Confessions of the Sullivan Sisters by Natalie Standiford Page B

mourners while we walked up the aisle, but he only listens to Miss Maura. Brooks was already seated with Carrie and his parents and Mamie. He nodded at me as I slid into our pew.
    I stared at Wallace’s body, all waxy-looking in his coffin, and it gave my heart a little pang, but I couldn’t cry. I wanted to cry. It would have felt right. People around me were sniffling and wiping their eyes. Sassy wept and trembled through the whole mass. Not hard-hearted Jane, of course. Ginger was crying, but who knows over what. Maybe she’d lost an earring.
    The sight of Daddy-o quietly weeping got to me. Daddy-o doesn’t fake tears. Wallace wasn’t his father, and if you think about it, Daddy-o has been to a lot of funerals for your husbands. Maybe he was remembering his real father. Or maybe he’s just tenderhearted. Sassy got her tender heart from him.
    Finally the ceremony ended and we filed out of the cathedral row by row. I felt tired. The faces in the pews blurred until, in the very last row, one face jumped out at me. Robbie. He looked at me so sweetly that I burst into tears at last.
    “Oh, Norrie!” Sassy draped her arms around my waist and clung to me as we walked. That was all that kept me from rushing into Robbie’s arms. The flow of people pushed us past him and out of the church.
    I hadn’t told him about the funeral; he must have seen the announcement in the newspaper. I longed to be with him, but I had to go to the luncheon. I don’t know why the sight of his face set me off like that, but in the limo, all the way to Gilded Elms, I hid my face in a handkerchief and cried. And then I worried: What if I was turning out like Ginger? What if I couldn’t be happy unless I was with Robbie, the way Ginger can’t be happy without Daddy-o?

FOURTEEN
    THE NIGHT AFTER WALLACE’S FUNERAL, WE SETTLED AT THE kitchen table for a quiet supper with Miss Maura. Sassy said she didn’t feel well and went upstairs to her room. The rest of us fixed turkey sandwiches and ate them with glasses of milk, and gossiped about who had said what at the post-funeral luncheon.
    “Brooks Overbeck told me he’s already bought a white tie and tails getup for the Cotillon,” Sully said.
    “Good for him.”
    Sully and St. John exchanged a glance. In all the fuss around the funeral I hadn’t forgotten about Brooks and the Cotillon, but it didn’t feel right to talk about something so frivolous while wearing mourning clothes.
    “I’m going upstairs for a smoke,” Jane announced. “And I don’t care who knows about it,” she added to Miss Maura’s raised finger, poised for scolding.
    “I’ll go with you.” I got up from the table, my sandwich half-eaten. “To make sure you don’t burn my room down.”
    Jane and I went upstairs to the Tower. Jane cracked a window and lit one of her cloves. I collapsed on my bed.
    “So what made you cry?” Jane asked. “I mean, at the end of the funeral. Why were you really crying?”
    “What kind of question is that? It was a funeral. Everybody was crying. Except you, of course.”
    “I know you think I’m mean. You weren’t crying over Wallace. I’m sad about him. I really am. And I’m sad for Sassy that she found him dead. It seems to have broken something inside her.”
    “I wish she’d talk about it,” I said.
    The door pushed open—no one ever bothers to knock in this family—and Sully and St. John came in.
    “The place looks like crap without my posters,” Sully said. “Looks like a girl’s room.”
    “It’s my room now.” I wasn’t in the mood.
    “It is and will always be my room, officially,” St. John said. “I’m only lending it to you squibs.”
    St. John stretched his long self across the foot of the bed while Sully settled in the armchair by the window. They both looked at Jane.
    “What?” she said. “I’m smoking. Deal with it.”
    “We need to have a talk with Norrie,” St. John said.
    “So talk.”
    “Get out of here, you feel me, shorty?” Sully