Nightshade

Joan moved next to her sister, who was standing in front of the full length mirror on her closet door.

“See? It’ll be perfect!”

Joan gazed at the two images in the mirror. There was no resemblance at all. Cynthia’s figure was almost perfect — Joan’s own chest looked completely flat compared to her older sister’s, and where Cynthia’s body was all soft curves, her own was nothing but straight lines and gangly limbs.

She didn’t have a waist, and she didn’t have hips, and she didn’t have a bust.

Even her hair — dark and straight — paled by comparison to Cynthia’s wavy blond tresses.

“See?” Cynthia said. “We’re exactly the same height! So you can go to the fitting tomorrow, and I — ” Abruptly, she fell silent.

“You can what?” Joan had asked.

Cynthia smiled. “Never mind. What you don’t know can’t hurt you.”

So she went to the fitting instead of Cynthia, and Mrs. Fillmore had lowered the dress over her head, and she’d turned to look into a mirror, certain the dress would somehow transform her into as beautiful a creature as her sister.

It hadn’t.

Instead of seeing the fairy princess she’d let herself imagine — even hoped for — she was still the same gawky girl she’d been before.

“It’s just not your color,” Mrs. Fillmore had tried to reassure her, reading her thoughts as clearly as if she’d spoken them out loud. “When it’s time for your prom, I’ll make you a red dress. It wouldn’t be right on Cynthia, but red will be perfect for you. You’ll see.”

Joan had made no reply, because even though she was only twelve, she was already sure no one would ever ask her to the prom. But she’d stood perfectly still, and Mrs. Fillmore hadn’t stuck any pins in her, and that night when their mother asked Cynthia how the fitting had gone, her sister lied so smoothly that even Joan almost believed it had been Cynthia who went to Mrs. Fillmore’s that afternoon.

And then the dress arrived, carefully folded and wrapped in tissue paper and packed into the gray cardboard box. And even though Joan knew she should wait until Cynthia got home and tried it on, she couldn’t contain herself. The unfinished dress had looked so beautiful that she could hardly even imagine what it must look like now.

The box drawing her like a magnet, Joan moved toward it, her fingers untying the string and lifting the lid almost of their own volition.

And then, from behind her, she heard her mother’s voice.

“What are you doing? How dare you touch that box!”

Joan spun around, her hands going behind her back as if to hide from her mother’s wrath.

“Useless!” her mother said, shoving her out of Cynthia’s room and closing the door so she couldn’t even see the box, let alone the beautiful dress inside. “What if you’d ruined it? What if you’d spoiled the most wonderful night of your sister’s life?”

* * *

BUT SHE HADN’T ruined the most wonderful night of Cynthia’s life.

And, despite what Mrs. Fillmore had promised, she’d never had a prom dress of her own.

“Useless!” she heard her mother mutter behind her. “You’re just as useless now as you ever were. I don’t know why I ever had you!”

I don’t either, Joan thought. I truly don’t. But she said nothing, reminding herself once more that her mother didn’t mean what she was saying.

It will be all right, she insisted to herself as she carefully hung the dress in the exact spot her mother wanted it. I’ll get through this.

I’ll get through this, just as I’ve gotten through everything else.

But even as she repeated the reassurances to herself, she still heard her mother’s angry words echoing in her mind.

Useless… useless… useless…

* * *

BILL HAPGOOD GAZED down the fourth fairway of the granite Falls Golf Club course. The fourth hole had always been his favorite — the fairway ran 180 yards from the tee, then veered sharply to the right to proceed another 150 yards to the hole. There was a dense stand of forest to the right of the first run, and if you couldn’t control your slice, there was no chance of finding the ball. On the left was a grove of pines that Bill’s father had planted (“Why should the hookers get off easy?” George Hapgood, a notorious slicer, had complained, instantly earning himself a reputation as being a stalwart foe of prostitution, a profession that no one in Granite Falls was practicing anyway.) But once you got successfully through the narrow slot off the tee and made the turn to the right, you discovered that your troubles had just begun. The woods were still on the right, but now there was a pond on the left, and six deep bunkers guarding the green, which most members were absolutely certain was becoming smaller every year. There were even rumors that Bill himself sometimes snuck onto the course at night to cut away small sections of the fourth green, making the sand traps even larger than they already were.

Though the rumors weren’t true, no one would have been surprised to find out that they were: indeed, there wasn’t a soul in Granite Falls who could even remember a time when a Hapgood wasn’t tinkering with the course; Bill’s grandfather carved the first nine holes out of his farm sixty years earlier, and he and his friends had built the original clubhouse themselves. Bill’s father had figured out how to add enough new tee boxes to at least half-convince the membership that eighteen holes wasn’t just a matter of going twice around the original nine, and Bill himself hadn’t missed a workday since he’d inherited his father’s membership when he was still in college. Indeed, the old hickory clubs his father had sawn off to teach Bill the game when he was four — and that Bill had used to teach Matt when he was five — were still stored in the club’s locker shed, waiting for the day when he could use them to teach Matt’s son.

Matt’s son.

His grandson.

Not his grandson, he reminded himself. His step- grandson. Not for the first time, he wondered if he’d made a mistake not adopting Matt when he and Joan first got married. But it had been impossible then, for his grandfather was still alive, and Bill would never forget the scene he’d had in the den the night before his wedding when he broached the subject to the old man, who had only reluctantly left his retirement home in Scottsdale to come to the wedding.

“Never!” William Hughes Hapgood had roared. “It’s bad enough that you’re marrying that Moore girl at all. But to even think of adopting her bastard — ”

“Come on, Grandpa! Nobody uses that word anymore. It’s archaic!”

“Morality is not archaic,” W.H. had growled, his brow furrowing dangerously. “And don’t begin prattling about modern times.”

“I won’t prattle about them if you won’t try to pretend they don’t exist,” Bill replied.

W.H.’s features had grown as hard as the New Hampshire granite from which he’d sprung. “I’m not forbidding you to marry this Joan person, am I? But I draw the line at adopting her — ” He cut himself short, reading the danger signals in his grandson’s eyes. “ — her son,” he finally went on. “We have no idea who the child’s father was, and I can only assume that since she’s never told anyone, she’s not terribly proud of whoever he was. And while you may find it old-fashioned, I still believe that in the long run, breeding will out. Know the lineage, and you know the man. But if you don’t know the lineage — ”

“You can’t trust the man.” Bill finished the phrase that had been drilled into him since childhood like a catechism, and in the end he’d given in to his grandfather’s wishes.

Just as Joan had given in to her mother’s wishes.

But it wasn’t the same thing, Bill told himself as he teed up his ball and took a couple of practice swings. Matthew Moore had never disrupted his life; if anything, Matt had been the son he’d always hoped for, and in the end even old W.H. had grudgingly conceded that Matt wasn’t “as bad as I was expecting.”

Emily Moore, on the other hand, was even worse than Bill had been expecting, and now, as he lined up his