Now, as she closed her eyes and allowed her mind to drift, a profound contentment advanced on her, evicting her nagging anxiety. She knew the feeling was not her own, but she surrendered to it anyway and closed her eyes. An instant before sleep, she realized the pillow she was hugging smelled of Fran. Funny how the scent of another human being could be so comforting.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Phoebe hung the final red glass apple on the Christmas tree and hit the power. Zoe instantly leapt up from the rug and barked at the blinking lights. She was one of those dogs who reacted to change, losing her mind if a houseplant was moved six inches. Rowe had installed a new chandelier in her vestibule and Zoe got hysterical every time she saw it.
“Come here, silly.” Phoebe gave her a reassuring cuddle and, once the Lab had calmed down, guiltily fed her a treat.
Rowe insisted on rationing these because Zoe tended to put on weight and she’d snuck off to the deer barn recently and stuffed herself on apples. Phoebe wasn’t meant to give the dogs table scraps either, but they knew a sucker when they saw one.
She surveyed her decorations with satisfaction. The room smelled of pine and the cookies she’d baked that morning, and with the garlands and Christmas stockings, it felt homey and festive. Cara drew the line at angels and nativity scenes, pointing out that Christmas was nothing but a pagan feast hijacked by an upstart new religion trying to make conversion painless for the heathen. Officially, in the Temple home, they celebrated the solstice festival of Yule.
Phoebe was dismayed that she hadn’t made it to Boston to shop this year. Her work for the FBI had been a huge distraction. Next year she would organize things better. Meantime, thank goodness for the Internet. Yesterday’s mail delivery had to be dragged by handcart to the door. Phoebe went over to the table where her gifts for Cara and Rowe were piled up, waiting to be wrapped. She wanted to have everything done by the time Rowe got back from her last-minute shopping expedition to Portland. Cara wouldn’t be home until Christmas Eve, and she would bring all her presents with her, professionally wrapped by those glamorous sales clerks in the ritzy boutiques where she shopped.
This year, for once, Phoebe was going to give her sister something just as fabulous as anything Cara might choose from Tiffany or Louis Vuitton. Sliding a square red leather box from its shiny white outer, she opened it carefully and inspected the contents. Cara had coveted a Cartier Pasha watch for many years and had even pinned a picture of the model she wanted on the refrigerator a few months back. Phoebe had taken this as permission to splash out, something she and her twin seldom did. When you grew up making your own soap and wearing secondhand clothing, frugal habits were hard to shake.
Grandma Temple had ingrained in them her views on extravagance and waste—the elderly lady still insisted on driving a twenty-year-old Ford rather than squandering money on a new car. Over time, Phoebe and Cara had recognized that her ideas were extreme, but Phoebe still practiced many of the home economies they were reared with. She grew most of their vegetables, canning and freezing through the summer so they would have enough to last through the winter. And despite Cara’s insistence that there was no need, she made their soft furnishings and sewed many of her own clothes.
Phoebe knew she should be enjoying her glamorous FBI salary, but she couldn’t assume it was going to last. Her second sight had arrived out of the blue and it could vanish just as quickly. Meantime, she was thrilled that she could donate extra money to WSPA and other causes she supported and buy some special things for the people she cared about. Humming to herself, she wrapped Cara’s watch in a sheet of beautiful embossed paper she knew would horrify her grandmother, who always presented their gifts in recycled tissue, decorated with dried flowers she had pressed herself.
After tying Cara’s box to a high branch, she wrapped a few of the more mundane gifts she’d bought. Books, DVDs, perfume, clothing. She’d also had the Colby Boone pastel framed. This was now hanging on the wall near the tree. While she was in the gallery, she’d purchased a couple of other paintings, one of them for Rowe. She still couldn’t believe her luck at the find. It was an oil painting of Dark Harbor Cottage by an unknown artist, painted about a hundred years ago. The moment she saw it she knew it belonged in Rowe’s front parlor in the gap above the rolltop desk they’d dragged in from the carriage house.
Ignoring an urge to take it from its protective crate, she contented herself with wrapping it beautifully. Rowe was going to be delighted, and the painting wasn’t the only special gift. Phoebe opened a small box and studied the ring she had chosen for her lover. She supposed some women would be frightened off, receiving this symbolic gift so soon into a new relationship. But it wasn’t a wedding band, and Rowe had mentioned one day that she’d lost a signet ring she was fond of. Phoebe had found a heavy handmade replacement she could imagine Rowe wearing. She hoped it would fit.
Picturing her lover’s pleasure, she felt her body react as it always did to the mere thought of Rowe. Her breathing shortened, her nipples grew taut, and she got wet. Weak kneed, she pulled out a chair and sank down into it. She still couldn’t believe they were together. More amazing still was that, for the first time ever, she felt certain she was in a relationship that had a future. The conviction was instantly tempered with unease. She hadn’t told Cara. She knew she was putting it off out of cowardice, trying to avoid a shadow being cast on her happiness.
She didn’t want her sister’s steely perception slicing through her own, wounding her with doubt. It was so often that way between them. Sometimes it seemed they shared a mind, thinking each other’s thoughts, feeling each other’s fears, living each other’s lives in countless tiny ways. They often wore the same colors unintentionally, injured the same limbs on the same days, made the same impulse purchases when they weren’t shopping together.
It was as if they inhabited an invisible womb, each seeking space to grow yet held captive by their dependence on the same blood supply. They were eternally trapped by their togetherness, one another’s first and most enduring passion, each the soul mate none other could be.
That was why she needed to tell Cara face-to-face, not over the phone. Being with Rowe did not mean rejecting her twin. But she had a feeling Cara might take it that way.
*
“Why didn’t you tell me before?” Cara spooned cranberry sauce into a crystal bowl.
Phoebe closed the oven door and wiped her hands awkwardly on her apron. Her eyes pleaded and her mouth was set in the small mutinous line that always spelled trouble. “Because I didn’t want us having one of those conversations over the phone.”
“So instead you wait until Christmas Day to explain she’s joining us because you’re now fucking her.”
Phoebe flinched. “Don’t say it like that. I’m in love with her.”
“How can you possibly say that? You only met the woman a few weeks ago.”
Cara carried the cranberry sauce into the dining room. The table was set for three, and Rowe was going to show up pretty soon. Swallowing her anger, she found a place for the sauce and refolded the napkins to give herself time to control her breathing. Damn Phoebe. Why couldn’t she behave like a responsible adult just once? And Rowe. Cara supposed she couldn’t blame her. The woman was obviously lonely and had let herself be charmed. So much for her reluctance to get it on with Cara because they were neighbors. Apparently her reservations had not extended to Phoebe.
She plunked down the napkin rings harder than she intended, stalked over to the bar, and hauled out the champagne glasses. When she turned toward the table again, Phoebe was standing in front of her, tears rolling down her cheeks.
“Please don’t spoil this,” she begged. “Please be happy for me. I really think she’s the one.”
“I don’t spoil things for you, Phoebe. You do that for yourself.”
“This is different. You have to believe me. I’ve never felt this way about anyone.”
“I wish you could hear yourself.” Cara moved past her to
set the glasses on the table. “I wish I had a tape recording of the times you’ve told me you were in love and it was going to be different.”
“I know I’ve done some stupid things in the past,” Phoebe said with shaky dignity. “When I think about those other women now, I can see that I never loved any of them. I just hoped I did.”
“You think that’s changed?” Cara softened her tone. “Honestly, sweetie. I’m not saying this to hurt you. I know you want to believe someone is going to walk into your life and sweep you off your feet. But that’s just a fairy tale.”
Phoebe stared at her. “Why are you being like this? Is it because I invited her for Christmas?”
“No. I don’t give a damn if you invite ten people without discussing it with me. You’re the one doing the cooking.”
“Then what? Please tell me.”
“I have told you.”
Phoebe shook her head, wispy curls drooping from the Grecian knot she wore while cooking. In a voice thick with tears, she said, “Can’t you feel how different this is? You have to know.”
Cara did sense a more profound emotion in Phoebe, but she refused to validate her twin’s happy delusion that this time she’d found true love. “All I know is that I asked you not to do this, and we now have a situation. Sooner or later it’s going to end up in my lap.”
“Don’t you have any faith in me at all?” Phoebe grew pale. “For God’s sake, Cara. I don’t understand why you’re so angry. If it doesn’t work out, I promise you I will deal with it. So please…at least act like you’re happy for us while she’s here.”
Cara felt a burn of frustration. Phoebe seemed unable to move beyond her need for someone’s blind adoration. Apparently it wasn’t enough that she had a twin who loved her and shielded her from harsh reality. Cara supposed it had something to do with the loss of their parents. Ever since she could remember, Phoebe had repeated an almost childlike quest for approval and attention over and over with women who seemed like authority figures.
They were usually much older—Bev had been in her mid-forties. And they were the type who put her on a pedestal and treated her like she was made of porcelain. Rowe didn’t exactly fit the profile. On the other hand, Phoebe’s choices were limited right now and their attractive, single neighbor was right next door.
Cara swallowed a sigh. She wouldn’t have minded playing around with Rowe herself, and it would have been a whole lot less complicated for all concerned. Rowe had been interested. Maybe she could still be tempted. Cara seriously doubted the woman was kidding herself about the nature of her liaison with Phoebe. She had obviously been down that road too many times to harbor naïve illusions. No doubt she was enjoying having a beautiful woman in her bed. Did it really matter which twin it was?
Cara smiled. Rowe could be handled, of that she was confident. “You win,” she told Phoebe with a sigh. “I’ll be nice to her.”
*
Before Rowe was halfway along the path, the back door flew open and Phoebe stood there. It had been a slow slog to the Temples’ house, dragging a covered handcart, with Zoe and Jessie cavorting out of shouting range like they were seeing snow for the first time. They would have to go straight to the laundry and get dried off. Rowe could imagine them leaping all over Cara, smearing mud and slobber down her expensive designer clothing.
“Hey, baby!” She waved to Phoebe. “The dogs are filthy, sorry.”
Phoebe called them, and as usual, they hurtled toward her, then flopped down at her feet, models of good behavior. Looking past them, Phoebe asked, “Need a hand?”
“No. I’m fine, thanks. But we should probably make sure they don’t jump up on Cara.” Rowe studied her lover with a smile she knew was probably sappy.
Phoebe’s cheeks were stained crimson, a paler shade of the skirt she was wearing. In her simple white blouse, with her ebony hair drawn up into a careless knot, the wild color in her face and her eyes shy and bright with passion, she looked so stunning Rowe was rooted to the spot, hardly able to breathe.
The strength of her reactions shocked her. It had been much easier to long for women she couldn’t have, she understood suddenly. With the Marions of her past, she had felt powerless and frustrated, but somehow safe. Sustained by fantasy and hope, her romantic feelings had never had to withstand the acid test of real life. There was nothing to prove when you didn’t have to be a partner. You couldn’t fail in a relationship that didn’t exist. It was like having a great idea for a book, but never writing it.
By contrast, being with Phoebe was thrilling and terrifying in equal parts. Rowe felt more exposed than she had at any time with any woman. In the past she had been disappointed, even imagined herself heartbroken over the women who failed to return her feelings. She could see now that she had been wandering in a maze of her own making, taking countless dead-end paths to avoid the prize her soul sought but her heart feared.
Why had she been afraid? It was as if she had courted profound desire, but only in one-sided situations. The women who actually became her lovers were those she defaulted into having sex with. Good women, women she liked. The relationships were…bland. Rowe had drifted in and out of them. None had lasted more than a couple of years. She gazed at Phoebe and knew by some magic she could not explain that she wanted to be with this woman for the rest of her life, that she would never have enough of her. That if she could not be with Phoebe, she wanted no one else, least of all another Marion.
“Go inside, my darling,” she said. “You’re getting cold.”
Instead, Phoebe walked through the snow toward her, arms outstretched. “I’m so happy you came. I missed you yesterday.”
“I missed you, too.”
Rowe wanted to swing her off her feet and carry her upstairs to bed. She didn’t care about Christmas dinner. She would rather devour Phoebe. The craving was so powerful, she had to remind herself to breathe. By contrast, the feelings she’d had for Marion seemed tepid, even banal. Shocked, she stared down at the fine icy crystals clinging to her jacket, each a tiny masterpiece of nature, unique in its design. One day soon they would melt and flow together, unified by the sun, their true purpose the mundane equivalent of a vast garden hose. So why the glittering beauty? Was Mother Nature in an exhibitionist mood—flaunting her immeasurable power to create and transform?
Time, Rowe thought. No one second was the same as the next. Each was a tiny world of possibility. She could seize her life or brush it away. She could fixate on the transient, blind to a wider truth. Or she could accept the fleeting enchantments and distractions of her past for what they were, part of a larger design she could only understand by stepping back. Love was not a solitary crystal of emotion, perfect and discrete. It was an accumulated capacity, a river enriched by dreams and desires and experience. She had loved Marion, in the stunted way she could, so she would know better how to love Phoebe. It was that simple.
Her beloved stared down at the handcart with a puzzled frown. “There’s something moving in there.”
“It’s a surprise,” Rowe said.
Phoebe lit up. “For me?”
“Have you been good?”
“You tell me.” Phoebe giggled and her lips left a warm, damp spot on Rowe’s icy cheek. Tucking her arm into Rowe’s, she walked with her to the laundry and helped clean up the dogs before they moved indoors.
Cara was waiting in the hall, looking like an invitation to sin, in tight black pants and a little butter yellow angora cardigan with a demure cream lace collar. She took Rowe’s coat and said, “You’re looking very delectable.” Playfully, she patted Rowe’s midriff. “No more rolls.”
“Amazing what regular exercise can do,” Rowe replied blandly.
“You know, it beats me why more people don’t just have sex instead of paying a personal trainer.” Cara flicked a pointed look toward Phoebe.
Rowe didn’t rise to the bait. “How was L.A.?”
“I worked hard and played hard.” Cara’s mouth parted in a lazy half-smile. The invi
tation in her candid gray eyes was unmistakable.
Phoebe touched Rowe’s hand. “Come see the tree.”
Pulling the hand trolley behind her, Rowe followed the twins into the den, wondering what the hell Cara was playing at. Was she hitting on her to prove something? If so, what? Did she seriously imagine Rowe would flirt with her in front of Phoebe? Was she trying to hurt her twin? Disturbed, Rowe inhaled the fragrance of pine and spice and made an effort to focus her attention on the room.
Phoebe hadn’t been kidding when she said she loved decorations. The walls were lavishly garlanded and the tree was decked out in red and gold ornaments. Around its base and hanging from its branches were gifts of all shapes and sizes. Rowe’s eyes were drawn past the glittering branches to a portrait on the wall, a pastel of Phoebe holding a sweet-faced spaniel.
She took a couple of paces toward it, captivated. The artist had captured Phoebe in a few deft strokes, revealing her innate sweetness and fascinating contradictions, her innocence and allure. The eyes that stared from her delicate face shone with hope and trust, and something else. Painful knowledge. Rowe caught her breath, her most protective instincts aroused.
Cara materialized at her side. “Isn’t it something?”
“Amazing,” Rowe agreed.
An arm slipped into hers and her nostrils registered the spicy fragrance she had smelled a moment earlier. It was rich, almost chocolatey, and belonged to Cara, who turned slightly then, her breast brushing Rowe’s arm. An accident? Rowe wanted to believe so. She shifted uneasily, putting some air between her body and Cara’s.
“Sweetie, did you tell Rowe about meeting Colby?”
Phoebe shook her head, absorbed in rearranging a strand of tree lights that had dropped from their branch. “I’ll tell her later.”
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