Sisters

On New Year's Eve, Chris and the girls cooked dinner. Brad brought several bottles of champagne. He and Chris had a good time talking before, during, and after dinner, and the biggest surprise of the evening was Candy's friend from L.A. He was probably the most famous young actor on the planet at the time, and it turned out that they had met three years before on a shoot and become good friends. He always hung out with her when he came in from L.A. There was nothing romantic between them, and he was great company. He had them laughing hysterically through most of the evening, and Brad couldn't believe the sort of people who dropped in at their house. Annie insisted she hadn't even known her sister knew him.

“Yeah, right. Who else is coming by? Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie?”

“Don't be silly,” she laughed at him. “I swear, most of the time, it's just us and the dogs, and Chris.”

“Okay, let's see, your sister is the biggest supermodel in the country, or maybe the world. Your other sister was one of the hottest producers in L.A., and is now the producer of the worst show in New York, we just had dinner with an actor who makes women swoon from fourteen to ninety, and I'm supposed to believe you guys are just regular people? How do you expect me to believe that?”

“Well, maybe they're not. But I am. Until six months ago, I was just a starving artist in Florence. Now I'm not even that.”

“Yes, you are,” he said gently. “You'll find other outlets for your art. That just doesn't go away. Give it a little time to surface again in a different way.” He sounded confident it would.

“Maybe,” she said, but didn't believe him. And at midnight they all toasted each other and hugged. Brad stayed and talked with them until three o'clock in the morning. Candy's actor friend spent the night on their couch, after drinking too much champagne. And Chris and Sabrina slipped away early. He asked her to come upstairs with him shortly after midnight, and the others never saw them again.

When Chris closed the door to Sabrina's bedroom, he kissed her. Privacy was hard-won in their house. He had brought with him two glasses and a bottle of champagne he'd bought himself. Sabrina smiled at him. It had been a hell of a year. So many things had happened, and whatever tragedies befell them, Chris was always there. This latest outrage with their father was just one more bump in the road. She knew she could count on Chris to be there for her, no matter what.

And as he kissed her, he took a small box out of his pocket, held her close to him, opened it with one hand, and slipped a ring on her finger. She didn't know what he was doing at first, and then she realized and looked down to see it. It was an absolutely beautiful engagement ring he had picked out on his own, and slipped out of a Tiffany box. He had been planning this for months.

“Oh my God, Chris, what are you doing?” She looked stunned.

He got down on one knee before he answered, and gazed at her solemnly from the floor. “I'm asking you to marry me, Sabrina. I love you more than anything in life. Will you marry me?” As he asked her, her eyes filled with tears. This was not what she had in mind. It was just one more shock. And she had had far too many in far too short a time. From their mother's death to Annie's blindness, the assault on Candy, and now her father marrying a girl half his age whom they had always thought of as a slut—it was just too much. She wasn't prepared to marry him. She wasn't ready. She just wanted to get through this year of taking care of Annie and living with her sisters. And maybe after that she and Chris could go back to their old life, but not get married. She didn't feel ready for that yet, and maybe never would. She loved him but felt no need to marry him. What they had now was enough for her.

She took off the ring and handed it to him with tears running down her cheeks and sorrow in her heart. “Chris, I can't. I can't even think straight right now. So much has happened in the last year. Why do we have to get married?”

“Because I'm thirty-seven, you're thirty-five, I want to have babies with you, we've been together for almost four years, and we can't wait for the rest of our lives to grow up.”

“Maybe I can,” she said sadly. “I love you, but I don't know what I want. I loved what we had before, each of us living in our own space, being together whenever we wanted. I know it's been a little crazy living with my sisters, and I love you. But I just don't feel ready to make that kind of commitment for the rest of my life. What if we screw it up? I see people in my office every day, just like us, who thought they were doing the right thing, got married, had kids, and then everything went wrong.”

“That's the kind of chance we all take,” he said, looking anguished. “There are never any guarantees in life. You know that. You just have to take a deep breath, jump into the pool, and do your best.”

“What if we drown?” she said miserably.