Page 2 of Waves of Time

Hilary laughed. “I was glad to be around quite a bit the past month or so, though. It’s been non-stop family drama.”

“We haven’t gotten much of a break,” Sam agreed.

Hilary searched for comfort within the conversation, wondering if this was how normal sisters talked to one another.Perhaps they could fake it till they made it?

“And I take it Dad and Uncle Grant still don’t want to meet their half-sisters?” Hilary asked, although she knew the answer.

“I think they still need time,” Samantha said with a sigh.

“Hmm.” Hilary sipped her lemonade, which was cool, tangy, and slightly too sour for her taste.

“Hey. I wanted to get your opinion on something,” Sam said mischievously. “Come on.”

Hilary stood and followed after her sister, her heart thudding. This was obviously the real reason Samantha had invited her over. They entered the door off the veranda into the cool expanse of the living room— which Sam hadn’t asked Hilary to help with at all— and stepped toward the center of the room, where a horrific chandelier hung from the ceiling. It was very gaudy, like something out of a costume shop, and it hung very low in the room so that whoever walked under it probably had to lower their head.

Hilary gaped at the chandelier for a moment and crossed her arms over her chest. Silence swelled in the room. When Samantha didn’t say anything, Hilary turned to look at her and found that she was staring at Hilary intently, as though waiting for her to speak first.

“Um. What’s up?” Hilary asked.

Sam tilted her head toward the chandelier. “What do you think?”

Dread mounted in Hilary’s gut.Was it possible that Samantha wanted her opinion on the chandelier? This horrible chandelier?

Hilary stuttered. “Um. You mean the chandelier, I guess?”

“Yeah! Isn’t it beautiful? I found it at a vintage store outside of Boston on my way back from one of the rehab clinics. The guy gave me a really good deal.” Samantha’s eyes glinted with the light from the chandelier.

Hilary closed her eyes, unsure of what to say. On the one hand, she wasn’t sure she’d ever seen an uglier chandelier in her life. On the other, it didn’t matter what she thought.

So, she asked instead, “What did you pay for it?” Because she could tell, Samantha was quite proud of that.

“Only four grand,” Samantha said.

Hilary couldn’t help it. Her jaw dropped nearly to the ground. “You paidwhatfor that?”

Samantha had begun to get the hint that Hilary wasn’t so keen on the chandelier. Furrowing her brow, she glared at Hilary and said, “It’s an antique. Given your job and all, I thought you’d be impressed with it.”

Hilary sighed and returned her gaze to the chandelier, trying to find some way to talk about it that would make Samantha think she actually liked it. She could lie for her family’s love, couldn’t she? This wasn’t a big deal, was it?

But as she took it in again, she saw something that made her stomach drop.

“Did the guy at the store give you a certificate proving it was an antique?” Hilary asked, her voice breathy.

“Um. Yeah, of course.” Sam walked toward the bookshelf and procured an envelope, in which she would soon learn was a forged certificate. Hilary blinked at it, at the mistakes he’d made in the margins and the poor excuse for a logo, which was barely in any relation to the official logo for all vintage articles across the United States.

“What?” Samantha demanded.

Internally, Hilary begged herself not to tell Sam it was a forgery. She told herself to gush over the chandelier, to tell Sam it was truly a work of art. But as she began to say, “It’s really, um, nice,” Samantha interrupted her and said, “I always know when you’re lying, Hilary. Why did you want to see the certificate?” Her tone was sharp.

Hilary rolled her eyes. It was as though they were suddenly fifteen and thirteen rather than forty-five and forty-three. “Because it’s a fake, Sam. It’s not a real antique.”

“What?” Samantha gaped at the certificate and then stared up at the chandelier. “What are you talking about?”

Hilary sighed and stood on a chair to show what she’d noticed on one of the hanging pieces on the chandelier. “Look at this seam? Something like this wouldn’t be on an antique. It’s proof it was made in the past ten years. Maybe even five.”

Sam set her jaw and glared at Hilary on the chair. Her face was terrifying. As Hilary flinched away, she accidentally knocked into the other half of the chandelier, and suddenly, one-half of it separated and crashed to the floor below. Glass shards went everywhere. Hilary and Samantha both shrieked as Hilary cried, “Get up on the sofa, Sam! Don’t cut yourself!”

The silence after the crash was horrible. Hilary couldn’t breathe. The fake chandelier that now hung in front of her looked totally busted, just one-half of its previous gaudy body remaining, and the rest of it was in an impossible mess every which way on the floor. It would take hours to clean up.

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