“I know we barely know each other,” the man went on, “and I know it’s too soon, but I—” His lips brushed Tawnia’s cheek lightly. “I care about you.”
She reeled from the closeness. She hadn’t been kissed by a man since Bret, and she hadn’t expected to feel so attracted to one whose name she didn’t even know. A sound escaped her throat, part moan, part sigh.
“Did I hurt your arm?” he asked, looking down at her folded arms.
“It’s okay.” More than okay, since Autumn was the one with a broken arm. If he glimpsed under her jacket sleeve, he’d see there was no cast. She’d better put the brakes on this conversation right now. Stepping away, she turned her face to the river, where some distance away a stretcher was being taken from a boat.
A man came jogging toward them. “Orion, we’re ready for you.” He appraised Tawnia with a frank stare, and this time she was the one who blushed. Maybe she should get a job for the county. She might get more dates that way.
At least she knew the fireman’s name. Orion. Leave it to Autumn to have a friend with an unusual name. Tawnia watched Orion trot to the group. He was a beautiful man—strong, mysterious, and good-looking.
He was gone a long time, and Tawnia began to worry. If he asked her to identify the body, she’d have to confess. She didn’t know what Winter looked like, and she didn’t exactly want to see a dead body today. Or ever, now that she thought about it.
He came back to her more slowly, as though dreading telling her the news, but he smiled as he arrived, which made her feel oddly excited. “Not him,” he announced. “Too young. No beard.” The smile vanished. “Not a pretty sight, though, after so long in the water. I think you should know about that. To be prepared.”
Nearly a week of water and river creatures. No, she didn’t expect the sight would be agreeable.
They watched as the men brought the victim up to a waiting ambulance, the body covered from view. After a few seconds of silence, she asked. “Orion, how did your daughter die?” Too late, she wondered if Autumn already knew the details of his daughter’s death.
His eyes seemed to dig into hers, though he couldn’t possibly see through her sunglasses. “She jumped off the bridge.” His eyes lifted to the remains of the Hawthorne bridge in the distance, leaving her in no doubt about which bridge he meant. “Three years ago.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know for sure, but she had just broken up with her boyfriend. His parents shipped him off to some fancy college back east, and he quit calling. She was never very strong emotionally since her mother died a few years before that—complications of surgery.”
“I’m so sorry.”
He didn’t move or speak for the space of several heartbeats and then, “This bridge has cost us both a lot. I would give anything to make it so that none of this had ever happened. I want you to know that.”
“Of course you would. I feel the same.”
He nodded. “Well, I guess I’d better get going. I’m actually working tonight. Once a week we take turns on the night shift at the fire station. Are you staying here?”
“For a while longer.”
“Is Jake coming to get you?”
“No, I drove.”
He smiled again, and she wished he would do that more often. Her stomach felt all funny when he smiled. “That’s it,” he said. “Don’t let them win.”
“Who’s them?”
“Everyone.”
Tawnia wished he didn’t have to go. “Will I see you again?”
“If you want to.”
“What about what you want?”
“I pulled a lot of people from the water, but I don’t come to the river to see them every day. Only you.”
The reference clicked. This was the man who’d rescued Autumn after the bridge collapse. “I’m glad.” She was glad, and she hoped Autumn was, too.
“Do you have my number?” he asked.
“I don’t have my phone with me.”
“That’s right.” He looked out at the river, as though pondering the whereabouts of her phone. “You’ll have to get a new one.”
“I did.” She gave him the number, making a note to change her message to something more generic. Of course, she couldn’t keep up this pretense for long. She’d have to tell at least Autumn about it. For all she knew, Autumn might be in love with this guy.
Or she might be gunning for Bret. Tawnia pushed the thought to a dark corner of her mind.
Orion took two steps away, looking younger and more vital than when she’d first seen him, as though his load had been lifted. She knew the feeling, having experienced it herself after Christian’s death. It was good to talk about those you had loved and lost.
He paused and turned. “Oh, and I’m glad your arm’s feeling better. If that nosy new friend of yours hadn’t told me it was broken, I would never have guessed.”
Tawnia looked down at her right arm, still folded on top of her left, more by luck than by design. If only you knew. “See you later,” she called.
“Good-bye.”
Just her luck. She’d met a cute, available man, who actually seemed to like her, and he thought she was someone else. I should have told him the truth.
Yet a part of her relished how much fun it was pretending to be someone else. She’d always imagined having a twin sister to change places with.
But I don’t have a twin, she reminded herself.
This was too bizarre. Time to get home and begin finding out exactly what was going on.
• • •
When Tawnia drove up to her bungalow, she imagined many scenarios as to what she might find—her clothes missing and Autumn vanished, Autumn sleeping in bed, or Mrs. Gerbert calling America’s Most Wanted. But finding Autumn lying on the lounge chair on her porch, wrapped in a blanket and talking with Mrs. Gerbert, wasn’t one of them. Her face was still flushed, her eyes bright with fever, but she appeared a lot better. She was eating a huge piece of cake in a cereal bowl, her movements awkward with her left hand.
“Ah, there you are, dear.” Mrs. Gerbert came heavily to her feet and met her at the stairs.
“Have you been here all day?” Tawnia asked. Babysitting wasn’t in her contract, and she wondered if Mrs. Gerbert would call her on it.
“Goodness, no. I did a lot of errands, and I visited the neighbors.”
“She’s mostly been here all day,” Autumn contradicted.
Tawnia followed a forkful of cake to her mouth. “I see.”
“I took the liberty of making your sister a stew,” Mrs. Gerbert said. “There’s a bit left over, if you like. I guess I didn’t make as much as I thought.”
Autumn laughed. “I just ate a lot. It’s really good, too.”
Tawnia was starving, and only now did she realize that she’d been so caught up with her thoughts about Orion that she’d left the Smokey’s bag in the car. She’d have to go back and get it—along with the crate of her belongings. But that could wait for a few minutes at least. She didn’t want to offend Mrs. Gerbert by rejecting her stew.
She sat down on the rocking chair Mrs. Gerbert had vacated. “We’re not sisters.”
Mrs. Gerbert’s eyebrows rose, her face going from one of them to the next and back again. “I find that hard to believe.”
“We’re both adopted,” Tawnia said, more to see her reaction than anything.
“Well, that explains it then. You’re related somehow. Still, if Autumn here gained a bit of weight—you really are quite skinny, dear—and if you colored and styled your hair the same way, you’d be hard to tell apart. Well, except Autumn has those different colored eyes. Such a lovely effect.” She shook her head, dismissing the subject. “I’d better get home. My baby girl will be there soon. And my grandson. You let me know if you need any help. And Autumn, I’ll write down my recipe for you and bring it by another day.”
They watched her leave in sudden silence, a heavy silence that made Tawnia feel at a loss. Where did they go from h
ere?
“I’m sorry I was so late,” Tawnia said. “I went to the river.”
Autumn was about to take her last bite of cake, but she let the fork drop to the bowl. “Did they . . . ?” She left the sentence hanging, snuggling deeper into the blanket, despite the heat of the summer evening.
“They found three victims total today, two women earlier and a man while I was there—not your father.” This last Tawnia hurried to say because she could see how much Autumn needed to know.
Autumn sighed. “Only two still missing then.” She looked so sad that Tawnia felt like crying herself. Better to change the subject.
“I saw a friend of yours at the river. A fireman.”
“Orion?” Autumn smiled. “He’s still hanging out there?”
“Looking for you, I’d say. He must like you.”
“He just feels responsible since he saved my life.”
“He’s really attractive.”
“Attractive?” Autumn laughed. “He’s old. I mean older than us. I never thought of him that way.” But her face colored.
“Never?” pressed Tawnia.
“Okay, once. I thought about what it might be like if he kissed me. But it was only for a second, and I wasn’t feeling well that day. He’s really not my type. He seems too, well, old. And I don’t mean age-wise, because I’m the first one who wouldn’t care about something superficial like that.”
“I think he looks older because he’s sad. His daughter committed suicide, you know. Three years ago. Jumped off the Hawthorne Bridge after she broke up with her boyfriend. He lost his wife, too, a few years before that.”
“I didn’t know.” Autumn was quiet for a few seconds. “So you really like him?”
Tawnia leaned back in the rocking chair, her elbows on the armrest. “Have you ever seen him smile?”
“That was when I thought about kissing him. But don’t worry about me. If you like him, I say go for it.” Autumn picked up her fork again, shoved in the last bit of cake, and set the bowl on the porch.
Silence again. “He thought I was you,” Tawnia said quietly.
Autumn’s eyes widened. “You let him think you were me?”
“Hey, that was how I got down near the river in the first place. Everyone knows you there.”
“They didn’t notice you look different?”
“Do I?” There, Tawnia had done it. She’d brought up the issue they’d been dancing around since she’d arrived home.
Autumn’s eyes were on her face. Though the rocking chair and the lounge were close, they both sat up and leaned closer. Autumn’s hand touched Tawnia’s cheek, a fluttery touch. “I don’t know how this happened,” she whispered, “but I don’t believe it was an accident.” She drew back and sank into her blanket once more. “If my parents were here, we could ask them.”
“I did some research today.”
“And?”
“You were born a day after I was. I couldn’t even find a record of your adoption.”
Autumn snorted. “Tell me about it. When I turned eighteen, I had to go through all sorts of trouble to prove I existed. We finally told the government that Summer had me at home. We didn’t know what else to do. Apparently, the doctor who found me for them didn’t exactly follow the rules.”
“You were kidnapped?” Tawnia felt a thundering in her chest. If there had been something suspicious about Autumn’s adoption, maybe hers wasn’t what she had always thought.
“Oh, no! My parents knew my birth mother. She lived with them for a few months before I was born. It was she who chose them. Later, she died having me.” She gave Tawnia a sad smile. “That’s why I know we couldn’t be twins like Mrs Gerbert wants to believe. My parents wouldn’t have lied to me about something like that. My mother was very young, but I suppose she could have had a baby before me, but if you and I are the same age, that pretty much rules that out.”
“I see.” Tawnia’s hopes fell. She’d been hoping . . . hoping what? “As a child I always wanted a sister.” She didn’t realize she’d spoken the words aloud until Autumn responded.
“So did I.”
They looked out over the tiny expanse of grass. Several neighbors were out working on their yards, pausing every now and then to surreptitiously study them.
“What now?” Tawnia asked.
“We still could be related. I think we should do a little research. For all we know, we come from the same family line. I knew some cousins once that looked a lot alike. If they hadn’t been ten years apart, they might have been even more similar.”
Tawnia began to feel better. “The doctor who placed you might know something.”
“He might. We could try to find him. I don’t remember
his name anymore, but I have a box somewhere with all the information. What about your parents? Maybe they have some papers.”
“I can ask, but I didn’t even know I was adopted until I heard them talking about it one day. We never really talked about it after that. Practically none of their friends ever knew.”
“They kept it a secret?”
“Not exactly. It just wasn’t mentioned. We didn’t talk about anything that wasn’t normal.”
“Are they why you wear a contact?” Autumn peered at her to verify its presence.
“I guess so. They didn’t like people staring.”
“I love the stares. It’s fun being unusual. In fact, I hate it when people don’t notice. That means they don’t really see me.”
Tawnia had never thought of it that way. “I guess I wanted to stand out for my talents, not because there was something wrong with my eyes.”
“There’s nothing wrong with your eyes! Or mine. And there’s nothing wrong with standing out because of your looks or your talents. Because in the end, neither of those are anything without hard work.”
Something they could agree on.
The conversation moved on, covering their childhoods, Tawnia’s graduation from college, and her career in the art field. Then they were on to Autumn’s one semester in college, where she flunked out of everything but her antiques and history classes. “I hated been cooped up and doing all those papers,” she said. “I already knew what I wanted to do. I could add and spell well enough to run my store, so I took the plunge and went into business. Winter paid the first six months of my mortgage, but since then I’ve been solvent.”
“That’s amazing. I would have been too afraid to do something like that.” Tawnia admired Autumn’s confidence. She herself made it a habit to never risk more than she could afford to lose.
“Sometimes risks are worth it.”
The sun was low in the western sky now, and Tawnia’s stomach had started complaining. “I just remembered. I have some meat pies in the car.”
“From Smokey’s?” Autumn looked happy. “Bring them on.”
Tawnia ran down to the car and back again with the food. “They’re actually still warm. Not hot, but enough that I don’t think we’ll need to zap them in the microwave.”
“Good, because I don’t use microwaves.”
“You don’t?”
Autumn shook her head. “I don’t want radiation in my food.”
“Most everything I eat comes from a microwave,” Tawnia confessed.
“Believe me, it’s not healthy.”
“Okay.” That was weird, but Tawnia thought perhaps it was no weirder than a woman with perfect eyesight wearing a contact every day. “You look like you’re feeling better,” she said as they ate. In fact, Autumn looked pretty, even beautiful. Do I really look like her? she wondered.
“I think my fever’s almost gone.” She hesitated a moment before adding, “You know, this is really strange, but I feel I’ve known you for a long time.”
Tawnia nodded and looked away so Autumn wouldn’t see the tears gathered there. She’d felt the same thing, but saying so seemed to risk a commitment she wasn’t ready to make. She didn’t make close friends easily. “So what are you going to do now?”
> “Go home.”
That was a good sign. “You sure you’re up to it?”
Autumn shook her head. “No, but I’ve been thinking about it all day. I have to face the apartment sometime, and I have to go back to work. Jake—he’s the guy who works part time for both Winter and me—he’s been running the stores. Had his fifteen-year-old sister in there some of the time. But they can’t buy new inventory or tell customers the background of my pieces. I think I can go back now.”
“What about your father? I mean, I know you’ve been going to the river.” Tawnia didn’t add that doing so was strange because she had the feeling she might do the same thing had the situation been reversed. Well, if her father had been more like Winter, instead of the remote man who’d seemed to sit down and talk with her only when she’d done something wrong.
Autumn sighed, blinking back tears. “I don’t need to go to the river anymore. I thought I felt him there, but it wasn’t him at all. I think he’s gone. Besides, everyone’s right that my being there won’t help him.”
“I’ll go with you, if you want. To your apartment. You shouldn’t be alone. Even if we’re not sisters . . .” The fact that they couldn’t possibly be sisters was so disappointing after all their similarities that Tawnia didn’t care to complete the sentence.
“Even if we’re not sisters,” Autumn repeated, reaching out to rest her hand on Tawnia’s, “we can still be friends. I’m glad Bret introduced us. I really am.”
Tawnia smiled. “Me, too.”
• • •
Bret squatted down by the remains of the huge metal girders the cranes had just brought up from the river. He’d seen this kind of damage before, and it wasn’t caused by stress fractures, however severe. He ran his fingers over the twisted metal, still cool from the river. Some sections were sheared off.
He stood and waved his hand to Robert, who was examining another pile of rubble. Robert jogged over. “Find something?”
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