Portrait of a Sister Read online

  “Pretty fancy, isn’t it?” Hannah draped her arm across Katie’s shoulder and squealed. “It’s just like that magazine we saw at the store that time, remember? The one with the big house and all the pretty rooms we dreamed about living in one day?”

  “I did not dream of such things—you did,” Katie corrected.

  “Relax, Katie, Dat is not here. You do not have to pretend when you are with me.”

  Katie wiggled out from Hannah’s hold and turned so her back was flush to the wall. “I’m not pretending, Hannah. I wasn’t the one who dreamed of an English life. That was all you. All the time.”

  “Oh please, Katie. You looked at those pictures every bit as much as I did and don’t you dare tell me you didn’t!”

  “Of course I looked. How could I not? You would put the magazine on my lap at night and point to every page. You’d point at pillows, and kitchens, and bedrooms as if they were the most wonderful things you’d ever seen.”

  “Because they were! Don’t you remember the way the pillows on the chairs would match the curtains and the placemats and the dishcloths? Everything was so pretty and fancy and not anything like our plain house.”

  “That is because we are plain people, Hannah!” she challenged.

  “I’m not plain.” Hannah rose up on pink-polished toes and slowly turned to show off the white jeans and powder-blue top she wore. “Not anymore, anyway.”

  “But I am.” She felt the answering tears gathering in the corners of her eyes and did her best to blink them away before Hannah officially completed her turn. “I like our home the way that it is. It has many memories and much laughter. This, here, is so”—she stopped, swallowed, and looked around—“quiet.”

  “That is only because Travis is at work. When he is not, he comes to visit and we laugh. Sometimes he brings Eric, too, and . . .” Hannah sucked in the rest of her sentence along with her breath. “What? Why are you turning red like that, Katie?”

  Katie rubbed at her face. “I’m not red.”

  “Yes you are.” Hannah pointed Katie toward a wall-mounted mirror and then headed into the kitchen, herself. “So what would you like to drink? Lemonade, soda, tea, water, beer . . .”

  “Hannah!”

  “What? Dat won’t know.”

  “But I know.” Katie waited for the strange patch of red to recede from her cheeks and then took a seat at the small table just outside the kitchen. “I do not drink beer and neither should you.”

  Hannah waved her off and then extracted a glass from a nearby cabinet. “Well, I do, and I wouldn’t write it off just yet if I were you. Things are different here in New York City.”

  “You should not be different.” Katie accepted the glass of water from her sister and took a small sip, the water cold against her throat. “You should still be Hannah.”

  “And I am. Just a newer, better version . . . with a better place to live and cooler clothes to wear.”

  She considered a variety of responses but opted, instead, to change the subject completely. “Dat said you would be waiting for my bus, but you weren’t.”

  “Jack was invited for a playdate at the last minute and I had to take him. Had I known your bus was going to get in late, though, I probably could have met you.”

  “I didn’t get in late,” she said across the rim of her water glass.

  “Then how did I beat you here?” Hannah crossed to the refrigerator and yanked it open. “It’s only a ten-minute cab ride.”

  “We walked.”

  Hannah grabbed a can of soda from the top shelf, glancing back at Katie as she did. “From the bus terminal?”

  “Yah.” Katie traced her finger around the edge of her water glass and then dropped it back down to her aproned dress. “We stopped for pizza.”

  “And?”

  “It was very good.”

  “And Eric?” Hannah asked as she carried her still unopened can back to the chair across from Katie’s.

  “He is very nice. Funny, too. He liked to try to guess what other people would order before they even got to the counter, and he was right three times in a row!” Katie’s laugh stopped only as another memory floated in. “And I think the only reason he didn’t get the one before that right is because I took my first bite of pizza and he could not concentrate with my moaning.”

  Lowering her voice to a whisper, Katie leaned against the edge of the table and locked gazes with her twin. “I didn’t know pizza could be so good, Hannah!”

  Hannah’s eyes crackled with the mischief of old, and she pushed her drink out of the way to match Katie’s lean. “Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile like that.”

  “What do you mean?” Katie asked as she lifted her hands to her face and felt around. “What is wrong with my smile?”

  “Nothing. It’s just that your smile and your laugh just now looked so different.”

  “Don’t be silly, Hannah. A smile is a smile and a laugh is a laugh. I have done both many times.”

  “Not like that, you haven’t.” Hannah grabbed her soda can off the table and popped it open. “But I get it, Katie, I really do. That is exactly how I felt when I met Travis.”

  She stared at her sister. “What are you talking about?”

  “Your smile a few seconds ago? That had absolutely nothing to do with pizza.”

  “It was good pizza, Hannah!”

  Hannah’s laugh sounded funny against the now-opened can. “I’m sure it was. But it is not why you smiled like you did.”

  “How do you—”

  Hannah held up her hands. “That smile had nothing to do with pizza and everything to do with the person you were eating it with.”

  “What are you saying?” Katie reached for her glass and held it against her face. “And why is it so very hot in here. Are you baking something in the oven that I can’t smell?”

  “Nothing is in the oven and it’s not hot in here. You’re just blushing because I caught you. Again.”

  “What do you mean you caught me again?”

  “First, I caught you with the whole sketch pad thing. Now, it’s this thing with Eric.”

  She sputtered her sip of water across the table and then lunged for a napkin to wipe her chin. “There is no thing with Eric!”

  “We may not share a room any longer, Katie Beiler, but that doesn’t mean we’re not still twins. I know you better than anyone else, and you know me better than anyone else. That’s just the way it is and the way it’s always been.”

  Katie pushed back her chair and stood, the shake in her legs manifesting itself in her voice. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m talking about the way you were smiling and laughing when you were talking about Eric.”

  “I didn’t smile and laugh because of Eric. I smiled and I laughed because I had fun. There were many new things to see on our walk.”

  “Your walk with Eric,” Hannah insisted as she, too, stood. Only instead of remaining by the table as Katie did, Hannah crossed to Miss Lottie’s suitcase, wrapped her hand around the handle, and pulled it through an open doorway on the opposite side of the room. “But don’t worry, your secret is safe with me.”

  Katie followed, her head spinning. “There is no secret, Hannah. I am to marry Abram, remember?”

  “But you haven’t yet.” At the foot of a bed covered in a baby-pink blanket, Hannah released her hold on the bag and gestured toward a white dresser located to the left of the window. “This is your room while you are here. You can put your clothes in the drawers and everything else in the closet over there—”

  “We aren’t sharing a room?”

  “No, why would we? There are two bedrooms. One for me and one for you.”

  “But we talk when we are in bed,” Katie said. “It is what we have always done.”

  Hannah waved her off and then hoisted the bag onto the bed. “That is because our bedroom was the only place we knew we could be alone—just us. But here, everything is just us. No pesky
brothers listening in, no little sisters asking to play games, no Dat to overhear what we do not want him to overhear, and no Mamm to . . .”

  Dropping onto the edge of the bed, Hannah released her hold on the bag’s zipper and reached for Katie’s hand. “Oh, Katie, I am sorry. I promised myself I wouldn’t say her name this week so you could try to forget for a little while.”

  “I don’t want to forget Mamm. Not ever.”

  “I’m not saying you should forget Mamm. I’m saying you should forget everything else—your responsibilities for the children, your chores around the house, having to draw at night so Dat doesn’t find out . . . you know, that kind of stuff.”

  Hannah reclaimed her hand to reach inside Miss Lottie’s bag for Katie’s things. “I know you had to bring this stuff for Dat’s benefit, but”—she pulled out the stack of dresses and kapps—“if you want to borrow some of my clothes while you’re here, that’s okay. I have some pretty cool things now thanks to my job with the Rothmans.”

  “I can’t wear your clothes!”

  Hannah stood, crossed to the dresser, and yanked open the second drawer. “Of course you can, silly. No one is here to know otherwise.”

  “But I would know,” Katie hissed. “And I know I can’t wear such clothes.”

  Shrugging, Hannah placed the items into the otherwise empty drawer and crossed back to the bed and the open suitcase. “Okay, okay, I won’t push and I won’t bring it up again. But just know that if you change your mind and want to look more like me, all you have to do is say so.”

  “I will not change my mind.” Katie pushed Hannah’s hand from atop the bag and reached inside for the pile of underwear and stockings. “It doesn’t matter if I am in Blue Ball or in your New York City. I am still—”

  “Oh my gosh, Katie! You brought it! You brought your sketch pad!”

  Before Katie could stop her, Hannah pulled out the pad, sunk onto the edge of the bed, and flipped back the cover; a peaceful sigh passed through her lips as she looked down at the first picture. “Oh, Katie. You have such a gift, you really do. I just wish you could see that.”

  “What I see is something I should not be doing.”

  “That’s crazy talk, Katie. This right here?” Hannah tapped her finger on the picture of baby Annie and the nose-licking calf and then turned the page. “This is talent, Katie. God-given talent. Don’t you think you should be allowed to do it for that reason alone?”

  It was a point she’d never really thought about before. But still, to draw faces as she did was wrong. She knew this.

  Turning, Katie made her way over to the dresser, pulled open the top drawer, and placed her underwear and stockings inside. When all was where it should be, she stepped in front of the window and its view of yet another tall building against a backdrop of even taller buildings. “It is so different here,” she whispered over Hannah’s continued page turning.

  “That’s why I like it. Because it’s different. It’s—oh, Katie!” The sounds emanating from the vicinity of the bed ceased. “This is the picture I left for you! The one Travis took of me on the bridge! You drew it!”

  Katie closed her eyes but said nothing.

  “You got it all exactly right—the buildings, the bridge, the people in the background, the water in the foreground, the . . .”

  Katie waited for the rest of the sentence, and when it didn’t come, she turned back to find her sister leaning over the sketch pad for a closer look. “Is something wrong?”

  “This picture.” Hannah looked up at Katie. “You captured everything in the photograph I left for you except one thing.”

  “Oh?” Katie crossed to the bed, pushed the suitcase back, and sat down next to Hannah so she, too, could see her most recent drawing. “Did I forget a flower or a cloud?”

  “It isn’t what you forgot, Katie. It is what you drew.”

  Katie felt her shoulders sag. “It is the buildings, isn’t it? I tried for a long time to get them just right but—”

  “The buildings are perfect, Katie.”

  “Is it the bridge?” Sighing, she pointed to the eraser marks at the spot where the bridge and land met. “I tried to get the curve just right, but it was a little tricky in that—”

  “The bridge is great, too.”

  “Then what did I draw wrong?” Katie asked.

  Hannah set her own finger down on the person standing in the center of the bridge with the bouquet of wildflowers in her hand. “This is supposed to be me.”

  “It is you.”

  “No, it’s you, Katie. See?” Hannah tapped the sketched face they shared and then pointed to her own chin. “You didn’t include my scar from that fall when we were not much bigger than Sadie is now.”

  “I must have forgotten,” Katie protested. “I am not an artist, Hannah. I do not draw those kinds of details.”

  “Of course you do.” Hannah turned back to an earlier page and a picture of her and Jakob brushing Dat’s buggy horse. “You have my scar in this one. And”—she turned back a few more pages to the one of her leaving Blue Ball for her life in New York—“in this one, too. See?”

  Katie took advantage of a hard swallow to gather her thoughts enough to respond and then hoped the rasp in her voice wasn’t as audible as she feared. “I was tired the night I drew you in, that’s all.”

  “I don’t believe that, Katie.” Hannah met and held Katie’s gaze for a few beats before breaking out the same mischievous smile that had always sent Katie running in the opposite direction when they were children. “And I don’t believe it was a mistake.”

  “Of course it was a mistake!” she protested.

  “You’re too good to forget something like that.”

  “But it’s not there, so I did forget, Hannah!”

  “If you hadn’t included my scar in all these”—Hannah flipped through to the earlier pictures again—“other pictures, I might be able to agree. But, since you did, I think you left off the scar because you weren’t drawing me at all.”

  “Who else would I be drawing?”

  “You!”

  Katie felt her stomach beginning to churn. “That’s silly. Why would I draw me on a bridge in New York City? I do not live here, remember?”

  “That doesn’t mean you don’t wish that you did, or that you won’t choose to by the time your visit is over . . .”

  For a few moments, Katie said nothing. She simply stared down at the picture as Hannah’s words circulated in her head.

  Was Hannah right? Had she drawn herself on that bridge because—

  No.

  Grabbing the sketch pad off Hannah’s lap, Katie stuffed it back inside Miss Lottie’s bag and zipped it closed.

  “Katie! Stop! What are you doing?”

  “You think I will choose to live here?” Katie shouted. “Choose? I have no choices, Hannah—none! You made sure of that, didn’t you?”

  Hannah’s eyes narrowed. “How did I make sure you didn’t have choices?”

  “Someone had to do the things you didn’t do!”

  “Such as?”

  “Are you really asking me that, Hannah?”

  “I asked it, didn’t I?”

  Katie stormed out of the room, her feet propelled by an anger she knew she shouldn’t have. But without the anger, she knew there would be tears—tears she refused to shed for fear they’d never stop. “I have to stay!”

  “Why?”

  “Because I know what leaving does! I saw it on Mamm’s face at the end, I hear it in Dat’s voice when he speaks of you, and I see it every time your letters come in the mailbox for the children! Your choice hurt them, Hannah! And unlike you, I don’t want to hurt people just so I can live in some stupid magazine!”

  Chapter 12

  Even without opening her eyes to the morning sun seeping through the fancy window coverings, Katie knew she was far from Blue Ball. At home, it was a toss-up as to whether Samuel’s rooster, the newest calf in the barn, or Dat’s footsteps on the stairs would serve
as the sound that roused her from sleep. Here, morning ushered in a whole new host of noises she tried to identify from the safety of her bed . . .

  Car doors slamming shut?

  A horn blaring?

  A person shouting?

  The refrigerator opening?

  Silverware being tossed onto the table?

  Hannah’s angry murmuring?

  Katie closed her eyes against the memory of the argument that had ended the first night of their visit. She knew she’d been harsh in her responses, but Hannah had gotten under her last nerve. And since Hannah was always after her to speak her mind, well, she’d spoken it. Loud and clear.

  If Mamm were alive, she’d have been shocked by Katie’s outburst. If Dat had been in the apartment when Katie unleashed her anger the way she had, he’d have shunned her until she asked for forgiveness. But Mamm wasn’t alive, and Dat wasn’t there, and . . . well, Hannah had it coming.

  “I know you’re awake in there and that’s fine. I don’t care to see you right now, either.” Hannah’s voice, clipped and slightly hoarse, made its way past the closed door. “I left a loaf of bread on the table for toast, and there are strawberries and apples in the fridge. I’d tell you to clean up after yourself, but since you’re so perfect all the time, I don’t need to say that, do I?”

  The headboard smacked against the wall as Katie shot up, ready to respond, but kept it to herself as Hannah continued. “I’m heading over to the Rothmans’ to look after Jack and should be home around four. Maybe when I get back, you’ll be ready to stop feeling sorry for yourself and we can actually have some fun.”

  Katie tossed back the covers, hurled her feet over the side of the bed and onto the floor, and stood, the previous night’s anger bubbling to the surface. “Feeling sorry for myself—”

  The click of a door in the distance stole the rest of her words and she reversed course from the door to the window. Pushing the blinds off to the side, she shoved her forehead against the glass and strained to make out the sidewalk directly below. Sure enough, within a matter of a few short minutes, Hannah emerged from the building and began walking in the direction of the sun.