Nancy Thompson - Sisters

Funny, the parallels—both Skye and me vying to be top of the heap, beating ourselves up to keep from getting stuck on the bottom. No wonder Jane divorced the lot of us.

Ginny eyes me up and down. “You’re so skinny, girl. We’ll have to fatten you up while you’re here.” She looks at Skye. “And you could stand to give a few pounds to your sister. Oh, but you’re both beautiful. Both of you. My beautiful, beautiful babies.”

My nerves are shot, and I can’t look at my sister. I don’t know how she’s going to take Ginny’s comment. I can’t deal with any more drama.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

“Where’s Jane?” Ginny says. “Did she come, too?”

I blink, wondering if she remembers asking for her earlier. Surely not.

“No, but I know where she is. She’s in Springvale, Mama,” Skye says. “You got better so fast I didn’t have a chance to get a hold of her.”

Ginny closes her eyes, and her hand droops beneath ours. As Skye and I pull our hands away, Ginny’s face contorts.

“I know I was a bad mother to you girls.” She swipes away the tears flowing down her cheeks. “But I tried. Lord knows I tried. You have to know I did the best I could. Still, I know things weren’t like they should’ve been, and I know I have no right to ask this of you, but I’m going to anyway.”

She takes a deep breath. The exhale comes in ragged shudders. “Since y’all know where Jane is, will you take me to her? Please?”

Her eyes beseech us.

Skye and I look at each other. I can almost read my sister’s thoughts because this is one of the rare occasions when she and I seem to be on the same page. I feel it.

“Mama, I’d be happy to call Jane for you.” Skye opens her purse, pulls out a notebook and flips to a phone number. “We can tell her what’s happened, but—”

“No!” Ginny struggles to pull herself into a sitting position, but she eventually gives up and falls back into the bed. It’s strange to see her like this.

“Please. No,” she pleads. “Don’t call her. She’ll just run away. She’ll disappear somewhere I can’t find her. Please. I need my three girls all together.”

Skye glances at me, then back at Ginny. “Mama—”

“There’s things you need to know.” Her voice raises a few notches. “Things you must know.”

“Ginny, don’t do this now. It can’t be good for you. The doctor said you’ll probably get to go home tomorrow, but if you get all worked up, it might set you back.”

She turns her face toward the window, away from us.

“I don’t know how to make you understand.” Her voice is low and serious. “I could have died.”

Skye touches her shoulder. “But you didn’t. Mama, never once did we lose faith that you’d come out of this fine.”

Mama silences her simply by holding up her hand. Just like she used to when we were children.

“I am going to die—someday. What I have to tell you cannot go with me to the grave.” She swallows as if the words are stuck in her throat. “But first, I need Jane here. Because it concerns her as well as you. So please, I am begging you, my sweet babies. Please let’s go get your sister. Let’s all three bring Jane home. Please tell me you’ll do it.”

Summer

The hospital staff move Ginny to a regular room since she’s doing so much better. Skye and I stay until Raul arrives at the hospital and then we go to our mother’s house to try and figure out what we’re going to do. Or should I say try and figure out how we’re going to get out of this road trip she’s trying to rope us into.

As we pull up to the wrought-iron gate that surrounds the huge estate, the first thing I see is Welcome to Hamby Hall written in ornate script across the top of the gate. The ironwork alone probably cost as much as a small house.

Skye punches in the code as if she goes to Ginny’s place every day. The gate swings open and she drives for what seems like miles up the brick driveway that’s lined by gnarly coastal trees and lush north Florida vegetation.

This is the first time I’ve seen Ginny’s house. I’d seen photos of it when she sent me the Better Homes and Gardens spread that ran in an issue shortly after construction was complete. She was so proud of the place—a sprawling, two-story number designed to look like a castle, complete with turrets and a front door that looks like a drawbridge. The place must be worth millions, even if it is a little out of place on a southeastern beach. My mother always has marched to her own tune.

“Mama did all right for herself, huh?” says Skye.

“Or should we say Chester Hamby did all right by Ginny?” I quip.

Skye shrugs and maneuvers the car under the port cochere.

The one and only time in Ginny’s life that she got married was to Chester Hamby. They had been married for fourteen years when Chester died of a heart attack.

If you can get beyond the fact that he was twenty years older than she was and ugly as a troll, he was kind to my mother and the tale of how she hooked up with old Chester is kind of a Cinderella story.

Skye and I left home right after high-school graduation. She went to college at Florida State University and I left for New York to model. Ginny was working at Joe’s Fountain over on Main and Dune. The way Ginny tells it is that Chester had just moved to Dahlia Springs from a town in the midwest—why he chose to move himself and his fortune to Dahlia Springs of all places is a mystery. There are many prettier beaches for a person with unlimited resources, but he moved here and soon he became one of Ginny’s regulars at the diner. Three months later she called from Vegas to announce that she was pregnant and they were married. Skye was just as surprised as I.

Ginny was only thirty-seven. She’d waited this long to get married and the lucky guy was ugly, old Chester Hamby? She had this incredible, fragile beauty that men found irresistible—still does. She could’ve had any man she wanted if she’d just gotten the hell out of Dahlia Springs. But he adored her and he never asked questions. She told me he wasn’t interested in her past. It didn’t matter who or what she’d been before they met. All that mattered was that she loved him from that moment forward.

And she did.

He freed her from the diner, gave her financial security for the first time in her life, encouraged her to get involved in charity work (she started the Galloway-Hamby Foundation and over the years has become quite a philanthropist). He left her a wealthy woman when he died.

Who am I to argue with that? Death separated Chester and Ginny. He didn’t walk out on her like Nick left me.

Nick….

I think about calling him, but it seems futile. What’s the use of dredging up the past? Maybe Ginny has the right idea finding herself a gorgeous, young thing—

“Does Raul live here?” I ask.

Skye shakes her head. “Of course not.”

I give her a knowing smile. “Oh, come on. She’s not making the houseboy work overtime?”

Skye tries unsuccessfully to suppress a smile. I can almost see her biting the insides of her cheeks, but the smile wins, and I grin, too.

“I thought so, too, at first, but there’s no trace of him in the house and she’s still got all these photos of her and Chester all over the place. Don’t you think Raul would be a little more… I don’t know…concerned if they were involved? I just don’t get that vibe from him.”

We get out of the car, and I carry my bag inside. I park my suitcase in the cavernous foyer and look around. A huge mirror in a gilded frame hangs on the wall directly across from the front door. It must be at least seven feet tall by five feet wide. To my right is an open door. I can see into a formal dining room that looks like it might have been modeled after a king’s dining hall.