“And here you are.” Julietta had thrown her arms around her. “Oh, Jo! I’m so sorry. After all you went through to get here, you didn’t even get pizza.”
They talked long into the night. And they cried, none harder than Johanna. Emma and Julietta still lived in Bitterly and Nina made certain she returned home for every holiday. Only Johanna stayed away with a million excuses and none of them good enough to justify an eight-year absence.
The aromas of coffee and bacon crept into her room. More snow in the night kept Emma with them instead of going home to her husband and boys. It would be she doing up breakfast the way Gram always did. Johanna pulled back the covers and swung her legs out of bed. The nasty scraping sound outside continued. She looked out the window to see a plow clearing the driveway. Someone was shoveling the front walk. A shock of red hair had her throwing open the window to shout, “Good morning, Charlie.”
The young man who looked up was not Charlie for all he looked like him. Exactly, in fact, like the kid she used to know. Her heart caught in her throat for the memories pelting. This room. That boy. But it wasn’t Charlie, and everything was different now.
“Hey,” he called back. “You looking for my dad?”
“I suppose I am.”
“He’s in the truck. Will’s doing the back walk. I got this one. You’ll be shoveled clear in no time.”
“And you are?”
“Caleb. Which sister are you?”
“Johanna.”
“The one who lives at the beach. Cool.”
“It’s far from cool, I assure you. Cape May is full of old people and tourists.”
He laughed and waved and Johanna closed the window. If she could find the ingredients in the pantry, she’d make the boys her famous hot chocolate. She pulled on the thick robe perpetually hanging on the back of her door, wrapped it tight and followed her nose to breakfast.
Faded school photos lined the hallway painted the same yellow as her bedroom. Gram had let them each choose her own colors when Emma and Julietta came to them in the big farmhouse in Bitterly. Nina, a cool and sophisticated thirteen-year-old, chose blue with white trim. Emmaline, only six, wanted mauve and olive green. Head still bandaged and arm in a sling, Julietta’s four-year-old love of purple and orange had been indulged. But Johanna, eleven and confused as to why they were decorating rooms when Mommy had once again vanished and Daddy was dead and now she had two little sisters as well as a big one, chose the soft, buttercream yellow.
“You?” Poppy had asked. “My wild Johanna? Not red or crazy-girl pink?”
He took her into his wiry arms, right there in the paint shop, when she started to cry. “It reminds me,” she whispered against his neck. Of the house in New Hampshire, the one that burned. It reminded her of them.
He bought three gallons of the buttercream yellow.
“What? It was on sale. Half price,” he told Gram when she scolded. He painted her room first, then the hallway. Last, because there was enough left over, he painted the room he shared with Gram.
“It reminds me too.”
It was their secret. One of many. She suspected he had them with her sisters too, those half-truths more story than anything real, like Weiner-schnitzel, the little man who lived in his pocket, whose voice only she could hear.
Johanna stopped outside Gram’s bedroom door, pressed her hand to the wood panel. She let her hand slide to the knob, felt the cool metal, let it go before any more memories got loose. Instead she hurried down the stairs, her feet thumping like when she was a kid late for school. Already there were her sisters, lined up at the counter like pretty maids in a row, sipping coffee. At the table sat Nina’s husband, ridiculously gorgeous despite his dark hair sticking up in spikes, and the stubble of a man who needed more than one shave a day. Johanna stopped short of sliding across the polished wood floor into the kitchen the way she used to, but only because she wasn’t wearing the proper socks.
“Hey, Gunner. I didn’t know you were still here.”
“I went to bed early so you ladies could have some time alone.” He stood up and pulled Johanna into an embrace, kissed both cheeks. “Good to see you, Jo.”
She tried to laugh. “It hasn’t been that long.”
“Almost a year.”
“No it hasn’t. Nina and I just…oh…” She pressed cool fingers to her burning cheeks. “I guess it has been a while. New Year’s right?”
His smile crinkled in the corners of his blue eyes. “Right. Nina said you had a hard time getting here.”
“It was insane. But I’m here now.” She slipped one arm around his waist, the other around Emma’s. “We all are. Gram would love it.”
“Yes, she would have. At Thanksgiving.” Emma slipped out of her embrace but kissed her cheek. “You’re here now, and Christmas is in less than a week. You will stay, won’t you?”
“I sup—”
“Good. Eat. I have to go. Snow day. Got to get home to the boys so Mike can go to work.”
Johanna let her arm slip from Gunner’s waist. Emma had every right to be upset, despite their tearful reunion. To go unchastised indefinitely was too much too hope for. She pulled out a vinyl chair and plucked a slice of bacon from the plate. Julietta dropped onto the chair beside her. “Emma’s been cranky lately,” she exaggerated a whisper. “I think she’s prego.”
“I am not cranky,” Emma said, putting on her coat. “And I am definitely not pregnant.”
“You and Mike not having sex again?”
Emma froze. Johanna cringed but Julietta sat poker-straight, head cocked and her expression concerned.
“Sex isn’t the issue,” Emma said, resuming her struggle with the zipper. “It’s…nothing. Nothing that needs discussing now. Supper at my house tonight. Nina, you and Gunner, too.”
“We’ll be there.”
“What about me?” Julietta asked. Emma kissed both her cheeks.
“You are a given, darling.” She headed for the door. “Seven o’clock. Bring wine.”
Gunner’s cell rang just as Emma closed the door. Bits of her brother-in-law’s hushed conversation drifted back into the kitchen. Nina poured another round of coffee before sitting down herself, her attention focused on her husband.
“He’s going to have to leave,” she said quietly. “It was nearly impossible for him to get out of the city to come here at all. Huge things happening at the gallery.”
“How huge?” Julietta asked. “Da Vinci huge?”
“Not art-wise. There’s been this firm out of Sweden wooing us for years. They want to buy us out, and I think temptation is starting to get to Gunner. If they succeed, the good news is neither one of us will ever have to work again.”
“And the bad news?”
Nina smiled into her coffee. “Neither one of us will have to work again.”
“How tempted are you, Nina?”
“I love the gallery. We’ve worked really hard all these years to grow it from that stinky little artist co-op into what it is now. But I’m ready to let it go, maybe travel a bit. I just don’t think Gunner would last a year living the life of the idle rich.”
The sisters ate and chatted, but Nina’s attention remained on Gunner. When he came to the doorway and motioned her to him, she went without a word.