by Anna Adams
Raina’s platinum-credit-card bill. Unopened. The girl might have money, but good Lord, she needed someone to carry around her common sense and remind her to use it. Daphne tucked the bill back into her purse.
Finding her sister’s house in the stratified neighborhoods of Honesty proved a little more difficult than Daphne had anticipated. The directions hadn’t mentioned twisting roads that changed names and then changed back.
Old money lived in the row houses, like Patrick. She turned away from his street and ended up heading toward the line of Victorian manses on a hill that overlooked the square.
The Abernathy estate clung to that hill among the gingerbread and brick monstrosities that acted as gargoyles repelling bad spirits from the sweet little town.
At last she found the newly resurfaced black road that wound into the neighborhood on the hill.
Raina’s place was in the first line of homes. An elegant A like the one on Raina’s silverware was scrawled into the wrought-iron gates. Three stories of brick and wavy-paned windows stood behind hedges and graceful trees and bulbs coming to color in the form of lilies and crocuses and blood-red tulips.
The gates stayed closed.
An intercom speaker was embedded in a brick stanchion close to the driver’s side of the car. Daphne opened her window and punched the button to speak. “Raina?”
Static answered her. She listened hard for a voice, but static rattled again into the otherwise still night.
The gate swung open.
“Thanks,” Daphne said, rolling her eyes for a glimpse of spruce branches and darkening sky. “I’ll be right up. Don’t loose the hounds upon me.”
“You like to make fun, don’t you?”
“Raina, you can speak. I thought you were sending Morse code in static bursts. I’ll be there before you know it.”
The driveway wound like a snake through formal plantings, cut back for winter but beginning to bud. Not a dot of anything untoward touched the velvet lawn. The Abernathys must have spent more than Daphne’s best annual salary on landscaping and maintenance.
Her sister opened the big glossy black door and came onto her wide porch like Scarlett welcoming the Tarletons.
Daphne parked and jumped out of the car. “I expected the old family retainer.”
“Who would that be?”
Raina’s spike-edged tone deflated Daphne’s flippancy. “I guess that would be Patrick,” she said, feeling more vulnerable just from saying his name. “You aren’t hiding him in there somewhere?”
“Come search if you’d like.”
“I forgot my posse.”
“Your—”
“My hotel TV barely picks up Gunsmoke reruns on some local channel. I’m becoming an expert on the American western.” She stayed on the first brick step. “I’ve never seen a place like this that wasn’t a museum. Or a castle. I’m not sure I belong.”
“Come inside and stop making a big deal about it. We shut the dungeon down generations ago. Keeping the rack in good repair really saps the capital.”
Daphne followed her twin up the steps and inside the cool, wide hall. Victorian darkness shrouded the place in shadows.
“You need more windows.”
“You don’t have to be nervous. Tell me what happened to you.”
What had she expected? A chair as comfortable as any rack and an invitation to tea?
“Can we start with your college thing? I’m sorry about hurting your feelings. I put you on a pedestal and I didn’t expect you to be human.” She held up her hands, begging for a truce. “I like you human. I prefer you human because there’s some chance you’ll be able to deal with the rest of what I have to tell you.”
“That was my only big secret, and I wasn’t eager to share it, but I thought it would be safe with you.” Raina went to a spot on the wall and light flooded the hall. Sort of flooded. Heavy, scrolled furniture drew more sinister shadows that seemed to hover. “Telling you took nerve,” Raina said.
Daphne nodded. “I let you down, but I didn’t mean to. You surprised me. I hardly know you, but I already assume you won’t choose to do something wrong.”
Raina rubbed her face. “I made a bad choice in college, and I get ashamed when I think about it, But I’m also sorry I stomped out like a teenager, and if it matters, I only did a few papers. I couldn’t take the guilt back then, either.”
Without thinking, Daphne hugged her sister. “You don’t have to explain anything to me.”
Raina hugged back. “I didn’t expect you to get upset.”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t assume I mean because you’re an arch-criminal or something. I just thought that because you’d lived more, you’d understand more.”
Daphne’s heart melted for the second time that day. “I’m so sorry I didn’t.”
“Let’s call a truce.” With her arms still around her sister, Raina eased Daphne toward the kitchen. “Come to the kitchen. I’ll make us sandwiches.”
“We’ll make them together. You’ll need plenty of sustenance before the night is over.” Daphne stopped before an actual suit of armor. “Don’t you have a horde of servants to wait on you and throw that thing into the dungeon?”
“You really have funny ideas. My trust fund pays a limited amount, and I have bills. I can barely afford Mrs. Dodge, the woman who makes sure I eat daily, but my mother would rise like an avenging angel if I tried to let her go. She usually leaves something, but I told her I wasn’t hungry because I thought we’d have sandwiches.”
“I like the privacy.”
“You can escape without anyone knowing you were here?”
They reached a long kitchen bound by tall windows, paned with wavy glass. “Don’t kid yourself, Raina. You may want me to disappear like a bad dream.”
“Sure I will.” Raina went to a porcelain sink as big as any bathtub Daphne had ever seen. She turned off the evening news on a TV that looked out of place in an alcove set among period cabinets above a limestone counter.
“This room is bigger than most apartments I’ve lived in,” Daphne said. “And you have all the comforts. The TV’s kind of small for a rich girl, but—good grief—it’s high definition.”
“You’re nervous again.”
“I’m going to be until we’ve had our talk.”
Raina washed her hands. “You act like you won’t be my sister if I don’t approve, but look at us. We’re together for life even if we both decide we loathe each other.”
Raina dried her hands and hung the towel on a rail. Then she wrapped her arms around her waist, a gesture that also came naturally to Daphne. She would have bet her next breath that her sister didn’t know she looked afraid.
“I didn’t lead your kind of life,” Daphne said.
Raina’s folded arms slipped a little. She tossed Daphne a look that said “Duh” loud and clear.
“I had some bad luck with foster families.” In her head, a memory began to take form—a door squeaking open to let in a thin strand of light. She pushed it away, breathing hard. “So I ran away. A couple of times.”
“What happened to you?”
Nope. Raina wasn’t ready to hear that yet, and Daphne wasn’t ready to tell. “I was a kid when I ran away. I couldn’t exactly find a job, and I stole some things. Food, mostly. Once, a book.”
“Why didn’t you go to the police?”
It was her turn to flash the “Duh” look. “Where would they send me? Another foster home—or back to the same one. I wasn’t adoptable.”
“Who would have been, after a childhood like that?” Raina started toward her.
Daphne wanted to walk into her sister’s arms, but she held out both hands. “You’d better hear the rest. I tried a—substance or two.”
“Daphne, I want to know exactly what you did. Don’t soften the facts for me.”
“I try too hard when I’m nervous. Remember?”
“Don’t, with me.”
“I don’t feel entirely safe yet. Le
t me finish. I got a clue after I was sent back to the one house where I’d felt sort of safe.”
“They took care of you?”
“It’s never that simple, Raina. I was too busy protecting myself to let anyone take care of me, and I just wanted out, but a friend of mine was there, too, and we promised to look out for each other.”
“But?”
She hesitated, but forced herself to go on, in a rush. “My friend overdosed. She was pregnant and scared and she didn’t want to think about it so she died, and I got totally clean and stayed in school and actually did the work. Afterward, I managed to persuade the D.A. and a judge to seal my juvenile record so I’d have a chance with the colleges I wanted.”
“How’d you pay for school?”
“Not with scholarships, for sure. I pushed grocery carts anytime I could get a shift at the local market, and I read SAT exam guides in libraries until I could pass with an acceptable score.” She caught her breath, lifting her face to find her twin’s imprinted with dread.
“When did you start going to AA?” Raina asked.
Daphne shook her head, so lost in getting all the truth out, she barely understood. “I got a degree in criminology on the fast track, and I found a job as a jury consultant. One good thing about my kind of life, I knew people. I had to be able to size up a guy or I could end up…” Again, she’d let herself slip out of bounds. “Hurt,” she said. “And people begged me to work for them, almost from my first case. I read truth the way most people read their own names. I mean, I could tell who was lying right away. I could tell which potential juror the lawyers should select to make the case go our client’s way.”
“That’s good.”
“Until Milton Stegwell.”
“Milton—”
She lifted her hands, this time pleading. It was almost over. “Good God, the pictures in my head,” she said, and Raina flinched. “Crime-scene photos. They’ll follow me until the day I fall into my own grave.”
“Stop, Daphne.”
“In a second.”
“I can’t move.”
“I don’t mean to frighten you, but you have to know everything because this is who I am.”
“You’re not some guy who obviously did something unforgivable.”
“He killed his wife and their three children, but back then I believed he was innocent. I only chose juries for innocent defendants. Until he bragged about destroying his family after his acquittal, I would have bet every stick of furniture in my safe and tasteful apartment. I would have handed over the keys to my Jag to pay for his defense. I almost did his case for free because he was so damn misunderstood.”
“God.”
“Yeah. I’ve done some praying since that case. Nothing scares you more than the innocent blood of three children and their real live loving mother. She fought for her children. She gave her life for them. She loved them, and he killed her and their babies, and I helped him go free.”
Her legs wobbled. She grabbed the cool limestone counter.
“Daphne.” Raina reached for her. “He’s the one who should feel this guilt.”
“I was part of his defense. I can’t shut my eyes and say it was just a job. I helped recommend the people who set him free.” They held on to each other. Daphne couldn’t stop. “He sent us a note afterward—something about how you really can broadcast your guilt on the evening news if a jury thinks you’re innocent.”
“Let me talk for a second.” Raina, weak and sheltered and rabbit-like in Patrick’s office, was stronger than Daphne now. “You did nothing wrong. That man had to be psychotic. How could you expect to see through him?”
Daphne staggered out of her sister’s arms, slipping against the counter. “Because I’ve been a bad person, too. I know how to lie. I know what to look for, but he fooled me. He could marry another innocent woman and then kill her and her children, too.”
“No, he can’t. You and I will find him and make sure wherever he goes, people know what he did.”
Daphne smiled, despite the fact that Milton and his crimes had all but destroyed her life. “You’re vengeful.”
“When it comes to family.”
“The D.A. had the same plan. He asked for volunteers in his office to keep tabs on Milton.”
“You can’t do more. I’m not naive,” Raina said. “You did your job and this creep fooled you. I’m surprised his attorney didn’t resign.”
“We visited a bar or two together, wallowing in guilt. That’s why I try not to think about it. Guilt is a good excuse to drink.”
“Not ever again.”
Daphne had saved the worst for last, and shame nearly choked her. “I hope you’re right. I plan never to drink again because I got a DUI after I took out a power pole about eight months ago. Once they stitched up my head—” she showed the scar above her ear “—I had a night in jail to think what might have happened after I got behind the wheel of that car.” Daphne pressed her fists into her eyes and then tried to laugh. “I must seem even more of a hypocrite being shocked that you’d written a couple of assignments for pay.”
“Forget it.”
Daphne stared at her. “It’s that easy for you to forgive me?”
Raina came to her again and refused to let her move away when she held her. “You’re so tough. What you need is to forgive yourself.”
It was good to lean against Raina. Her sister. Her family.
“I want you to like me. I’m scared you won’t.”
“Maybe I feel the same about you.”
It was strange, exactly what she’d hoped for, and yet, silence pressed against her ears. As a finale for tonight’s performance, she might just faint.
“Why did you tell me all of this now?” Raina asked.
“For the same reason I had my last whiskey about half an hour before I hit that pole. I work best with pristine starts, and I didn’t want you to stumble across something that might make you think I’d kept the truth from you—or even tried to shade it.”
Daphne saw a mother’s patience in Raina’s eyes. Maybe only a woman who’d been raised by a good mother could be so kind and so strong.
“I am human. I understand choices, and you are my family now. We’re going to say things that hurt each other.”
Daphne smiled. “You amaze me.”
“Because you don’t expect enough for yourself. Open your eyes. You don’t need to be punished. You’ve been trying to do that killer’s penance. You don’t think you deserve a good life.”
Raina turned to a white tin with a loaf of bread painted on its front. Daphne grabbed the counter again and finally gasped as if she’d fallen from a great height, landed on her back and…survived.
CHAPTER SEVEN
RAINA TURNED, drawn to the rasp of Daphne’s breathing. “What’s the matter with you?”
“I guess we’re going to say things that heal, too.” She yanked a stool away from the counter and collapsed onto it.
“What did I say?”
“I’ve been trying to do that man’s time.”
Raina opened the bread box. “The trick is to see yourself without guilt. You aren’t like him. You think you’re a bad person, but you’ve spent your entire adult life making sure you aren’t.”
“So the trick is to believe I don’t need to do penance.”
“It’s not a trick,” Raina said. “You simply have to see yourself the way I see you.”
“Maybe I can’t do it that way. Thinking I’m not bad takes some practice after all these years.”
“You had lousy foster care. I wonder why my parents didn’t adopt us both.”
“I guess we’ll never find out, but maybe they didn’t know about me,” Daphne said.
“I hate what your life has done to you.”
Daphne hated the amount of time she’d wasted assuming she’d be wrong for everyone. Even this afternoon, when Patrick had kissed her, she’d pulled away, thinking she was the kind of woman who’d be a bigger problem for him after hi
s ugly divorce.
“Raina, can I ask you a question I have no right to ask?”
“Maybe.” She took out four slices of bread. Still holding it in one hand, she managed to open a cupboard and pull down plates.
“Are you in love with Patrick?”
The plates clattered to the counter. “What is the matter with people in this town? Who told you that?”
“You did, with the way you depend on him.”
Raina stared at her for a second before she set the bread on the plates. “You’ve read me wrong. He’s my friend, nothing more. What makes you ask?”
“I don’t want to be his friend,” Daphne said.
Raina paused at the fridge. “Meaning?”
“I’ve only known him for a couple of weeks.” Daphne crossed to a mesh basket beside the stove and chose a tomato from a rich, red pile of them. “But I care about him.” She pretended the tomato fascinated her. “I think. I’d like to find out, if you won’t be hurt.”
The fridge door opened. From the sound of things, Raina was searching for something specific. At last a glass jar connected with the counter.
Daphne turned to see if Raina needed help, but no, she’d set fancy mustard on the limestone.
“I don’t mind if you see Patrick,” she said.
“It may come to nothing. I don’t want him to come between us.”
“Does he feel the way you do?”
“I’m not sure.” She didn’t know how to answer. She couldn’t talk about the kiss.
“His ex-wife is addicted to prescription drugs. He’s going to be afraid when you tell him about your problem,” Raina said. “I don’t want you to hurt each other.”
THAT NIGHT, when she left Raina’s, she dialed Patrick’s number. He answered just after the first ring.
“Daphne?”
“About that talk.”
“Where are you?”
“In my car. I’d like to meet you somewhere, but I know you have your son.”
“I can’t get a sitter this late. Maybe we could meet tomorrow night.”
“Can I come to your house?” Daphne said. She’d rather tell him about her alcoholism before gossip got to him first.