The Carpenter & the Queen

by Michelle Lashier

  Any trace of misplaced lines on the woman’s face was gone now. Her bright blue eyes gazed back at Claire. But beneath her eyes and nose lay the feature Claire’s inspiration had redeemed.

  With full lips and open mouth, the woman in the tower was smiling.

  An excerpt of a the first novel in a new series by Michelle Lashier:

  Time-Travelling Twins:

  Quivers and Quills

  Available Winter 2015

  Time-Traveling Twins 1: Quivers and Quills

  Chapter 1

  April 10, 2009

  Columbus, Ohio

  Jill Mason’s life was far too predictable. As she studied the birthday cake she shared with her sister Joanna, Jill knew exactly how the situation would play out. Dad would tell the twins to lean over the dining room table and get closer to the cake for the picture. After the first photo, he would take another. Dad never liked anything—or anyone—on the first viewing. Mom would sing “Happy Birthday” off key while Dad’s mustache twitched—the closest he ever came to smiling.

  And that’s exactly how it happened.

  Someone in the world likely longed for such familial bliss and tranquility. But grateful as she felt, Jill couldn’t help wondering if she had been born for more than this.

  Atop the cake sat two molded candles spelling out 25. After wincing through the birthday song, Jill automatically leaned toward the number two. Having been born three minutes after her sister, Jill’s designated candle since the twins turned ten had always been the lower number. The system, created by her mother, eliminated arguing over the birthday cake and had worked quite well except for the twins’ eleventh birthday when special clarification had been required. After that, birthdays sank into another routine without even the adrenaline rush of arguing over a candle flame.

  Jill didn’t make a birthday wish. What was the point?

  Seated at the dining table in her parents’ home, Jill, Joanna, Mom, and Dad ate the cake in the comfortable silence. Jill picked up the camera and flipped through the digital images her father had just taken. She marveled again at the resemblance between her and her sister, a similarity all the more amazing since as children they hadn’t looked anything alike. People expected all twins to look identical, even fraternal ones, and had been surprised the girls were twins after noting the eight-inch height difference when Joanna towered over Jill at age 13. But now, Jill understood why people mixed them up. Their shoulder-length hair, dark like their father’s, differed only in that Joanna parted her hair on the left and Jill the right. Beyond their almost identical trim figures, both had endured years of careful orthodontia resulting in perfectly straight, white teeth and too-broad smiles, even when they were unhappy.

  Noting the differences required more careful study. Joanna’s nose sloped to a sharper point, but more freckles adorned Jill’s nose and cheeks. Jill had her mother’s blue eyes, Joanna her father’s brown ones. Joanna wore every emotion on her face, especially her eyes, although Jill imagined Joanna hid her feelings better around strangers. In the photo, Joanna’s discouragement leaked out the corners of her mouth and eyes in a drooping effect. But the sight of Jill’s own eyes in the photo disturbed her more. The sparkle of mischief she treasured had faded to a sad, glassy expression that revealed how bored she felt.

  “It’s so nice to be just the four of us, isn’t it?” As Mom smiled, laugh lines spread around her eyes. Her hair, which became blonder every year, framed her delicate features. “Although I do love when you bring friends home, too.”

  “It would be nice to have grandchildren some day.” Dad took a bite of cake without making eye contact with anyone.

  “Dad!” Joanna shot him a dirty look.

  Dad enjoyed getting the family worked up, something he had started for his own amusement years ago as a way of coping with a household of women, Jill imagined. His joking didn’t bother her too much, but it made her think. She had never brought anyone home to meet the family. Only once had she considered it, but the relationship dissolved before she could extend the invitation. On the other hand, Joanna’s parade of boyfriends resembled a Hollywood casting call for Mr. Right, but no one got the part. Behind Joanna’s back, Jill and her parents created secret monikers to keep her male interests straight. Chris the Psychology Major had looked promising for a while, especially in comparison to Sam with the Nose Piercing and Ricky from New York. Mark the Writer positioned himself as a serious contender, but he had dumped Joanna a month ago and she was the only one surprised.

  “Twenty-four was a rotten year.” Joanna raised her class of milk. “Here’s hoping the next one’s better.”

  Joanna was in one of her dark moods. Jill did a quick self-assessment and assured herself that despite her own discontent she still felt much happier than Joanna. Love and competition between the twins had been intermingled for so long they were almost the same thing.

  Jill raised her glass and clinked it against Joanna’s. “I’ll drink to that.”

  “Jill, how’s your self-defense class?”

  Mom deftly changed the subject, but her topic choice was unfortunate. Jill wished she could say, “Fine,” and move the conversation on to something else, but her mother was too good a therapist for that to work. Honesty and brevity were the only responses that would hold off a deeper inquiry.

  “I stopped going. I sort of beat up the instructor.”

  Mom’s eyes opened wider. “This I have to hear.”

  “He wanted a volunteer for sparring.” Jill shifted in her seat. “He showed us how to spot an opponent’s vulnerable areas, and let’s just say I noticed his pretty quickly. He told me he wanted me to hit him as hard as I could . . . so I did. And he cried.”

  Mom and Dad both chuckled.

  “Get this,” Joanna added. “After she made him cry, he asked her out. But she didn’t go.”

  Mom folded her napkin and ran her finger along the crease. “Why not?”

  “Jill’s holding out for someone rich.”

  Nothing could have been farther from the truth. However, Jill suspected Joanna fantasized of a rich patron who would fund her writing and rescue her from a string of bad jobs. Recognizing the opportunity to shift the focus of the conversation to Joanna, Jill said, “Jo, have you told Mom and Dad about what happened in your writing group?”

  Mom took the bait. “I loved those two stories you wrote. What did the group think?”

  “They kicked me out.”

  “What?”

  “They hated the medieval story.” Joanna’s voice took on a tone she probably meant to sound nonchalant but instead came across as bitter. “They thought it lacked ‘authenticity.’ All plot and dialogue with no description that pulled them in.”

  “That’s ridiculous!” Mom scoffed. “I thought the story had beautiful description.”

  “Not the kind they wanted, apparently.” Joanna shook her head. “You know what bugged Gordon? The door knob. He said that if I have a character open a door, the reader has to see the knob. He said I shouldn’t write about anything unless I can describe it in detail.”

  “Door knobs?” Mom made a hissing sound to show her disgust. “As if those are important! Who looks at door knobs?”

  Joanna blushed. “I went to three home improvement stores and checked out what they had.”

  Jill felt her right eyebrow rise. “They have medieval door knobs at the Home Depot?”

  “Well, no . . . but I thought I could get an idea of the mechanism. Books on medieval doorknobs are a little hard to find.”

  “I guess you’ll have to leave that part out of the story,” Jill said.

  “But it’s bothering me now. I looked up a bunch of stuff on the Internet, but nothing really describes exactly how the door opened. If I ever had the chance, I’d study a medieval door knob until I knew exactly how it worked.”

  “Sounds enthralling.” Jill glanced at Dad after she made her comment and noted his mustache moved.

  “Do you know how a plane is able to
keep you in the air?” Dad asked.

  Joanna frowned. “Something about the air across the wings creating lift. I should look that up.”

  “And yet, you managed to get on a plane today and fly here from Minneapolis. How’s that possible?”

  “You’re saying I don’t have to understand exactly how something works in order to use it?”

  “Now we’re getting back into your mother’s territory,” Dad replied. “I don’t do psychology.”

  Mom rolled her eyes. “Your father’s got a point. These door knobs sound like an excuse to avoid writing.”

  “Excuse or not, they got me kicked out of the writing group.” Joanna sneered as she took another bite of cake.

  “Then the door knobs weren’t the only problem?”

  Joanna blushed. “They said the ‘love conquers all’ story line was overdone and hackneyed. I was mortified.”

  One look at her father told Jill that he hadn’t the faintest idea what hackneyed meant, and neither did she, but Joanna’s tone communicated the word was definitely an insult.

  “Then they told me my wedding planner story read like a bad romantic comedy. Gordon said the main character—and everyone knew it was me—had super hero fantasies because there was no way a wedding planner could solve a case of mistaken identity, settle a family feud, and still get the bride down the aisle in time.”

  “But that’s exactly what you did.”

  “Apparently, reading my work is like eating cookie dough—too many spoonfuls made people sick. Twenty-first century writing calls for sex, profanity, darkness and despair—and possibly an appearance from the undead.”

  “Well, phooey on them,” Mom said. “Someday when you’re a best selling author, you can look down their nose at them.”

  Joanna’s wan smile indicated her lack of belief in her mother’s prediction.

  Mom turned to Jill. “And someday when you’re running a company, all those people at work who don’t listen to you will have to.”

  Jill appreciated Mom’s attempt to keep the future predictions equitable, but Jill had no intention of running a company. She didn’t really know what she wanted to do except go on an adventure—and corporate America didn’t offer many opportunities for her style of excitement.

  After the twins helped clean up the kitchen, Joanna and Mom retired downstairs to check out bedroom curtains on the Internet for Mom’s plotted redecoration project. Jill excused herself from weighing in on the decision (she had never developed an interest in home décor) and settled on the couch at an angle from her dad who sprawled in his leather armchair reading his tablet computer.

  “I found something you might be interested in,” Dad said. “It’s the press release on your company’s new vice president. Have you seen it?”

  He passed her the computer and Jill read the headline: Goodwin new VP at Houston’s United Petroleum.

  “It got sent to the company yesterday.”

  “What do you think?”

  She passed the tablet back to him. “Hard to tell from just an email.”

  “The article makes it sound like he’s some sort of entrepreneurial prodigy. But I’d bet anyone whose father was a billionaire shareholder in the company can buy whatever credentials he wants. Did you know he was British?”

  “It’s a British-owned company, Dad.”

  Her father shook his head. “I don’t see why they can’t hire an American. After everything that’s happened in the Gulf, it’s hard to believe anyone from England could appreciate our resources. We have 300 million people in this country, and they couldn’t find any American qualified to run the site? Didn’t we learn anything from taxation without representation?”

  “Afraid they queen will try to retake the colonies?”

  “Don’t forget your ancestors were patriots. Zachariah Mason fought under George Washington.”

  Jill flashed back to family vacations when her father used to drag the family across Boston’s Freedom Trail in ninety-degree weather, all the while reciting family history.

  “‘The Mason family has always played an important part in history.’ Isn’t that what you always say?”

  “It’s the truth. I’ve been working on our family tree.”

  “Find anything interesting?”

  “I’m just getting started. But I suspect that our family has been at the center of everything important that has happened in the western world.”

  “Obviously, Dad. Obviously.”

  Dad looked like he was pondering the level of sarcasm in Jill’s response when Joanna and Mom returned to the living room.

  “Joanna likes the purple curtains.” Mom’s emphasis indicated Dad had supported a different choice.

  He snorted. “She doesn’t have to look at them every day.”

  Mom curled in her floral armchair next to Dad and faced the couch where Joanna had joined Jill. “Are you ready for your presents?”

  When the twins nodded, Mom looked expectantly at Dad, her smile fading at the seconds of silence ticked by.

  “Frank? The presents?”

  “What presents? I don’t remember presents.”

  Mom shook her head in frustration. Dad’s mustache twitched as he slid two envelopes out from underneath a lamp on the table and handed them to the twins. Jill passed Joanna the one with her name on it.

  “You have to open them both at the same time,” Mom instructed.

  Used to the ritual, Jill watched Joanna out of the corner of her eye to ensure their motions of opening the flap, pulling out the card, and reading the front were synchronized. On the inside, after the birthday message, Jill read this handwritten note: “Redeem this card for $300 toward a plane ticket to the destination of your choice.”

  Jill didn’t know how to respond. Her parents didn’t have a great deal of money, especially to give both twins such a gift.

  “We want you to take a trip . . . together,” Mom explained. “Since you’re spread out between Minneapolis and Houston and you don’t get to see each other very often, we thought you might enjoy a little outing just the two of you.”

  “If you’re willing to fly at odd times, that money could get you to Disney World,” Dad suggested.

  “Or New York,” Mom countered. “Wherever you two could have an adventure.”

  Adventure. Jill’s heart beat quickened.

  “We thought about planning the trip for you,” Mom said, “but your father and I couldn’t decide on the destination.”

  “You did love Orlando when you were kids,” Dad offered.

  “But two women alone in New York could have some great shopping adventures,” Mom countered.

  “I like the idea of a trip,” Jill said. She met Joanna’s eyes and knew Joanna already agreed on where they were going. The twins had kept this secret for a long time. While the money wouldn’t pay for an entire plane ticket, it provided the motivation to actually do what they had been planning for years.

  “Orlando and New York are great ideas,” Joanna ventured, “but Jill and I want to travel out of the country. We both have our passports already.”

  Mom blinked. “Well, that’s great!”

  “You’re not going to Cozumel, are you?” Dad asked. “I just read an article about women getting kidnapped down there.”

  Joanna laughed. “We have some place much more civilized in mind—England.”

  “Lovely!” Mom exclaimed. “They speak English there.”

  Jill looked at her father to gauge his reaction. His mustache remained still.

  “There’s a simple psychological principal at work here, Frank,” Mom teased. “You’ve railed against the Brits for so long that it’s had the opposite effect you intended.”

  Dad grunted. “All they’ve got over there is a bunch of old rocks and hot dishwater that passes for the national beverage. I don’t see the appeal.”

  “Oh, come on, Dad,” Joanna goaded. “I was an English major for crying out loud.”

  Dad’s lips pursed. “If it’s w
hat you want, you should go.”

  Jill and Joanna would have gone even without their dad’s blessing, but having him agree to a scheme always made everyone’s life a little easier.

  “I’m glad you’re getting this out of your system,” Dad continued. “I won’t worry about you over there. Once you see what England’s really like, I’m fully confident that you’ll never want to stay.”

  About the Author

  Michelle Lashier is an independent author who lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

  Visit her website at www.michellelashier.weebly.com to sign up for her mailing list, find out when new novels are available, and access special bonus features.

  Acknowledgements

  My special thanks go out to the people who helped make this book possible:

  My mom Charlene, proofreader extraordinaire and endless source of encouragement.

  My sister Nadine, fearless beta reader and sounding board.

  My son Nathan, resident webmaster and technology guru.

  My dad Larry, who always believed I would publish, even though he didn’t live to see it.

  My friends, family members, colleagues, and students over the years who have encouraged me to publish.