The Sunshine Sisters Read online

  Lewis was devastated. The parents met to discuss what would happen, but Lewis’s parents were adamant: a baby was not going to ruin his rowing future. Lewis seemed overwhelmed. He loved Nell, he said, but things had been hard for a while—a long-distance relationship wasn’t what he wanted, he had realized, and a baby definitely wasn’t what he wanted. He did not want to keep the baby and said he thought adoption was clearly the only right solution to this dilemma.

  Not for Nell. She couldn’t, wouldn’t give her baby up. She dropped out of college, but she didn’t go back to her mother’s house. Rather, she found a home at the farm where she had worked with Mrs. Sussman. Lewis stayed in touch until River was six months old. Meredith knows Nell hasn’t heard from him since then, although his parents send a large check every Christmas.

  The farm saved her sister. The caretaker had recently left when Nell got in touch to ask if there might be a live-in position she could take.

  “I promise I won’t let the baby get in the way of my job,” she knew Nell said to Theodora Dorchester, the lovely old patrician owner, who was the third generation of her family on the farm.

  She knew Theodora told her sister that she had known her for years, that no one had a stronger work ethic than her and few knew the farm as well as her. She told Nell she had raised six boys there, each of whom turned out okay. “Except for Peter,” she muttered, shaking her head, refusing to talk about Peter. Nell could move in whenever she liked, she said. They were all used to babies around the place, even though it had been a while. Nell was already “part of the family.”

  Nell told Meredith that the old woman had been businesslike as she said it, but there had been a glimmer of a tear in her eye as she looked away. Meredith knew that Theodora had once told Nell that she had always wanted a daughter, and that Nell was just the kind of girl she would want her daughter to be. Meredith understood now that her moving in was as good for Theodora as it was for Nell, and for River.

  Seeing her now, Meredith knows for certain that her sister has found a place to belong. Nell is happy. Nell once told her that being a single mother is hard, but farm work is harder, and she loves doing both. Plus, there is a team of workers on the place who all love River, who take turns looking after him; plus, now that River has started preschool, it’s easier. Kindergarten is only a year away, and then Nell will have hours every day when she won’t have to worry about him at all.

  Nell opens the fridge and helps herself to a bottle of cranberry juice. “Want some?”

  Meredith nods as Nell gets the glasses, moving around the kitchen they both know so well. However much they both wanted to leave, it’s still home. “What about you? I heard you have a serious boyfriend!” Nell has always been the expert at diverting the conversation away from herself, thinks Meredith wryly. But she bites at the opportunity to talk about Gavin.

  “I don’t know how serious it is, but it’s nice. And I love being in London.”

  “So far away, you mean?” Nell smiles. “I get it.”

  “How is Mom at being a grandparent? Does River see her?”

  “Actually, she’s pretty good. She’s a much better grandparent than parent. He gets to see all the good stuff with none of the bad, or mad.”

  “Wow. I always hear people talk about how the worst parents can still make wonderful grandparents, but I never believed it.”

  Nell nods. “I know. I wouldn’t have believed it either. She’s still impossible, but not with River. She adores him unreservedly, and he adores her.”

  “It’s so weird to think of Mom as a grandmother. She doesn’t seem old enough.”

  “She isn’t, really,” says Nell. “I’m the one who screwed her up with a pregnancy at nineteen. Still, she won’t be called Grandma. She’s Ronron.”

  “As in ‘Da doo’?” Meredith starts to laugh.

  “Exactly!” Nell starts to laugh too as she sings the well-known chorus. “I suggested Gigi, but she says she knows far too many reluctant grandmothers called Gigi. Where is she anyway? Isn’t she supposed to be here?”

  “I thought so too. Especially since I haven’t seen her in months,” says Meredith, turning as they hear yet another car, then a car door. “Speak of the devil,” says Meredith as they both turn to see their mother swoop through the front door, scooping River up and covering him with kisses.

  “What a lovely surprise!” she declares. “My darling boy is here to welcome me home!” She walks into the kitchen and sees Meredith. “Oh, my goodness!” Her hands fly to her mouth. “Meredith! I completely forgot you were coming! Oh, my Lord! Two surprises in one day!” She gathers Meredith in her arms for a hug, then releases her, holding her at arm’s length. “You look like you’ve been eating well,” she says, in the same delighted tone, as Meredith feels her heart sink. She glances at Nell, who shakes her head and rolls her eyes. “London food clearly agrees with you.”

  Meredith says nothing. All she can hear in her head is her mother saying, You are still not good enough. You are not slim enough, pretty enough. I do not approve of the way you look, and I cannot love you looking the way you do. It is the same message Meredith has always gotten from her mother: You are not lovable.

  “Can one of you take my bags upstairs?” says Ronni, unaware of the impact of her words as she moves to the fridge for a bottle of wine. “Nell? Be a dear and open this wine for me.”

  “I’ll take the bag,” says Meredith, whose heart has plummeted, who is on the brink of tears. And once again, she wishes she had never come home.

  2007

  nine

  For years and years River was the earliest of risers. When he was tiny, he would pad into her bedroom and stare at her, his nose inches from her face, until Nell opened her eyes, grinning always at the little face so close to hers. She would always jump out of bed to make him breakfast before setting him in front of a cartoon so she could get the farm organized, go through the daily routine of waking up the animals.

  Today she wakes up at her usual time of 5:15 a.m., the sun almost up outside her window, and she listens. Nothing. No footsteps on the stairs, no chinking of china as River pours cereal into a bowl, no faint cartoon fighting coming from the little room next to the kitchen where he watches TV.

  A teenager, she thinks. We are finally there. At fourteen he is now a morning sleeper, sometimes not rousing until she goes in to physically shake him. He is up all night, playing computer games, watching television, and then he sleeps the day away. It seems absurd for a boy brought up on a farm, brought up in an environment where everyone is up as soon as the roosters start crowing, but there it is. A teenager.

  Padding along the whitewashed bedroom floor she smells the fresh coffee from downstairs, throws open the curtains, and squints at the brightness, even though she can’t see much beyond the old stacked stone wall thanks to a slight morning fog. It happens from time to time in the summer, this gray chilly haze in the morning. But it almost always burns off to a bright, clear, hot day, revealing acres of lush green fields and trees.

  This farm is still the most beautiful place she has seen. The fact that she is able to live here still gives her a shiver of pleasure as she looks out the window every morning. Even on the days she can’t see much, she knows the old stacked stone wall is there, the split-rail fence beyond, meadows stretching farther back, the old red barns breaking up the landscape, lines of trees ending the view.

  Often she pauses to consider how peaceful her life is. There is no chaos, no drama. No one who works here has even the slightest whiff of volatility or emotional instability.

  Theodora Dorchester is old now, in her eighties. While other workers on the farm talk about her in the same terms as a loving and beneficent grandmother, Nell has always thought of her as more of a mother. Theodora is the mother Nell would have chosen, if she had ever been given a choice. She is wise, calm, loving, and consistent. These are qualities Nell has tried to embo
dy for River, but first she has had to learn from Theodora.

  Nell is no longer simply the caretaker; she is the manager. She is the person to whom everyone turns for any decision. She is Theodora’s right-hand man, as the old woman is now too infirm to walk the farm in the way she once did.

  Even a year ago the two of them would walk the farm together in the afternoons, Nell pointing out any problems she saw, asking Theodora for advice. But Theodora is suddenly frail, and not recovering well from a fall that resulted in a broken hip a few months ago. Nell worries about her all the time, about how much longer she’ll be with them. Theodora is still sunny, though, always smiling, always delighted to welcome Nell into her bedroom in the main house to fill her in on all the details of the farm.

  Nell jumps into a quick, hot shower before pulling on jeans, clogs, and a T-shirt. She has never bothered with makeup or fancy hairstyles, instead pulling her long, sun-bleached hair into a tight ponytail, slipping her arms into a sweatshirt to ward off the cold.

  She doesn’t see what she looks like, her appearance never having been important to her. She is what would once have been called a classic beauty, although she has never thought so. Now thirty-three, Nell has slowly grown into her looks. Her features are strong and lovely. Her skin is dark from the sun, and tough, making her look older than her years, but her body is lean and strong.

  She is what you would call statuesque, although she is not yet fully comfortable in her skin, not yet completely at ease with who she is. The mystery to everyone who visits the farm is that she is still single.

  She must be lonely, they think. Surely a lovely young woman such as herself would want to meet someone. Every now and then someone will try to set her up, but Nell is too busy with the farm, too busy as the mother of a teenage boy, to go on any dates. On the rare occasions she has allowed herself to be introduced to someone, it is out of politeness rather than desire.

  And now, after all these years, Nell is used to being on her own, just her and River, the pair of them entirely self-sufficient. Granted, she was a child when she met Lewis Calder, but she was not a child when he left her, not a child when she realized that being in a relationship ran too great a risk of getting hurt. She didn’t need to go through that again. Her priority is River. And the farm.

  Nell downs the coffee before going outside to feed the chickens the vegetable scraps from yesterday and refresh their water. This was River’s job for years, before he morphed into the sleeping teenager, but she doesn’t mind. She likes the routine of going out there herself, hearing the chickens cluck with excitement as they hear her approach, all of them racing to the edge of their run to greet her, see what treats she might have for them today.

  On the way back to the house, she stops to wave to Theodora’s caregiver, who beckons her toward the porch.

  “You’re up so early!” says Nell, with a wave. “Did you catch the sunrise?” Carly shakes her head as Nell notices how tired she looks. “Are you okay?” She walks up the steps. “Is everything okay?”

  “It’s . . . I think we may be beginning the journey.” Carly’s voice is low. “She’s barely eating. I have made all her favorites, but she turns her head. She won’t have anything. She said if I saw you she wants to talk to you. Can you go and see her?”

  Nell nods, a lump in her throat. “I can’t go now, too many things to take care of, but I’ll come by late afternoon when I’ve got everything done. Thank you.” She walks off, whispering a prayer that when the time is right, Theodora’s journey will be peaceful and pain free.

  ten

  The smell of the studio is enough to calm Meredith down. It’s why she keeps coming back, she tells herself. She loves the meditative quality of the quiet room that smells faintly of turpentine and linseed oil. There are old wooden easels placed around the studio and a naked model lying on a large wooden box in the middle of the room. She is perfectly still, staring vacantly into space, a pillow under her head, the soles of her feet dark with shaved pencil and charcoal dust.

  Meredith comes back because an art studio has always been the place she’s turned to for a sense of peace and calm. Growing up, she always had an art desk in her room, busied herself for hours, losing herself in shapes, colors, and swirls. Later, she took courses at the Silvermine School of Art, until she moved to London, when she put it aside for a few years. Now she has rediscovered her early love. She comes back because art has always been her escape. She is coming back here, to the Frognal Arts Center, because of that. Nothing to do with Nicholas, the art teacher, who may be the most perfect man Meredith has ever laid eyes on.

  She has been coming for two years. Her painting skills have improved dramatically, as has her appearance, both of which are largely due to Nicholas. For the first year, Meredith was invisible. She’d arrived at college pudgy, and the freshman fifteen she gained at university soon became thirty, then forty, and her own veil of shame, her mother’s voice echoing in her ears, would keep her quietly at the back of the class, hiding behind her easel. Very occasionally Nicholas would lay a hand on her shoulder or say something to her, direct her pencil, and she would flush scarlet, her heart pounding as she stared straight ahead, wanting his hand to rest there forever, wanting him to move away so she could regain her equilibrium and pretend it had never happened. Pretend she wasn’t unable to breathe, let alone speak. She would sit and nod, hope that no one noticed.

  She would watch as Nicholas leaned down to whisper in the ears of the prettiest girls, the slimmest of girls, the girls who breathed confidence and coolness, who perched on stools with ease and moved through the studio as if they owned it. They were the ones who flirted with Nicholas and joined him after class for a boisterous, noisy night in the pub.

  It was rumored that sometimes they went home with him. Meredith never knew the details. She wasn’t invited to the pub. Whatever she knew was from watching silently, picking up snippets of conversation from disgruntled girls who were not on their teacher’s radar, or perhaps, no longer on their teacher’s radar.

  Meredith had never been on Nicholas’s radar. She left her flat every Wednesday evening and took the number 13 bus along the Finchley Road, crossing over to the arts center and making her way up the stone steps. Every week she chose her outfit carefully, put the tiniest bit of makeup on, blew out her hair, as her mother’s voice echoed in her head: You have such a pretty face; if only you’d lose some weight.

  She finally listened. After a year of being ignored and watching Nicholas flirt with the skinny, confident women in the tiny tight jeans with ripped knees and cool sneakers, Meredith decided that she wanted to change herself.

  She started a diet that didn’t call itself a diet, but instead a food program. Diets don’t work, they said; the only way to change your body is to change the way you eat. That’s the reality of life, they said.

  Three weighed and measured meals a day, they said. No carbs, no sugar, no alcohol. Teams of two, with weekly support meetings for the group, and daily chats with your team member. It was the easiest thing Meredith had ever done.

  Every week she would sit and listen to questions about how other people could possibly measure food in restaurants, how embarrassed they were, how difficult it was to eat out, and Meredith would look at them and think: Don’t go to restaurants. For her it was easy; she never went out anyway. Her idea of a good night had most often been a video from Blockbuster and Chinese takeaway. And perhaps a few chocolate bars picked up from the newsagent on the way home, because—English chocolate! Who could resist? Now it was just a video from Blockbuster and a huge bowl of salad with some oil-free grilled chicken breast, or salmon. And no chocolate.

  For a while she didn’t feel very different, aware only that her skirts were a little looser and her shirts stopped gaping between the buttons. Eventually, though, at her CPA firm, people started noticing her, and occasionally asking what she was doing, because she looked so good.

 
Yesterday, she went shopping. All her clothes were swimming on her. It was time. She went to Warehouse, Top Shop, and Miss Selfridge. She spent very little, but emerged with an entirely new closet. She had work suits and shirts and floral skirts and pretty, summery tops. There were a couple of things she bought that she didn’t particularly like. A purple dress and a blue skirt. The sales assistant happened to show up when she was trying both of those, and was so effusive in her praise, Meredith didn’t want to offend her by not buying them.

  She came home and threw out the five pairs of leggings she has lived in for years, the Lycra stretched so tight it was shiny and worn. She put the purple dress and blue skirt aside. She will go back another day to return them and hope the sales assistant isn’t there.

  Today, for art class, she is wearing the jeans she bought, the first pair of jeans she has owned in years. She channeled Cecilia as she dressed, one of the skinny, beautiful girls from last year, a girl who drew all of Nicholas’s attention, a girl who, thankfully, has now moved to Norfolk.

  Faded jeans with artful rips up and down the legs. Meredith sat and looked at her legs, unable to believe they fit her. A white tank top with a large baggy shirt over it. The chunky gold handwrought pendant she has always worn, but removed from the fine gold chain and put on leather. She tried on the heels, but they looked ridiculous with the outfit. Cecilia could carry off towering heels, strappy sandals, and platforms for the Frognal Arts Center, but Meredith cannot. The suede espadrilles she bought would get ruined. Her old Adidas sneakers are fine. They never looked particularly good, or particularly cool, with her stretched, shiny leggings, but now, with the faded jeans and white shirt, they are the epitome of trendiness, the height of casual chic.