Sisterly Love is a serialized novel. To savor the full narrative experience, start at the beginning and work through the chapters in order. You can find chapters on the Home page or in the Archive.
CHAPTER 27
Florida, USA
Rose loaded the rounds one after another, like a gambler rhythmically feeding quarters into a slot machine. When she was finished, she pushed the magazine back into the chamber using the heel of her hand. Click. Then she laid the revolver on its side.
“Now you load mine,” she said, passing Summer her Glock. “It’s semi-automatic so you’ll need to add a single round before—”
“Everything okay here, ladies?” The Range Officer came up behind them.
“Hi Chuck!” Rose said. She waved at Summer. “This is my little sister. She’s visiting all the way from Australia.”
“Well, howdee!” the Range Officer beamed. “We’re always happy to welcome a new shooter at Palm City Gallery.”
Summer pressed her thumb into the flat end of the round. “This is harder than it looks,” she admitted, as the bullet skimmed off the metal and tumbled to the floor.
“It’s her first time shooting,” Rose said.
The Range Officer looked perplexed. “They shoot kangaroos in Australia, right?”
“We do,” Summer grinned, “but it’s not a national sport.”
The Range Officer frowned.
“She means that shooting is not a big deal there... like it is here,” Rose translated.
“That’s correct,” Summer confirmed. “Australians go to a movie of a Friday evening and then to dinner afterwards.”
“Oh! Okay!” The Range Officer looked relieved. “You can do that here too.” He gestured beyond the transparent glass walls to where the mall buzzed with activity. “The movie theaters are on seven and we have all kinds of restaurants up there too, grill, burgers, pizza...” he beamed, then he cleared his throat. “So, anyways, I stopped by to let y’all know I’ll be giving the safety talk in just a few minutes.”
Summer watched him move along the stalls.
“Americans don’t get Australian humor,” Rose warned, attaching Summer’s Zombie to the target retriever.
She pressed the button on the wall of their stall and sent the will-less creature with its flailing arms speeding up the range—its open mouth seemed to be silently screaming.
“You can set it at any distance you want,” Rose demonstrated, bringing the target back. “But since you’re a beginner, I recommend fifteen yards because you’ll never hit anything at thirty.”
Rose toggled between the buttons, and the zombie jerked backwards and forwards. Its left eye, which was hanging out of the socket, appeared to be rolling on its cheek. Summer giggled.
“You’re sick,” Rose said, smirking at the multicolored impact halos embedded in the zombie’s skull. “Why you couldn’t get the regular silhouette target like ordinary people do, I don’t know.”
“It’s too real, Rose,” Summer protested. “I can’t do this unless I can pretend it’s a game.”
“You need to learn to protect yourself,” Rose said, taking a serious tone. “There are bad people out there and they’ll shoot you if you don’t shoot them first.”
Summer sighed, “I don’t doubt that for one minute, only, I’m thirty-six years-old and no one’s come at me yet with a gun.”
“But you’re in America now. Things are different here.”
“Yes,” Summer said, relenting. “I can’t argue with that.”
“For our new home, Alan’s getting us special nightstands,” Rose said. “You program them to recognize your palm imprint so that when the alarm goes off in the middle of the night, all you have to do is roll over, lay your hand on the surface, and the cabinet door pops open.” Rose gestured with her hands, indicating the simplicity of the device. “Then you just reach inside, take out your loaded weapon, and wait for the intruder to come into your bedroom.”
Summer took in this information with a combination of alarm and amazement. It had been a common response to many of her sister’s revelations since her arrival in Florida forty-eight hours ago. It was almost as if Rose’s desperate phone call to her at Parliament House had never occurred: Rose’s terrified whispering, her fears for her life and for her daughter’s. That was thirteen months ago and the conversation still haunted Summer. For her sister, however, the event that had been so shocking at the time, seemed miraculously behind her and Rose now spoke incessantly not of Salvatore, her husband of twenty-six years, but of Alan, a man Summer had yet to meet.
“Why not just hide in the closet until the police arrive?” Summer asked.
“You can’t rely on the police. They’re more likely to kill you.” Rose stressed the second person. “No,” she said thoughtfully, “Alan says we need to protect ourselves, and I agree with him.”
All of a sudden, the voice of the Range Officer boomed over the public address system. The high-pitched female chatter in the gallery quieted.
“I know y’all waiting to have some fun, but before you get started, there’s a couple of rules we need to go over,” he said.
Rose took the Glock from Summer and ejected the magazine. “Alan’s getting me the Ruger for a wedding present,” she whispered. “It’s designed for concealment and for women.”
“Can I have everyone lay their firearms on the bench,” the Range Officer said. “Be sure the muzzle is pointing downrange. Downrange means parallel to the floor and parallel to the walls.”
The Range Officer paused to give the ladies time to absorb his instruction.
“Someone is coming by to check,” he continued. “Be sure the injection port is facing up. Be sure the slide is locked back and the magazine is out.”
The gallery echoed with the sound of metal on metal Kaching! Clunk! Kaching!
“Next.” The Ranger Officer said. “Keep your gun unloaded until you’re ready to use it. Unloaded means completely unloaded.” The Range Officer stressed completely as though addressing a class of children. “The magazine is out of the gun. Nothing is in the chamber. Nothing is in the cylinder... lady in lane three, ma’am, I need you to listen up.”
Summer peeked out of their stall to see who was in lane three, but she could only hear hushed whispering.
“Does he talk to everyone like this? Or is that tone just reserved for ladies’ night?" she asked.
“They’re only doing their job, Summer,” Rose said.
A safety officer appeared.
“Please step back,” he said.
“What for?” Summer asked.
“Step back, ma’am!”
Summer obeyed, raising her eyebrows at Rose. The safety officer looked over their guns then moved on to the next stall.
“Don’t be sassy with them,” Rose said.
“Do all Americans take themselves so seriously?”
“Women need to be told, Summer. I see silly women in here all the time.”
“CEASE FIRE!” The Range Officer suddenly shouted.
Summer jumped. She looked to Rose, “who’s firing?”
“He’s just demonstrating the cease fire,” Rose said.
The intercom crackled, “When you hear a cease fire, take your finger off of the trigger. Bring your elbows to your side. Then. Wait for instructions from the Range Officer.”
Thirty minutes later, Summer pulled off her earmuffs and inspected her target. She looked over at Rose and made a sad face.
“Never mind,” Rose consoled her, pulling back the action on her pistol and shunting it back and forth to check for loose bullets. “You could ask our neighbor for her target, since most of your rounds ended up there.”
Summer grinned, pleased to see Rose’s humor break through the serious demeanor that had endured since she met her at the airport. She folded the zombie target and slipped it into her bag—she would take it back to Australia to entertain Frankie and their friends. She watched Rose dismantle her firearm, pressing down on the side pins and sliding the frame off. Rose had always had their mother’s hands. But the fingers working out the recoil spring had lost their slender elegance and seemed awkward, spindly. Rose tipped the pistol on an angle and let the barrel drop into her palm and Summer saw uncertainty in her movement.
Rose caught her sister’s stare.
“What?” she demanded.
“Nothing!” Summer said, smiling and nodding at Rose’s dismantled firearm. “It looks complicated.”
“You get used to it,” Rose said, unzipping her gym bag. “Hungry?” she asked.
“Starving.”
Summer trailed Rose into the mall. She felt a tightness in her chest; she had begun to question her mission. Perhaps this was not the time to tell her sister about her impending marriage to Frankie. Although she did not know why she was experiencing such reticence. After all, the first thing out of Rose when Summer arrived in Florida was the announcement of her own nuptials to Alan.
The server poured their wine.
“I thought you were a teetotaler,” Summer said.
Rose raised her glass and clinked it against Summer’s.
“Sal’s folks were drinkers. He was against it, though he indulged in the occasional beer.”
Summer seized on the mention of Salvatore. She had hoped to acquire an understanding of what had happened to her sister’s marriage. The call with Rose at Parliament House had been disjointed, shocking. Summer had been overwhelmed, dumbstruck. She had not known what to say. Rose had not been able to talk for long but Summer had, during the short conversation, elicited a promise from Rose to keep her informed and to prioritize her safety. Before she disconnected, Rose gave Summer a phone number where she could be reached if needed.
In the days following, Summer had struggled to absorb the sudden turn of events in her sister’s life. She surmised that, without any real information it was impossible to understand how a supposedly happy marriage of twenty-six years could suddenly dissolve into the despair she had heard in Rose’s voice. After a week, having heard nothing more from Rose and fearful for her wellbeing, Summer called the number. A digital voice on an answering machine directed her to leave a message after the beep and the impersonality of the device added to her anxiety. Then two days later, Nana Laurel’s aide called to say that their grandmother had been hospitalized again, her cancer had returned, and this time she was not expected to recover. Summer became frantic. She tried again to reach Rose, once before she left for Queensland, and once more when she arrived at the Royal Brisbane Hospice.
On the day before Nana Laurel’s funeral, Rose called her. Summer thought she seemed embarrassed, regretful even. She apologized for involving Summer in her “drama” and suggested that she had probably overreacted. Then she expressed sorrow at missing the opportunity to farewell Nana Laurel. Summer told her that she planned to include her in the eulogy she was preparing on behalf of Nana Laurel’s family, which was now just her and Rose. Rose had choked up and thanked Summer, saying that she did not deserve to be mentioned, since she had not stayed in touch with their grandmother in any meaningful way. Summer told her that was nonsense and insisted that Nana Laurel would not have seen it that way. This seemed to calm Rose. Then Summer had tried to get Rose to reveal more about the loss of her marriage, but Rose clammed up. Reluctant to divulge the details of her divorce, she complained that it was late in Florida and said she wanted to put the conversation off until she could “talk more freely.” Summer, though disappointed, assumed Rose was protecting her daughter’s young ears; not wanting Sofia to overhear unpleasant truths about her father, and she had not pushed. She had, however, insisted on knowing how Rose was managing: Where was she living? Did she need money? That’s when Rose said that a friend from church, Alan, was helping her out, and, yes, she was both safe and financially secure. She told Summer that she didn’t need to worry.
But Summer was worried. She had always shared her life with Rose, and she could not understand why Rose kept so much from her now. She discussed her concerns with Frankie who suggested that she pay a visit to her sister in the United States.
“Shame, if that’s what it is,” Frankie had said to Summer, “is never black and white. But if you can look it in the eye, you will see the truth.”
Now, sitting opposite her sister, Summer reflected on Frankie’s perceptive advice. The server had brought their pizza and Rose was dragging a slice onto her plate. A broccoli flower fell onto the tabletop. She scooped it into her mouth. Frankie had warned Summer that reconnecting after so many years might not be easy, and as she watched Rose chew hungrily, Summer wondered if the adjustment was as hard on her sister as it was on her.
On her first evening in Florida, she had expected Rose to tell her story, intimately, as they had done as children. But Rose had been vague, evasive even, and Summer had felt obliged to play along with the Rose’s girly observations about Summer’s hair: “You’re so blonde!”; her clothes: “That sweater is so darling!”; her weight: “You’re so tiny.” Until finally Summer backed off, understanding that she needed to find common ground with her sister, who felt more like a stranger than her only living relative. But now, Rose had opened a door, and Summer saw an opportunity to show her sister that she could trust her.
“I can’t imagine how it must have been for you Rose,” Summer said. “All those years with Salvatore; so charming to the outside world and so controlling at home. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.”
“It’s not your fault, Summer.”
Rose squeezed her sister’s hand.
“I was so naïve. Sal used to lecture me; he would say: Wives should be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their husbands.” Rose mimicked Salvatore in a sarcastic voice. “And I agreed with him!” she admitted.
Rose reached for her glass then. She lowered her voice.
“That day I called you, Sal told me he’d had a dream that he killed me and Sof and then himself. I knew it wasn’t a dream, Summer. I sat in our bed, and I felt my soul freeze over. I knew I had to get out.” Rose sat up straight. “I don’t know why I called you, I was panicked. I mean hitting me was one thing, but I wasn’t going to let him hurt my daughter.”
“Sal hit you?”
“He didn’t mean to,” Rose said, protectively. “He was always sorry afterwards.” Rose tilted her head to one side. “He’d had a hard life. I feel sad for him now. I pray for him every day.”
“He needs help not prayer, Rose,” Summer said. “But I don’t care about him, I care about you... and me. I’m your sister and I love you.”
Rose smiled. “I know, you’ve always been there for me,” she said.
“Then why couldn’t you tell me what was going on in your marriage?”
Rose looked perplexed, “Well, you wouldn’t understand.”
“What wouldn’t I understand?”
“Men,” Rose said. “You don’t know men.”
“Well, I might not date men, but I know them.”
“You know what I mean, men and women... you have no idea about men in that way.”
Summer was taken aback. She wasn’t sure she agreed, but she did not think this was the time to remind her sister that they had both grown up in a heterosexual family, or that the world in which everyone exists, gay and straight, is a patriarchy.
“But I’m your sister. I have a right to know.”
“I know,” said Rose. “But everything’s alright now. I’m happy and Alan’s going to give me the kind of life I deserve.”
Summer tried to contextualize this happiness that Rose had spoken of often since her arrival. Though she hadn’t met Alan, she could not see from her sister’s preoccupation what was so special about this man.
There was a photo in Rose’s apartment taken during a recent trip to the Grand Canyon. Rose and Alan were arm in arm. Rose looked demure in a floral sundress that offset the red hues in her hair. But Summer had been disappointed at Alan’s lazy paunch, his hooded eyes—this was not another Salvatore: handsome, enchanting, bewitching. She wanted to ask Rose why she was in such a hurry to remarry and what kind of life she envisaged, beyond new houses and vacations. But no matter how she phrased the question in her mind, it sounded jealous, judgmental and she did not want Rose to think that she was either of those things.
What she wanted was to breach the divide that how somehow come between them, to reach a place of comfort and ease of communication, to find their way back to the trust that had seemed unbreakable when they were girls. But Rose was so busy running errands for Alan, who called at least five times a day from different parts of the United States where he was, according to Rose, “doing business.” When the display on Rose’s phone lit up with Alan’s number, Rose would drop what she was doing and rush into her bedroom to speak privately with him. She emerged dreamy, apologetic, and with a new list of chores. Summer accompanied her all over town, picking up his dry cleaning, clearing his mailbox, scheduling his social engagements—there was a time when Summer would not have thought twice about calling out the unfairness of the bargain Rose had struck with Alan. Instead she tiptoed around the uncomfortable silences and responded in kind to Rose’s gushes of hollow pleasantries: “... but gosh it’s so good to see you...” or “... can you believe we’re really here together?...”, and in submitting to the charade, Summer pandered to an innate fear of jeopardizing the relationship with her sister because if that happened she would have no one.
The server brought their Buffalo wings. Summer inhaled the spicy aroma, then seized a wing between her thumb and forefinger. Rose suddenly reached into her bag and brought out her phone, which was ringing.
“It’s Sof!” she said, excitedly.
Summer dipped her wing into the raspberry habanero and bit into the crispy skin, immediately fanning her hand over her mouth. Rose gestured her sympathies as she spoke to her daughter. Summer listened to the bossy authoritative voice she knew so well, only Rose had acquired cunning in her negotiations: No, Sofia may not spend the week with a new friend because she would be joining her mother, her aunt, and Alan on a trip to New York then Kentucky, a vacation Sofia had been consulted about. Summer admired Rose’s skillful manipulation, guiding Sofia away from selfish wants toward her familial responsibilities.
Rose returned her phone to her bag.
“She’s so excited to be meeting you,” she said.
“Me too,” said Summer.
“I just know you and Sof are going to love each other,” said Rose, tugging Alan’s credit card from her purse and hailing their server for the check.