The Weird Sisters - Eleanor Brown [140]
“My years on the road have taught me much, grasshopper,” Cordy said, as though Rose had spoken her thought aloud.
Such are the minds of sisters.
EPILOGUE
On Christmas Eve it snowed, a light fall starting in the morning and continuing through the day, the whisper of flakes promising magic and coating the trees with silent beauty. We stayed inside for as long as we could, until the tracing of frost on the windows and the promise of cold snow against our skin drew us out. Enough snow had fallen for the children to go out to Wilson’s Hill; we could hear the shouts and shrieks as they sledded down the gentle slope that had seemed so high to us years ago.
“Let’s go into the woods,” Cordy said, and headed off, so we were bound to follow. The baby had come early, or the doctors had just been off (our mother assured us this was possible, as Cordy herself had arrived almost a month later than expected), and she was enjoying the new pleasure of her own mobility. She walked, light and quick, along the gathering snow, and we placed our feet in her steps, widening them with our own imprints.
Rose and Jonathan would be married in a week’s time, a small ceremony and a small reception, the service at St. Mark’s, the reception in a restaurant. Celebrating her marriage at Barnwell College had seemed wrong now, an unnecessary return to the past. Bean had chosen the dress, a deep midnight blue that made Rose’s eyes glow, her creamy, delicate skin set off by its richness. When Rose had tried it on, she turned and turned in front of the mirror, partly amazed by her own beauty, partly to listen to the delicious rustle it gave with each twirl. Everyone else would be celebrating the end of an old year, the dawn of a new, and we would be celebrating our sister and the man who had captured her heart in the forest of Arden.
“Are you nervous?” Bean asked. She stepped over a fallen log; the moss still showed, burned and brown, through the cover of the snow.
“Not at all,” Rose said. She smiled, her teeth white against the cold apples of her cheeks. “Isn’t that silly? I should be, shouldn’t I?”
“Not necessarily. Not if you’re sure of what you’re doing.”
“I’m sure,” Rose said. And we felt that spoke of more than her relationship with Jonathan. She had come back from England taller, prouder, scented with strength like perfumed oil. An article had been accepted for publication. After the wedding, they would honeymoon out west, where the mountains gave way to the sea, and visit universities or colleges that might want them both after they returned from England. But they held nothing certain but each other, and we saw that for our Rose, this was now enough.
“Ooh, look. They’re setting up the Nativity,” Cordy said, pointing toward the church. On the lawn in front, bales of hay and a tiny shed had risen from the white, and figures, wrapped in heavy clothes, moved with crates and boards in their arms. “Remember when that cow died during the Nativity and no one knew?”
“Ugh. That’s so depressing. Do you have to bring it up?” Rose asked.
“Yes,” Cordy said, and trotted off toward the church.
We walked past Father Aidan on the front steps, knocking snow off his boots before he headed back inside, and he raised his arm, waved. “See you all tonight?” he called. We had always, for as long as even Rose could remember, gone to the candlelight service on Christmas Eve at St. Mark’s. When we thought of the church, we pictured it like that, bright with holly, the lights down, all rich reds and the waxy cream of candlelight as we—yes, even we—sang hymns to the winter, to the Christ child, to the darkness and the light.
“You know it!” Cordy said. She pointed at him, clicked her fingers. Pow.
“God, Cordy,” Bean said. “You’re so embarrassing.”
“That’s my job,” Cordy said, swinging her arms by her side.
We walked back toward home through town, shuttered shops dark behind the swirl of snow. The old-fashioned streetlights had come on in honor of the darkened sky, and they shone twice as bright with the strings of holiday