The Sparrow Sisters (3 page)

“What's all this I hear about your remedies?” The dismissal was clear and Patience, for the first time in days (a record), turned snappish.

“I beg your pardon?” Patience asked with a bit of a bark. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Sorrel flinch.

The doctor looked at Patience with a mixture of surprise and anger. It was not a pretty look. His brow lowered, and his jaw stood out sharply as he clenched it. As for the object of his irritation, two hectic spots of red bloomed on her cheeks and, to her horror, tears sprang to her eyes, threatening to spill over her burning face.

Sorrel ushered Henry out as she excused her sister's outburst in calming tones. As soon as the door clicked into place, she rounded on Patience.

“How could you be so rude!” she snapped. “Honestly, I think you put all your care, every bit of it, into your remedies.”

She stomped out into the back garden, leaving Patience staring at the black-and-white checked floor. A hot tear dropped at her feet. It smelled of chamomile, as did her skin and clothes, but there was nothing soothing in it for Patience. Sorrel lost her temper with her sisters so infrequently that Patience wasn't sure if she was (damn it) crying because of Sorrel's angry words or over the very odd reaction she'd had to Henry Carlyle. Simmering under her anger with Dr. Carlyle was a wholly unexpected tug. If Henry had been captured in that moment,
Patience had been caught too. She would never tell her sisters, but Patience had already noticed Henry, twice. One evening as she walked home from Baker's Way Bakers, Patience had looked up to see him standing at his window. He hadn't seen her in the darkness, but she was able to pick out the slump of his shoulders, his fingertips pressed against the glass. She'd wondered what his story was. Patience had sidled closer to the building across the street so she could look at him for another minute. When she saw him coming out of the post office a week later, she ducked her head and fiddled with her phone.

Patience swiped at her cheeks and pulled her heavy hair back up into a ponytail. “Really,” she muttered, “get a grip,” and walked down the hall to the kitchen.

The air around her had taken on a sharp, astringent smell, the soft chamomile burned away in a matter of moments. Sorrel smelled it as she gathered laundry from the line; it was so strong even the sheets were imbued. She knew that sometimes Patience's rich interior life, a thing of bright colors, strong scents, and a good deal of swearing, burst forth. The smells that followed her were the most noticeable, and even the town had learned to interpret at least some of the scents that wrapped around the youngest sister. Her graceful surface was often at odds with the force of her emotions. When that happened, everything and everyone around her knew it. Her sisters had gotten used to it: her internal struggles externalized. In fact, they could read Patience as easily as Patience read the people she helped. The three sisters were as tightly entwined as the
bittersweet they battled each fall, and as stubborn. If the town ever wondered why they didn't break away—and it did—no one dared to ask them.

All the Sparrow Sisters were naturally beautiful, each in very different ways—except for the twins, of course, who were eerily identical. So even the three who were left in the house had the certain confidence that came with knowing you needn't worry about your looks. They were never self-conscious around the men in town, which made Patience's reaction to Dr. Carlyle all the odder. In fact, as the years passed and neither Sorrel nor Nettie married, everyone stopped bothering about them. A natural New England reserve meant people didn't give in to curiosity often, and really, it was easier to assign them the status of the slightly sad single Sisters than to keep wondering. The girls seemed unconcerned and went about their days, each as lovely in their own way as the flowers they tended. Sorrel's black hair became streaked with premature white, which gave her an exotic air, although the elegance was somewhat ruined by the muddy jeans and shorts she practically lived in. Nettie, on the other hand, had a head of baby-fine blond hair that she wore short, thinking, wrongly, that it would look less childlike. Nettie wouldn't dream of being caught in dirty jeans and was always crisply turned out in khaki capris or a skirt and a white shirt. She considered her legs to be her finest feature. She was not wrong.

Patience was the sole Sparrow redhead, although her hair had deepened from its childhood ginger and was now closer to
the color of a chestnut. It was as heavy and glossy as a horse's mane, and she paid absolutely no attention to it or to much else about her appearance, nor did she have to. In the summer her wide-legged linen trousers and cut-off shorts were speckled with dirt and greenery, her camisoles tatty and damp. The broad-brimmed hat she wore to pick was most often dangling from a cord down her back. As a result, the freckles that feathered across her shoulders and chest were the color of caramel and resistant to her own buttermilk lotion (Nettie smoothed it on Patience whenever she could make her stand still). When it was terribly hot, Patience wore the sundresses she'd found packed away in the attic. She knew they were her mother's, and she liked to imagine how happy Honor had been in them.

On the surprisingly warm June day on which Dr. Carlyle threw the Sparrow Sisters into a swivet, Patience was wearing a pair of Sorrel's too-loose shorts rolled down at the waist until her hip bones showed below her tee shirt. She hadn't expected a visitor, and certainly not a stranger, so it wasn't until she went back into the kitchen and caught sight of herself in the French doors to the dining room that Patience realized how undressed she really was. She stared for a minute and then she laughed.
Ha!
she thought.
No wonder he was so unbalanced.

Patience wasn't vain, but she knew what the sight of her bare midriff could do to a man. It made her laugh again as she pulled the chamomile flowers from their stems. But when she thought about how silly her sisters were, how completely “girly” their behavior had been in front of the doctor, her smile faded. And
when she recalled how Henry Carlyle's jaw had hardened as he looked at her, Patience dropped the chamomile into the sink and slapped the cold porcelain, her tears completely dried, as teed off at him as Sorrel had been at her.

O
UTSIDE
I
VY
H
OUSE
, the doctor stood for a full minute before he turned to walk back to his practice. The scent of herbs and grass and damp soil trailed in the air behind him. He turned in a circle trying to focus on the scent, and for the second time that day he sniffed like a rabbit and tried to pinpoint what it was.

When Henry got back to his shingled house on Baker's Way, he wavered in front of the door to the apartment he lived in over the “shop.” It was after six, and there was no real reason to go back into the office, but he did so anyway. It was too quiet in his apartment, which struck him as funny, really. The one thing he'd craved in the hospital was quiet. The one thing he didn't have when he was deployed was solitude. Now that he had both, it made him restless. So he unlocked the door and turned on the lights in the office. There were always notes to dictate, charts to catch up on; paperwork was not Henry's strong suit, and he usually left anything to do with organization to the last minute, or to Sally, who he'd inherited from Dr. Higgins. He found a pile of patient files with a yellow sticky on his desk and growled as he toed his chair out.

“Dr. Carlyle, please try to keep up,” Sally had written in purple ink. He huffed and deliberately moved them aside so he
could put his bag on the desk. Henry opened the old satchel, meaning to restock it with saline, Tylenol, a suture kit. The scent of chamomile slipped out, or at least that's what Henry thought. He snapped the bag shut and crossed to lie down on the exam table. The paper rattled under him as it did under his patients. Not for the first time he wondered what he thought he was doing in this town of fishermen and spinsters, shopkeepers and faith healers.

The smell of cookies replaced the chamomile, and Henry figured that the little store down the street, Baker's Way Bakers, was probably just closing, the last of the stock set aside for discount sale in the morning. Henry coughed, certain he could feel the flour on the back of his throat. He gave in to fatigue, a very different kind than that of his residency in Boston. There he'd felt hollowed out by exhaustion, a dark place inside waiting to be filled by the desperation and panic of a city hospital. Remembering that, Henry understood, again, why he'd left and why he'd come to Granite Point. He dozed off, slightly hungry for cake, the ache in his leg a nervy hum.

When Henry woke, it was full dark, and a small circle of lamplight puddled on his desk. Sitting up, he had a renewed sense of purpose; maybe it was the half hour of oblivion. Henry had trained himself to sleep quickly and deeply. He grabbed the charts and made his way upstairs, opened a beer, swallowed three aspirin, considered a Vicodin, and sat at the kitchen counter to work. There weren't too many patients yet: Dr. Higgins's practice had begun to wind down before he did,
but Henry had high hopes. Already word of his kind manner and good looks had filtered down to the young mothers, their babies swaddled tight even into June, their toddlers already in bathing suits. News traveled fast, no doubt about it; rumors even faster. The women speculated that he'd left heartbreak behind in Boston, and their husbands figured he'd seen too much death in Iraq, too many sick people, accidents, and car wrecks at the hospital. Both were right, although his heart had broken far from Boston.

Hunger drove Henry back outside. He set aside his papers and slipped on the blue sweater. He was more susceptible to the cold since his return. The tree peepers seemed to echo the insistent buzz of pain in his leg. He walked slowly, trying to make his gait as even as possible. He was used to the way people's eyes flicked to his leg when he walked through the hospital or into his own waiting room. But, he realized now, Patience hadn't lowered her gaze, not even for an instant, as she stood with her arms full of damp flowers. Henry stuck his hands in his pockets as he rounded Main Street, glad that the lights of Doyle's were bright.

He took a seat at the bar. Frank Redmond approached, drying his hands on a stained white cloth.

“What'll you have, Doc?” he asked, and Henry snorted.

Frank looked at him, eyebrows raised.

“It's just that you're so welcoming and I just had a run in with . . . I have no idea what.” Henry laughed. “Pretty tight, this town.”

“Well now,” Frank said, already pulling a pint for Henry. “There's some who might take offense at that, coming from an inlander.”

“Oh, I'm sorry”—Henry raised his hand—“I only meant that nearly everyone I've met is . . .” He stopped. “Just, I'm sorry.”

Frank was chuckling as he watched Henry fumble. “Shit, Henry, I'm just messing with you. Inlander, like that's even a word.” He handed Henry a menu and moved off, still smiling.

Henry looked at the menu, not really seeing any of it. He'd have a grilled cheese and leave it at that. What Henry was seeing was Patience: the way her hair stuck to the dampness at her neck, the smudge of dirt over her eyebrow, the spark of anger he'd drawn from her even as he suspected that the last thing he wanted to make her was angry. Henry thought that making her smile would be wonderful, and he felt his own lips twitch.

“So?” Frank was back. “See something you like?”

“Oh yes,” said Henry and shook his head to clear it of the springy green scent that seemed to cling to Patience, even in memory.

When his sandwich came, he ate it in silence, listening to the chatter of the locals who were Frank's bread and butter until the summer season got underway. He wiped his mouth and reached for his wallet, shifting on the stool until he had to slide off to keep his balance. He landed harder than he meant to on his bad leg and grimaced, dropping the wallet.

“A quart of the chowder, Frank.” Patience stood at the end
of the bar, an old hoodie over her tee shirt. The stretched hem came to the middle of her thighs; she looked naked beneath it, but her dirty boots and slouchy socks dismissed that image with an oddly childish look.

Henry paused, his head just below the bar, his wallet halfway to his hip pocket.
Damn it,
he thought. It felt as if his little reverie had called Patience to Doyle's long before he was ready to see her again.

“How's Nettie?” Frank asked.

“She's better,” Patience said shortly.

Frank lowered his voice, and Henry had to strain to hear him.

“She went to the new guy, didn't she?”

“Yeah,” Patience said. “She gets nervous, you know.” She shuffled through some bills as Frank brought the soup.

“No charge, P,” Frank said. “I still owe you for Claire's migraines.”

“Thanks.” Patience shoved all but a couple dollars back into her pocket. “See ya.”

“Yup.” Frank turned back, and Henry stood up slowly, careful not to look toward the front door as it swung shut behind Patience.

“Where'd you go there?” Frank asked.

“I dropped my wallet,” Henry answered and opened it to pay for his dinner. Frank took the money, and Henry asked, “Not on the house for me?”

“When you cure my wife's headaches in the time it takes to make a martini, I'll tear up your bill too.”

Henry felt the heat rise up his throat. He put a hand on the bar to stop Frank. “You seriously think her stuff works?”

“I seriously think it does, and so do most of the people in this town.” Frank looked at Henry. “What do you know about the Sparrow Sisters?”

“There are three of them,” Henry said. He took a last swallow of his beer. “That's all.”

“That's true,” Frank said and let the name Marigold flit through his head. “And you were hiding from Patience because, what? She doesn't like you?”