and the other clinging to the tip of her finger. She looked uneven, maybe even a little mad, and by the way she was staring at Adri, she wasn’t very impressed by her friend’s casual observations.

  “First,” she said, holding up the finger with the eyelashes still attached, “David isn’t the least bit interested in me. Nor I in him. We could never be lovebirds. Friends, coconspirators, more like.”

  “Second—” Harper’s middle finger popped up and dislodged the clinging row of lashes. Adri watched them flutter to the ground but Harper seemed not to notice. “He invited us over because he’s a very lonely young man. Don’t tell him I told you so; he’d be pissed.”

  “Third, never, ever underestimate yourself, my lovely friend. You are a thing of beauty, a slow burn, a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted. Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in the mirror. But you are eternity and you are the mirror.”

  Adri rolled onto her back so she could clap slowly. “Bravo,” she muttered, gazing at her friend upside down. They hadn’t known each other long, months not years, but time had felt condensed in the early days of their friendship and Adri already knew the way that Harper’s mouth quirked when she was on the verge of laughing. “And who, exactly, are you quoting?”

  “Kahlil Gibran. Hell’s bells, girl, tell me you’ve read him!” Harper looked at her finger and realized the eyelash was missing, so she hopped off the desk and went to her knees on the hardwood floor. “Didn’t your father teach you anything at all?”

  “Nope,” Adri said. “Neither Gibran nor how to apply false eyelashes.”

  “Well, you’re missing out.” Harper burst upright, slightly mangled lashes once again dangling from her index finger. “I have so much to teach you!”

  They dressed for supper, Harper in the cocktail dress and a pair of heels that made her look downright Amazonian. She was stunning, and Adri felt diminished in comparison. Her navy skirt and striped sweater seemed matronly, and any confidence that she’d gained during the bikini fashion show had long faded. But she dutifully followed Harper down the main staircase at seven o’clock sharp, just as David had directed them to do.

  A part of Adri couldn’t believe that she was actually inside the mansion. It was all she had ever wanted as a little girl at the Piperhall summer picnic—even the smallest peek would have sufficed—but no one had ever been allowed to step foot in the house. But all at once the entire setup seemed inauthentic to Adri, distortedly grandiose, and as they descended the sweeping staircase she felt a stab of annoyance that David would put them through such theatrics. Who did this? Who lived in a twenty-room house with two people? What sort of man expected his college-age guests to get dressed up for supper on what was supposed to be a carefree weekend away from school? The whole thing felt affected to her.

  But when they rounded the curve, David, Jackson, and Will were lounging in the entryway, watching them approach. They were all in exactly the same clothes they had on when they left campus hours before—jeans and T-shirts, even though they had expertly feigned irritation at Victoria’s dinner dress code and the need to pack a tie. Will and Jackson seemed almost sheepish, but David wore a self-satisfied smirk that should have been unattractive. It was somehow enchanting.

  “Told you,” Will said, stepping forward and putting a hand on David’s shoulder. “She’s really not the type.”

  “Excuse me?” Harper was standing on the bottom step, the heels and the added inches of the stair making her tower over the guys, even though David was far from short.

  “We had a little bet going,” Jackson smiled, but it was hesitant. “David figured you’d both get all dressed up if he told you to, and Will said Adri wouldn’t.”

  “I’m dressed up,” Adri huffed, tugging at the three-quarter-length sleeves of her thin sweater.

  Will looked between Harper and Adri, then gave his sister a look as if to say, Seriously?

  She would have marched right back upstairs and changed into a pair of jeans, if Harper hadn’t thrown back her head and laughed like she was in on their little trick. “Ohhh,” Harper said, drawing out the word. She smoothed her hands down the curve of her formfitting dress and sighed. “You are such pathetic little men. It’s sad, really, to realize that you wouldn’t know what to do with us even if you could catch us. I had expected more of you. Come on, Adri.”

  And then she took off down the long hall, her heels clicking against the floor in a staccato of reprimand. Adri watched her go, as ruffled as the men, and didn’t realize until Harper was halfway gone that she was supposed to follow.

  It was one moment, one insignificant occurrence that should have been nothing but chaff against the backdrop of all her consequential memories. But everything mattered, everything, and though it seemed small, the guys treated Adri and Harper as equals after that. By the time they were known as The Five, they were not the sort to prank each other or pull rank, but they existed in a sort of composed balance where each person was respected and admired as both beautifully independent and inextricably fused. And it was all because of Harper.

  Sometimes, it felt like everything was because of Harper.

  It had been over five years since the first time she slept in the room at the end of the hall, but the bedding was the same. A neutral duvet cover in an elegant floral brocade. Although it was old, it still looked new, and it felt exactly the same when Adri reached out a hand to touch it. Cool and silky, the flowers a subtle silver pattern on fabric that reminded her of smudged charcoal. She sat on the bed, tracing the petals with her fingertips, and before she knew it, she was curled up on her side, cheek against the pillow. Adri could just see the garage from where she lay, the white paint beginning to peel in places and a couple of shingles curled up at the edges, weathered by rain and snow and wind. This was exactly where she had spent so many nights with Harper, dreaming about being David’s lover, about becoming the next Mrs. Galloway. And though some things felt like they would never change, everything was different. She was different.

  When Adri closed her eyes, she could picture Harper perched on the desk, her face turned toward the sun.

  She missed her with an ache so deep it felt bottomless.

  She missed Harper more than Blackhawk and the life she almost had. Adri missed Harper more than she missed David.

  9

  When sam found adri later that evening, she was in the horse pasture on the estate, mending the whitewashed fence. An old tool belt from the workbench in the garage was slung low on her hips, and though the light was fading quickly and a nighttime cool was wisping through the air, fine beads of sweat clung to her forehead. Adri knelt on the ground, one knee in the dirt and the other propping up a ten-foot length of fallen board. She was working to pull a bent, rusty nail out of the warped wood. “Need a hand?” Sam asked, leaning his forearms on the fence.

  Adri glanced up and saw her father bite back a grin. She would’ve been angry, but she knew he wasn’t laughing at her. He simply loved to watch her work. He always had. When she was little, he would catch her on the floor in her bedroom, the contents of every drawer and closet in her room spread around her. She’d fold, refold, and then carefully organize and arrange everything so that if she wanted her green T-shirt from 4-H, she could find it blindfolded in five seconds flat.

  But Adri wasn’t just organized. She was a fixer, too. A mender of broken things, a one-stop repair shop of a girl who learned early how to wield any tool like a pro. It was exactly why she had decided to go into nursing—an occupation that David had routinely tried to talk her out of. “You don’t need to work,” he told her after they were engaged. He nibbled her ear, his warm breath making her shiver. “You’ll never need to work another day in your life.” It didn’t sound like a promise to Adri. It sounded like a threat.

  The nail finally gave and skidded out of the wide board with a hollow s
queak. Adri plucked it out of the crowbar head of the hammer and added it to a growing pile of rusty nails in the front pocket of her tool belt. “No thanks,” she said hefting the board into place and centering it on the post. “I don’t need any help.” But Sam reached down and secured the wood for her anyway so both of her hands were free to drive the new nails.

  They worked in silence for a few minutes, Sam holding the plank steady as Adri expertly hammered three nails in a triangle pattern. When she was done, she stuck the hammer in the loop of her belt and pulled herself up. Her knees were sore and she bent and flexed them until the blood started to flow back into her feet. Only then did she give her dad a small smile of thanks and set off down the fence in search of the next spot that needed patching.

  Sam trailed her, a step or two behind. “It’s getting late,” he said. “You’ve got to be cold.”

  Adri hadn’t noticed the drop in temperature, but goose bumps rose along her bare arms at the mere mention of the weather. “I want to get just a bit more done.”

  Sam didn’t say anything, but Adri knew what he was thinking. She had chosen an odd job to get started on. A few loose boards on the pasture fence were nothing, really. The horses weren’t going anywhere. Even if an entire section fell down, there was still the thin line of electric fencing and the memory of shock that would keep the small herd contained. But this felt to Adri like a step in the right direction. She was doing something quantifiable. All she had to do was glance back the way she had come to see the neat line of white fencing and know that she had accomplished something.

  “Let me help you finish, at least.”

  Adri shrugged and Sam interpreted the gesture as a yes.

  They worked until the sun fell behind the trees and the shadows became so deep they couldn’t see clearly anymore. The labor was undemanding, but they worked in silence anyway, and when Sam straightened up from the last board he broke the quiet with a jaw-splitting yawn.

  “I suppose we missed supper,” Adri said as they headed back toward the driveway.

  “What day is it?” Sam asked. “Tuesday?”

  “I left Africa on Saturday, traveled until Monday . . .” Adri could hardly believe it had been only a couple of days since she left Caleb standing beneath the blaze of a West African sun. Her entire life had tipped upside down in less than a week. She shook her head. “Yeah, I think it’s Tuesday.”

  “I have supper with Will on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Sometimes Jackson and Nora join us. Tuesdays they cook and Thursdays I do.”

  “Sounds like a nice setup. But didn’t Will and Jackson make supper last night?”

  “You’re home,” Sam said, giving her a sidelong look. “I have a feeling we’ll have supper together every night if you let us. And you don’t need to worry about the time. We eat late.”

  They always had. The afternoon milking came first, and by the time Sam was done cleaning up the parlor and scraping the holding pen, he was in desperate need of some cleaning up himself. First he had a hot shower in the stall that had been added to the converted sunporch on the back of the house, and then he liked a half hour to just be still. That short span of time was one of Adri’s fondest memories of childhood. There was a certain balance to the world, an indisputable peace as her father sat at the table, a Bible open in front of him and a glass of ice water close at hand.

  Sometimes he read out loud. He loved the Psalms, and sometimes the cadence of those words washed over Adri as she sliced bread or set the table around him. It was a love song that he sang to her.

  They had reached the drive and Sam’s truck was parked beside Adri’s Buick. The windows were open and Beckett was sprawled out on the front seat, looking for all the world like a rug instead of a dog. Adri slipped her hand in and patted his broad head, and the thought crossed her mind that the humane thing to do would be to put him down. Poor thing was obviously suffering in his own hushed way. Or maybe he was just so old that he was living in slow motion.

  She said to her father, “You knew, didn’t you?”

  “I did.” Sam confessed, and there wasn’t an ounce of repentance in his voice. “Victoria and I talked about it.”

  “You were friends?” Adri tried to sound nonchalant, but the thought of her father and Victoria becoming bosom buddies made her heart pinch almost painfully. It felt wrong somehow. Dangerous.

  Sam shrugged. “After a fashion. She was a rather isolated woman. When you left I started checking in on her from time to time.”

  Adri didn’t know what to say. “Thank you,” she managed, though she didn’t know what she was thanking him for.

  “She really wanted you to have the estate. She even went so far as to alert her brother-in-law to the change in the will and ensure that he wouldn’t fight it at all.”

  “Why didn’t he? Fight it, I mean.”

  “In the grand scheme of things, Piperhall is only a small fraction of the Galloway fortune. James got what he wanted, and would have sold the house and land if given the chance. His family is in Kansas now—and scattered across the continent, from what I understand. They’re not about to move to northwest Iowa. It just seemed better this way.”

  “Why?”

  “It keeps the estate in the family,” Sam said.

  “Dad”—Adri passed her hand over her eyes and tried not to sigh—“I’m not a Galloway.”

  Sam reached for the truck door and swung it open, gently nudging Adri out of the way as he climbed onto the bench seat. “No,” he said through the open window, after he had shut the door behind him and started the engine. “You’re not a Galloway. But sometimes family is what you make it.”

  “I know, Dad.” Adri nodded, clinging to the decision she had made as if the weight of it could stop her from being swept away. “And I’m going to do good by Victoria. I’m going to make it right. But she’s not my family.”

  Sam didn’t say anything.

  Adri watched him go, his words as heavy and real as a polished stone that she could worry in the palm of her hand. He was right, and she had spent the last decade collecting a small family around her. One to replace the love she had lost. Substitutes for the people she felt she could never return to, no matter how much she sometimes longed to do exactly that.

  It would have hurt Sam to know that Adri had chosen her family a long time ago. They lived halfway around the world and they were her brothers and sisters.

  Her children.

  Adri didn’t get hold of Caleb until Friday, and in the interim she ran herself ragged attending to all the details of Victoria’s will and trying to ignore the nagging guilt inspired by Victoria’s letter. Of course, there were small things to do on the estate itself, but mostly she made phone calls, attended appointments, and wrote checks to tie up the loose ends that, against Victoria’s most fervent wishes, were inevitably left dangling. She also fielded calls from the various recipients of Victoria’s generosity—it seemed everyone wanted someone to thank for the gifts the matriarch of the Galloway fortune had graciously bestowed. Adri tried to be accommodating, but she felt downright deceitful as strangers thanked her again and again. It didn’t matter that she told them she was only the executor. Someone had to hear their gratitude.

  When Adri dutifully circled through Caleb’s cell phone number on Friday morning, she had merely grabbed the old rotary in her father’s kitchen on a whim. After a couple of tries, she had come to the conclusion that Caleb would call her if he needed her, and beyond that there was nothing she could do. She had to let it go, and she was about to force herself to hang up. But after only two fuzzy rings, there was a half-shouted “Hello” that felt like a sucker punch to the gut.

  “Hello? Caleb? Caleb, it’s Adri. Where have you been?”

  More fuzz and static, and then suddenly there was a pop and everything seemed to go flat and clear. “Hey, Adri.” There was a smile in Caleb’s voice, and Adri was shocked tha
t she could actually hear it. They didn’t often get such a good connection. “What’s new with you?”

  “I asked you a question first.” She tried to sound stern, but she was grinning, twisting the curlicued cord of the phone on her finger. “Where have you been? What have you been up to? I’ve been trying to get ahold of you all week!”

  “Calm down.” Caleb laughed. “I’m fine. Everything is fine. We went up-country for a few days because one of the outlying churches was experiencing an outbreak of malaria. We’ve got it under control.”

  “Thank God,” Adri breathed, but she started doing mental calculations almost immediately. The malaria meds were meticulously accounted for and doled out. She wondered where he’d gotten the extras from. Or if he used the medication that had been stockpiled for the kids.

  Before she could ask, he put her mind at ease. “A windfall donation. No worries. Your kids are fine.”

  Your kids. Adri squeezed her eyes shut and fought an ache of homesickness so fierce that it threatened to overwhelm her. She swallowed hard. Then she forced herself to say the words that she had been dreading: “I hate to tell you this, but I won’t be back this weekend.”

  “I figured as much,” Caleb said easily. “Might as well stick around a while. We’ve got everything under control here. Besides, the yearly board trip is coming up in a couple of weeks and our jobs will be rendered rather meaningless for a while. I had planned on talking you into learning to surf and then getting you drunk every night for a week straight, but you might as well stay put. Maybe I’ll come to you.”

  “What?” Adri managed.

  “Well, not drunk-drunk, just a little tipsy. You deserve it, don’t you think? We both do . . .”

  “You’re not actually thinking about coming here, are you?”