“I didn’t meet him under the best of circumstances,” she replied. “He’d called Scotty in to scream at him, only I went instead. And I was pretty offensive. I wasn’t there to beg, and I wanted him to know that. So after he got over being stunned, he was just plain angry.”
“Yeah,” Nick said. “It was the same when he met me.”
“But toward the end, I kind of liked him,” Claire said. “I felt a connection. Maybe it was just physical. I looked at him, and it was like looking at you thirty years from now, looking at me sixty years from now. I think he felt it, also. I think that’s why he gave me the money.”
“He gave you the money to get you out of there,” Nick said. “Out of his life.”
“That, too,” Claire said. “But I said something funny and he laughed. His laugh is a lot like yours.”
“What did you say?” Nick asked.
“I don’t remember,” Claire replied. “It doesn’t matter. When he laughed, it made me feel the way it does when I make you laugh. Proud. Like I’ve accomplished something. It makes me feel that you must really like me because I’ve said something to make you laugh.”
“Daisy used to laugh all the time,” Nick said. “Before the accident. I’d come home from work, and I’d hear her laughter. My mother never laughed. It wasn’t even a defense mechanism for her. She just never laughed.” He slowed down as a car pulled in ahead of them. “Scotty’s mother,” he said. “What’s she like?”
“It’s hard to say,” Claire replied. “She was mostly hysterical over Scotty. She was okay to me, though, nicer than his father, but I didn’t take that too seriously. They might have decided to divide up the roles that way. She looks a little bit like you, but I don’t think people would automatically assume you were … related.”
“I don’t even remember her name,” Nick said.
“Vivienne,” Claire said. “Evvie told me.”
“Vivienne, that’s right,” Nick said. “She’s a year older than me. Her mother was pregnant with her when he began the affair with my mother. There’s a son, too, a couple of years younger. Sebastian Charles. I thought when I first found out about him that would be what I’d change my name to. Charles Sebastian. But I couldn’t see myself as a Charlie.”
“No,” Claire said. “You must have made a terrible George.”
“No one called me that,” Nick said. “Nicholas was my middle name. My mother thought it was classy. I was always called Nick.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Claire said. “I could believe everything else Aunt Grace told me, but I could never picture you as a George.”
“My mother had a couple of kids with my stepfather,” Nick said. “It’s funny. I have two brothers and two sisters, and half of them I haven’t seen since I was sixteen, and the other half I’ve never met. I think about that sometimes, how many nieces and nephews I must have. Of course, now it turns out Scotty’s my nephew. I wish I could remember more about him, but the only impression I get is someone mooning over Thea. What’s he like? You must know him fairly well if you got him to marry you.”
“He’s crazy about Thea,” Claire said. “And he’s terribly lonely. He grew up in boarding schools. And he doesn’t like his grandfather at all. He says he’s cruel.”
“Then I guess you didn’t miss much,” Nick declared. “Daisy and I talked about it once, about how I should get in touch with him, let him know he had all those granddaughters, but I just couldn’t do it. You don’t know what it was like, Claire. Before I saw him, well I was seventeen, and the only time I remember being even close to happy was when I was in school. No, that isn’t true. The day my mother came to get me, after she got married, I was happy. I was four or five, and I’d been boarded out, mostly with relatives, never stayed with one family very long, but sometimes my mother would visit me, and that made me feel so good, because it meant I really had a mother. People made it abundantly clear to me that I didn’t have a father. So the day she took me with her, told me I was going to meet my new daddy, I think that was the happiest day of my life.”
“Even happier than the day you met Megs?” Claire asked.
“Even happier,” Nick replied. “By the time I met Daisy, I didn’t remember what happiness was anymore. She reintroduced me to it, but so much inside of me had already died. I went to live with my mother and meet my new father, and that night I was overexcited and I wet my bed and he hit me so hard he dislocated my jaw.”
Claire wished Nicky would stop talking. She didn’t want to know these things about him. She turned her face away, and stared out the window, looking at the lights on the side of the highway.
“By the time I met Prescott, I hated him for what he’d done to my mother, what he hadn’t done for me,” Nick said. “But I wanted him to love me. I wanted him to see I was his son and become my father. I had dreams, and I hated myself for that weakness, for letting myself fantasize like that. I had dreams of my own by then, and I knew I was being foolish hoping for a father, hoping for a real family. But I couldn’t stop it. I was just a kid, although I didn’t know that at the time. You’re like me that way. You think because you’re smart and ambitious that you must be grown-up as well. Well, I wasn’t and you aren’t, and I couldn’t control my dreams, so he smashed them for me. No father, no long-lost son. Just name-calling and yelling and not even as much money as I’d hoped for.”
“I got more,” Claire said. “I got enough to pay you back for what he did to you.”
Nick shook his head. “It doesn’t work that way,” he said. “Interest doesn’t accrue. When I took that money, I hated myself. I hadn’t counted on that. I went in there, after all, determined to get the money for my full college tuition. Either he was going to love me and be proud of me for what I’d accomplished, and be happy to give me the money, or else he was going to to be ashamed and frightened, and give it to me to keep me out of his life. Either way I was going to walk out of there with four years at Princeton paid for. I couldn’t even manage that. I hope you never loathe yourself the way I did that day. I knew I should have refused the money. I knew there are times when pride is the most important thing. But I took what he gave me. I took the crumbs just the way I always had. And I vowed never to do that again. I’d rather starve.”
“He didn’t give me crumbs,” Claire said. “Fifty thousand isn’t crumbs. He offered me that. His first offer was five thousand and I laughed at him. I didn’t even accept twenty, and I was tempted because it was almost enough. But I knew almost enough wouldn’t do it. You weren’t tough enough with him, Nicky. It wasn’t your fault. He was your father, and it’s hard to bargain with your father. But I didn’t care. I didn’t go in there thinking maybe he’ll love me, maybe he’ll straighten out my life. So I was tough with him, and he gave me all this money, and it’s for all of us. It’ll save us, Nicky. Sybil’ll walk again, and we’ll have a home, and you’ll start making deals just like you used to, and everything will be all right. That’s what this money is for. You can’t be proud about it. You can’t toss it away because it’s too much, or it isn’t enough, or somehow it offends your sensibilities. Your sensibilities don’t count. Sybil is what counts.”
“That’s a very pretty speech,” Nick said, and he sounded like Nicky again, like the Nicky Claire had to deal with and never much liked. “I think you’ve almost convinced yourself that it’s true.”
“It is true,” Claire said.
“The only person who really counts with you is yourself,” Nick declared. “All this is a stunt for you. Can you do it? Can you raise that kind of money using your beauty and your body and your wits? And you proved that you could, and Sybil’s going to benefit. But that was never your true motive. You wanted to test your powers. And there was the bonus of hurting Thea as well.”
“Why does everybody assume that about me?” Claire cried. “Why won’t people believe that I love Sybil?”
“I know you love Sybil,” Nick said. “But not nearly as much as you love yourself.”
“I’d better love myself,” Claire said. “Nobody else does. Not the way they love Thea.”
“That isn’t true,” Nick said. “And I don’t want Thea to know about any of this. It’s all been a game for you, marrying her boyfriend, taunting my father. But it would destroy Thea to find out what you’ve done.”
“I have to tell her,” Claire said. “Scotty and I made a deal.”
“Break it,” Nick said.
“Go to hell,” Claire said.
Nick slammed down on the brakes, and pulled the car over to the side of the road. “Give me that check,” he demanded.
“I will not,” Claire said. She turned to face her father, and stared at him, stared at her own mirror image. Nick’s face was contorted with rage, and she knew hers was as well.
“I will not have you hurting Thea,” Nick said.
Claire forced herself to laugh. “Hurting Thea’s my hobby,” she declared. “It’s what I do for relaxation. If I give you the check, and you tear it up, not only do I get to tell Thea all about Scotty and me, and all about your father and who you really are, and how you’ve lied to her all these years, I get to tell her how you destroyed Sybil’s only chance. She’ll really love you then. I’ll tell Sybil everything then, too. She loves you now because you’ve been going crazy trying to make her whole again. If she finds out you’ve kept her from this rehab center because of some stupid proud gesture, she’ll never forgive you. I know Sybil better than you do, better than anyone. You don’t want her to hate you. She’s stronger than your father, stronger than me. Thea’ll forgive you someday, but Sybil will cut you off as though you never existed. That’s what happens if you tear up this check.”
Nick closed his eyes for a moment, and Claire could see the anger dissolve, replaced by an emotion she didn’t care to name. “There are things you don’t know,” he said. “Things about me, about my past.”
Claire had trouble believing Nicky had any secrets left. “Does Megs know?” she asked.
“Megs knows everything,” Nick replied.
“Then it can’t be too important,” Claire said.
“I guess not,” he said. He turned and faced his daughter. “There’s nothing you’ve done that I haven’t done myself,” he said. “No tricks you know, I couldn’t have taught you.”
“I’ll give you full credit,” Claire replied. “If anybody asks.”
“I look at you, and I see myself,” Nick said. He shook his head ruefully. “Poor Claire,” he said. “Poor me.”
“I’m all right,” Claire said. “I don’t know how you are, though.”
“I don’t, either,” Nick said. “I do know, though, if I take this money, things will change. I’ll cross a line.”
Claire exulted inwardly. “What kind of line?” she asked, trying to sound casual.
“The kind that’s best left uncrossed,” he said. “I’ve spent my life trying to be strong, independent, reliable. I’ve wanted desperately to be worthy of Daisy. Once I accept the money from my father, I won’t bother trying anymore. There won’t be any point. I’ll be a beggar again, only older and more bitter, with more death inside me. We’ll save Sybil, but at the cost of my soul.”
“It’s worth the price,” Claire said.
“You’re probably right,” Nick said. “But it’s my soul, and I’d grown almost fond of it.” He turned the key in the ignition, and started the car again. “Don’t tell Thea about my father, all right?” he asked. “Rub her nose in this business about Scotty if you must, but leave the rest out of it.”
“Sure,” Claire said,. She could give him that much. Besides, it might prove useful having something to hold over him.
Nick pulled the car onto the highway. Claire could see he was driving faster now, and he almost immediately passed another car. She looked out the window, and saw a shopping mall just closing for the night, the cars emptying out of its lot, the lights in the stores being turned off. “You should have loved me the best,” she said. “I’m the one who’s most like you.”
“But it was Daisy I loved,” Nick said, cutting ahead of a car in the left-hand lane. “I could just barely tolerate myself.”
Claire nodded. She was so tired. She yearned to stretch out in the backseat, as she had as a child, and let the movement of the car lull her to sleep. But exhausted as she was, she knew she could never trust her father enough again to leave herself that defenseless in his presence. More than one line had been crossed that night; more than one soul had been sacrificed. But it was for Sybil. She would be strong now, and that was worth all the lines and all the souls and all the peace that Claire could ever offer to the gods.
Turn the page to continue reading from the Sebastian Sisters series
CHAPTER ONE
“What a dump!”
“Claire! You came!”
“Of course I came, kiddo. I wouldn’t miss your sixteenth birthday for anything.”
Sybil Sebastian pulled her sister Claire to her and enveloped her in a hug. She had hoped Claire and Thea would come for her birthday, but Sebastian family finances were such that nothing could be counted on, not even the plane fare from New York to Boston.
“Let me get a look at you,” Claire demanded, and she checked Sybil out carefully. “I don’t believe you turned out as well as you did,” Claire said. “Sixteen. You look older.”
“I feel older,” Sybil replied.
“Thea kept weeping, all during the plane ride,” Claire said. “‘My baby sister is sixteen.’ She used to be unbearable before she turned eighteen, and now, she’s even worse.”
Sybil laughed. “Thea came, too?” she asked, not believing her good fortune.
“She’s downstairs cleaving unto Nicky and Megs,” Claire replied. “We were on the same flight as Evvie and Sam. They dropped us off here, and went back to their apartment. They should be here in an hour or so.”
“This is going to be the best birthday I’ve ever had,” Sybil declared. “All of us together.”
“We were together at Christmas,” Claire pointed out. “I don’t recall that as an especially fabulous time.”
“That doesn’t count,” Sybil said. “We’d just moved in, and Nicky was still smarting, and you could only stay until lunchtime because you had to work the next day.”
“Us models need our beauty sleep,” Claire said, trying to look haughty, but failing miserably. “It was too good a job for me to turn down, Syb. I wanted to stay longer, but I couldn’t.”
“I know that,” Sybil said. Of her three sisters, the one she was closest to, both in age and affections, was Claire. Evvie, the oldest, was generally regarded as the family anchor, but she’d left home for college when Sybil was only twelve, and for that matter, she’d left the family in some hard-to-explain way even before then, when she’d fallen in love with Sam Steinmetz Greene. Thea, who came next, always tried hard with Sybil, mostly, Sybil suspected, because she couldn’t get along with Claire, but Sybil had never especially cared for the way Thea tried to baby her. Sybil was the youngest, but she never regarded herself as a baby. Claire, on the other hand, was there for Sybil in a way that no one else in the family, except their father, Nick, could approximate.
Not that Sybil looked anything like Claire or Nick. She resembled Meg, her mother, although not as strongly as Evvie and Thea did. Actually, Sybil had been disconcerted to discover from examining an old family album, that the person she looked most like was the late unlamented Aunt Grace, Meg’s aunt and guardian. Aunt Grace, who had hated Nicky and disapproved of her niece’s marriage to him, had never truly loved Meg’s four daughters, and took pleasure in carrying the grudge beyond the grave. Stubborn, willful, obnoxious Aunt Grace, whose house Sybil now called home.
“How is life in the mausoleum?” Claire asked, glancing around Sybil’s fairly empty bedroom. “Still dank and gloomy?”
“How did you know what I was thinking?” Sybil asked.
“Years of practice,” Claire said, giving Sybil another hug. “Oh, Syb
, I miss you so much. Move to New York, right now. Finish high school there.”
“You have Thea,” Claire said. “You can’t be lonely.”
“Thea.” Claire groaned. “I thought she was shaping up, when Kip finally dumped her. It took him long enough, but Thea eventually got the picture. I thought Kip was going to have to send out engraved engagement announcements before Thea finally acknowledged he was involved with somebody else.”
“Thea took it pretty hard,” Sybil declared. “She cried on the phone to Megs a lot. And that was when we were still in Oregon. I shudder to think what those calls must have cost.”
“Whatever the cost, Kip wasn’t worth it,” Claire said. “Not that Thea would admit it. And Megs wasn’t the only one to get those tear-stricken phone calls. I got more than my share, especially late at night. I don’t know why Thea thinks I care that she’s miserable after midnight. But now she’s involved with some new loser, and at least she’s cut down on the phone calls. Good thing, too. She was putting a real strain on my sisterly love.”
Sybil stared at her sister. She had a rough idea of how far Claire would take sisterly love. Sybil knew how much in debt to Claire she would always be. She also knew it was a debt Claire would never call her on.
“New York just isn’t big enough for Thea and me,” Claire said, this time choosing not to read Sybil’s mind. “Eight million people, and I keep bumping into her. If you’d just move in with me, you could handle Thea, listen to her endless confessions. She only plagues me because we have the same last name. You she actually loves. It would be a public service, Sybil.”
Sybil laughed. “We just moved here six months ago,” she said. “I think I should last it out a little while longer.”
“It is a dump,” Claire said, looking around. “An expensive dump, I grant you, but a dump just the same. What a hoot, Aunt Grace leaving the joint to Megs in trust, so Nicky can’t get his hands on it and sell it.”
“I never liked Aunt Grace,” Sybil said.
“I did,” Claire replied. “She didn’t like me because I look so much like Nicky, but I liked her. She had a wicked sense of humor. Her will proves it. Leaving Megs only the house, no furnishings, no artwork, just the house. I’m surprised the trustees didn’t peel the wallpaper off. She must have known Nicky couldn’t begin to afford the upkeep on a Beacon Hill mansion. They can’t even sell it, because it’s only in trust for Megs. And Sam and Evvie can’t get it, because it’s officially left to Megs’s first legitimate Christian grandson. Now that’s the will of a funny lady.”