Janice Kay - Charlotte's Homecoming

Char, she knew, would have booted Rory out on his butt the first time he questioned why she was late and who she’d been talking to. She wouldn’t have waited until he hit her, and she’d never have given him second and third and fourth and fifth chances. In Rory’s case, Char would have been right. As it turned out, he hadn’t deserved any of those chances. But people often did, in Faith’s experience, so was it really so awful that she’d wanted to believe in the man she had loved?

She should try to articulate how she felt to her sister. After all, she was the one who had begged Char to come and who had admitted that Rory scared her. But Charlotte-at-a-distance and Charlotte-actually-here were not at all the same sister. It was a little like the way Faith saw Rory, as if he were a layer of transparencies on the overhead projector in her classroom, and she could peel a few off and there would be the Rory she’d first known.

The Charlotte she’d first known was her twin. Her other half. They’d curled in the womb together, slept side by side in the same crib, shared toys and clothes and their mother’s arms. They’d never needed words to understand each other.

Which made it all the sadder that now they needed words and couldn’t bring themselves to speak them.

She had never understood why Char had hated having an identical twin. Faith only felt whole when Charlotte was near. They reflected each other, yes, but they each had their own strengths and weaknesses. They complemented each other.

That’s not how Char felt about it. It was as if … as if Faith’s very existence lessened her. One of Faith’s earliest memories was of Charlotte screaming and struggling because Mom was trying to make her wear the pretty pink parka that was just like Faith’s. They couldn’t have been more than three years old. Charlotte had howled, over and over again, “I won’t! It’s hers! I won’t!” The scene was colored, in Faith’s memory, by her own bewilderment.

Somehow, Faith always forgot. Each time her sister came home, she expected that they would read each others’ minds from the first glance, not be unable to meet each other’s eyes.

Wouldn’t you think that after all these years, she would have gotten over it? Faith thought. Moved on? It was her own fault that it hurt so much every time Char came home and Faith saw again how much her sister wished they weren’t twins. Maybe even that the egg had remained undivided and only one of them had been born in the first place.

What was, was.

She stared blindly down at the scissors she held in her hand.

Why have I spent a lifetime feeling as if she’s a necessary part of who I am, while all she’s ever wanted is to amputate the part of her that’s me?

The great, unanswerable question.

She jumped up. “Why did I ever think decorating jars of jam was a good idea? Ugh. Let me help you.”

Her twin actually grinned at her. “Yeah, why did you? And pretty please—I’m losing control here.”

Ridiculously warmed by the flash of camaraderie, Faith took the tongs from her hand and said, “Do something about the jam. It looks like lava about ready to head for the sea.”

“Boy, this is fun,” Charlotte muttered—but not as if she really minded spending the day in the hot kitchen with her sister.

She’d be foolish to hope for too much, Faith cautioned herself. Every time Charlotte came home, Faith let herself imagine that this time they might rediscover the bond that had tied them together as children despite Char’s discomfiture. This time, Char might open herself to her sister, decide they could be friends at least.

But Faith had been hoping for a long time, and it hurt to be disappointed. Char was here out of a sense of obligation, that was all, and expecting more was asking to be hurt once again.

Faith had sworn, when she left Rory, that she’d never invite that kind of pain again.

So don’t.

THE TEMPERATURE NEVER USED TO get up into the nineties, not when she’d lived here. Summers had just plain gotten hotter. As humid as it was in the Puget Sound area, today had been close to unendurable. Thank God for indoor plumbing—Charlotte had taken three showers today—and for nightfall. It didn’t stay hot at night here summers the way it did in, say, Chicago where Charlotte had landed her first postgrad job.

It was now past midnight, and she’d tried turning out the light and going to bed, but sleep was eluding her.

Why she hadn’t tumbled onto her bed at 8:00 p.m. and conked out, she had no idea. Well, not at eight—in August, the sun didn’t set until nine-thirty or so and she’d never been able to sleep with daylight outside the window. On the other hand, she hadn’t worked this hard physically in ten years or more, and she should be exhausted.

She was, in one way—she hurt. Having made a habit out of hitting the gym at least four days a week, she’d kidded herself that she was in decent shape. Ha! Not. The damn sunburn wasn’t helping, and it was her own fault. Charlotte had forgotten how white her skin was. Sunburn wasn’t much of a problem in the foggy Bay Area, especially since a half-hour jog was about the longest she was ever outside.

But aside from the physical aches and pains, she felt weirdly energized by the past couple of days. It seemed hard work suited her, or at least that she’d needed some to pull her out of the funk she’d been in when Faith called. Picking berries, weeding the perennial beds that wrapped the barn and making jam had seemed so … real, compared to what she did normally with her life. She’d been ridiculously proud of what she had wrought, when she admired the rows and rows of jars sitting on the kitchen countertop. She was going to enjoy selling her jam.

Too bad she hadn’t made any blueberry.

She was too smart to waste a thought on Gray Van Dusen, part-time mayor, part-time architect. But she kept doing it anyway.

He was a good architect, according to Faith, and probably a good mayor, although he hadn’t been on the job long enough yet to have gotten far with West Fork’s many problems. He was also an incredibly sexy man, which was why she kept having to nudge him out of her head.

He wasn’t her usual type, which was a thin, intense geek. Funny, because even in high school that was her type. Jocks so didn’t interest her.

Gray would have been a jock. Although, in fairness, she suspected he was exceptionally smart, too. He was … not huge, but probably six feet tall or so, broad-shouldered and lean in the way of a man who probably ran for exercise, maybe still played fast-pitch or basketball but wasn’t interested in the tedium of weight lifting. His hair was just a little longer than she suspected some of his constituents would like, a brown that was streaked bronze and gold by the sun. Calm, gray eyes—what else, considering his name? A face that should have been ordinary-handsome, but was somehow more than that, maybe because his nose looked like it had been broken at some point, maybe because of those hooded eyes that were thoughtful but also tinged with humor. She didn’t see Mayor Van Dusen as being volatile. He’d be the kind to mull over his options for a good long while before he made decisions.

And stubborn. She just knew he’d be stubborn. The traffic thing, according to Faith, was an example. He’d made three visits now to discuss it, including one yesterday. Charlotte had seen him walking into the barn and had slipped out the back. Instinct had told her to evade him, jolting her into motion before she even knew what or whom she was running from.

It was just common sense, she told herself. Letting herself be attracted to a man in West Fork wasn’t logical, considering how short her stay was likely to be.