It seemed to come in off the water one morning, the change. Millie had gone down to the lake hammock with a book and come back as though looking at the world through display glass, her eyes watchful and her voice tempered. When Nora provoked her at the kitchen counter: “why wouldn’t you ask me if I wanted to go with you all?”, Millie returned a look that seemed to come from a long way away, as though across the lea that stood between their house and the Havertys’. “Come if you want,” she said, and then, while Nora let fly a mounting sequence of woundings, left the room. Nora’s cheeks turned pink, and her eyes flashed: “That’s really a nice way to treat your sister!” Bea returned to her knitting, pretending to untie something. “I can see you don’t care either, but what else is new,” Nora said, and then stormed out, slamming two doors in her wake. Bea collected her kit and went to the bay window. Millie was standing alone on the flagstone patio. She tapped on the glass, and Millie turned.
“Are you OK?” Bea mouthed. Millie nodded, and smiled her most polite smile, but Bea could see her hands were shaking. She walked down the steps and across the greensward that separated Never Moor from the Haverty house. Bea was inured at this point to Millie’s withholding; what had she expected? As the youngest, Bea never got a straight answer from Millie. Just the smoothing of linens, the benevolent outlook. “Oh no, it’s OK, don’t worry about it,” and “Hair always grows back,” and “She’ll get over it, Bea.” But it was strange, to have seen the ice in her eyes when she’d spoken with Nora. Hadn’t even rallied a reply. Hadn’t rushed in with a “you can’t mean that,” or “of course I want you there.” Bea knew it wasn’t fair to expect these generosities of Millie, who uncomplainingly sustained the full breadth of her parents’ expectations and the fiercest vagaries of her sister’s moods, but she found herself disheartened by their absence all the same.
Millie had been spending a lot of that summer on the lake with Cullen Haverty, and Bea suspected him in Millie’s cool. Cullen was the oldest of the Haverty brothers, and well-liked. “A stand-up guy,” Bea’s father called him. And Bea had observed this, too — that afternoon, when she was eight or nine, that they’d decided to take the Havertys’ new wood-paneled speed boat out, and Bea had run back to retrieve her forgotten hat, and by the time she’d returned to the dock, the boat had left a clean line of wake as it sped along the epilimnion. Her own sisters hadn’t noticed, but Cullen saw her, stopped the boat, and steered it back to shore, where he helped her onto it with one foot on the bow and one foot on the dock. Nora had laughed at the floppy fishing hat she’d brought with her — “but I’ll burn, Lenora!” Bea had interjected — and Millie had been apologizing for the delay on Bea’s behalf, but Cullen had just smiled and said, “We got you, Bea.”
But Cullen was also a dark universe. Bea had seen him smoking cigarettes behind the small shed by the dock, his brawny build leaning against the splintering wood as he looked out on the water, and standing in an intimidating huddle with other tall, good-looking friends he brought with him from his boarding school and, later, college. There was something unreachable about him in these formations; a tense and brooding energy that scared Bea. She’d once gotten underfoot while Cullen was tying the boat to the dock — had been reaching for her pen, which was rolling straight off the edge into the water, and tangled her feet with Cullen’s — and Cullen had silently moved her out of the way with firm, unyielding hands. The maneuver haunted Bea. She knew he was right — he was anchoring an expensive piece of equipment to a dock by himself and she was chasing an errant five-cent pen — but he made her feel as immaterial as the water drying on the wood planks beneath them: a slight, almost unnoticeable nuisance to unthinkingly deal with. Afterward, she reread his decency as a facade. Dependable, pleasant, unobjectionable, but cover for something else, some immovable iron core. When she crossed paths with him a few hours after the pen incident, he’d looked vacantly at her — “oh, hi, Bea” — as he turned to call something back to one of his brothers at the dock. Bea noticed a sun-or-age-browned copy of a book curled in the back pocket of his khakis, one she recognized from Millie’s nightstand. Bea felt the urge to roll her eyes. She doubted Cullen Haverty read in his free time; this, too, must have been part of the costume. Bea suspected her embarrassment at her own dockside clumsiness was unwittingly molding this view, but once thrown, the clay didn’t seem to budge much. When she watched him open the door at the grocery for Mrs. McKnight, and return an errant baby sock to a passing mother on Main Street, she found herself narrowing her eyes.
Millie and Nora would sit with the Haverty boys and their friends on their dock at night, passing beers between them, and Bea would watch from behind the shed, shivering in her flannel pajama pants. Nora was resplendent on those dock nights, the delicate bones of her cheeks lit by the moon, her long tanned legs folded like a sin beneath her short white skirt. When she spoke, she moved her wrists in circles that mesmerized even Bea; she couldn’t imagine what it was doing to the boys sitting beside her. But it was Millie Bea studied most carefully. She always knew the right thing to wear, even when it was Cullen’s borrowed prep school sweatshirt, the lettering faded and the hem obscuring her mini-dress. Cullen had taken it off, leaving his hair askew, and handed it to her without any conversation, and she had said: “That’s so kind” and slipped it over her slender body. Bea was struck by the out-of-generation earnestness of her response, by the way anyone else would have made a joke, or deflection: “Nah, are you sure?” Millie was this way: porcelain where one might expect blade. All of the boys seemed to make easy, laughing conversation with her while observing a crisp line when it came to her dignity. Bea overheard a visiting friend make an off-color joke at Millie’s expense, and all of the boys leapt in: “hey, shut up!” and “Jesus!” while Millie just shook her head lightly. The offending boy had later slung his arm around Millie, and Bea had watched Cullen stand and walk back to the house. Millie had noticed his departure, of course, though her countenance betrayed it; she read and played the dock perfectly. And Bea, from ten feet away, also found the scene easily legible. She was unsurprised, then, when Millie cleverly released herself from the boy by reaching for Nora’s shoulder in the midst of a story, artfully repositioning herself out of his grasp, then sat for a calculated five or six minutes in affable conversation, and finally excused herself under the cover of the late hour. Bea watched her tiptoe up to the Haverty house, and disappear inside.
She had no proof beyond this, but she knew something was happening between her sister and Cullen Haverty, and she was determined to stop it. She watched the Haverty house in quiet thought, turning away from Nora, and abandoning her to the dark.
Post-Scripts.
+On shaking hands with the blank page.
+Do you consider yourself a hummingbird or a jackhammer?
+My favorite motivation mantra.
Shopping Break.
+I own this large woven Altuzarra bag in a confetti color way, but adore it in the blue and white and it’s on serious sale right now! This is one of my most-worn bags.
+Currently wearing this striped cotton sweater. It’s so joyful!
+A seriously cute seashell-print dress at an incredible price. Also available in a shift-style mini but almost sold out!
+The Juliet Dunn cover-up we all loved last week is out in even more great patterns!
+Love these marbleized plates and cocktail napkins from Caspari.
+Very chic floor lamp, under $150.
+Classic serving bowls, and a chic display bowl for citrus.
+If you like these Manolos…you’ll love these.
+How fun is this octopus-print dress?
+Still my favorite part of our bed. Perfect weight. Super soft and cozy, but not too heavy and hot.
+Have been hearing good things about this “black” lip balm — goes on in a sheer berry color, sort of like a grown up Clinique Black Honey! (IYKYK.)
+Fun wavy frames.
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Thanks for sharing your fiction, Jen! I really enjoyed reading about these three sisters and want to know more 🙂 I love the “But Cullen was also a dark universe.” paragraph – I’m captivated!
loved this so much. beautiful writing. now I MUST know what happens!!!!