Introduction

A tale of family secrets and sisterly bonds set against the unlikely friendship of two remarkable women: Stella Nightingale, a twenty-one-year-old runaway from a broken home, and Alice Montclair Whittington, a ninety-four-year-old Southern grande dame with a dry sense of humor, a wicked tongue, and an illustrious but mysterious past.

The last thing twenty-one-year-old Stella Nightingale wants is a job as a caregiver for wealthy Alice Montclair Whittington. Alice, a ninety-four-year-old Southern grande dame with a dry sense of humor and a wicked tongue, has already run off a long line of caregivers. But Stella, a former runaway from a broken home who's only recently begun to put her life back together, is desperate for work. And she figures she can handle Alice.

But strange things are happening at Alice's rambling mountaintop estate. As an unlikely friendship develops between the two women, Alice, whose memory comes and goes, begins to reveal long-ago tales of her illustrious past, tales that pose more questions than they answer. Who is her mysterious sister, Laura? Why won?t Alice and her sister, Adeline, ever speak of her? And why are the other caregivers afraid to go down in the basement?

As Stella tries to separate fact from fiction in Alice's life, she struggles to overcome her own devastating family secret, compelled by a deepening friendship that will change the lives of both women forever.

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Excerpt

One

§§§

October, 1934

Come home. Your sister has lost her mind.

Her mother’s words seem to echo in the room around her. Alice could almost hear the breathless pauses in her voice, the undercurrent of tension and pleading in her tone. Her mother wrote the way she spoke. Alice crumpled the letter in her lap.

Well, why should she? Go home, that is.

She was in college now, away from home for the first time in her life, and surely her sisters were no longer her concern. She had felt when she came up to Sweet Briar a year ago that she was leaving her old life behind and beginning anew. Reinventing herself as the person she wanted to be, not the dutiful oldest daughter who must always watch after her little sisters, escort them to school on the streetcar, make sure they had money in their pockets for the return trip. Laura, with her cloud hair and angelic face, always wandering off into the street, lost in her own dreamy world. And Adeline, the youngest, difficult and stubborn and determined to have her own way.

And now Laura was sixteen and Adeline was thirteen, old enough to take care of themselves, and it was unfair that Mother would expect Alice to come home. As if there was anything she could do to prevent her sister from falling in love with an unsuitable man and running off with him against their parents’ wishes.

Really, it was unfair of Mother to even ask.

Alice felt her mother had an ulterior motive in asking her to return, just as she had an ulterior motive in refusing. The simple truth was, and Alice would admit this to herself even if she wouldn’t to anyone else, she didn’t want to come home because she didn’t want to see Bill Whittington.

She had let him kiss her at a cotillion party in August and now something seemed to have been settled between them, something Alice was loathe to acknowledge or accept. The fact was, she didn’t even like him. He made her nervous, with his fine clothes and manners, and the slightly condescending way he had of speaking to her, as if he expected her to be dazzled by his charm. He was five years older than she, and he and all his friends had been to college and had come home to join their fathers’ businesses. Or spend their fathers’ money, in Bill Whittington’s case. His grandfather had been one of the first millionaires in Chattanooga and he had grown up in a sprawling mansion staffed with servants. He and his friends were from Lookout Mountain, which was where the old money resided, and Alice was from Signal Mountain, which was where the people who ran Chattanooga, the doctors, lawyers, and engineers, lived.

Her father, Roderick, did not like it when she voiced this distinction. You have nothing to be ashamed of, he would say gruffly. Your people were here in this valley long before the Whittingtons arrived. The Montclairs had been in the Tennessee Valley from the time of the Indian Removal, long before the first carpetbaggers came to town and made their fortunes. Her father was a lawyer and he had business dealings with many of the Lookout Mountain crowd but he let Alice know she was never to feel socially inferior to any of them. Her mother had been a Jordan, which was one of the Old Carpetbagger Families (as her father called them privately), so Alice at least had some connection to Lookout Mountain. But despite her father’s admonition, she always felt slightly out of place with Bill Whittington and his gentlemen friends. As if they were all laughing at some joke she wasn’t privy to.

Alice had no intention of returning to Chattanooga and settling down with Bill Whittington, or anyone else for that matter. She liked boys well enough; she liked dancing with them, and flirting with them, but she didn’t like being told what to do or how to do it, and it seemed to her that that was a husband’s sole purpose.

Two days after she let Bill Whittington kiss her she came home from a party to find her parents on their way down to Ringgold, Georgia to rescue Laura from yet another undesirable suitor. The lovebirds had gone down there to get married because Georgia didn’t require a blood test.

Watching her parents drive away, Alice decided that once she graduated from Sweet Briar, she would never come home again. She would never get married.

She would travel the world and live life to its fullest, and above all else, she would avoid love like the plague.

Two

§§§

I

t was one of the largest houses she’d ever seen, rambling along the western brow of Lookout Mountain. More like a hotel, really, than a house. Stella Nightingale pulled to the side of the road and checked the address. This was the son’s house. He lived next door to his ninety-four year old mother, Charlotte had told her. Stella put the car in reverse and backed slowly along the street. She’d been driving for half an hour along this road that ran up the front of the mountain and meandered along the brow past houses that looked like they belonged in Beverly Hills.

She could see now why she had missed the house. It was smaller than the others, more like a cottage really, sandwiched in between the two mansions on either side. Larger than anything Stella had ever lived in but smaller than most on the mountain. It sat down slightly from the street, with a high pitched roof and a circular drive in front. Stella pulled into the drive and parked in front of the garage beside another small, forlorn-looking car. The other caretaker was named Janice, Charlotte had said. She was the one who would be showing Stella the ropes.

“She’s been with Miss Alice the longest so it’s best that she train you.”

The whole time Charlotte was talking, Stella was thinking, Do I really want this job? But jobs were not easy to come by these days, especially for girls like her, so she kept her mouth shut and nodded her head politely as Charlotte explained the routine. Miss Alice was hard of hearing and she was particular. She wasn’t difficult, of course, (said with a nervous laugh) she just liked things done a certain way. Her way. She had her own little routines, and that was the important thing, to keep Miss Alice on her routines. Not to shake her up. She got upset over small things so it was important to follow the routine to a tee. (Another nervous laugh).

Stella had answered the ad on Craigslist because it had stated clearly that she would be a “companion.” An in-home caregiver, not a nurse. No bathing the client, no insulin shots, no ass-wiping. The client was ninety-four years old and walked with a walker and the caregivers were only there to make meals and make sure she didn’t fall. There was a housekeeper to do the cleaning. Her son, Sawyer, who lived next door, did all of the shopping. The job was for two twelve hour day shifts, eight to eight on Wednesday and Thursdays, and the ad claimed that the client kept mostly to her room so caregivers were on their own for much of the time.

It had sounded like the perfect job for a college student; plenty of time to study and write term papers. The interview process was brutal, a twelve page application, an online psychological test, and a background check. Stella had never expected to make it through, especially through the psychological test. She had been surprised when Charlotte, the head of the agency, called to tell her she was hired.

It seemed they were as desperate to have her, as she was to have the job.

The house was deceptively large inside. The ceilings were nine feet tall and the rooms along the back, the living room, dining room, and sunroom, all had French doors leading to a wide verandah overlooking the valley. The view was spectacular, the valley bathed in sunlight, the Tennessee River meandering like a snake, and the distant mountains of the Cumberland Plateau rising into a violet sky. Despite its view, the house had a fusty, over-heated smell. Stella stood in the wide foyer staring at an oil portrait that hung on the wall of a somber dark-haired young woman. In the library to her right she could hear the sound of two female voices, one low and well-modulated with the aristocratic accent her mother had always dismissively called “Plantation South,” and the other higher-pitched, too loud, twittering.

“Miss Alice, the new girl is here and I want you to be nice to her,” Janice said.

“New girl? What new girl?”

“The one who’s taking Martha’s place.”

“I don’t like Martha.”

“I know. That’s why she’s not coming back. Now you sit here and write your letters and I’ll show the new girl around and then bring her in and introduce you.”

“Oh, all right then.”

Janice came hurrying out of the library, a small nervous-looking woman, smiling brightly. “Follow me. I’ll show you the kitchen.” Her eyes swept Stella, came to rest, pointedly, on her lip ring and her hair, dyed an unnatural shade of black, and then skittered away.

Stella followed her down a long narrow hallway through a butler’s pantry to the kitchen. Janice was talking the whole time. Miss Alice likes this, Miss Alice doesn’t like that. “You’re not to eat her food. Bring your own lunch and dinner from home. She’ll tell you what she wants to eat. Here’s her routine,” Janice said, opening a three-ring binder that contained accounts of all the minutiae of Miss Alice’s daily life, down to the time and quantity of her bowel movements. “She exercises twice a day, morning and afternoons, five complete laps of the ground floor.” Janice took a glass down from the cupboard. “These glasses are for Miss Alice only. You can use the ones on the bottom shelf. You have to walk behind her as she walks to make sure she doesn’t fall. Before you begin, fill one of these glasses with ice up to here, just here, do you see where I’m pointing? The rest with water. Put the glass on the table and cover it with a napkin. That way, when Miss Alice needs to hydrate as she’s making her laps, she can just pick it up off the table. The rest of the time, she has a little bell and she’ll ring it if she needs you.”

Stella thought, I’ll call Charlotte tonight and tell her I can’t take the job.

“Are there any questions?” Janice said brightly.

“No. I don’t think so.”

“Don’t worry,” Janice said, laughing. “You’ll do fine.”

Her financial aid hadn’t come through, not in the amount her counselor had told her anyway, and now she was short on tuition for the spring semester. Short on tuition and short on money for books, food, and housing, too. It was the way her chaotic life always went. If things could go wrong, they would. She should have been used to poverty by now, she’d been on her own since she was sixteen, she should have developed thick skin, calluses, a devil-may-care attitude. But she wasn’t like that. Poverty wasn’t like that. It wore you down, permeated your clothes, your skin, like a fine powder. After awhile you gave it off like a stench.

Just once, Stella wanted life to be easy.

She deserved it, damn it. If anyone deserved an easy life, it was her.

Alice Montclair Whittington was nothing like she had expected. She had expected Joan Crawford in a padded-shoulder suit, but Alice was thin, of medium height, with a cloud of white hair. She wore a green knit dress and a pink sweater, and a pair of tennis shoes with pink socks. Her eyes were a faded blue but Stella saw something move in their depths, something sharp and fierce. Those pale eyes fixed on Stella’s face while Janice twittered on, speaking in an overly-loud and jovial voice, as if she was talking to an unruly child.

When Janice had finished, Alice looked at Stella and said, “I hear you’re from Alabama”

“That’s right.”

“Well, I’m sorry for you.”

Stella stared at her a beat. “It could be worse,” she said.

“I don’t see how.”

Alice was sitting in a wingback chair next to a wall of bookcases. Janice stood behind her.

“Now, Miss Alice,” she said nervously.

Alice ignored Janice and continued her perusal of Stella. “What’s that mark on your arm?”

“This?” Stella hesitated, and then pushed up her sleeve so the old woman could see. “It’s a tattoo. It’s the Sanskrit symbol for peace.”

“You young ones are always marking up your skin. Do you know what that will look like when you get to be my age?”

Stella pulled her sleeve down. “I try not to think about it.”

Behind the chair, Janice frowned, giving her head a warning shake.

Alice brightened, slanting her eyes up at Stella. “Ever do this kind of work before?”

“Nope.”

“But you think you can handle it?”

“It’s not brain surgery. I can handle it.”

“They say I’m difficult.”

“I’m used to difficult people.”

“I’m not difficult. I just like things done a certain way.”

“I understand.”

Alice folded her hands in her lap. She gave Stella a sly look. “You’d be a pretty girl if you’d do something with your hair.”

“And you’d be a nice old lady if you’d stop saying things you shouldn’t.”

Behind Alice’s shoulder, Janice’s mouth fell open in shock. The clock on the mantle ticked steadily. Stella thought, I never even had a chance to ask what the hourly rate was.

Without warning, Alice Montclair Whittington put her head back, and laughed.

The girl reminded her of someone. She had suffered; you could see it in her eyes, in the fierce, wary expression on her face. The girl’s face was heart-shaped; a sign of beauty in Alice’s generation but less so now, with their celebration of thin, blade-faced women with over-full lips. The girl reminded Alice of someone but she couldn’t remember who.

Memory was like that. It shuffled in and out of her consciousness like an old servant. One moment she might be looking at the angelic expression of a blonde child in a sepia-tinted photograph, and the next moment she remembered, with all the fresh anguish of grief, that the child was her own son, long grown now and dead.

Alice watched the girl’s face as Janice explained the dreary routines of this dreary house. The girl listened attentively, eyes hooded, chin dropped slightly, and Alice was reminded again of someone she’d known long ago. Memory stirred, began its lumbering progress along the dusty corridors of her mind toward the shuttered room where something unpleasant waited.

No.

Alice closed her eyes and let it go, sinking once more into blessed oblivion.

Stella and Janice were standing in the library when Alice’s sister, Adeline, drove up. Stella watched her through the window, listening half-heartedly to Janice describe the routines of the house, still in shock that, despite her inappropriate comment to Alice, she’d been offered the job. Adeline came in carrying a bag of chili-cheese Coneys that she’d picked up at the Sonic Drive-In. She was well-dressed and looked every bit the aristocrat, handing the greasy bag to Janice and saying, “There are three in the bag. Make sure they all go in the refrigerator.”

Janice took the bag gratefully, without so much as a grimace, but Stella blushed.

“I’m Alice’s sister,” Adeline said, her eyes sweeping Stella. “Who are you?” The disapproval in her face was obvious. She didn’t even try to hide it.

“I’m Stella.”

Alice said, “She’s my new caregiver. She’s taking the place of that other one. The one I didn’t like.”

They looked as different from each other as sisters could look, although Janice had warned Stella that Adeline visited often, and that she and Miss Alice quarreled like children.

“Done this kind of work before have you?” Adeline asked Stella.

Stella frowned slightly. “No.”

“I didn’t think so.”

“Stop interrogating her, Adeline. I don’t come to your house and interrogate the help.”

The help. Stella blushed again and followed Janice into the kitchen. The whole time she stood listening to Janice give instructions on how to make meals, Stella was thinking, I won’t be back.

But later, as she was leaving, walking past the library door, Alice called to her, “Are you coming back tomorrow?”

Something hopeful and hesitant in her voice made Stella stop. She raised her chin and stared boldly at Adeline, and then at Alice, giving her a tight little smile.

“Of course I’ll be back,” she said, lifting one hand carelessly, and turning, she walked out.

They watched her through the library windows climb into her small rusty car and drive away. The January sky was darkening, pressing down on the roofs of the houses across the street.

Adeline said, “She has a tattoo.”

“It’s the Sanskrit symbol for peace.”

“The what?”

“The tattoo. It’s Sanskrit.”

“She has a ring through her lip.”

“They all do these days.”

“Only the bad ones. Did you hide the silver?”

“I like her,” Alice said. “I think I’ll keep her.” view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

1.) What was "The Sisters Montclair" about? What are some of the book’s themes?

2.) How realistic were the characters of Stella and Alice? Did you like them? Hate them?

3.) Did the actions of Stella and Alice seem plausible? Why? Why not?

4.) By falling in love with Brendan, Alice made a choice that had moral implications in the story. Would you have made the same decision? Why or why not?

5.) When Professor Dillard asks Stella why she stays with Alice, Stella replies, “Because she’s wounded.” How does this statement relate to Stella’s abandonment by her own mother? How does it relate to the central themes of love, mutual respect, and support that develop between Stella and Alice?

6.) Did the story pull you in, or did you have to force yourself to finish it?

7.) The novel essentially takes place in two different time periods. How did the author handle this? Did you feel you were experiencing the time and place in which the book was set?

8.) Did the book end the way you expected? Were you surprised at the end by Alice’s confession, “There’s all kinds of love. There’s the kind that comes over you like a sickness, and there’s the kind that comes on after years of shared struggle and companionship. And I can tell you, from my experience, it’s the second kind that lasts longest. The other eventually burns away like a fever. Leaving what – guilt, regret? Would I have been happier with Brendan Burke? I don’t think so. He wasn’t the man I thought he was. I got the life I needed with Bill Whittington, even if it didn’t seem like the one I wanted at the time.”

9.) Did you enjoy the novel? Why or why not?

10.) How did the book compare to other books by the author? Would you recommend this book to other readers?

Weblinks

»	Author Cathy Holton's web site
»	Publisher's Book Info

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