Finally Cordelia stood. “I take it the bathroom in this place works?”

“No, but there’s a Porta-Potty in the garden.”

Cordelia’s eyes went wide.

“Just joking.”

This time, everyone laughed, even Cordelia, the tension in the room easing.

Cordelia headed out of the kitchen, and Olivia cupped her hands around a mug of hot mint tea laced with honey. Portia started to clear the table. But when she reached for the unused place setting, she heard Cordelia in the tiny foyer.

“Who are you?” the oldest sister was asking.

Portia glanced out of the kitchen and saw a young girl, eleven, maybe twelve, standing just inside the front door. Her curly light brown hair puffed like a cloud around creamy white skin, making her big brown eyes look even bigger. Freckles stood out on her nose, perfect and contained, like crayon dots drawn by a child. While the dots were meticulous, the girl was not. She wore a navy blue sweater over a white blouse that was mostly untucked from a navy blue plaid skirt. Her headband was askew, one kneesock up, the other down, spilling into black flats, finishing off what was clearly one of the private school uniforms that children wore in Manhattan.

“I’m Ariel, from upstairs.” She looked around. “I heard all the noise. The door was open.” Her pursed mouth dared them to contradict her. “Are you squatters or something?”

Olivia laughed out loud.

“No,” Portia said. “We’re not squatters. I live here.”

The girl studied them, as if trying to get her head around anyone living in this run-down apartment. “But you weren’t here yesterday.”

“I moved in last night.”

Cordelia scowled. “I still can’t believe you moved here. You should have kept staying with me.”

When Portia first arrived in New York, she had gone straight to Cordelia, not sure what to do about the apartment. But as with so many things with Portia, she had woken up yesterday morning knowing what she had to do. Next thing she knew, she made the call to the lawyer, then moved in here.

“And the rest of you are, what … friends?” the girl asked.

“Sisters.”

“You must be Gabriel Kane’s child,” Cordelia said.

“You know my dad?”

“Olivia and I sold our apartments to your father.”

The girl wasn’t paying attention. She eyed the food.

Cordelia shifted into mother mode. “Are you hungry?”

“Starving. The new housekeeper-slash-cook made dinner, but it was really weird, like scary weird, and seriously, who wants to eat scary food?”

“Have a seat.” Cordelia retrieved a plate as if it were her own home and loaded it with food. Just before she set it down at the extra place setting, she froze.

Her eyes narrowed, and her mouth pinched. Portia hated the battle she sensed going on in her sister. But she didn’t repeat Gram’s words.

“Some things are true whether you believe them or not.”

“Sit,” Cordelia finally said, setting down the plate. “Eat, before it gets cold.”

Four

THEY SAT BACK DOWN on the stools while Ariel gobbled up her food and Portia, Cordelia, and Olivia stared at her.

“What?” Ariel said, glancing up through a curtain of wispy bangs, the fork halting halfway to her mouth. “You’ve never seen a girl eat before?”

Cordelia smiled in the condescendingly maternal way she had perfected by age ten. “Perhaps we’ve never seen a young girl eat so fast.”

Ariel shrugged, unbothered by the implied reprimand. “Like I said, I’m starved.”

Cordelia started to speak, but Portia cut her off. “Let her eat in peace, Cord.”

Olivia laughed. “Yes, eat. Though tell us,” she added, studying the girl, “who all lives in your apartment?”

Ariel looked confused. “Who all? What kind of word is that?”

“It’s a Texas thing,” Portia clarified. “You know, like y’all for you all.”

“I don’t get it. Who adds all to you?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Olivia interjected, waving the words away. “I just wondered who lives with you upstairs.”

Olivia said the words casually, but Portia knew better. She knew her sister. Olivia was always interested in the possibility of a new man.

“Just me, my dad, and Miranda.”

Olivia scowled. “Miranda?”

“My sister.”

“Oh, really.” Olivia’s smile returned, slow, delicious. “So, your dad’s single?”

“Olivia,” Portia and Cordelia both snapped.

Cordelia no doubt said that because Olivia was being rude. Portia wanted to think she did it for the same reason, but the truth was that at the mention of the man upstairs, she felt, well, possessive. The thought of Olivia’s lack of inhibition and beautifully sculpted body in relation to Gabriel Kane didn’t sit well—which was ridiculous, since Portia was barely divorced and certainly not interested in Gabriel herself. But there it was.

“What?” Olivia asked, her tone defensive. “What did I say?”

Cordelia sighed. “One, it’s inappropriate to ask a man’s child if he’s single.”

“And two,” Portia picked up the thread, “you only like guys who are…” She hesitated, glanced at Ariel, and then leaned closer. “T-A-K-E-N.”

Ariel narrowed her eyes.

Olivia scoffed. “Now who is being inappropriate in front of the K-I-D?”

“Hello,” Ariel said. “I can S-P-E-L-L.”

Olivia pushed more food in front of her. “Keep eating.” She turned back to her sisters. “I do not like guys who are taken.”

Portia and Cordelia rolled their eyes.

“I don’t,” Olivia persisted, reaching up to twist her mass of curls into a loose knot on her head. When she let go, her hair fell in a tumble around her shoulders. “Martin wasn’t taken. Neither was Daniel. And what about George?”

“True. But let’s see. Martin, you broke up with because he had a cat.”

“Sue me. I’m a dog person.”

“Well then, Daniel should have been perfect for you: He had a dog,” Cordelia said. “I can’t remember why you broke up with him, just that you did via text message.”

“Does anyone under the age of fifty use the word via?” Olivia shot back. “How old are you really?”

“You know very well I am”—she glanced at Ariel—“twenty-eight.”

“Not!” Olivia and Portia laughed. “Thirty-five if you’re a day!”

“Don’t change the subject,” Cordelia snipped. “We’re not finished. You mentioned George.”

Olivia shrugged and looked away.

Cordelia tsked. “Poor George. He would have been better off with a text. He only found out about your change of heart when he came home to your all’s apartment and saw you’d thrown his clothes out the window.”

Ariel gaped, fork forgotten in her hand.

“He deserved it,” Olivia stated with calm certainty. “Besides, the apartment was a fifth-floor walk-up. I wasn’t going to spend hours walking up and down those stairs taking everything down to the street. That’s a rite of passage. Every woman should throw a guy’s clothes out a window once in her life.”

Cordelia scoffed. “A rite of passage is a sorority hazing or a bat mitzvah.”

“Maybe for you, Miss Marry-the-first-guy-you-date.”

“I dated!”

Portia groaned. “Please stop.”

Olivia and Cordelia ignored her.

“You only dated one other guy, Cordelia, and that didn’t turn out so well.”

“What happened?” Ariel asked.

Without Portia noticing, the girl had dumped everything out of her backpack and had retrieved a notebook. She sat now, poised with pen in hand over an empty page, like a reporter, or overeager detective. Next to her plate, a smorgasbord of paraphernalia littered the table. Several pens of assorted colors, a calculator covered in E = mc2 stickers, a wild-haired rendering of Einstein painted in fluorescent-green nail polish on an inhaler, a half-eaten KitKat bar, a mini-bottle of antibacterial gel, and multicolored knit socks with separate coverings for each toe, like gloves for feet. Portia loved the socks.

“What happened to the only other guy you dated?” Ariel persisted, ready to write.

“Nothing,” the three sisters said in unison, which brought them back together, the energy between them shifting.

Olivia touched Cordelia’s hand. That was the way with Olivia. Wild and carefree, blazing through anything bad with a bold fearlessness, but underneath a caring that Portia sometimes thought her sister worked hard to hide.

“Dating practically only one guy has served you well,” Olivia said. “You and James are great together, and you’ll survive whatever is going on now.”

Cordelia gave her a determined smile. “Thank you, sweetie.”

They shared a comfortable moment, Portia just barely realizing that Ariel studied them like a scientist scrutinizing a foreign species.

Olivia didn’t seem to notice at all, lost in her own thoughts, until she wrinkled her nose, then leaned closer. Portia could see the sparkle in her eyes that she knew meant trouble.

“So it goes without saying that you and James are perfect, yada yada,” Olivia said with another wave of her hand. “But let’s just pretend. If you had dated anyone else before you left Texas, who would it have been? Brody, right? You were madly in love with Brody. You would have slept with—”

“Olivia!” Portia barked, nodding toward Ariel. “Inappropriate. On so many levels.”

Olivia just shrugged innocently, though she didn’t look innocent at all, and squeezed Cordelia’s hand.

Ariel shook her head and rose, wandering out of the kitchen, surprising them when music suddenly blared. “Oops,” she called out from the living room. “Sorry.”