I held up the lighter in my hand. “You almost ruined your boob chances, so you get what I mean.”
She finally smiled, and I put my hand under her chin.
“So, besides staying in Peachtree Bluff forever, what would your second birthday wish be?”
“I don’t want a big party,” Vivi said. Then she lowered her voice and said sheepishly, “I want to come to LA to see you film your new movie.”
My heart felt like it would burst. That was the sweetest thing in the world. I tapped her on the head. “Wish granted. I heard the Francie Nolan character in the movie I’m filming,A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, needs a few friends. Do you think you could say a couple of lines and look dirty and disheveled?”
She nodded enthusiastically.
“Perfect,” I said, feeling better about the whole day. “Read the book first. You’ll love it.” I got up but turned back to the girls before I headed into the house. “And don’t forget: beer makes your hair fall out.”
They both gasped, putting their hands up to their long, flat-ironed locks.
They’d probably only buy that one for another couple of years, but it was worth a shot.
“That must be why my dad is bald,” Vivi’s sidekick whispered.
I muffled my laugh as I walked inside, realizing that I was getting ready to do something very, very unpleasant. And I knew all at once that nobody in the Murphy family would be laughing again for a long, long time.
FAME IS A LITTLElike love. When it happens slowly, it’s more likely to last. Sure, there are those overnight success stories, the ones who make it big right off the bat. But I like to think that they’re one-hit wonders and that the way I’ve done it—or have been forced to do it, really—is better in the long run. That climbing the ladder slowly, one rung at a time, will eventually lead to something long and prosperous. I love the idea of being sixty years old and still being on the screen or the stage, being someone’s idol.
So, despite how mixed up and frustrated and overwhelmed I felt about my career, I couldn’t help but realize that there was the tiniest bit of joy mixed in there. Because while I didn’t have that Oscar sitting on my shelf that I thought I would surely win before my thirtieth birthday, I did have fans, and I was someone’s idol. Even if it was just my niece. And I couldn’t believe my sweet Vivi would trade what I was sure would be the party of anyone’s dreams for a chance to be with me on set. Despite all the bad that was going on, that was something to be grateful for.
After the Vivi cigarette fiasco, I had wanted to go straight over to confront Jack and Mom. But I decided against it. Maybe it was because I chickened out, but I told myself it was because I needed to tell Sloane and Caroline first. It seemed sort of like sisters’ code.
I made my way very slowly toward Sloane Emerson, where I knew Caroline was working on my wedding. I had helped with all the big-picture items. I had picked the florist and the food and the band and the location and the photographer. But when it came to details, I was a mess. Caroline would come up with a whole list of ways we could transport the cake to Starlite Island, while I would nod and hum along, realizing I would never have thought of that. And she would figure out how many pieces of silverware we needed to rent and spend hours scouring the state for the right wineglasses, while I wouldn’t even realize that choosing wineglasses was part of the wedding-planning process. I was beyond lucky. I had recommended hiring a wedding planner so Caroline wouldn’t end up doing all the work, but she had looked at me like I had suggested we give vials of Ebola out as favors.
“I’m better than any wedding planner.”
She was such a good sister. She loved me so much. Caroline and I had always been closer than Sloane and I, for whatever reason. I mean, Sloane and I were close, too, but we talked only once a week, whereas Caroline and I talked a highly dysfunctional, codependent three to five times a day.
I wouldn’t say that Mom checked out after Dad died, but there were some long months in there when Caroline really looked after me. She let me sleep in her bed and made me breakfast when I got up really early and braided my hair in a crown across my head the way I liked it every day. We had always understood each other in a way that Sloane and I just hadn’t. Caroline always joked that she was the glue that held the family together, and in this regard, she kind of was. I took a deep breath, my hand on the door of the store. And now I was going to make the glue’s world come crashing down.
When I walked inside, Caroline was sitting on the stool behind the front glass counter, making notes in that ridiculously huge wedding-planning binder she had constructed for me. Well, for her. This was Caroline’s wedding now. Besides the binder, the two of us were all alone.
I could pull her into the back storeroom and recount what I had heard. Then we could formulate how to tell Sloane. Together. Sloane was more sensitive than Caroline, and right now, with Adam so newly home and her wading through the waters of his trauma, I felt she had enough on her plate. I didn’t want to heap one more thing on top of it all.
I started walking toward the counter, but before Caroline could even look up, Sloane walked out of the storeroom with a canvas in her paint-stained hands.
Great. What did I do now? I could tell them both and get it over with. Or I could walk out. Which I almost did, until they looked at me at almost the exact same time and said simultaneously, “Hi, Em.”
Hi. NotHey. Grammy always told us thatheywas for horses, and it had stuck.
I felt a pang. How in sync they were at that moment made me realize how close they were, reminded me that they were whole, full-blood sisters. And I was only half. Did they talk about it when I wasn’t there? Did they feel bad for me because I was less of a sister than they were? It made my heart hurt even to think that I was somehow less connected to either of these women whom I had looked up to since the day I was born.
Would the revelation that Jack was their biological father drive a wedge between us? That thought almost talked me out of telling them.
“What’s up?” Caroline asked. “Did you sense that I was ordering those string lights you said you didn’t want?”
I looked at her incredulously. “It’s not that I don’t like them. It’s just too much trouble. All those poles and all those people you have to hire to put them up.”
“It’s your only wedding,” Sloane said. “It should be perfect.”
I cleared my throat, my heart racing. “Where’s Leah?” I asked.
“She’s supervising the installation at Kyle’s,” Caroline said, smiling.
