Rose (Shooting Stars 3)

Already she was looking younger, happier.

Charlotte Alden Curtis was right. She was either an angel of mercy. Or an angel of temptation leading us to a deeper fall into unhappiness.

Mommy and I wandered through the house looking at the pictures of the Curtis and Alden families. We both lingered over pictures of Angelica. There were very few pictures of Evan, and in these he was always looking away or down and never smiling. I picked up the one on the grand piano and looked more closely at his face. It was only natural I suppose for me to look for resemblances to Daddy and to myself. I thought he definitely had Daddy's nose and jaw as well as his hair. In the pictures where I could have some view of his eyes, I thought they were his mother's eyes, and he did have his mother's slightly cleft chin.

Charlotte had her maid set up a small buffet lunch for us on the patio that was on the west side of the house and therefore soaked in warm sun. Soft blue umbrellas shaded the rolls, meats, and salads that were placed on the tables.

"Why don't you go to Evan," Charlotte asked me. "introduce yourself, and see if you can get him to join us for lunch?"

"I can't just go to his room," I said.

"Of course you can. dear. I want y'all to feel this house is your house immediately. Go on," she urged. "He won't bite. The worst thing he'll do is what he does often to me. He'll ignore you, pretend you're not there."

I looked at Mommy. She smiled some encouragement and I shrugged and started toward Evan's room. What a strange feeling came from realizing I was about to meet my brother for the first time. We shared the same father. We had similarities in our looks. Did that mean we might think alike, feel things the same way?

And what did he think of our father now? Did he hate him for what he had done to his mother, for helping to create him and then deserting him? Would his anger toward our father spread to me? Would he resent me and hate me no matter what I said or did?

I was actually trembling a bit when I approached the door to his room and 'mocked. I heard nothing, and thought perhaps I had knocked too softly, so I did it again much sharper, harder. Still, he didn't say come in or ask who it was. My third set of knocks actually opened the door. It wasn't closed tightly at all. It swung in and I looked at his room.

I hadn't been in many boys' rooms, but this certainly didn't look like any I would imagine. The walls were bare. There weren't any posters of sports heroes or movie and television stars or rock singers. The room itself resembled a cold, aseptic hospital room. There was a special bed made up with stark white s

heets and pillow cases bounded by railings. Around the room were all sorts of therapeutic equipment.

At first I didn't think Evan was in the room, but when the door finished opening. I saw him staring at a computer monitor. He was also wearing headphones, which explained why he didn't hear my knocking. I saw that there was a microphone attached to the headphones and he was talking softly to someone. I thought I shouldn't interrupt him, but something told him I was in the doorway. Perhaps it was the shadow that came from the light behind me or maybe I was reflected in the glare of his computer screen. Whatever it was, he turned suddenly and looked at me, practically stabbing me with his furious eyes,

"I'm sorry," I began. "I knocked and then knocked again and your door just opened."

He said something into the microphone and slowly took off the headphones, placing it all in his lap.

"She tells me you're my sister," he said. His voice was deeper than I had expected and not unlike Daddy's. "My half-sister," he added.

"It seems to be so," I replied.

"She's trying to make it sound like half is better than none," he said. "That's not always true. Half a glass of cyanide isn't better than none; half a headache isn't better than none."

"I'm hardly poison and I don't think I give people headaches," I retorted. "Look. this is just as much a surprise for me and my mother as it is for you, believe me. More so," I added after a beat. "because, according to Charlotte, you've known about us for some time."

He stared, his eyes so unlike Daddy's. They were definitely his mother's eves entirely-- a deep blue, sapphire, but so penetrating, searching, and unmoving.

"I don't see why you and I have to suffer because of what others have done," I suggested.

His eves brightened and softened.

"Oh, and how do I stop suffering?" he asked with a bit of an impish smile. "'The best doctors haven't come up with an answer. Can you?"

"I'm not talking about that."

"What?" He was wheeling toward me. "What's that?"

"Your unfortunate condition." I said, nodding at him in the chair.

"Unfortunate condition, Yes, that's a good way to put it. Thank you. I used to call myself crippled."'

"'If you accept misery, you will be miserable,' Daddy used to say."

"Daddy? Daddy," he muttered. "You'll have to tell me about Daddy," he added, spitting the word like some profanity.

"I will," I said defiantly. "I'll tell you lots of things if you let me, but first you have to want me to. I'm not coming here begging you to be friends. I'd like to be friends, but if you don't want me to be your friend..."