by Dianne Dixon
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Copyright © 2016 by Dianne Dixon
Cover and internal design © 2016 by Sourcebooks, Inc.
Cover design by Susan Zucker
Cover image © Patricia Turner/Arcangel Images
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The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
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ALSO BY DIANNE DIXON
The Book of Someday
Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Part One: Rhode Island
Prologue
Ali
Morgan
Ali
Morgan
Ali
Ali
Matt
Morgan
Ali
Matt
Morgan
Matt
Morgan
Ali
Matt
Ali
Matt
Morgan
Ali
Morgan
Part Two: California
Ali
Morgan
Ali
Morgan
Ali
Matt
Ali
Morgan
Matt
Matt
Ali
Morgan
Ali
Ali
Morgan
Ali
Morgan
Ali
Matt
Matt
Part Three: A Whole New World
Morgan
Matt
Ali
Matt
Ali
Matt
Morgan
Ali
Morgan
Ali
Matt
Ali
Morgan
Ali
Morgan
Ali
Kim
Ali
Morgan
Ali
Morgan
Ali
Morgan
Ali
Morgan
Ali
Matt
Morgan
Ali
Ali
Morgan
Morgan
Ali
Ali
Epilogue
Reading Group Guide
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Back Cover
For Elizabeth, Christi, and Stephen.
With love.
The lotus comes from the murkiest water
but grows into the purest thing.
—Nita Ambani
Part One
RHODE ISLAND
Prologue
In the glass-walled ballroom of a Newport, Rhode Island, mansion, a swarm of butterflies had just been released—and in the same split second, a bridal bouquet of lavender roses was thrown into the air.
Ali, the maid of honor, stood at the bottom of a curving flight of stone stairs in a shimmering, sage-green gown. She was so incredibly beautiful that even with the spectacle of the butterflies and the bouquet, everyone’s attention was on her.
A bridesmaid wearing a pale-pink dress scrambled to grab the falling flowers. No one noticed, including Ali.
While the wedding flowers grazed the bridesmaid’s straining fingertips and sailed away, Ali was in the midst of a kiss. At the end of the kiss, Ali stretched out her hand with a quick, effortless gesture.
The bouquet dropped directly into her open palm, its slap on her skin startling her, making her laugh. In response to this charming accident, the bride and the wedding guests whistled and applauded.
But Ali was suddenly nervous. Leaning over the stair rail, scanning the faces in the crowd, searching for someone. Matt, the man she’d been kissing, told her, “I know what you’re thinking. Don’t do it.” He wrapped her fingers around the base of the bouquet. “Hang on to this. It’s proof. You’ll be the next one to get married.”
“I’m not even engaged,” Ali said.
“Not yet.” Matt put his lips on her shoulder, bringing them up along the length of her neck, very slowly.
The bridesmaid in the pink dress moved closer to the bottom of the stairs, closer to Ali—arms crossed, gaze lowered. Her fingernails dug into the soft flesh in the crooks of her elbows.
When the bridesmaid finally raised her head, her angry gaze was fixed on Ali.
Ali clearly understood the message that had been sent. The bridesmaid was her sister. Her twin, Morgan.
For anyone who happened to see it, the poisonous look that went from Morgan to Ali was a disturbing glimpse into the darkness that can cling to the underside of love.
For Ali and Morgan, the darkness was directly connected to the fact that their twinness wasn’t identical. Ali’s eyes were sparkling, changeable, sometimes brownish green, sometimes golden brown. Her glossy hair was caramel colored, and her body was voluptuous. Morgan’s shape was narrower, the body of a fencer or a long-distance runner. Her eyes were simply, and always, brown. Her hair, a quiet ash blond. Compared to what her sister had received, Morgan had always felt that what she’d been given wasn’t enough.
In her pale-pink bridesmaid’s dress, Morgan was staring up at the bridal bouquet. Asking Why? in a voice that was almost soundless.
She let several seconds pass. Eventually, when she understood Ali wasn’t going to answer her question, or let her have the bouquet, Morgan turned and walked toward the crowded dance floor. As soon as she got there, her attention went straight to the handsome groom. He was slyly grinding close and slow with his laughing bride.
• • •
The guests had scattered; the band had gone home. It was just before midnight, and the bride was in the ballroom, where the only light was coming from a satin-shaded lamp on a table near one of the glass walls. She was there with her family. They were cheering as she held up a champagne glass and announced, “Here’s to my new life! May it be as fabulous and happy as the one I grew up in!” The groom sat next to her, saying nothing.
Ali was in one of the mansion’s guest rooms
, excited and happy, taking a handful of unlit sparklers and a gift bag stuffed with tissue paper from an open suitcase on her bed. The bridal bouquet of lavender roses was lying on her pillow.
Morgan was in the shower, surrounded by a thunder of water. Ali called to her, “Don’t wait up! Matt and I will be doing some major celebrating.”
Ali had traded her wedding finery for a plum-colored linen shirt and a pair of jeans and was heading toward the door, holding the sparklers and the gift bag. As she passed Morgan’s bed, she noticed the plain cotton pajamas Morgan had neatly laid out—and that the book on Morgan’s bedside table was a dog-eared romance novel.
Instantly, Ali’s happiness was flattened by guilt, by a grinding sense of obligation planted in her years ago. When she was a little girl on her way to birthday parties and sleepovers. When her parents’ constant refrain was “What about Morgan? You wouldn’t want her going off and leaving you all alone. Be a good girl. Take care of your sister.” That lifelong guilt about Morgan’s loneliness was what had made Ali agree to share a room with her this weekend, instead of being where she wanted to be, with Matt.
Ali opened the book on the bedside table. On the inside cover, her sister had written her full name: Morgan Marie Spencer. The same way she’d written her name in every book since she was six—like she was relentlessly hanging on to being a child.
Ali glanced toward the closed bathroom door, thinking, Everybody in the wedding is staying in this mansion tonight. The place will be full of parties. You’re twenty-seven, Morgan. All grown up. Go out… Have some fun.
But the truth was that Morgan had nowhere to go. She didn’t know how to find her own fun. She’d stubbornly refused to learn.
Ali tossed the romance novel onto the bed. “I don’t feel sorry for you, Morgan. It’s your own fault you’re alone.”
Yet, just before Ali left the room, she moved the bouquet of lavender roses from her pillow to Morgan’s.
• • •
In years to come, seemingly random events taking place in the mansion that night would lead to brutal, unexpected violence—and to the discovery of something so bizarre it would be heart-stopping. No one could have known this.
But if Ali had a choice, would she have wanted to know? Would she have appreciated advance notice on the identity of the person who would someday shatter her life? What would be less painful? To find out it was a stranger? Or someone close? Someone she’d slept beside or danced with? Maybe even somebody she loved.
Was it for the best that, in a future place and time, things happened exactly the way they did? Hitting her out of the blue. Without warning.
Ali
Ali had arrived at the farthest edge of the mansion’s rolling back lawn, where the grass gave way to a sandy bluff overlooking the ocean. Matt was there, spreading a white tablecloth under a small, wind-gnarled tree. Setting up a picnic borrowed from the wedding feast. A bottle of wine, a pair of engraved forks, and a gold-rimmed plate containing a single slice of wedding cake.
The minute Matt saw Ali running toward him, he jumped to his feet, reaching out, catching her, and lifting her up.
The warmth and strength of Matt’s embrace, the clean, fresh smell of his skin—to Ali it was like being carried into heaven. “Am I late?” she whispered.
“No worries. We still have four minutes till midnight. It’s still our anniversary.”
In the light from the half-moon, Matt looked like a blue-eyed, fair-haired angel. He took Ali’s breath away as she told him, “I can’t believe it, the anniversary of our first date. Exactly one year ago.”
“Before that night, I’d never gone out with a girl as wonderful as you.”
“As wonderful as me…?” All Ali could think about was Morgan—the drab cotton pajamas and the dog-eared romance novel, how alone Morgan was at that moment. It wracked Ali with guilt when Matt said, “You’re so loving, so giving.”
“Am I?”
“Yeah. You make me wake up every morning wanting to be a better man, just to be worthy of you.”
Matt leaned in for a kiss. There was nothing Ali wanted more, but she flinched and pulled away.
“Al, what’s wrong?”
She didn’t know how to explain without sounding crazy—because there was no uncrazy way to say I’m being hit by a horrible ache that belongs to Morgan, the misery of my sister’s loneliness.
“Ali, what’s going on?” Matt gave her a gentle shake.
“Maybe we should put this off, our celebration, till tomorrow. We could do it after we get back home.” She tried to slip out of Matt’s embrace; he didn’t seem to notice.
He nestled her closer against his chest. “To be with you, Al…it’s the only thing I’ll ever need for the rest of my life.” Matt glanced toward the feast beneath the tree, then looked up at the sky. “I brought you cake and champagne. And the moon. Because anything less wouldn’t have been enough.”
“I got you a present, too. Hope you like it.” Ali suddenly remembered what was in the bag she’d brought with her. The thought sent a blush across her cheeks. “It’s a gift I autographed. Very personally.”
Ali’s blush made Matt laugh. “Can’t wait to see what it is.” His laughter stopped, leaving behind an enigmatic smile. “But I want to open my present later. Right now, there’s something more important we need to do.”
The sparklers Ali had brought with her from the mansion were still in her hand. Matt took them from her and planted them in a wide circle in the grass.
He lit the sparklers carefully, one by one. Surrounding Ali in a cloud of fairy-tale light. Light that danced across the wine bottle. And the china plate with its single slice of wedding cake. Light that danced across the diamond ring that Matt was slipping onto Ali’s finger as he asked, “Alexia Spencer, will you marry me?”
For a moment, Ali was speechless. Then she said, “Yes. Yes. I’ll marry you. And I’ll spend the rest of my life loving you. You’re everything I’ll ever want.”
For a while, Ali and Matt simply held each other, sharing intimacy that was quiet and sweet.
Then as they were enjoying the wedding cake and the champagne, Ali said, “Our life together is going to be fantastic.”
Matt grinned. “Tell me about it. Every detail.”
“Well, as you know, one of the nicest parts will be my restaurant.” Ali put down her champagne glass, eager to tell Matt the news. “By the way, I have a new idea for the layout—simple, welcoming. Totally unpretentious.”
“Even if we make it unpretentious, the restaurant’s an expensive proposition, Al.” Matt’s grin was gone. “You’re about to marry a thirty-year-old, first-year assistant professor of English. It might take a while before we get this thing off the ground.”
Ali knew Matt wanted to be her hero. And every time they talked about the restaurant, it made him nervous. Because teaching—the career he loved—could never provide him with enough money to make all her dreams come true. In a rush of protectiveness, Ali laced her fingers into Matt’s. “I don’t care about having piles of cash. I never have.”
“It’s easy to live without a lot of money only if you’ve never had a lot of money,” Matt told her.
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing.” He shrugged and looked away. “I’m just babbling.”
Ali wondered if it was true, wondered if there wasn’t something more to what he’d just said, but she didn’t push him. There were parts of himself that Matt kept private, things Ali could only guess at. Hurts that she assumed were connected to losing his parents when he was still a teenager. And having no other family. His grief at being left completely alone in the world.
Ali cuddled close, wanting Matt to feel how much he was loved, believing that someday, their love would make him feel safe enough to open up and tell her everything.
Matt, meanwhile, had turned his attention towar
d the soft glow coming from the mansion’s windows. “That house is enormous. How many bedrooms do you think it has?”
Ali cuddled closer, loving how warm Matt’s skin was. “I don’t know, dozens?”
“And I’m not the only guy staying here tonight who’s in love with you, am I?” There was the slightest flicker of a frown in Matt’s expression.
Ali was puzzled. “What are you talking about?”
“That guy. You know the one, the ginger-haired hulk.”
A wave of heat rose in Ali. Embarrassment, discomfort. For an instant, she was back at the wedding reception…in her sage-green gown. Dancing way too many dances with a partner who wasn’t Matt. Experiencing a familiar surge of excitement. The one that had always been there every time that handsome, ginger-haired man touched her.
“You mean Levi?” Ali said.
“Yeah. Levi. The guy you were all over the dance floor with. What’s the story with him?”
Ali shook her head, trying to clear it. “Um…we’ve known each other forever.”
“And that’s it? That’s all there is to tell about Dancin’ Levi?” On the surface, Matt’s tone was playful; below the surface, Ali heard something that sounded like jealousy.
She quickly put her arms around Matt and hugged him. “I’ve known Levi since second grade. We went all through high school together, and college.”
“What about now? What’s his story now?”
“He plays professional hockey. He’s a goalie. And we see each other every once in a while, mostly at the weddings of people we went to college with. Levi and I are friends.”
“Was it ever anything more than that?”
“No. Not really.”
Ali hugged Matt again—tighter than a moment ago. She’d just told him a lie, put a sliver of distance between them. And she wanted to be close again.
• • •
Later, when the two of them lay down together in the grass, a breeze lifted the gauzy linen of Ali’s shirt. Matt slipped his hand between the billowing fabric and Ali’s skin, moving with delicious slowness, letting his fingers come to rest low on her belly. There was lust in the way he touched her. There was also a hint of a question.
