Imprints

by Rachel Ann Nunes

  “I sort of spaced off for a minute. That ring. It was intense.” I stifled a shiver.

  My sister’s expression became immediately solicitous. “Don’t worry. He just wanted to show you those items before he confronts the cult guy tomorrow. I told him you’d be at my house this evening and he could come there. It seemed impolite not to invite him to eat if he was going all that way.”

  “It’s not far from here.”

  “Yeah, but he lives in Woodburn, near Willamette University. That’s a thirty- or forty-minute drive. He left his card, though, so I guess we can cancel if you’re not feeling up to it.”

  “No, it’s okay. I’d rather get it all behind me, anyway. If I have to do it at all.” Exhaustion abruptly fell heavily over my entire body. Reading imprints was like that sometimes.

  Tawnia motioned to Thera, who was talking to a customer. Thera said something to the woman and came our way, her hazel eyes questioning.

  “I’m taking Autumn home,” Tawnia said. “Feed her a little dinner. Do you think you can handle things here?”

  “Sure. I’ll lock up when I leave.”

  “Thank you.”

  Tawnia went to gather her belongings in the back while I emptied the cash drawer of a check, a couple of twenties, and signed charge slips. As I squatted down to remove my bag from a cupboard under the counter, I spied the paper Tawnia had let fall earlier. I picked it up, turning it over. On the front was a rough sketch of the cartoon figure she had considered using for the underwear campaign. The face on the figure was Ethan’s.

  My jaw dropped, and sudden goose bumps made me shiver. Still squatting on the floor, I looked up as she returned with her briefcase and laptop. A soft sound escaped her mouth when she saw what was in my hand.

  I arose. “You never saw him before?”

  “No. I got the idea right after you left the back room. Can’t you see how rough it is? If I didn’t know better, I’d guess I’m drawing things you see.”

  “How do you know it’s just me?”

  Her face paled. “I don’t have an ability like you do. It’s just our connection, the twin thing. That’s all.”

  I nodded but mostly because I didn’t want to make her more upset. That wasn’t good for the baby. I stuffed the paper into my bag. “I’d use another face,” I said lightly. “I get the feeling Ethan McConnell wouldn’t want to be an underwear king, even in cartoon form.”

  Tawnia laughed. “That’s advice I think I’ll take.”

  Before we left, I slipped my parents’ poetry book into the bag next to the day’s proceeds. I had no idea what other skeletons Ethan had in his closet, and I wanted the book close.

  I waved good-bye to Thera and steered my sister into the Herb Shoppe. Familiar smells assailed me, seemingly stronger with her by my side. I felt a sadness that she hadn’t grown up as I had, knowing the names of herbs, that she couldn’t relate the smells or tastes to the scenes from my gloriously carefree childhood with Winter and Summer. No matter how close we had become, there was that gap of time. Not one that would be important in the long run, I was sure, but one that was bittersweet because I knew she’d also had wonderful childhood memories that didn’t include me. Her parents had been stiff and formal at times, but they had loved her deeply and had given her all the comforts and experiences and lessons money could buy.

  Jake came toward us, smiling a welcome. “Tawnia, I didn’t see you come in.” He took her hands and kissed one of her cheeks. “You look gorgeous today, as usual.”

  Which I supposed I could take as a compliment, too, since we were identical twins. But he never said such things to me. Or maybe he was referring to that mysterious glow pregnant women were supposed to radiate.

  Tawnia laughed. “Thank you. You were busy, or I would have stopped to say hi when I came in. I’m taking Autumn to my place to eat—and you know what I mean when I say that. Only Autumn can eat as much as me these days. I’d planned to invite you, but she says you have class tonight.”

  “Ah, but what Autumn doesn’t know is that my class was canceled. If the invitation is still open . . .” He looked at us hopefully.

  “Consider yourself invited,” Tawnia said.

  “Great. What time?”

  “You can come anytime, but we’ll probably eat at seven.”

  I cleared my throat. “That means come early so you can help me cook.”

  “Are you going with Tawnia? Because if you are, I could give you a lift home.” He made motions with his hands, as though revving the engine on his motorbike. “We’ll take the long way. Should be a nice night for a spin.”

  I pondered his invitation. We lived only a block apart and often gave each other rides to work. In fact, he’d come by for me this morning. Tonight I preferred to drive myself so I could be in control of my unruly feelings toward Jake, but the opportunity to put my arms around him was too tempting. “Sure. But that doesn’t get you out of helping me with dinner.”

  “I’ll be there as soon as I lock up.” Jake winked at me. “I’ll double check your door, too, on my way out.” This was a service we always did for each other. It paid to be careful when you lived as frugally as we had to.

  “Great.” His wink made me feel odd inside—all butterflies and tickly spiders. It was almost easier back when that hadn’t happened, before the idea of Jake as a possible boyfriend had wormed its way into my mind. What had changed? Maybe it was Tawnia getting married and all this baby stuff that had my imagination working overtime. Nothing like your twin becoming a mother to make a woman consider the passing years.

  Tawnia headed toward the door, but Jake stopped me, his strong fingers warm on the bare skin of my arm. “Who was that guy that was here earlier? He didn’t look like a customer.” His tone had gone serious, and I wondered if he’d seen me arguing with Ethan. No, if he had, he would have come running. But that he’d noticed made me feel both protected and annoyed all at once.

  “He’s a private investigator hired by the Fullmers, but he’s really a math teacher. He became a PI last year when his sister disappeared. He thinks she may be with the same group that took Victoria.” I shrugged. “He wants me to read some of her stuff and see if I can learn anything.”

  “He teaches math and he believes you?”

  “He does now.” I shuddered, remembering the agony that was too private to share. And yet, only by sharing it could one really come back to the world. I’d found that out the hard way when Winter died. It was too easy to fall into your own space and let the world pass by. Easier, but not at all emotionally healthy. Being left too much on her own might have been what had attracted Marcie to Harmony Farm in the first place. They would have offered constant love and affirmation without the need to come to terms with anything, no need to live in the real world. With as much money as Marcie had in her assets and accounts, they might be content to let her simply sit in a corner for years, if that was what she wanted.

  Jake’s eyes were soft and liquid, like creamy dark chocolate. His smooth face was already showing signs of new beard growth, making his brown skin even darker in those spots. The dreadlocks made him seem tough, and the muscles straining across the front of his short-sleeved polo supported the notion. Yet I had seen Jake tenderly nurse sick animals back to health. I’d seen him spend long minutes helping old ladies who didn’t know what they were searching for. He’d been more than supportive after my father died, being insistent with me when I needed it or letting me cry on his shoulder when I simply couldn’t take any more. He and Tawnia had been my salvation during that terrible time.

  “Jake.” My voice caught in my throat, coming out all husky.

  “Yes?” His face tilted down close to mine to hear me better.

  I had the sudden urge to kiss him, to feel his lips against mine, to rub my face against his cheeks. “I want to thank you for everything you’ve done for me since Winter . . . died. I don’t know if I ever told you how much that meant to me.”

  His smiled faded into an enigmatic loo
k more appropriate to my statement. “You have, Autumn, but I assure you, you’ve given me much more in return. I value your friendship more than I can say.”

  Friendship. The word was like a slap in the face. Here I was, thinking about throwing myself into his arms, and he was talking friendship!

  I stepped back quickly before I made a fool of myself. “I’ll see you later.”

  Puzzlement crossed his face, but I certainly wasn’t going to explain my behavior. If he had any sense—and I knew he did—he could figure it out. Of course, since it is scientifically proven that men and women couldn’t be more different, he might come to a completely erroneous conclusion.

  All the better for me. I didn’t want his pity. I did want and need his friendship, even if that was all he could offer.

  Chapter 5

  Jake, Bret, and I slaved in the small kitchen of Bret and Tawnia’s rented bungalow, while Tawnia sat contentedly at the round table, her feet up on a chair. As usual, she was sketching something.

  “Somehow, when I envisioned having guests over for dinner,” Bret told his wife, “that meant we’d feed them, not make them fix us dinner.”

  Tawnia laughed. “They know I’m no good at cooking. Besides, neither one of them would eat anything I’d make, anyway.”

  This was not strictly true. My sister had come a long way in the cooking department since our reunion nearly a year ago. Moreover, Jake and I were not as picky as she implied. We ate meat and eggs and milk and cheese like most people, the only difference being that the products came from animals that had been fed and housed correctly. Well, and the items were sold as near to their natural state as possible, which meant no pasteurization for dairy. As for everything else, there were plenty of wholesome foods that didn’t contain preservatives and weren’t irradiated for longer shelf life—if you were willing to take the time to look for them.

  “We don’t mind,” I said. “I need to make sure my niece gets some healthy food before she’s born.”

  Bret snorted. “I can tell you, that’s a full-time job.”

  Normally serious and thoughtful to a fault, my brother-in-law had mellowed over the past months of marriage. He had straight blond hair and blue eyes in an oval face. He was slightly taller than average but leaner than he should be for his height, though he’d gained a few needed pounds lately—not from my sister’s cooking, of course. Probably from all the midnight ice cream feasts Tawnia had begun in her fourth month of pregnancy. Bret was handsome in a conservative way, not like the exotic Jake, who could trace his roots to Africa, or even the rugged, unruly-haired Ethan who, math teacher or no, might have missed his calling as a movie star.

  “Hey, I can’t help myself,” Tawnia protested. “This baby’s taken control of my taste buds, and he or she loves sweets.”

  “Especially chocolate milk.” Bret dropped a kiss on Tawnia’s head. To me he added, “Anything else I can do?”

  The pork chops were on the grill, the organic spinach and blue cheese salad chopped and ready to go, the whole wheat rolls in the oven, and the organic fruit and vegetable plate ready for munching.

  “You could stir this pudding,” I said.

  Tawnia loved banana pudding over fresh pound cake, but it had taken me a while to discover a recipe that satisfied both my nutritional requirements and her taste buds.

  I moved away from the pan, but Bret didn’t take the spoon. He was staring down at Tawnia’s newest sketch. “Hey, that looks like an engineer I hired today. Nice man. The nose is a little off, though.”

  Tawnia’s hand froze over the picture. Her eyes, their mismatching colors prominent even from where I stood at the stove, sought mine.

  I smiled encouragingly. “Do you think he’d mind being in an underwear ad?”

  “What are you talking about?” Bret asked.

  Tawnia and I laughed, but I sensed the worry behind her smile. Something odd was going on. We just didn’t know what.

  We were saved from further thought on the matter by the doorbell. “That must be Ethan.” Tawnia jumped to her feet and grabbed my hand. “Honey, take over on the pudding so Autumn can go with me to the door.”

  “I’m going, too,” Jake said.

  Bret rolled his eyes. “That’s right, the engineer always gets the tough duty.”

  My hands felt suddenly sweaty. It was show time. I really hoped Ethan would wait until after I had food in my stomach before he started hauling out his sister’s possessions. I was still shaky from the little ring.

  To my disappointment, Ethan’s snug jeans and blazer were gone. He was now dressed similarly to Bret, with slacks and a gray, long-sleeved, button-down shirt. He’d probably bought them by the dozen when he was teaching. I noticed Jake eyeing him with unconcealed mistrust, his hands shoved into the large pockets of his off-white cargo pants.

  Besides the dress shirt, Ethan looked the part of a strong, capable, mysterious PI. He was as tall as Jake, which meant slightly shorter than Bret, and leaner than either of the other men. His intense blue eyes gave him the look of a man on the edge.

  The edge of what?

  I let Tawnia make the introductions, because this was her party, and watched her repeat the process after we joined Bret in the kitchen. He had the pudding off the stove now, and it was perfect. I smiled at him to show I was pleased.

  We left the food on the counter, filled our plates, and took them to the small table. It was a squeeze with five people, and I wasn’t sure where Tawnia had found a fifth chair. I sat between Jake and Ethan, instinctively shifting closer to Jake, bringing one bare foot up under me as I customarily did. Ethan eyed my foot but said nothing.

  “So, you’re a math teacher,” Jake said after Bret offered a prayer of thanks over the food.

  “It was the only thing I was good at,” Ethan confessed.

  I grinned. “If you were my high school math teacher, I certainly would have paid more attention.” So he didn’t have a chance to misconstrue my meaning, I added quickly, “Mine was bald and fat, which normally I wouldn’t have cared about, but he took entirely too much pleasure in stumping us with impossible equations.”

  Everyone laughed, except Jake, who, to my surprise, took my words seriously. “Well, you obviously learned enough math to do your books.”

  “Only because there was this really hot guy behind me who took pity on me. He explained everything.”

  “What happened to him?” Tawnia asked. Trust Tawnia to be interested in that.

  I shrugged. “The first time I didn’t wear shoes to school, he stopped talking to me.”

  “Ah, his true colors emerged.”

  Ethan glanced at my feet again and then away.

  “Well, some people like bare feet,” I joked. “For instance, at the river today a guy from Harmony Farm told me I’d be welcome to join them.”

  Tawnia snorted. “As if.”

  “I just noticed your eyes.” Ethan looked first at me and then at Tawnia. “They’re different colors.”

  “We were born that way,” Tawnia said. She threw me a grin that said, “Ha, he noticed.” I smiled back.

  “Did you go to school to be a PI?” Jake asked Ethan. “I mean, is there a two-week course or something?”

  Knowing him as well as I did, I caught the derision. That wasn’t like Jake at all. “Why would you care about school?” I teased. “We’re both college dropouts.” I turned to Ethan. “We ended up taking only the classes that interested us, and believe me, general education wasn’t on the agenda.”

  Ethan didn’t seem to hear me. “I did take several courses,” he said to Jake, “but mostly I studied books about how to track people and how to follow a paper or electronic trail. On the whole, PI work is basically a lot of reading and research. I’m good at that. It’s methodical—like numbers.”

  “Rats! That counts me out,” I said. It counted Jake out, too, because as smart as he was, he didn’t read well, and I knew that was something he worked on privately. He’d dropped out of college because o
f the required reading, while I, who loved to read, had dropped out strictly from boredom. My parents had been good teachers my entire life, exposing me to people and ideas others my age couldn’t begin to fathom. Learning with students my own age had seemed slow and confining compared to what I could do on my own. Not to mention that I had trouble seeing the importance of tests; after all, wasn’t the knowledge itself the important thing?

  Fortunately, Winter had seen my faults and had encouraged me to follow my dream to open Autumn’s Antiques. I wouldn’t be building a new house any time soon, like my college-educated sister and her husband, and maybe I never would, but I spoke proper English and I knew antiques and herbs better than anyone, even Jake.

  “I’m taking a botany class right now,” Jake said. “The professor is adequate. Mostly.”

  Another veiled insult toward our guest, who by profession was linked to the comment. What had come over Jake?

  “Well,” Tawnia said, coming to her feet, “I don’t know about you guys, but I need another helping of that wonderful brown rice.”

  “I’ll beat you to it.” I leaped up and scooped three large spoonfuls of the organic mixture on my plate, along with a second pork chop, though my first was only half-eaten.

  Ethan stared in amazement. “You can eat all that?”

  “She’s only just beginning.” Jake passed me the fruit plate.

  “Big appetite, huh?” Ethan commented.

  “Healthy appetite,” Jake returned in a lecturing voice I almost didn’t recognize. “If you eat right, you can eat as much as you want. But most people, even people who should know better, don’t pay attention to what they put into their bodies.”

  “I eat whatever I feel like,” Ethan countered.

  “That’s okay while we’re young, but hit your mid-thirties, and things start falling apart.” He gave Ethan a flat grin. “I’m sure you’re aware of that.”

  So the meal went on, with Tawnia and me competing to see who could eat the most and Jake and Ethan exchanging increasingly barbed comments. Bret, smiling widely, remained silent. Only when he helped me serve the dessert did he quirk an eye in the direction of the table and whisper, “Man, they’re at each other’s throats. Something tells me you have two admirers.”