Heather Barbieri

Snow in July

Chapter 1

The night my sister almost dies for the twelfth time, a foot of snow falls, which makes it harder, though not impossible, to save her. Under normal circumstances—as if they’re ever normal when it comes to her—snow doesn’t pose much of a problem. As Montanans, we’re used to driving the white drifts, crunching down unplowed roads like the trailblazers we pride ourselves on being. But this storm catches us off guard. It’s July, after all, a time of beach vacations and ice cream trucks and waterskiing, everyplace but here. We let ourselves get suckered in, stored the chains and boots and parkas in the attic in anticipation of scorching, dry days. I suppose we should have known better. Weather can be unpredictable in Butte.

So can my sister.

As snowflakes tumble from the sky, the telephone wires hum a dirge, black lines tying us into the network, tying us down. The phone hiccups, bring-bring, bring-bring, bearing a message from my sister, who has the habit of disappearing and reappearing like a sequin-clad girl in a magic trick. I know something’s wrong the minute Mama picks up the phone. She gets that pained look around her eyes, as if a splinter has lodged deep in the optic nerve.

That doesn’t stop her from seeing things clearly. Or, at least, as clearly as you can when you’re the mother of a sister like mine.

Mama sits down at the kitchen table, the receiver to her ear, listening. For a fleeting moment, she has a this-isn’t-really-happening look on her face, distant, dazed. She gazes past me, past the whole town maybe, to the life she’d never managed to have. Her name is Finola McGann Mulcahy, though everybody calls her “Fi.” She was the first in her family to go to a university. Even though she had a beautiful singing voice, she took the practical route and studied nursing. She returned to Butte on weekends to see her friends, to see the guy who would become our father. She couldn’t separate herself from this place.

Neither could the rest of us.

Then she got pregnant with my sister, came home, and married my father, a boy she’d known almost her whole life. The same old story. He was a good man, even if he didn’t have a good heart. By that, I mean one that worked right. His heart was too big in some ways, too small in others, a hidden defect no one discovered until it was too late. He died at the age of thirty-seven, when I was twelve. Ancient history, since the years have collapsed on themselves, like folds of an accordion.

I’m eighteen now. My mother is forty-two. My sister, twenty-one.