Jo Leigh - Confessions Bundle

“Completely startling!” he said, smiling at her.

“We’re not identical,” she told him. “We’re the same size and pretty much the same shape, but she’s got the most beautiful natural blond hair and blue eyes.” California’s dream.

Blake chuckled. “I can just imagine what the two of you must have done to all those pubescent boys in high school. An intimidating redhead and an innocent blonde. Side by side.”

He thought her intimidating? He sure didn’t act like it. “How do you know she was the innocent one?”

Blake’s eyes took on a glint that dared her to lie. “Am I wrong?”

“No.” And then, when he said nothing more, “Why are you staring at me with that weird grin on your face?”

“It’s not weird. I’m just getting over the shock of you as a twin. I always pictured you so independent.”

Yeah, a lot of the world saw her that way. And that was her fault. “Nope, Marce and I are joined at the hip. Always have been.”

“Her name’s Marce?”

“Marcie.” She grimaced. “Marcella, actually. Our mother named us after her two favorite heroines.”

“Don’t tell me, you’re Juliet from Romeo and Juliet?”

Enjoying the laughter in his voice, Juliet turned a little more, lifted her arm to the back of the couch, her fingers within inches of his. “Don’t laugh, Ramsden.”

“So who’s Marcella?”

“She’s a magical little character who played with Raggedy Ann and Andy. It’s an old book published back in 1929, but Marcella was my mother’s favorite children’s book, full of magic and whimsy and love. From what I can tell, the story embodied everything my mother was before she met my father. Blinded by that whimsy and love and her belief in magic, she ended up pregnant with Marce and me, got married and pretty much ruined the rest of her life.”

Head tilted, he continued to study her in a way that left Juliet feeling strangely supported. “How so? She had two beautiful daughters.”

“She had a self-centered philanderer for a husband. He’d only married her to avoid the scandal of leaving a young girl pregnant and alone—and therefore getting cut off from his father’s fortune. Of course, he made her sign a prenup that denied her any rights to his wealth in the event of a divorce. Not that it mattered. After he squandered all the money, he ran off with a very wealthy older woman who supported him. As long as she was alive, he didn’t have to work. So, since he had no actual income, my mother couldn’t sue for child support.” She tried to tell it as though it didn’t matter because, if she tried hard enough, someday it wouldn’t. “My mother’s mother had been born and raised in Maple Grove, California, a little out-of-the-way migrant town. She’d gotten pregnant without being married, too, but hadn’t fared nearly so well. The migrant worker she’d fallen for had moved on and she never heard from him again. With no other way to support herself and her daughter, no way to get out of that town and get some education, she spent her life doing laundry, cleaning houses, mending, picking fruit, anything she could do to afford a little trailer on a lot outside town.”

Juliet stopped, her throat dry and choked as she heard what she was saying. Things she didn’t tell anyone. Things she tried never to think about. She had to leave now. Get back to her office. To real life.

Except Blake had taken hold of her fingers along the back of the couch. How could she not have known he was holding her hand?

“Go on.”

“When our grandmother died, at the ripe old age of forty, my sister and I were still babies. She left my mom that little trailer in Maple Grove. When we were thirteen, Mom suddenly found herself an ex-rich socialite—humiliated, friendless, with no training, other than in how to dress nicely, spend money and sit on charity boards. So she ran home to the only other life she knew.”

“And took you and Marcie with her.”

“Yeah.” To a town, a world, they’d never even heard of.

His fingers rubbed gently against the top of her hand. “That must’ve been rough.”

She tried to smile. “It wasn’t so bad for Marcie and me. We had each other.”

“And your mom?” With eyebrows slightly raised, his empathetic expression implied that he knew that part of the story wasn’t easy.

“She cleaned houses, worked in the school cafeteria, took in laundry. And during my last year of law school, she swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills, ran a bubble bath, went to sleep and drowned.”

Blake’s exclamation wasn’t anything she’d ever heard before. Or wanted to hear again. But she shared the sentiment. More than she wanted to.

“I’m over it now,” she quickly assured him, sliding her hand from beneath his to wrap her arms around her middle. “It took a while, but once you work through all the guilt and misplaced responsibility, you move on.”

“Do you?” The glance that had been so warm seconds before was piercing.

“Of course,” she told him, nodding for emphasis. “What other choice do you have?”

“I’m not sure it’s a matter of choice.” He sat forward, head bent, elbows resting on his knees. “Do we choose to forget and move on? Or do we just push things away and refuse to deal with them?”

He wasn’t just talking about her. She wished he had been. She’d have been able to defend herself against such an attack. But when she put herself in his shoes—wondering about his parents’ deaths, and his ex-wife’s—putting herself in Mrs. James’s shoes, feelings arose that she wasn’t prepared to face.

They’d been there, slowly attacking from the inside, since she’d first seen the news earlier that day, seen the press photo of Eaton James that had been shown on air during the trial, when there wasn’t any bigger scandal to talk about.

“Can we choose to forget?” “I think we can.” She was a walking testimony to it. “Really?” Turning his head, he glanced at her over his shoulder. “You’ve forgotten, then?”

Damn him.

“What do you suggest we do, Blake? Run around burdened down with all the problems and challenges life hands us—until they pile on so high they’re too heavy and we die? Sounds suspiciously like what my mother did. And maybe your Amunet. And Eaton, too. There’s got to be a better way.”

He nodded. “Or maybe it’s a question of the differences between people,” he said. “Maybe some of us have a built-in defense mechanism that kicks in and protects us when life feels overwhelming, some sort of self-preservation. And the rest of us have other great characteristics but lack that core of self-preservation that will sustain us.”

“Do you think so?”

He shook his head. “I honestly don’t have any idea. It’s just a theory I’ve come up with to try to understand.”

But if he was right, if those types of people didn’t have what it took to help themselves, wasn’t it up to those around them to provide that help?

“In the end, we’re each responsible for ourselves,” Blake said, as though reading her thoughts.

It was something he’d done more than once on their long-ago night together.

What was it about this man that made him somehow…different?

They sat silently for several minutes, thoughts wandering. She had to go, Juliet knew that. She just wasn’t ready to leave the peculiar sense of peace that had settled around her.

Thinking about trying to explain the moment to Marcie, she couldn’t find a way. Blake’s life was in complete turmoil. Hers wasn’t much better. And still, in this room together, for these few minutes out of time, they’d created a moment of calm.

It was a precious commodity.

“So how soon should I expect them?”