“Sounds like a recipe for stress,” Delta said.
Lacy nodded. “It’s killing me,” she said. “I’m sick of walking around on eggshells with her. It’s worse than not having any contact at all. I can’t do it anymore.”
“What are you going to do?”
“The only thing I can do,” Lacy said. “My car is packed. I’ve quit my job. I’m leaving straight from this reunion to go back to Kansas City.”
THIRTY-THREE
THE ELEVENTH HOUR
Lauren did, indeed, arrive in time for dinner—in a limousine from the airport.
Delta and Lacy watched from rocking chairs on the covered porch as the long black limo pulled into the driveway. “One of Trip’s business partners owns a private plane, I think,” Lacy said.
Delta got up and went down the steps to greet her. When she turned back, Lacy was still sitting on the porch, waiting.
LAUREN LINGERED IN THE BACK of the limo, peering into the gilt mirror from her purse, checking her hair and makeup. She looked all right, she guessed, but her face showed every single day of her forty-seven years. She looked closer. When her reflection caught in the beveled edges of the glass, the angles magnified her crow’s feet and distorted the sagging skin around her jaw line.
Jowls. For God’s sake, she was getting jowls!
She patted a little more powder on her nose and scowled at her reflection. Why she had agreed to this gig in the first place, she couldn’t tell to save her soul. It was Rae Dawns fault. Rae and her sense of nobility, her damned persuasiveness.
Lauren had no illusions about what Rae and Delta must think of her. The brazen hussy who seduced her twin sisters boyfriend and stole him away.
Brazen hussy"? Where did that image come from? The Smithsonian, no doubt. Lauren would have laughed at herself if the language hadn’t made her feel so abominably ancient. Might as well have called herself a tart or a strumpet.
At last she saw the front door of the limo open and the driver come around to her side. She plastered on a smile, wiped damp hands down the front of her skirt, and took the hand he offered her.
Delta was standing on the bottom step of the porch. The expression that flitted across her face was brief but unmistakable—the look of a visitor coming to a dying person’s bedside for the first time. The oh-my-God glance that quickly rearranges itself into a false smile.
A lead weight dropped into Lauren’s stomach and tears pricked at her eyes. To cover her distress, she reached out and drew Delta into a perfunctory hug. “I’m so happy to see you,” she murmured into the air at Delta’s ear. “It’s been too long.”
DELTA WAS GLAD for the hug, not because it communicated any real warmth, but because it gave her a chance to collect her wits. Coming on the heels of her time with Lacy, the sight of Lauren Jenkins shocked her to the core.
Had she expected Lauren to look as young and vibrant as her sister? They were twins, after all. A shadow of Lacy’s natural attractiveness still lingered about the edges of Lauren’s appearance, but anyone who saw them together would more likely take them for mother and daughter than for sisters born from a single egg.
Delta could only hope Lauren hadn’t noticed her reaction. She patted Lauren’s back and extricated herself from the hug.
Lauren was dressed in a gray skirt and lavender cashmere sweater set, the cardigan arranged with careful indifference across her shoulders. A string of perfectly graduated pearls at her neck caught the fading afternoon light. Real pearls, Delta thought. Real cashmere.
“You look marvelous,” Delta lied.
“Thank you.” Lauren took her arm and steered her toward the porch. She waved at Lacy, still seated in the porch rocker, then quickly averted her gaze. “Where’s Rae Dawn?”
“She probably won’t get here until midnight,” Delta said. “We’re supposed to go on to dinner without her.”
“Then let’s take the car and go.” Lauren pointed toward the limo. “I can settle in later.”
The driver extracted two matching leather suitcases from the trunk and handed them to Matilda Suttleby, who fluttered nearby as if in the presence of royalty. “I’ll just take these up,” she said at last when no one was paying any attention to her. “You girls have a nice dinner.”
The limo—apparently at Lauren’s disposal for the weekend— took them to an upscale restaurant called Riverbend, on the edge of town where the river made a wide horseshoe curve to the north. The back of the restaurant, a wall of glass facing the river bend, opened onto a slate patio and a lighted garden sloping down to the water.
The evening was mild, so they opted for a table on the patio. Their driver, whose name Delta had yet to hear, installed himself in the bar with a burger and an O’Doul’s to watch clips from last year’s Super Bowl.
Dinner, at Lauren’s insistence, included a lobster appetizer, wine, and a decadent chocolate torte for dessert—all delicious and outrageously expensive. As a minister’s wife, Delta wasn’t accustomed to such extravagance, and she was certain Lacy couldn’t afford it on a teacher’s salary. But Lauren coerced them into letting her buy and encouraged them to get whatever they wanted. Delta chose a fresh trout amandine with brown rice pi-laf and caesar salad. Lacy, much to her sister’s displeasure, ordered the fried catfish special.
Delta had anticipated a quiet dinner and even hoped for some meaningful conversation. Shortly after the salads arrived, however, so did a gray-haired, round-faced man with a portable keyboard. He had been hired, no doubt, to provide live music for the entertainment of the diners, but his imitation of Frank Sinatra turned out to be so abominable that no one within earshot could talk of anything else.
Halfway through the meal, five ducks waddled up from the river to gorge themselves on bread hand-fed to them by indulgent patrons. When a waiter tried to shoo them back down the hill to the water, a large green-headed drake went on the attack and sent him scurrying back to the kitchens.
It proved to be an entertaining evening, certainly, but not a profitable one. The most Delta was able to accomplish was to ask Lauren about her family. She responded by passing around photographs of her son and his fiancée. Lacy barely glanced at them.
By the time they all climbed into the limo for the silent ride back to the B&B, Delta half wished she had joined the chauffeur for a burger and Super Bowl reruns.
MATILDA SUTTLEBY MIGHT BE ANNOYING, but she hadn’t lied about the beauty of Highgate’s small garden. Completely enclosed by a vine-covered stone wall, the place seemed miles away from the rest of the world. Stone walkways wound among the azalea bushes and dogwood trees. At the center, where Delta now sat on a carved wooden bench, a three-tiered fountain tinkled and shimmered in the moonlight.
Muffled footsteps sounded behind her, and she turned to see Lauren in navy satin pajamas, robe, and slippers.
“Have a seat,” Delta offered, scooting over to make room.
Lauren edged onto the bench.
“What time is it?”
“Almost eleven. Lacy s asleep.” Lauren fiddled with the sash of her robe. “It’s very peaceful here.”
“Yes it is,” Delta agreed.
Unfortunately, the serenity hadn’t seemed to rub off on Lauren. She shifted on the bench, crossed her legs, waggled one foot, agitated as a June bug battering itself against a window.
Suddenly a rush of compassion welled up in Delta, the desire to have a look into her friend’s heart and find out what anxieties had aged her so. Was she still carrying around the shame and guilt of what she had done years ago? Was she afraid of what Delta might think of her? And did she know that her sister bore her no ill will?
She touched Lauren’s arm. “How are you?” she asked. “We didn’t get to talk much at dinner.”
At the gentle touch, Lauren jerked back as if she had been stung by a scorpion. “I’m fine. Everything’s fine.” She stared up at the stars. “It’s very peaceful here, isn’t it?”
“You already said that.”
Lauren got
up and began picking fallen leaves out of the fountain. Delta followed.
“Stop,” she said, taking hold of Lauren’s hand. “I want you to talk to me.”
Lauren relented, albeit reluctantly. She went back to the bench, sank down, and began to jiggle her foot again. But still she didn’t speak.
“I don’t mean to pressure you,” Delta said, although she suspected that a little pressure wouldn’t do any harm at the moment. “But clearly something’s wrong.”
“Am I ill, you mean?” Lauren finally said with a note of bitterness in her voice. “I caught the expression on your face when you first saw me. I look like crap, I know. Like an old woman.”
“If you are sick, I want to know it,” Delta responded. “But I’m not talking about your appearance. Hell, we’re all getting older. I’m talking about your soul. Your heart.” She looked into Lauren’s shrouded eyes and opted for the direct approach. “You’ve been faking it since you stepped out of that limo. Like the last thing in the world you wanted was to see me again.” She pressed her lips together. “Now, if you want me to shut up, say so. But at least be honest. We were friends once, Lauren, and might be again. But if all we do is make small talk—” Delta shrugged and lapsed into silence.
Lauren’s countenance had taken on a fixed, stricken expression, the look of a small animal that wants to be comforted but is afraid of being hurt. She shook her head and shoved her hands into the pockets of her robe.
“No!” she said at last. “It’s not you, Delta. It’s me. You say I acted as if I didn’t want to see you. But that’s not the truth. I— I didn’t want to see myself, reflected in your disapproval.”
Delta sat back, floored by this unexpectedly profound insight. “Have I communicated disapproval?”
“No, not at all,” Lauren admitted. “And that makes it even worse.”
Delta shook her head. “I’m sorry, Lauren, I’m not quite following you. Talk to me, please. And start at the beginning.”
LAUREN FIXED HER EYES on the fountain. Start at the beginning. But where was the beginning, exactly? More than twenty-five years ago, when she seduced her twin sister’s boyfriend on a secluded bank in the park? Or long before that, all the years of competition between herself and Lacy, the years of vacillating between jealousy and intimacy?
“Being a twin,” she finally began, “is a strange life. In many ways it’s wonderful, having someone so close, someone who understands you right down to your genes. But there are also stresses unlike those faced by normal siblings. Or maybe they are the same stresses, but infinitely magnified by the similarities between the two of you.”
She paused, stared at the fountain, then took a deep breath. “I was always jealous of Lacy.”
“Wait a minute,” Delta interrupted. “I thought I remembered that Lacy was jealous of you. You were the one who was more outgoing, had all the boyfriends, the popularity.”
Lauren waved a hand impatiently. Now that she had started, she didn’t want her train of thought to be derailed. “Surface stuff. Superficialities. Lace and I shared the same DNA; we should have been just alike, right? But I knew better, even when I was very small. Lacy had something different, something I only later learned to name. She had character. Substance. Not that she was smarter than I was; our intelligence level was pretty comparable, I think. But she was … deeper.”
This time Delta didn’t interrupt. “I had loads of friends as we grew up—and later, boyfriends,” Lauren said. “Adolescent boys don’t usually value depth. But the few friendships Lacy formed were more significant, so still I felt jealous. I compensated by competing.”
DELTA LISTENED INTENTLY, both surprised and impressed by Lauren’s depth of insight.
“I’ve never been able to talk about this except to my therapist,” Lauren said, slanting a glance at her.
“Therapist?” Delta repeated. “You’ve been in counseling?”
“Don’t look so shocked. I’m forty-seven years old. I like to think I’ve grown up a little since the sixties.”
Delta suppressed a smile. “Please continue. I’m riveted.”
Lauren went on with her story. “What I did to Lacy was unforgivable.”
Unforgivable. The melancholy word echoed inside Delta’s head, desolate, hopeless, heartbreaking. If Lauren truly believed her actions to be unforgivable, it was no wonder a reconciliation had never taken place between the twins.
She opened her mouth to protest, but Lauren was speaking again.
“Trip and I almost divorced once, when Ted was fourteen. At the time I was, frankly, amazed he had hung on that long. He stayed with me out of guilt at first, and then out of a misguided sense of loyalty. I stayed with him out of shame, because I couldn’t bear to face the enormity of the mistake I had made.”
“That’s why you didn’t want to see me,” Delta murmured. “And why all these years you’ve avoided any real relationship with Lacy. Shame.”
A flash of the old Lauren-fire returned. “What do you mean, I’ve avoided a relationship with Lacy?”
“Lacy told me that you kept everything superficial at your family gatherings. That you never talked about your husband or your marriage. I assumed it was because you were still nurturing shame over the, ah, the situation with Trip.”
“For God’s sake, Delta, give me a little credit. It’s been twenty-five years. I laid down the burden of shame years ago. I avoided talking about my family not because I was ashamed, but because I didn’t want to hurt my sister.”
Delta had no idea how to respond. Lauren saved her the trouble. “When Trip and I separated—or, I should say, when he left me—I went to visit Lacy, to tell her face to face that Trip had left. To be perfectly honest, I expected her to jump at the chance to get back together with him, if for no other reason than revenge for what I’d done. Instead, she asked me if I loved him. That question shocked me into admitting my true feelings for my husband, even if I didn’t believe I deserved his love in return.
“When Trip returned, we agreed to go to counseling together, to try to sort things out. He didn’t love me at the time, and I knew it. He had never really loved me. But gradually, as time went on and we got honest about ourselves, something changed. Love grew between us. Not just heat or physical passion, which I had once mistaken for love, but real love. Real intimacy. We let go of the guilt, the shame, the duty. And after more than fifteen years of marriage, we fell in love.”
Delta hadn’t expected this. She had anticipated a confession of blame and remorse, more than two decades of it. She had been prepared to talk to Lauren about putting the past behind her.
“My relationship with Trip,” Lauren went on, “has been the saving grace of my life. Better than anything—except perhaps having Ted. Trip is an incredible father, a loving, attentive husband. We talk, we laugh, we love being together. All our friends are desperately envious of how well we communicate and how much we adore each other after twenty-five years.”
Lauren turned to look into Deltas eyes. “I’m aware that the years have not been kind to me. But Trip still thinks I’m beautiful.”
Delta could understand. The facade was gone, the mask set aside. Despite the crow’s feet and the sagging skin, Lauren was attractive, lit from within with the confidence only an older, more settled love can bring.
“Then why—” she began.
“Why have I kept at arm’s length the one person more important to me than anyone except my husband and son?”
Delta nodded.
“Precisely for that reason. Because she is so important to me. You’ve seen her, Delta. She lives alone except for that cat of hers. She’s never married. The only close friend she has lives halfway across the country. I didn’t want her to see how happy my relationship with Trip has become, to be confronted with our love for each other. It would just make her life seem that much more miserable by comparison. Even if it means keeping an emotional distance, the last thing I want in this world is to hurt Lacy. To make her feel left out.”
>
Lauren bit her lip and blinked back tears. “I love my sister, Delta. I will always love her. I miss the closeness we once had. The craziness. Even the fights. But I’ll go on missing her, if that’s what it takes to keep from hurting her.”
Delta thought about Lacy, what she had said about forgiveness, about moving on. All this time Lauren had believed her sister to be living in perpetual grief, heartbroken and tormented over the loss of Trip’s love. She had withdrawn herself so as not to pour acid into the wound.
“ ‘The Gift of the Magi,’” Delta said.
“Excuse me?”
“It’s a short story by O. Henry, about a desperately poor couple who have only two prized possessions—Della’s lustrous hair and Jim’s gold watch.”
Lauren frowned. “And your point is?”
“In the story, Della sells her hair to buy him a gold watch chain, and Jim sells his watch to buy her a pair of expensive hair combs. In the end, both have lost their treasures, but they’ve gained something even more important. The gift of the Magi, the wisest gift of all. The noble but ironic sacrifice of love.”
“I don’t get it,” Lauren said.
Delta stood up and put a hand on her friend’s shoulder. “Go talk to your sister,” she said. “Really talk. Be honest with her. Tell her what you’ve told me tonight. Then you’ll understand.”
THIRTY-FOUR
THE BLUES SINGER
Rae Dawn pulled up in front of Highgate House at ten minutes to midnight. The front porch light was on, and a sleepy, rumpled-looking Matilda Suttleby answered her quiet knock.
“Ah, Miss DuChante!” she said, coming instantly awake and pushing her hair back into place. “You finally made it.”
“DuChamp,” Rae corrected. “I’m sorry to arrive so late, but—”
“Not to worry,” Matilda said. “I wasn’t in bed yet.”
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