Names My Sisters Call Me

  Here’s what I thought about that: not much.

  Lucas knew about Matt Cheney. In fact, he knew the truth about Matt Cheney, which Norah did not. What did Norah think this was, a Lifetime movie with a plot that hinged entirely on one easily cleared-up misconception or half-truth? I wasn’t one of those women who lied about her romantic history and then had to spend her entire relationship maintaining that lie. Who had that kind of energy? In any case, my wariness had been flashing above my head like a neon sign when we met, and Lucas, being the kind of man who didn’t need to rush into anything, was perfectly content to wait. And what do you do while you’re waiting? You tell stories. You get to know each other.

  So of course Lucas knew that there hadn’t really been anyone serious in my life, because I’d always had a crush on my older sister’s best friend. Matt and Raine had met in kindergarten, and had been inseparable ever after. I thought he was a marvel. He made my breath hitch in my chest and he had dark green eyes, like the men in the paperback novels I had to hide in my cello case so Norah couldn’t find them and lecture me about propriety and acceptable literature (i.e., anything boring that ended unhappily).

  I’d been in love with him since I was a kid.

  And then I turned twenty-two, and he finally noticed me.

  He was my first love, and so I adored him heedlessly, impossibly, and to the exclusion of everything else. When he told me we had to keep our relationship a secret, it hadn’t occurred to me to object. I didn’t care if everyone knew or no one knew, I just cared that finally, we were together.

  When he left with Raine in the wake of Norah’s wedding it almost killed me.

  It also made me the musician I became. Which was the point of the story of Matt Cheney, as far as I was concerned.

  Thanks to heartbreak, I threw myself into the cello. For three years I did nothing but eat, sleep, and play. I won a chair on Philadelphia’s Second Symphony Orchestra. It was a coveted position, though not on a Big Five orchestra like the city’s more prestigious and famed Philadelphia Orchestra. Nonetheless, I was doing well, and could continue playing at just about the highest professional level as long as I maintained the same level of commitment and hours upon hours of practice.

  Which was hard once I met Lucas, but I’d managed, for the most part, to keep music as my first priority.

  How dare Norah threaten me with my own past? She’d never understood about Matt Cheney when he’d been around, much less six years after he’d abandoned me for California with Raine. He’d become nothing more than a footnote to a completely different story—one starring Lucas, thank you.

  “I think I’m going to go,” I told her, getting to my feet and not quite meeting her gaze. “I’m sorry you’re upset.”

  “‘Upset?’” she echoed, her voice sharp with temper. “As far as I’m concerned, you’ve basically just told me I don’t matter.”

  “This is crazy.” I shook my head, and found myself holding my hands out in a placating way. “You think I don’t understand that she hurt you, but I do. I really do. I’m talking about reaching out to her, nothing more.”

  “You can do what you like,” Norah retorted. “But you can’t have it both ways, Courtney. You can have her or you can have me. Choose.”

  Chapter Three

  I fumed the whole way back into Center City, barely noticing the usual irritants of Philadelphia public transportation because I was so annoyed with Norah. Sometimes I truly believed that she had no idea who I was.

  How dare she throw Matt Cheney at me?

  Especially when—and this galled me the most—she didn’t know what she was talking about. She had no idea what had really happened when Matt and Raine disappeared that night, because she had no idea what had been going on that whole, long summer.

  It had been awful when they’d left. Norah’s wedding had been ruined, a fact she made sure to emphasize whenever possible, and I had felt frozen through to the bone. Frozen, and incapable of discussing it with anyone. Even my mother had wounded me to the core with a careless remark.

  “Well,” she’d said one morning shortly afterward, in the wake of one of Norah’s rants about Raine and her follower Matt, “you always had stars in your eyes where Matt Cheney was concerned, didn’t you?”

  I loved him, I’d wanted to rage at her. And he loved me, too.

  At least I thought he’d loved me. I’d wished it, wildly and often, though he had never actually said it. But it was the only thing that made sense of those few, desperate months we’d been together.

  When I got back to our apartment west of Washington Square—in the Gayborhood, as it was affectionately known and handily marked with rainbow flags beneath the street names on all the street signs—I fired off an angry, venting e-mail to my best friend Verena, who spent her days working in marketing for a theater company and most of her evenings, when not involved in the company’s shows, performing her stand-up routine in and around the city. This made her largely unavailable, but it was much better than the two years she’d spent singing on tour with yet another Broadway revival of Oklahoma! right after we’d graduated. It was difficult having a best friend who was so busy, but at least she was no longer the modern equivalent of a traveling minstrel.

  Verena and Norah had maintained something of an armed truce ever since they’d met at the conservatory. Norah had not been impressed with Verena’s goth attire or choice of introductory music (Trent Reznor). Verena thought Norah was controlling, which was true. Even so, they had often enjoyed each other’s company over the years. But I was sure that wouldn’t matter. Verena, I felt, could be trusted to express the appropriate level of outrage at Norah’s behavior as soon as she checked her e-mail.

  Lucas was out somewhere, so I fumed at the cats for a while—a fruitless exercise, since they were cats and unconcerned with my emotions as they cleaned themselves and stretched—and then dealt with my anger the way I dealt with everything: by playing.

  As I practiced my scales and arpeggios, I reminded myself that I was lucky, for so many reasons. I could even list them with each slide of my bow across my strings.

  For Lucas, of course, who made everything worthwhile.

  For my idiot cats, who lay stretched out in what little afternoon light poured in the bay window. They liked to bask in the music with me, purring along to the melody and pricking up their ears in protest when I played a sour note.

  For my best friend, who always made time for me, no matter what drama might be going on in her own life.

  For my cello, the one whose curves I knew so well that I could trace them with my hands in thin air. I loved the sweet magic I could produce with bow, fingers, and strings. I loved the sharp tang of the rosin I used on my bow and the glory of the music when those same strings sang.

  And for Norah, too. She was a challenge, but she acted the way she did because she loved me. Her version of love involved holding on tight and squeezing for dear life. As if I were an instrument and she could coax the proper response from me if she simply practiced enough.

  I could envision Norah in my head, bent over me as if I were the cello, her blond head against my copper one. Our identical brown eyes. Her fierce expression as she forced her bow across my strings, making melodies I didn’t quite wish to play. It was a recurring image.

  Sometimes I even dreamed it, and woke up in the night, gasping for air.

  The phone rang, cutting that unpleasant image off, and I shook it out of my head as I crossed the room to snatch up the receiver, my bow hanging loose in my hand.

  “You cannot be serious” was how Verena greeted me.

  “That Norah said all that?” I asked. My outrage kicked in. “She has no idea what really happened, and she thinks—”

  “I do know what really happened,” Verena said, cutting me off. “And are you sure you know what you’re doing? Why would you invite Raine back into your life? Hello—she ran off with your boyfriend!” Her voice was so incredulous, it nearly cracked.

  “S
he didn’t know he was my boyfriend,” I retorted, on automatic pilot.

  “He knew he was your boyfriend,” Verena barked. “Those two are trouble, Courtney.”

  “I just want my family back together,” I said, stung.

  “Your family,” Verena repeated, her voice making it very clear she didn’t believe me. She sniffed. “Make sure that’s what you’re actually interested in having back together, that’s all I’m saying.”

  Later, I poured it all out on Lucas the moment he walked in the door.

  “Can you believe Norah?” I demanded. “It’s not like I thought I’d never speak to Raine again—I just stopped for a while. She was always my favorite sister, you know.”

  “I think she’s probably jealous,” Lucas said, rummaging around in the fridge for a beer. He leaned back against the kitchen counter and twisted open the bottle cap.

  “You should find your sister if that’s what you want to do.” He flipped the bottle cap into the sink. “It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. It only matters what you think.”

  “It matters what you think,” I told him. I considered for a moment, then dove in. “Apparently, Verena is under the impression that I’m secretly on a mission to find Matt Cheney. For suspicious purposes.”

  Lucas laughed, and I loved the way his eyes crinkled up at the corners. If he was threatened, he completely failed to show it.

  “Good luck with that,” he said. “Didn’t she notice that didn’t end too well the first time around?”

  I decided in the middle of our final concert of the season at the end of May that I was going to California to find Raine.

  We were playing an enormously complicated piece as part of our summer send-off—a selection of the Romantics, which meant a lot of interesting cello parts—and I should have been concentrating on the notes I was supposed to be producing.

  Instead, I was having an epiphany.

  Sitting in the cello section of a professional orchestra, engaged in a performance, was as good a moment to have an epiphany as any.

  I was wearing my least favorite pair of black pants, the pair that I felt made me look like a reject from the sort of eighties movie that might, independent of any plot, involve dance competitions and/or horrible hats to deflect attention from the shiny pants with their unfortunate cut and just-too-short legs. This was what happened when I forgot to pick up my dry cleaning.

  The fact that Verena was right and I needed to pay more attention to fashion, if only to avoid another performance during which I was more concerned with how my butt looked than how my music sounded, was not the epiphany in question.

  It had been two months since Norah’s little outburst and Verena’s phone call. Family Dinners had continued, and everything was perfectly pleasant. Mom and I debated invitations to the point of nausea (on my part anyway) and then sent them out for the party in July. Verena e-mailed me the most atrocious wedding gowns she could find online, complete with ostrich feather headdresses and whole trains made of sequins. I grew used to Lucas’s ring, its weight and its place on my hand. I practiced, went to rehearsals, played concerts, and never mentioned Raine or Matt Cheney again.

  But I thought of little else.

  It was as if our engagement had lifted the lid off an entire aspect of my childhood that I’d been keeping shut up tight these past few years. After Norah’s wedding, I had been so angry and hurt that I’d channeled it all into my cello and tried to block out the fact I’d been abandoned by both my first love and my hero, all in one fell swoop.

  It was the hero part I kept going back to now. I missed Raine. That was the long and the short of it. I didn’t want to get married without her. I didn’t want to be without her any longer. I didn’t know why six years had gone by without my feeling it, only to feel it now. I just knew I felt it.

  So every day I sat down and started composing the perfect letter to send to her. It would patch up our differences, build a much-needed bridge, and do so without actually choosing any sides.

  Except I wasn’t a writer. At all.

  Dear Raine, I wrote. Wow, six years. That’s a long time.

  Lame.

  Dear Raine, I don’t know if you’ve thought of me since the day you took off with Matt, but I—

  Entirely too pathetic. And notably not about her.

  Hi, Raine. This is your sister. Courtney.

  As if Norah would write?

  Dear Raine, Guess what? I’m engaged! His name is Lucas and I love him very much.

  Yuck. It made me sound like a teenager, and made Lucas sound like a carnival prize.

  I’d written so many versions of that letter I’d stopped counting them.

  I was tired of writing that damned letter.

  I was jolted back to earth—and the concert hall—when my stand partner kicked me in the foot. And since Marcello would have vaulted over my body if he thought it would get him closer to a seat as Principal Cello, it was a hard kick that would probably bruise.

  And it was lucky he did, too, as I was about to miss our entrance.

  I kept myself from yelping, and tried to put my family drama out of my mind for the rest of the performance, but a light had gone on in my brain.

  Enough with the letter writing.

  I was going to California.

  Chapter Four

  I think that’s a great idea,” Lucas said. “I would have asked you to come with me before, but you said you wanted to spend the entire month of June reading books in bed.”

  I was all wound up from performance adrenaline and epiphanies. I was also limping slightly, thanks to Marcello and his fashionable shoes. I hobbled across our living room and sank down on the couch.

  “I was too stressed to think about the fact you had business in San Francisco,” I said, pulling off my boots and flinging them aside. “But I think it’s high time I start acting like a business wife, and take your business trips with you.”

  I aimed a cheesy smile at him—my approximation of a Stepford Wife. He let out a laugh.

  “I’ll remind you of that the next time I have to go to Poughkeepsie,” Lucas said dryly. “But San Francisco is beautiful. Streetcars and the Golden Gate Bridge. Your infamous sister . . . I have to do a lot of on-site client bullshit, but it’s not like you won’t have a million things to do to amuse yourself.”

  “Most people,” I pointed out, “might urge caution here.”

  “Baby,” Lucas said, handing me a glass of wine, “I keep trying to tell you I’m not most people.”

  I sipped at my wine and watched him move back toward the kitchen, dodging the cats as they rolled around each other in a sudden death match across the linoleum. Felicia squalled and dug her teeth into Felix. We ignored them both.

  This man—my fiancé—delighted me. I liked the way he walked, all liquid and low, like he was prepared at any moment to fling himself in the path of danger. He had an abiding interest in various martial arts, was addicted to the Sci Fi Channel and select reality shows, and had studied philosophy at Penn. He had a great big family out in the far reaches of Vermont, all of whom were planning to trek down for the engagement party. He was easygoing and relaxed, in contrast to all the neurotic musicians and type-A academics I knew. He was the perfect man.

  He was also great-looking. When he came to performances, the more amorous flutists always made approving noises and sighed over his smile. He was a good four inches taller than my five feet six, with those wonderfully calm, knowing eyes and a full head of chestnut hair threaded through with red. If modern day Vikings wore cargo pants and T-shirts, they’d look a lot like Lucas. The only downside to our relationship was that our babies would be redheaded through and through. I apologized to them whenever possible, in advance.

  “What are you smiling about?” Lucas asked, settling next to me with a plate of cheese and bread he’d cut up. Because he knew I liked to nibble after I played a concert. I rubbed at my aching foot, which I knew from past experience was likely to bruise.

 
“Our redheaded babies,” I told him.

  “Poor little bastards.” He grinned. “At least they’ll be smart and talented, right?”

  “I guess that’s something.” I leaned into him and let out a contented sigh. “I’m so happy to be on vacation. I can’t believe I don’t have to go back to work for nine glorious weeks!”

  Some people were unable to break the umbilical cord that kept them locked to their instruments, and maintained their punishing practice schedule all throughout our long summer break. Every year I vowed that I’d be one of them, because every year I took the break as an opportunity to pretend I had never heard of the cello and then proceeded to pay dearly for my relaxation come the fall.

  Which I had no intention of worrying about tonight. No matter what, I was not going to play so much as a note of music for at least the first two weeks of my vacation. I made a vow right then and there.

  Lucas gathered me next to him, and fed me a piece of sharp cheddar. I savored the way it popped on my tongue, and sighed in contentment.

  “California, here we come,” he said, waggling his brows at me.

  “I think it’s a stunningly bad idea,” Verena said over paninis and coffee a few days later at the Village Coffee House. We’d somehow managed to get one of the outdoor tables, a Philadelphia miracle, where we could enjoy the lovely May afternoon and watch the pretty boys stroll by.

  I’d caught Verena before one of her open-mike “experiments,” and I decided that maybe anxiety might be contributing to the frown she was aiming at me.

  “I’ll be honest,” I said when she didn’t elaborate. “That wasn’t really the answer I was looking for.”

  “What do you think is waiting for you in San Francisco?” she asked, shaking her head at me.

  “It’s San Francisco!” I cried. “Free love! Janis Joplin! Flowers in hair!”

  “That was in 1969,” Verena said in repressive tones. “It’s not magical today. It’s a place. That’s it.”

  “I thought I was going to get Old School Verena,” I complained. “Remember? All you ever used to say to me was ‘break out of your shell! Tell Norah to kiss your ass!’ What happened to that Verena?”