by Vella, Wendy
“Why’d you choose Dallas?”
She seemed uncomfortable, Piper thought. Like Dylan, Charlotte hated personal questions.
“I—ah, it had what I wanted.”
As did plenty of other places closer to Ryker Falls. Piper’s guess was that this was another sibling who’d been run out of town by her bossy mother.
“Maggie?”
Piper saw Fin coming down the trail toward them wearing his ranger uniform. He pushed his aviators on top of his head so they could clearly see his eyes and the frown he was throwing Maggs.
“What the hell are you doing out here?”
“Hey, Fin.”
“Hey, Pip,” he said, keeping his eyes on Maggs.
“This is Charlotte Howard, Dylan’s sister,” Piper added, hoping to draw his attention off her friend. Maggs and Fin had always been like two cats, hissing and spitting at each other.
He shook Charlotte’s hand, said hello, then returned his attention to Maggie, who looked flushed and uncomfortable.
“And I repeat, what the hell are you doing out here?”
“I’m hiking.”
“Why?”
“I want to.”
“You hate hiking, and exercise for that matter.”
“I don’t!”
“You told me so yourself.”
“Whatever, I don’t have time to stop and talk, Fin. I need to walk, then I get wine.”
“What’s the deal with her?” Fin whispered as Maggs stalked away from him looking pissed off.
“She met someone who likes hiking. She’s trying to impress him.”
Fin’s mouth drew into a line.
“So what are you doing up here?” Piper asked.
“Checking the course for the Coffee Run.”
“They still do that?” Charlotte sounded surprised.
“Sure.” He looked at Charlotte. “You planning on entering?”
“No, I won’t be here.”
“Those Howards don’t give much away, do they?” Fin said softly as Charlotte walked away. “She carries the same look as her brother.”
“Hardly surprising when you remember who their mother is.”
“There is that. Okay, sweet cheeks, duty calls. Watch the crazy redhead doesn’t fall down a bank or walk into a tree, will you.”
“Roger,” Piper said, accepting his kiss on the cheek.
They walked for an hour, then turned around and walked back again. Piper loved every minute, especially as the two women she walked with didn’t want to talk, which left her alone with her thoughts.
“Thank God,” Maggs moaned as they reached her home. “You two go on in and take a seat, I’ll get us something to drink and eat. Bailey’s probably already here.”
“I should probably leave,” Charlotte said, standing outside the front door looking uncomfortable.
“Why?” Piper asked her.
“Oh well… ah, I need to get home.”
“You told me you saw your dad just before we hiked.”
“I—yes, but Dylan and Ava….”
“Wine and food, what’s not to like. Move your ass, girl.” Piper waved Charlotte inside, deciding to take the choice away from her.
“Hello.”
Bailey was seated in the conservatory, which was the feature of the little cottage. Views of Roxy and Phil dominated the vista, and it was somewhere a person could lose themselves for a few hours.
“Wow.” Charlotte stopped walking when she saw it.
“Impressive, right?” Piper followed her.
“It really is.”
“Charlotte, this is Bailey. She’s married to my cousin Joe.”
After introductions they all sat and Maggs brought wine and snacks.
“How’s your dad, Charlotte?” Bailey asked.
“He’s better, thank you, and should be home soon.”
“That’s good. Must have been scary for you all.”
“It was, and difficult as I had to leave behind a series of meetings to get here, but Dylan sent me an email saying he was coming, so I thought I better too.”
An email. Surely this should have been discussed by phone? Piper wondered just what kind of job Mary Howard had done on her children to make them all emotionless.
“Where do you live, Charlotte?” Bailey asked.
“In Dallas.”
The woman wasn’t comfortable with this, Piper thought. Not comfortable with the girl thing. The gossip and sharing, almost as if it was something she rarely did.
“So, nice to have all the family together again after so long. Dylan, Ava, and you. Your parents must be happy,” Maggs said, sitting on the arm of Piper’s chair.
“Of course.” Charlotte dropped her eyes, which pretty much told the other women she was lying.
“You and Dylan catch up often?”
Charlotte took a sip of the wine she clutched in her hand before answering Piper’s question.
“No, we haven’t stayed in contact. Dad sends the occasional email, telling us all the news, but other than that we… well, we’re pretty much strangers. In fact, that email from Dylan was the first one in a long while.” Her laugh was dry and painful, and the smile on her face brittle.
“Did you enjoy the hike?” Bailey asked, changing the subject.
“Oh yes. I walk a lot, but the scenery is not as amazing as this.” Charlotte frowned. “I’d forgotten how lovely it is here.”
They moved on to less stressful topics and away from anything personal after that, which was hard for Piper as she wanted to ask questions about Dylan—which told her exactly why she needed to keep her distance.
Girl talk was something Piper, Maggs, and lately Bailey, excelled at. They gossiped, discussed fashion and movies, and laughed a lot. Charlotte simply listened and added nothing, and was clearly uncomfortable. They tried to include her but all attempts failed.
“Anyone special in your life, Charlotte?” Maggs asked.
“I don’t have time to date at the moment.”
“But you go out, right, with friends?”
“Look, not everyone lives their life like an episode of Friends, okay. I like what I do and how my life is tracking. For now my career is what’s most important.”
“Sure, and no one said any different. We were just interested in what was happening with you, Charlie. I mean, we were once all friends,” Maggs said.
“Charlotte,” she said, getting to her feet. “I should go; this was a mistake.”
“No, sit, please, we didn’t mean to upset you,” Piper said.
Her cell phone started ringing, and Charlotte dug it out of the pocket of her jacket. “Excuse me, I must take this call.”
No one spoke until she’d left the room.
“Okay, so that was awkward,” Piper said.
“She didn’t talk much on the walk either, and isn’t comfortable here. It’s weird, don’t you think? I mean, sure I forced her into letting me hike with her, but still… you’d think she’d be chattier. And what was that last bit about? Who doesn’t date or have a social life?” Maggs said.
“She’s also got the same look as her siblings,” Piper added.
“She’s unhappy,” Bailey said softly. “I know what that looks like, because when I arrived back in Ryker Falls I was just like Charlotte. Edgy, and wary of people. Plus, I didn’t date.”
“I remember,” Piper said. “You looked scared the whole time.”
“Not all the time, surely!”
“Most, but that always changed when you saw Joe, and if you sigh again just because I mentioned his name, you can leave.”
“Jealousy is an ugly trait, Piper.” Bailey laughed.
As five minutes crept into ten they talked about other things, and then the door opened and Charlotte stood there, all color drained from her face.
“What’s happened?” Piper got to her feet.
“It’s nothing.”
“It sure looks like something.”
She opened her mouth, but nothing
came out. Shock, Pip thought. This was a woman who’d just received devastating news.
“Is it your dad?”
“No.”
“Come and sit down, Charlotte, you look ready to faint.”
“I-I need to go.”
Her hands were shaking; Piper knew this because she’d grabbed one.
“Sure, and you can as soon as you calm down,” Bailey said, taking her other arm and leading her to a chair. “Call someone to come get you, or we’ll take you home.”
“Why?” Charlotte’s eyes were wide in her face. “Th-they can’t help.”
“They can, and that’s what family does.”
Her laugh bordered on hysterical. “Not my family.”
Maggs disappeared, and Piper thought it was to make coffee.
Piper picked up Charlotte’s wineglass and handed it to her. Long minutes passed as Bailey and Piper talked about nothing and let the woman calm down. Maggs came back holding a mug of steaming coffee and handed it to Charlotte.
A knock on the door ten minutes later had Maggs getting to her feet again. She walked back in with Dylan Howard on her heels. Big, imposing, with that ruthlessly polite expression on his face, his eyes locked on Piper first before finding his sister.
“What’s happened, Charlie?” He dropped down before her.
“Why are you here?”
“Maggs called me, she said you were upset.”
“She shouldn’t have. This is my business, not yours.”
“Sure, but now I’m here, you want to tell me what’s wrong?”
“I’m okay. I just need to get back and figure something out.”
“Back to Dallas or the house?”
“Dallas.”
“Okay, I can help you with that, but how about we discuss why you need to go too?”
The Howard siblings didn’t touch like she would if one of her family was hurting. Piper would have wrapped her arms around them and held them close, but not these two. The distance between them was vast.
“I can handle it. I—ah, just need to go now and work through some stuff.”
“What do you need to figure out?”
“Leave it, Dylan. There’s no need to do this for appearances’ sake.” Charlotte whispered the words, but Piper heard them. She then watched as Charlotte put a hand on Dylan’s shoulder to push him out of her way. He didn’t move.
“This is not about appearances, it’s about concern, Charlie.”
Charlotte looked at Piper, then Bailey and Maggs.
“I need to go.”
They were private people, these Howards. Unlike the Trainers, who were demonstrative and loud.
Piper wanted to reach out and touch the muscles of Dylan’s clenched jaw. It was hard to watch them, two people who had no idea how to communicate with each other. A brother and sister who were like strangers. She wanted to yell at them to hug each other, but it wasn’t her place to do so.
“Come on, I’ll give you a lift home then, because I know Ava dropped you here.”
Piper stepped up to Charlotte as she rose and wrapped her arms around the woman. She was stiff and tension radiated, but didn’t pull away.
“Come into the café when you get a chance. Coffee will be on me.”
“I’ll be leaving now.”
Dylan gave them a nod, and then they were gone.
“Holy crap, those two are like total strangers,” Maggs said, falling into a seat. “I nearly got frostbite just being close.”
“It’s sad, but I remember what it’s like to have family and not feel close to anyone. It’s lonely,” Bailey said.
“But now you’re stuck with us.” Piper gripped her cousin-in-law’s hand.
“I do, and it’s the best thing that ever happened.”
“I hope they at least talk on the way home,” Piper said, looking at the door the Howard siblings had just left by. “What the hell do you think happened to Charlotte?”
“I don’t know, but it’s bad is my guess,” Maggs said. “Really bad if you consider the shock on Charlotte’s face.”
Piper hoped whatever it was, that it didn’t impact too greatly on Charlie’s life. She also hoped the Trainer siblings found a way to connect with each other before they went their separate ways again, because it was lonely without siblings, she knew that, and never wanted to go back there again.
CHAPTER TEN
Dylan turned up the heat in his Range Rover because Charlie was shivering. Her face was pale, and eyes wide. He knew she was in shock, just not why.
“Warm enough?”
“Sure.”
Maggie Winter had called his parents’ house while Dylan was sitting at the kitchen table working. As he was the only one home, he’d answered. Maggie said Charlie was upset and needed him to come and get her, so here he was.
Piper had been seated beside Charlotte when he arrived, looking sexy, and then he’d looked at his sister. The devastation he’d read in her face had rocked him.
“What’s happened, Charlie?”
“It’s nothing.”
Her hands were clenched in her lap, eyes forward, but he doubted she saw anything outside the window. Dylan knew body language. He knew many things about people and how they reacted.
“How was the hike?”
“Good.”
“I’ve forgotten so much about this place. It’s nice here. For so long I blocked it out, made it a place I never wanted to visit again... turns out I was wrong,” he said. “The people too. I mean, they’re nosey as hell, and are continually asking me questions, which weirdly I seem to be answering, but still, I hadn’t realized how much I missed Ryker until I came back.”
“I-it’s nice here.”
The whispered words were a start.
“Please tell me what’s wrong.”
“Dylan, we don’t do this, so just let it go.”
“This being?”
“The brother-sister thing. The acting like we give a shit.” Her words came out with a bite to them.
“Because we’ve never wanted to.”
“Right.”
“But maybe now I do.”
Did he?
Her laugh was ugly. “Too little, too late. We are a product of a dysfunctional family; let’s not break with tradition.”
He drove past the end of the street his parents lived on and followed the river down to the boardwalk.
“Where are you going?”
He kept driving until he saw the basketball court and the beginnings of a building site. He found shops, saw a herbalist, a massage place, and a greengrocer. The window display had lots of leafy vegetables and baskets of fruit with the word organic written in large gold letters. Dylan lived a healthy life because his body needed some of that from time to time, but not too much, and it certainly looked like a place he would avoid while in Ryker.
He parked facing the water, then switched off the engine.
“That’s going to be a recreation center. Mr. Goldhirsh told me about it. Joe Trainer wanted it built, our mother didn’t, he won,” Dylan said, looking at the water.
“Imagine Mary Howard not getting her way.”
“Yeah, hard to believe, isn’t it. I found out that she’s been making the Trainers’ lives hell since I left, especially Joe’s.”
Charlie turned to look at him.
“What? Why?”
“Because she blames him for me leaving, and I’m not entirely sure she’s going to stop, even though I’ve told her to.”
“Why do you care?” She looked out the windshield again. “This place is nothing to you. You don’t do personal, remember.”
“Don’t you get sick of that?”
“What?”
“The not caring, the living for yourself with no connections?”
“It’s all I know,” she whispered.
“Me too, and I thought that suited me, but coming here, it’s like someone’s taken a can opener to me and now all this stuff is leaking out.”
“What stu
ff?”
“Emotions, needs. It’s weird, I’ve been back only a few days and I’ve talked more with people here than I have in years in New York. Really talked. Laughed too. Hell, this morning I did exercise class with a group of seniors.”
“You’re kidding me?”
“I’m not, it just kind of happened.”
“I don’t know if I can open myself up again,” Charlie said. “I don’t know if I’m capable.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean, but maybe we could try with just us two, and hopefully bring in Ava when she’s ready. Plus, there’s Dad who has always loved us.”
“He should have stood up for us though, Dylan. Taken our sides instead of sitting on the fence.”
“I know it, and I think he does too now.”
“Is he really going to be okay?”
“I spoke to the doctors and they said he’d make a full recovery, it will just take time.”
They were silent for a while.
“It was hard when you left, Dylan, Ava and I were lost for a while. She would go to your room and lie on your bed because she said it made her feel closer to you.”
Christ. The image of his little sister lying there wishing he was home hurt; more than that, it made him realize how selfish he was.
“It was like one day you were there and the next gone forever. You were our leader, Dylan, and without you the wheels well and truly fell off.”
“God, I was so angry, Charlie. All I could think about was getting away from here and Mom. Getting away from everyone and everything. I didn’t want to be a Howard from Ryker Falls anymore.”
“I know, and Ava knew too, it was just hard because we had no contact with you because Mom wouldn’t give us any information on how to reach you.”
“Bitch!” The word exploded from Dylan. “God, I’m sorry, Charlie. You and Ava deserved better from your big brother.”
Dylan had gone and not looked back. He’d been an angry, confused young man, uncaring of those he’d left behind. Sure, he’d missed his sisters, but told himself they’d be fine without him.
“I can keep saying sorry, but I guess now what we need is action. So how about you and I at least try to be friends, and then maybe the sibling thing will come?”
