Monica answered it.
Marcie stood on the veranda.
“Come in,” Monica said, coming to realize this stranger had as much right to be in her father’s home as Monica did.
She didn’t know what to do with this woman—didn’t know how to be with her.
It was all too eerie to look into someone else’s face and see your own.
Marcie entered the living room. Monica stayed where she was. She heard her father ask, “How are you doing?”
“Okay.” Monica heard uncertainty in that voice, so like her own. “People in town are looking at me strangely.”
“Of course they are. This is probably the strangest thing to happen in Accord in decades.”
Monica stood in the doorway, noting the affection on her father’s face as he talked to this other woman, as well as seeing the hope on Marcie’s face.
Change was here to stay and Monica didn’t know what to do. Tired, exhausted by too many revelations, all she wanted was her bed. She didn’t care that it was only four or five in the afternoon, she needed to sleep, to escape all of this unwelcome reality barreling down on her.
“I have to go.”
They stared at her.
“Now?” Dad asked. “You can’t stay a while to get to know your sister?”
Her sister.
“Later. I need to rest.”
Monica left, because this woman was already making inroads into her life, and Monica wasn’t ready to make room for her.
When she returned to her apartment, there were phone messages from Maria, Audrey, John Spade and Laura Cameron. She returned none of them. At some point she would have to talk to people. Not yet.
She stripped out of her clothes, dropping everything onto the floor, then crawled into bed. She slept fitfully that evening and into the night, when she slept at all.
Her alarm went off, the radio came on, she rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling in the gray light of dawn, but no answers about where she went from here magically appeared.
Did she care? Should she care? Not today.
Too many revelations, too much emotion, had left her as deboned and lifeless as the fish she’d caught with Noah.
She brushed her hand across Billy’s side of the bed, the fabric soft, but offering scant comfort.
If Billy was here, he would tell her a joke, make her laugh.
“You always said you wanted a brother or sister,” he would say. “Now you have one. It’s not the end of the world.”
He would be right. She had always wanted a sibling.
He would also be wrong. It was the end of the world. Her world. Her parents had lied to her, egregiously. Egregiously. Take that, Noah Cameron. Bet you don’t think I know a word that big let alone understand it.
Nothing in her life was true. Her entire childhood had been one big lie.
How was she supposed to get over that?
Her mom and dad had engineered such an extreme solution to an unprecedented problem that they’d left all parties less than whole and hurting.
Was Marcie that thing that had always been missing inside of Monica? That gaping hole that had always needed filling? Was it possible to lose a piece of yourself when the tiny creature with whom you had shared a cozy womb was ripped away and never seen again? Never seen again? No, the problem was not the seeing—it was the feeling. She had never felt her again.
Double whammy, though, because she’d lost her mother, too. The beautiful nurturing vessel that had been her home for nine months had not been replaced with her mother’s warm arms and loving words.
Everything had been taken from her.
And the woman she’d met yesterday, while familiar, didn’t match her preconceived idea of a sister. Sisters didn’t come to town to take everything away.
She rolled over, ready to go back to sleep. Her eyes were gritty, as though she had the mother of all hangovers, yet she hadn’t consumed a drop of alcohol. That was what happened when you cried yourself to sleep.
Why should she get up? Why should she care about anything?
She closed her eyes, but an insistent hammering interrupted her bid for oblivion. It wouldn’t let her fall back asleep, wouldn’t let her not care about the day.
Someone was knocking on her door. She pulled Billy’s pillow over her head. She could no longer smell him. So much loss.
The last thing she wanted was a visitor. But whoever it was at her door wouldn’t give up. The pounding went on and on.
Forcing herself out of bed, she answered the knocking.
Noah stood in the hallway, grim determination sobering his handsome face. Strangely, given how volatile their relationship had been, she was glad to see him.
“Noah,” she said, her voice as dull as the weather beyond her living room window. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to see if you were okay. I tried to find you yesterday, but couldn’t, and then I had to go take care of the farm after closing the shop.”
“Why were you looking for me?”
The expression that flitted across his face could only be described as compassionate.
“Oh, God.” Her early morning, depression-soaked voice whispered out of her on a guttural sigh. “You know?”
“Yeah. The whole town does. It’s the biggest scandal to hit in years. I’m sorry, Monica. I’m not making light of it. It’s just the truth.” His voice was deep and serious. No, he wasn’t joking at her expense. He looked at her with such a deep well of empathy she wondered how she could have ever thought of Noah Cameron as self-righteous and cold. He cared about people—and people seemed to include her.
“Nobody knows the whole story or what to think,” he continued, “so they’re making it up as they go. Some of the rumors floating around are pretty wild. Can I come in? These coffees are hot. I need to set them down somewhere.”
For the first time, she noticed the two huge paper tumblers from his sister’s bakery. Laura’s café made the best coffee.
“How did you get into my building?”
“My natural charm.”
She snorted, surprised that he could make her smile when “lower than a doormat” didn’t begin to describe her mood. She took one of the coffees and walked away to her small galley kitchen.
As though from a great distance, she heard the front door close. She turned around. Noah was toeing off his sandals in the hallway. His size and big red personality made the space shrink. His thick socks stood up in big puffs around his toes.
He padded in woolen-hushed silence down the hallway.
When she stared at him, he said, “Hazel MacEnright let me into your building on condition I share whatever I learn from you about the new woman in town. Your doppelganger.”
“Will you?”
“Will I what?”
“Share what you learn with Hazel?”
“What do you think? My allegiance lies with you, not with her. Hazel’s always been a malicious gossip.”
He cocked his head to one side. “Any misinformation you’d like me to share with her when I leave? It would give me great pleasure to mess with her head.”
He wasn’t Billy. He couldn’t make her laugh until tears streamed down her cheeks. She’d give him huge kudos, though, that he could make her smile not once but twice at a time like this.
“Tell her the new woman’s an alien here to suck the brains out of nosy old bats.”
“I like it. Done.” He put down his coffee and took a paper bag from under his arm.
“Hope these aren’t squished.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“I have four of Laura’s cinnamon buns.”
Monica took two plates out of the cupboard. “Maybe I can manage one.”
When she turned back around, Noah
was smiling, a little sadly, but smiling nonetheless. He’d seen right through her. There wasn’t much that would keep her away from Laura’s cinnamon buns, not even calorie counting. Not even a brand-new, hitherto unknown twin sister.
She had a twin sister. The pain in her chest caught her off-guard.
She crumpled. Noah caught her, his arms wrapping around her before she hit the floor.
He led her to the sofa. “Have you eaten at all since yesterday?”
She shook her head.
He helped her sit down. “Seriously, Monica? White leather?”
She stared at him, bewildered, before realizing he was speaking with such disdain about her sofa. “Oh. Billy liked it. He wanted it.”
Noah didn’t look convinced. She shrugged. “Believe me or don’t. I don’t care. I have a sister. A twin. I don’t care.”
“Yeah, you sure do care.” He retrieved her coffee from the kitchen and brought it to her, taking off the lid and placing what looked like a gallon of coffee in her hand. “How could you not care? Of course you care that you now have a sister.”
“No, I don’t care. I hate her. I hate my dad. I hate my mother who I never met.” Her hand shook. Her body shuddered. Coffee dribbled onto her T-shirt.
“Give me,” he said. “Let me.”
He put one hand on the back of her head, his long fingers so good, solid and real, unlike her life at the moment. He brought the coffee to her lips. Carefully, she sipped. It went down like a dream.
“That’s good.”
“I had to guess how much sugar and cream you would want.”
“It’s perfect.” She meant it. She couldn’t have doctored it better herself, a shot of strong tasty caffeine and a sweet milky confection all wrapped up in one.
He left her to get the buns and she missed that strong hand cupping her head.
“Noah,” she whispered when he came back. “What am I going to do? I don’t know what to think. It’s all too bizarre.”
He wrapped his strong hand around the back of her head again and held her drink for her. Nice. She didn’t know whom to trust anymore, but Noah was here helping her, and he seemed to care. The force of her desire for his embrace rocked her.
“Tell me what’s going on.” He let go of her and placed her drink on the coffee table. He shimmied to the other end of the sofa so he could turn sideways to talk to her, hitching one knee up onto the sofa cushion.
The distance dissipated the heat she’d found so comforting, leaving a cold vacuum. She shivered and Noah got a wool coat from the closet beside the front door. He covered her with it.
She would rather have had his arms to warm her, but the coat would do.
A thought struck. “Why did you come here? We’re not even friends.”
“I was worried. I thought you might not be all right.”
She picked up her cup and stared into its depths before taking a big gulp. Warm again, she said, “I’m not all right. But I think I need to talk about this.”
“I’m all ears.”
“What about the plants? Don’t we need to get out to the farm?”
“I’ve been up for hours. I did a bunch of hoeing already.”
“Which ones?” Why did she care? It wasn’t her farm. But every day she saw changes in the plants.
“Potatoes, carrots, onions, turnips.”
She smiled. “You left the radishes for me?”
“Yep. And the beets.” Humor crinkled his eyes at the corners. “Your favorites.”
“The bane of my existence, you mean.”
“Enough talk about the plants. They’re fine. You’re not. Talk to me.”
She didn’t know if what her dad had told her was confidential, but did it really matter anymore? If the truth didn’t come out, who knew what the town would make up? As Noah had already indicated, speculation would be even more bizarre than the very outrageous truth.
She began talking and didn’t stop for a good hour.
The detritus of their breakfast sat on the coffee table. Her nerves hummed with caffeine and sugar overload. At some point today she should get real food into herself.
“What do you think, Noah? Could they have done things differently?”
“Sure. Yeah. In hindsight, everything can always be done differently. Things might not have worked out any better, though. All you have right now is the responsibility to move forward. Take what’s been dished out and deal with it.”
He brushed a strand of hair back from her forehead and tucked it behind her ear, the action innocent, but also exquisitely intimate. Her skin tingled. Her body shivered.
“Do you know what you need today?” he asked.
Yes, she did. She really did, and it was sexy and X-rated, and with Noah, and how strange was that? She stood too abruptly, gathering up their mess for the recycling.
He followed her to the kitchen. When she dropped everything into the blue box, she said, “Look. See? I recycle. I use this all the time. Notice yesterday’s bread wrapper. You’re not the only one who recycles.” Babbling like an idiot, she concentrated on the inconsequential because his callused fingers on her ear had left a delicious, unsettling quivery thrill.
She wanted to throw him down on her bed and have her way with him—with Noah Cameron, of all people. He reached beyond her to drop the paper bag he held into the box. His muscled shoulder touched hers. She jumped away.
“I should—I need—” She didn’t know.
“You need to come out to the farm. Put on some old clothes. We’ll work in the rain.” Noah grinned. “Do you own anything old?”
“Of course.” She was surprised that a day on the farm sounded like a good idea. She pulled up short as disappointment shot through her. “Oh. I can’t. I have to work.”
“No, you don’t. I already talked to my mom.”
“You shouldn’t have done that, Noah. Not before checking with me.”
“Do you really want to work in the gallery today with passersby gawking through the windows to get a glimpse of you? Not everyone will be sensitive about this.”
She hadn’t thought of how much attention this would focus on her. What a nightmare.
“No,” she admitted. “Your mom has been coming down hard on me lately, though. I don’t want to give her an excuse to fire me. Contrary to what most of the town thinks, I support myself. I don’t go to my dad every month for my rent money.”
Given the hint of red in his cheeks, Noah had probably assumed exactly that. Honest to God, the people in Accord needed to get a life instead of constantly speculating about hers.
“When we talked this morning, my mom was the one who suggested I talk you into taking today off.”
“What about you and the shop?”
“There’s a Closed sign in the window. If someone wants something badly enough they know they can call me at the farm.”
“This is very kind of you, Noah.”
He shrugged off her praise, but looked pleased. “I need to pick up groceries for our lunch.”
“And I have to shower and get dressed.”
“Okay. I’ll be back in about...twenty minutes?”
“Sounds good.”
He looked surprised.
“You sure? Don’t you need more time than that, for like, makeup and stuff?”
“Noah, I’m going out to work in the rain. Makeup would be a waste of time. Go. I’ll leave the door unlocked for you to come back.”
* * *
IF EVER NOAH needed proof of how imperfect his fit with Monica was, her apartment said it all, like multiple exclamation points after the statement “this woman doesn’t belong with you.”
He stood in her living room with two bags of food, one in each hand. He hoped she liked what he’d picked up—Tonio’s
lasagna and a baby-greens salad.
The white leather sofa sat across from a large, clean fireplace. No ash residue here. A large canvas, white paint slashed with red and green and blue, hovered above the glossy white mantel.
Not a single flake of peeling paint. No comfy old-woman-in-a-shoe-with-a-bunch-of-kids-running-around hominess.
Here was the shallow gloss and sophistication he associated with the old Monica, not the one he’d come to know.
This summer’s Monica startled, charmed and seduced him with her playfulness and childlike whimsy, but wouldn’t that have always been there? Had he spent so much time ignoring her that he hadn’t seen the real woman beneath the polished veneer?
Why had he allowed his adolescent prejudices to bleed into adulthood? He had done to Monica the very thing that had often been done to him. He had judged her strictly on appearances and preconceived notions.
Standing in the middle of her picture-perfect apartment, he had to wonder who she really was. This living room came from the pages of a magazine. There was nothing lived-in or real about it.
While she finished whatever prep work she was doing in the bathroom to turn herself into an even more beautiful woman, Noah stole down the hallway to check out her bedroom.
As a teenager, he’d wondered how she slept. Of course, his vivid imagination had insisted naked.
He’d also wondered where she slept and had wandered past her house once trying to guess which bedroom was hers. He had wanted to scale the side of her father’s house to peek in through whichever window might be hers, but not to catch her naked. Okay, maybe to do that, but mostly to satisfy his curiosity about her.
Who was Monica when she was alone? What went on underneath that perfect facade? When no one was looking, did Monica do normal things? Did she pick her nose? Belch? Fart?
As a boy, he’d doubted it. He still doubted it.
He stepped in through an open doorway and stopped, arrested by the vision of feminine beauty that was her bedroom. Lace coated a four-poster bed. Dripped from it.
What should have been cloying and sweet instead fascinated him with its girly-girly-ness. Images of making love to Monica in the yards of white lace that would float up and cover them like icing sugar while she wrapped her long legs around him robbed him of breath. Her private bower, the absolute antithesis of sexiness, filled him with lust.
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