at hand, and she often went to bed soon after dark. She read at times, and liked to sit by the fire relaxing and lost in thought, but the memories snuck up on her then. She didn’t like giving herself time to think and drift back to the past, and avoided it. She was living in the present, and her present was the house she had restored, mostly by the work of her own hands. She was proud of the results and what she had achieved. The house was living proof of how far she had come since she had bought it, and a symbol of her survival. No one in the area knew how hard she had fought to cling to life and not give up when she’d lost the person she loved most. Working on the house had brought part of her back to life, and kept her busy, happy, and fulfilled for four years. It was her therapy and had become one of the handsomest homes in the Berkshire mountains, with exquisite handcrafted workmanship. In its own way, it was a work of art. To Melissa, the house was alive, a living being to be cherished and embellished, and had become her reason for staying alive.
She let herself think of her sister, Hattie, sometimes, with her fiery red hair and huge green eyes, like a pixie when she was a child. Her copper hair was hidden under her nun’s veil now. She had been a tomboy, and then blossomed into a beautiful young woman with a natural, striking beauty men were drawn to. Boys pursued her even when she was a teenager. Melissa, with dark hair and blue eyes, had a cooler beauty and seemed less approachable. When Melissa went to Columbia, she was more concerned with taking care of her sister than meeting men. She never dated until her junior year.
When Melissa graduated from college and got a job, Hattie was sixteen and a beautiful, voluptuous young woman by then. All the boys at the school she went to in New York were crazy about her, which made it all seem even more absurd when Hattie decided to become a nun. She had always been the boy-magnet of the two of them and loved to flirt. Melissa was more reserved. Hattie was fun-loving, gregarious, and at ease with everyone. The idea of her being sequestered from the world seemed a criminal waste to Melissa. She was sure her sister would fly back out of the convent in six months, it was all a whim, but she hadn’t. She had stayed for eighteen years, faithful to a vocation Melissa couldn’t understand, and had never accepted, although she knew their mother would have loved it.
They had shared an apartment until Hattie joined the order. Melissa met Carson around that time, before she published her first book, right after she wrote it. He sold it, and a year later they were married and she gave up their old apartment. She hated being there once Hattie was gone. It was silent and lonely, but she didn’t feel that way about her house in Massachusetts now. She was never lonely there, and had made peace with the solitude she’d chosen. It was a relief to be alone when she and Carson had separated in New York. They’d lived in Tribeca, and their marriage felt so dead to her by then that it was painful being with him, and she was grateful for her freedom when he left.
She’d started looking for a house immediately, and had found the right one quickly. It was a merciful release when she left New York and started fresh. She didn’t have to look at Robbie’s empty room anymore. It was the end of the happiest time in her life, when Robbie was alive, which was nothing but a memory by the time she moved to Massachusetts.
When Melissa went upstairs that night, after sanding the door all morning, she glanced at a photograph of Hattie in a frame on the desk in the small den off her bedroom. The photo was of Hattie dressed for her senior prom at her high school in New York. She was wearing a pale blue dress, with her bright red hair pulled back and swept up in a mass of curls. She looked sexy and gorgeous and was beaming in the picture. Melissa perfectly remembered the moment when she took the snapshot. She had helped her sister pick