The Sweeney Sisters Read online

  “That depresses me more than the losses, thinking of him spending a weekend in Atlantic City alone.” Tricia didn’t want to let her mind wander to whether he may not have been alone, but she did ask Cap, “Were there, are there, women he’s giving money to?”

  “No. He would have told me that.”

  “And the manuscript. You said . . .” Tricia looked down at her notes to read directly, “. . . ‘it’s completed but its whereabouts are unknown.’ And that Dad has hidden it somewhere because he wanted to, quote, ‘add a coda or do some updating and then have it published after his death,’ but you don’t think he got to the coda. Is that correct?”

  Cap was patient, responding to Tricia carefully, “That is correct, although I wouldn’t say that the manuscript is hidden. I’m sure it’s in his office. Your father said he wasn’t ready to turn it in yet and preferred that it be published after his death.”

  “Why? He usually loved the hoopla.”

  “He told me that in this book, he really let it all hang out. That was the phrase he used—‘let it all hang out.’ And that he felt too old to answer for his sins on some NPR interview show to publicize the book. He only wanted it published after his death.”

  “That’s morbid, coming from him. He seemed to think he’d never die. What’s in it?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t read it. I don’t think anyone has. But the publisher is eager for it. At least they were last week when you father was simply fending them off with calls for more time. Now that he’s gone, I’m sure now they want it even more.”

  “Is that why you told us to keep the boathouse locked the night of the wake?” Tricia asked, a whole new light of comprehension dawning. This was a big deal, an unforeseen issue that could damage not only the estate, but the legacy of William Sweeney. A posthumous memoir of radical honesty was valuable and potentially explosive. Jesus, Dad. “You didn’t want those people from the publishing house poking around in there, did you?”

  “I didn’t. Or anyone from Lois Hopper’s office. She may be his agent, but I don’t think she’s his advocate. We need to do this on our terms and our timeline. If you’ll allow me to assist you in dealing with all these issues.”

  “Of course, Cap.”

  After Tricia’s rapid-fire questions, Liza asked quietly, “Cap, did he know he was sick? This seems pretty calculated. Hiding the book until his death.”

  “I think he knew something. He’d made a few references lately about his heart, made a few changes to his habits.” Cap was vague with the sisters. He was fairly sure that Bill Sweeney knew there were heart issues and had seen him visibly slow down in the past few months. But the girls hadn’t signed off on an autopsy, so no one would ever know for sure.

  Maggie finally spoke. “I don’t understand what’s happening. I thought selling the house would bring in millions. Do you mean we’ll get nothing?” The thought had crossed both Liza’s and Tricia’s mind, but only Maggie was desperate enough to say it out loud. Maggie was counting on a windfall, needed a windfall, to stabilize her life. She didn’t have a husband like Liza or a regular paycheck like Tricia. She lived a life that had been piecemealed together, funded by intermittent periods of good fortune (rich boyfriends, generous friends, occasional patrons of the arts) and periods of barely scraping by where she’d relied on the kindness of her sisters and total strangers, like the Arts Commission of Mill River, who were funding her current living situation. Even her car was a gift from her father, something a thirty-four-year-old woman should be able to buy herself. Or at the very least, lease. But when Maggie arrived home last year, Bill Sweeney took one look at her and said, “I’ll buy you a car. What do you want?” He was a fan of the big gesture.

  Maggie was hoping an inheritance might get her a tiny place on Martha’s Vineyard or Key West, even Austin, if that’s all she could afford. This was not the news she was expecting. She was torn between cursing and crying. “How is that possible?”

  Tricia stepped in, like she usually did when Maggie was going over a cliff. “Listen, we’ll find the manuscript and get out from under that possible litigation and financial obligation. If the advance is gone, we have to deliver that manuscript or pay back the money somehow, like using the proceeds from the house sale. Once we deliver it, we’re in the clear financially, right, Cap?” He nodded. “Is this house underwater?” Cap shook his head. It wasn’t. There was a lot of debt, to be sure, but they should be able to squeeze some money out of it if they got a good price.

  Tricia got it. “Then we sell the house as is and we don’t get greedy. Look around. This place is a tear-down. Some captain of finance wants this property to create a compound and will pay the money to make that happen. This house isn’t protected by the Historical Registry, so let’s not get all emotional and look for a buyer who wants to preserve Willow Lane out of respect for Dad. Let’s get out of it what we can.” Tricia nodded in Liza’s direction, knowing that she’d be a holdout. “And let’s face it, there will be revenue from book sales and possibly other business ventures like film rights now that Dad is gone. Is everyone okay with that?”

  Maggie was having a hard time controlling her tears and Liza was lost in thought. How did we let this happen? Whit would have a field day with this news. He was constantly harping on Liza to get her father to agree to let him take over the finances, fearing that Bill Sweeney was doing exactly this, frittering away equity and cash. Bill Sweeney’s banker was a sailing buddy, not a financial whiz, who worked at the local People’s Bank, known more for its charming historic building than aggressive portfolio management. We’re going to end up paying for your father one day, I know it, Whit would say after almost every family dinner. “Why didn’t Dad sell this house then if he needed the cash?”

  “Your father had a lot of flaws, but he knew most of them. He knew if he sold the house, he’d spend the money. The house was part of your inheritance and he didn’t want to gamble that away.”

  “Jesus. How fucked up is that?” Tricia asked. “His best quality was not gambling away the roof over his head. Thanks, Bill!” The four of them managed to laugh. It was true. Brilliant William Sweeney was a goddamned mess. The laughter turned to snorts. If people only knew.

  When they collected themselves, Liza asked, “Is there anything for Julia in the will?”

  “I’m glad you asked. You father had a decent life insurance policy through his employment at Yale. The sole beneficiary is Julia Ruiz.”

  “Like how much is ‘decent’?” Maggie had to ask because stockpiling resentments was her lifeblood.

  “Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.” This only made the sisters laugh harder, the thought of the housekeeper getting a clear inheritance, much deserved, while they had to clean up their father’s mess.

  Liza said that Julia would be equally shocked about the money, but also pragmatic. “Julia had told me about her cousin who had devoted twenty-five years to a Southport family of five, from the first baby’s baptism to the last child’s college send-off, only to be given a CVS gift card and two bags of old clothes on her last day of work. Maybe she told that story to Dad, too. I’m happy for her. She deserves this. She put up with a lot over the last fifteen years. She saw it all.”

  “So did we,” Maggie whined. More laughter.

  Their dark sense of humor serves them well, Cap thought as he prepared to drop the biggest bomb of all on the Sweeney sisters.

  “As you know, your father was a man in full. He lived a life that was both rich and often complicated, the result of which could be brilliant writing but difficult personal relationships. As you come to terms with your father’s death, I must add one more complication. It came to my attention about a month ago that your father had a previously unknown child outside of his marriage to your mother.” Cap paused to let the last sentence sink in. A previously unknown child outside of marriage. “And I have an obligation to tell you about the child both legally and morally. You have a half-sister out there in the world and you
should know that.”

  A quiet moment passed, then the sisters registered their disbelief. Maggie spoke first, straight from her bank account. “Seriously, could this day get any worse? How many more people do we have to split the money with?”

  Liza muttered, “What the hell . . .”

  “Who is this person? How did you come to know this?” Tricia asked.

  There was a flutter of talking along the same lines by the other sisters, then Liza said, “Please don’t tell us that one of his grad students has a newborn.” They all cringed at the thought of their seventy-plus father impregnating one of his starry-eyed students.

  Cap understood their panic. “No, the child in question is not a newborn. In fact, she is older than any of you. Your father is the biological father of Ms. Serena Tucker.” Again, a pause to let the sisters absorb the name. “As you recall, the Tuckers lived next door, the blue Dutch Colonial that shares the hedge. It appears that your father and Birdie Tucker were intimate for a time and Ms. Tucker, now thirty-eight, is the result.”

  Tricia, the lawyer, went straight to the heart of the matter. “Does she stand to inherit any part of the estate?”

  “Your father did name her as an equal heir in the real estate portion of his estate. She is to get one-quarter of the proceeds of the sale of the house.”

  “And the intellectual property?”

  “She is not entitled to any share of the IP. The three of you are the primary heirs to any and all of your father’s work, from his books to his articles to the unproduced screenplay I know he has in his desk. There is a small percentage of monies from the IP revenue granted to his sister Frannie, five percent, but she has no say in the decisions about the IP. In terms of this recently identified heir, I think having a non–family member in the role of executor will add a layer of clarity.”

  “Thank you for the provision, Cap. I’m sure that was your influence,” Tricia said, and Cap nodded.

  Liza was more focused on the name, not the law. “Wait, Serena Tucker? She was at the wake.” She could barely find the words. “Tricia, she was the blonde out there dancing by herself at the end of the night. The tall skinny one.”

  The light bulb went off for Tricia. “The one who was doing that drunk-girl sway out on the dance floor?” Nothing about this situation was the slightest bit humorous, but Maggie snorted a bit at Tricia’s brief imitation. It was spot-on. She’d seen that drunk girl out on the dance floor, too. Then, it hit Tricia. “Dad slept with Birdie Tucker? How is that possible? She was so, so . . . tan. Remember, all she did was play tennis? I don’t think I ever saw her in anything but a Ralph Lauren tennis skirt.”

  It was true. The mention of Birdie Tucker’s name took them right back to the one summer their mother signed the older girls up for tennis camp at the country club, a rite of passage for so many local children whose parents believed a reliable serve could secure a lifetime of good fortune. Maeve Sweeney was not one of these mothers, preferring the public beach, the Boys & Girls Clubs sports, and arts and crafts to the country club lifestyle, but Emmy, her friend who meant well but only saw one path to a life well lived, talked her into signing up Liza and Maggie for tennis. The sisters were constantly reminded they weren’t “real members” by fellow campers, meaning their spot in the locker room hadn’t been passed down by bloodline nor paid for in equity.

  Liza and Maggie, then fourteen and twelve, hated every minute of it, pounding forehands during the baking afternoon sun when the club moms preferred to sit by the pool, drinking iced tea or wine spritzers. The only reason they didn’t revolt entirely was the tennis pro, John Wilton, with the floppy brown hair, his Conn College T-shirts, and a maroon Saab. Liza and Maggie talked about him endlessly. Plus, there were popsicles at the end of the day.

  The Tuckers were a permanent fixture at the country club courts, either playing, taking lessons, or drinking half-and-halfs on the patio. Liza could picture Serena Tucker, a few years older with tennis abilities well beyond those of the Sweeney sisters, hanging out at the tennis shack, flirting with John while he strung racquets, and her mother, Birdie Tucker, doing the same, like competitors. This was the woman their father slept with?

  Now, Liza was a member of the same club, signing her kids up for the same lessons.

  Maggie’s voice broke a little bit as she said, “Mom was so beautiful then, so healthy. How could he do that to her? With that totally generic suburban woman?”

  Liza and Tricia fell silent. The timing of the affair, if it could be called that, was hitting them. Their father was sleeping around on his young, beautiful wife—not his sick wife, or his dying wife, or even shortly after Maeve was gone, all of which might have been understandable and, if the sisters were honest with themselves, knew had occurred with various women over the years. But the possibility that their father slept around on his young, beautiful poet wife, his muse, with that uptight mom next door who was constantly yelling at the Sweeney sisters to walk on the sidewalk instead of down the middle of their dead-end street? This had never occurred to them.

  Cap answered as only Cap could. “Your father was a man who moved from one experience to another, uninterested in operating in some kind of coherent direction. He wasn’t a big-picture guy, except in his writing. In his life, it was often moment to moment.”

  “Did he tell you about Serena?” Tricia was back to business.

  “No, Serena came to see me about a month ago. She had done a mail-in DNA test. When her results came back, she got an additional email about being a 99.9 percent match with a Sweeney from Southport, Connecticut.”

  “What idiot would do one of those tests and let everyone know your DNA information?”

  “I’m the idiot,” Maggie said, raising her hand. “Don’t get mad at me. I had a panic about getting breast cancer like Mom and I wanted to know if I had any genetic predisposition.”

  “Then go to a doctor, not a mail-in kit with a public option.”

  Liza stepped in. “Okay, I don’t think that’s the point here. Let Cap tell us what we need to know.”

  “I understand this is upsetting, but Liza is right. Some details don’t matter very much and some matter a great deal. First off, these DNA tests do hold up in court, so if you decided to contest Serena’s rights vis-à-vis the will, you could stand to lose your share of the real estate holdings entirely.” Cap paused to let that sink in. A legal battle wouldn’t make this mess go away. Then, he continued. “Serena Tucker was born in May 1982. I was unaware of the relationship until last month when Ms. Tucker came to see me. You should know a few things about her. She is bright and thoughtful. She’s single, no children, so there are no other relations to contend with. She’s an experienced investigative journalist in Washington, DC. She was with the Post, then Slate, and now with the political site Straight Up.”

  “I’ve heard her on the Straight Up podcast. I listen to it all the time and she’s on it occasionally. She’s really smart,” Tricia said that like it was a bad thing. “But I’ve heard Straight Up is in financial trouble. Their funding is drying up. Oh, this isn’t good.”

  Liza and Maggie didn’t even bother to ask how Tricia knew all about a startup political media company that they’d never heard of. Tricia absorbed information and retained names and knowledge with astonishing accuracy. It was what made her a good lawyer but a terrible conversationalist. She had a hard time not being a know-it-all.

  “Why is that bad?” Maggie asked, barely tracking.

  “Serena needs money or a story to sell because she could be out of work any day,” Tricia announced like she was reporting the news.

  Cap jumped in. “I would describe her as measured and reserved. She sat on the information for a good while and then had a conversation with her mother, who confirmed the relationship with your father. Then she came to me.”

  “It’s creepy to think she was at the wake. That makes me uncomfortable,” Maggie said, thinking more about how she’d noticed Serena at the wake because she was a knockout
in the severe preppy way that Maggie herself had never been able to pull off. Maggie was too curvy; Serena was thin as a rail with what Maggie liked to call “perfect European A cups.” She’d been envious of her at the wake, having no idea who she was. Now, knowing they were half-sisters, a childish jealousness was creeping into Maggie’s consciousness. “I don’t know who she thinks she is.”

  “What did she want? What does she say she wants?” Tricia asked, convinced already that an ulterior motive was at work.

  Cap continued, “I didn’t get the sense she wanted anything specific when we spoke other than to see your father if he was inclined to see her. She didn’t mention anything monetary or otherwise.”

  “That’s bullshit. Sorry, Cap. But the timing is uncanny,” Tricia snapped. “Did she meet with our father? He must have known all along she was his. They were our neighbors for something like thirty-five years.”

  Liza, who’d been quiet, said, “Maybe it was a one-night stand. For all we know, Dad didn’t even remember he’d ever slept with Birdie Tucker.” That was entirely possible. If the stories from the wake the other night were to be believed, the main ingredient for any Willow Lane gathering in the early days was booze, lots of it. Maybe Birdie Tucker happened one boozy night.

  Cap proceeded cautiously, because this part of the story did not reflect well on his old friend. “After speaking with your father about Serena, I can tell you this: he recalled the relationship; he claims he did not know the child was his; and he did not want to see Serena. I had not informed her of that last fact yet. Frankly, I was stalling, hoping that your father would change his mind. I suggested this provision in his will as a way of acknowledging her after his death. He agreed. We moved on it quickly. Then your father died and, like you, I was surprised to see her at the wake. But not entirely. She was very curious about your father, her father. And about the three of you.”