Cherished by Seven Sisters novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Fenwick Street

Seven sisters pack the old Hart kitchen and name the checks he mailed for eleven years; Leo sets his terms, and Vivian's phone shows Roland Price has booked her bank at nine.

The house on Fenwick Street smelled like pot roast, and for one second I was nine years old.

I stood in the front hall with my garbage bag dripping on the tile.

The wallpaper was the same yellow wallpaper.

The stairs had the same dip in the third step, where my father used to hit it with his boot heel every morning.

"I bought it back three years ago," said a broad woman with a shaved head and welder's forearms. "Nobody lived here. I kept your room."

That was Hammer, and she took the bag out of my hand.

I had sold this house at twenty-one to pay for my mother's last hospital bills.

I had told myself I never wanted to see it again.

"Sit," said Doc.

She was already holding my wrist, her fingers on the pulse, her green surgical cap pulled over ash-blond hair.

"You're cold. You're also too fast. Sit down before I make you."

They pushed me into the chair at the end of the kitchen table, the chair that had been mine.

All seven of them crowded in around me.

Judge, who was five feet tall in heels, put a folder in front of me and said, "Don't open that yet, it's a trust, I'm just showing you I have one."

Mic had her phone up and said, "I'm not recording, I'm just narrating," and kept narrating.

Spook leaned in the doorway in black, with an earpiece.

"I had a van on your street for three weeks," she said. "You parked badly."

"You watched my house?"

"I watched your wife's garage. They parked you behind the lawn tractors."

Bird stood at the stove stirring the pot with a wooden spoon, singing under her breath to the pot roast.

She was the baby of the girls and a platinum recording artist, and she was crying into the gravy.

"Don't look at me," she said. "I'm cooking."

I looked at all seven of them, and I could not make my mouth work.

Five years was a long time.

They had grown into people whose faces I had seen on billboards.

"Where do I start?" I said.

Vivian sat down across from me with one sheet of paper and set it on the table between us.

It was the program from a charity dinner, with a list of donors on the back.

Halfway down the page, in plain type, it said L. Hart.

"We read this three weeks ago," she said. "Judge found it."

"The Founders' Gala program," Judge said. "Mrs. Price invited the seven of us as honored alumni. I read the donor page twice."

"I sent the Alumni Fund a check on the first of every month," I said. "Since I was eighteen."

"We know."

"It was never supposed to be you."

"Dispatch," said Doc, very gently, "who did you think the Fund was giving scholarships to?"

I didn't answer.

"Me," said Doc. "Medical school, the second and third years. I got a letter that said an anonymous alumnus believed in me."

"Truck deposit," Hammer said. "Nineteen. I cried in the lot."

"A camera," said Mic.

"Two years of bar fees," said Judge.

"Studio time," said Bird, without turning around. "Four hours, and that's how I got the demo."

"Night classes for my first banking certificate," said Vivian. "I thought it was a stranger who'd heard I worked at a bank."

"It was a trucker's kid who earned fifty-eight thousand a year," Spook said.

I stared at the table.

"It wasn't much," I said.

"It was our start," Vivian said.

"I didn't do it for a thank you."

"I know. That's why we're sitting here instead of in a courtroom."

The kitchen was quiet except for the spoon scraping the pot.

"What did Mrs. Price tell you?" I asked. "After Mom."

"That you were happy," said Vivian. "That you wanted space. That you'd asked us to stop calling."

"I got the same speech backwards. That you were all busy and would call when you were ready."

"I called your house a dozen times," Mic said.

"Amanda told me it was always the cable company," I said.

Nobody said anything for a long time.

Hammer slammed one hand on the table, and the salt shaker jumped.

"Not tonight," Vivian said.

"I'm just saying, I could drive to Club Road."

"Not tonight."

Then they all started to spoil me at once.

Doc was booking me a full physical for Thursday.

Judge said the trust was only forty million, which shouldn't hurt anyone.

Mic wanted to put me on television, and Spook had assigned a man in a black jacket to follow me at a distance.

"Stop," I said.

I held up both hands.

"I'll sleep in my old room. I'll pay four hundred dollars a month in rent, to Hammer, in writing."

"Four hundred?" said Hammer. "I own it."

"Then it's a lease. I get my own key."

"Fine," Hammer muttered.

"Nobody buys me a thing. Nobody gets me a job. I don't want my sisters to be my plan."

"You can't pay rent to your sister," said Judge.

"Watch me."

For the first time that night, Vivian smiled.

It was a small smile, the smile of a woman who was proud and hated it.

Her phone buzzed on the table.

She looked at it for a long second, and the smile went away.

"Roland Price just booked a nine o'clock with me at Harbor National," she said. "The bridge loan. Thirty-eight million."

"Cancel it," said Hammer.

"Don't cancel it," I said. "And don't turn it down for me."

"Then come watch," Vivian said. "Come make sure I'm fair."

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