My Sister Stole My Second Life novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Sink

At the Stanhopes' summer party Thatcher watches his friends shove Maisie's face into a sink and gives Dena his coat; Maisie names the boys in front of everyone, then Anne's bracelet falls out of her pocket.

"No," I told him that first night. "She wasn't lying. She was copying."

He didn't ask what that meant.

He just left.

For two months he called me "the guest" at dinner and spoke to me only to pass the salt.

I turned eighteen on August 21 with a cupcake Anne left outside my door and no card.

The candle was already in it.

She didn't mention it at breakfast, and neither did I.

But I saw her check the plate in the hall later and smile when it came back clean.

On August 30 the Stanhopes threw their end-of-summer party.

Two hundred people under a white tent on the back lawn.

Rain started at six and nobody minded, because the champagne was free.

I wore a plain blue dress and my gray cardigan, and I worked.

Not for pay.

Anne hadn't asked me to.

I just couldn't stand in a tent full of strangers with my hands empty.

So I carried ice and flowers from the pantry and kept out of the way.

At seven, the catering van backed up to the kitchen door.

Doreen Purdy climbed out in a black apron.

Dena climbed out after her.

My sister had a tray of crab cakes on her shoulder and a brand new sadness on her face.

She hadn't been invited.

She had been hired.

"Big sister," she said brightly as she passed me. "Don't you look expensive."

I went back into the pantry to cut stems.

Anne had been arranging peonies there an hour before.

Her diamond bracelet and her earrings sat in a little china dish by the faucet, where she'd taken them off to work.

I moved the dish to the windowsill so nobody would knock it into the drain.

Then the pantry door swung open behind me.

Two of Thatcher's friends came in, laughing, glasses in hand.

The tall one with the crew cut.

The one in the Nantucket-red shorts.

I'd seen them around the house all summer, eating out of the Stanhopes' fridge like they paid the mortgage.

"There she is," the tall one said. "The little gold digger."

"I'm cutting flowers," I said. "Get out."

"You hear that? She's giving orders already."

The one in the red shorts held up his phone. The red light was on.

"Your sister's a sweetheart, you know that? She told us all about you. How you picked the rich family before the lady even finished talking."

"My sister says a lot of things."

"She says you'd do anything for money."

The tall one grabbed the back of my neck.

I dropped the shears.

He shoved my head down into the deep porcelain sink and turned the tap on full.

Cold water hit my face and filled my nose.

I couldn't breathe.

I kicked back and hit nothing.

"Wash it off," he was laughing. "Wash all that gold dig off, sweetheart."

He pulled me up by my hair.

I gasped and choked and saw the doorway.

Thatcher was standing in it.

His hand was on the frame.

He was watching.

He didn't say a word.

The tall one pushed me down again.

When he let go the second time, I came up coughing water onto the floor, and Thatcher was gone from the doorway.

I staggered to the kitchen door with my hair streaming.

Out under the porch light, Dena was standing by the catering van in the rain.

Her white blouse was soaked through. Her arms were wrapped around herself.

Thatcher walked straight past me.

He took off his navy coat and put it around my sister's shoulders.

"You'll catch cold," he said quietly. "Go stand under the porch."

Dena looked up at him.

Then, over his arm, she looked at me.

And smiled.

She thought it was all happening the way it had before.

The heir being kind to the poor girl in the rain.

The rich girl left out in the cold.

She was half right.

I wiped my face with the back of my wrist.

My sweater was dripping. My mascara was down my cheeks.

I could have gone upstairs and changed and cried in the shower.

That was what they were counting on.

I walked through the kitchen, out the French doors and straight into the tent.

The string quartet was playing something polite.

Heads started turning before I was halfway across the lawn.

Anne was by the bar with the mayor's wife.

She saw me and set her glass down.

"Maisie. What on earth..."

"Your son's friends held my head under the pantry tap," I said.

I didn't lower my voice.

"Twice. One of them filmed it."

The quartet faltered.

I turned and pointed.

The tall one and the one in red shorts had followed me out, still grinning. Their grins went stiff.

"Him," I said. "And him."

"She's being dramatic," the tall one said. "It was a joke. Thatch, tell her..."

Every face in the tent turned to Thatcher, who had come in behind them.

He didn't say anything.

Anne looked at her son.

Then at the boys.

Then at the water dripping off my hem onto her lawn.

"Get out of my house," she said to the two of them. "Both of you. Now."

The tall one laughed in disbelief.

Mr. Stanhope came over from the dance floor without hurrying.

He didn't speak.

He just held the tent flap open and waited until they walked through it.

The quartet started again.

Anne put her hand on my wet arm.

It was the first time she had touched me.

"Go and change," she said. "Then come back down. I want you at my table."

Dena was standing just inside the kitchen door with a stack of towels.

"Oh, you poor thing," she said, loud enough for the nearest guests. "Here, let me help."

She draped a towel over my shoulders and patted it down my arms, all big wet eyes.

I shrugged her off and went up to change.

When I came back down twenty minutes later, Anne's table had gone quiet.

Anne was touching her bare wrist.

"I left them by the pantry sink," she was saying. "The bracelet and the earrings. They were right there."

"Mrs. Stanhope," Dena said softly from behind the bar. "I'm so sorry. I don't want to say anything."

"Then don't," I said.

Her eyes went to my cardigan anyway, and stayed there.

Thatcher followed her look.

He walked over.

He picked my gray cardigan up off the back of the chair where I had hung it to dry.

Something heavy in the pocket knocked against the chair leg.

He reached in and pulled it out.

Anne's diamond bracelet dangled from his fingers, wet and glittering, in front of everyone.

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