The Sister Season Read Online Free PDF

tempestuous as the day was long, beginning the moment they met. Rather than “love at first sight” it seemed to be “distrust at first sight” with the two of them. Elise wasn’t sure if she even knew the full extent of what had happened between them, only that it had been big and shattering and had somehow involved Claire.
    Of all the unanticipated things that had happened over the past two days, Elise was most surprised to see Bradley standing in her kitchen now. She’d expected Maya, of course, and even the kids, but it was rare that the whole family traveled together. Bradley usually had “business” somewhere. What “business” meant for Bradley depended on whom you asked. And you didn’t want to ask Claire.
    The family had been too tired from travel to do much talking during dinner. Claire had eaten in silence and then ducked back to her room, Julia and Eli had made small talk, then bundled up and taken a walk to the creek, coming back after everyone had gotten up from the table and slipping into their room silently. Bradley had taken his laptop to the den, and Maya had dumped the kids immediately in the bathtub. Elise had heard them singing and playing while she’d cleared the table.
    Which left her the chance for only the most minimal chat with her middle daughter.
    How was the flight?
    Okay, I suppose. Bradley slept, so it was just me and the kids.
Hint of bitterness there.
    Been a long time since you were down this way. Bet a lot’s changed.
    Mmm—yeah, I barely recognized the strip.
    We got a Target.
    I saw that.
    There was nodding of heads, and Maya drank her mug of wine in two long gulps. Elise had stared at her daughter’s feet, wondering how someone could travel all day in five-inch heels, and more important, why one would do such a thing.
    Though she supposed she knew why. Maya’s life would always be about trying too hard. To be beautiful. To be poised. To be thin. To be smart. To be . . . everything Bradley wanted. Why someone would want to try so hard to please such a man was beyond Elise, but she supposed nobody could make sense of how and who they loved. Love just happened, even when it was bad for you. If anyone could understand that, it was Elise.
    Everyone but the kids seemed to be turning in early. Nobody was in the kitchen, and the back of the house was still silent. Elise pulled her coat off the hook by the back door and stuffed her feet into the rubber boots she left there year-round, then slipped out through the sunporch. She needed something to do. Something to take the edge off her worries. Something to make the memory of what had happened with Robert go away.
    The frozen grass crunched under her shoes as she headed for the little garden shed behind the honeysuckle bushes. In years past, the shed was home to powders and sprays, pesticides and plant food and trowels and hoes and muddied gloves, and its door was constantly open. Seemed like, especially during the summers, Elise was always in the shed, fumbling around for the tool she needed or the right spray or a bucket or watering can. But, like everything else on the farm, in recent years she’d just gotten too tired for the garden, and had barely been inside the shed, much less had a yearning to restock it.
    She pushed the door open and, by feel, poured three big scoops from the birdseed barrel into a bucket. She couldn’t do anything about the chickens, but she could at the very least feed the wild birds. A walk with a purpose just might do the trick to ease her mind.
    She decided to go to the tree line on the north side of the pasture first. Plenty of birdhouses and feeders out there, from back when Robert and the girls went through their woodworking phase. It had been years since she’d checked on those houses, which the girls had nailed, crooked and loose, to the trunks of the trees. Elise wondered if they were even still there, or if time, weather, and the squirrels had destroyed them by now.
    Robert had always been