Sally Carleen - A Bride In Waiting

“She goes off like that without telling her parents?” Sara asked incredulously. “I couldn’t even go out in the yard without asking my mother.”

“Analise always tells them, but it’s usually after the fact, when it’s too late for them to stop her. In this case, she told me, and I’m to tell her parents. She’s kind of impulsive.”

“Sounds like it.” Flaky and irresponsible, Sara would have said, though she found herself liking the absent Analise and wondering what it must be like to be so confident and so daring.

She leaned back against the door, pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “When I left Missouri, I was determined to change my life, but I didn’t have quite this drastic a change in mind.”

“You’re doing great,” he assured her. “You’re totally safe as long as Clare doesn’t put on her glasses... and she’s so vain, I’ve never seen her wear them.”

“No, I’m not doing great. Her father suspects. Does she really slide down the banister?”

“That she does.” He leaned back against the door beside her, one knee upraised with his hand resting on it. “Analise is, um, high-spirited.”

“You must love her a lot.” What a stupid thing to say, she chastised herself. He was marrying the woman. Of course he loved her.

“Love Analise? Well, sure. Yeah. We’ve been best friends since I moved back here to go into practice with her father six years ago.”

“He must be a very successful doctor.” She looked around at all the opulence.

“He is,” Lucas agreed. “Successful and competent and a great guy. But this house belonged to Clare’s family.”

And Lucas was marrying the impulsive daughter of this prominent family.

Sara got to her feet shakily and walked across the room. What on earth was she doing here? What made her think Analise Brewster would want to claim her as a sister, even if that far-fetched possibility should be true?

“This room is as big as some of the places where my mother and I lived.”

“It used to be two rooms. Ralph and Clare had the wall knocked out when Analise was just a baby because she had too many toys for one room. Analise is an only child, and her parents overindulge her sometimes.” He grinned. “Most times.”

Sara stood for a moment studying the room with its plush white carpet, accented by colorful throw rugs. A red phone and a computer peeked from disorderly piles of paper on a rolltop desk. A white telephone—did Analise even have a private phone line?—sat on a nightstand next to a large bed with a white-eyelet spread almost hidden by bright throw pillows and stuffed animals. On one wall a large television stood guard over videotapes scattered casually around it. An elaborate stereo with compact discs in shining disarray occupied a corner, while an entire wall of built-in shelves was filled with books, photographs and assorted music boxes. In one corner, as if occupying a place of honor, a battered doll with remnants of red hair reclined in a doll carriage.

It was a comfortable room, one where Sara immediately and irrationally felt at home though she’d never lived in, or even visualized living in, such a room. Maybe it was the music boxes, something she’d have loved to collect if she’d had the money, or maybe—

“That doll looks a little like Analise,” she said, more to herself than to Lucas.

“Not really. Analise is much taller and has more hair,” Lucas teased.

Sara laughed. “I meant, she looks like a doll I used to have, a doll named Analise.”

“Really? That’s odd. I mean, it’s an unusual name. What an odd coincidence that you named your doll Analise when you look so much like her.”

“Yes, I guess it is.” She picked up the doll and studied it curiously. “I have no idea where I heard the name. I saw that doll in the store and decided her name was Analise and I absolutely had to have her. Probably because she had red hair like me.” Or because she reminded me of a twin sister I remembered only on a subconscious level? “We never had much money and we moved a lot, so I didn’t get many toys. I understood and usually didn’t complain, but this time I kept after my mother until she bought me that doll. Then I hung on to her until we moved to Iowa when I was nine. Somehow she got lost in that move, and I felt as though I’d lost my best friend.”

She returned the doll to its carriage and smoothed its dress then turned back to Lucas.

He stood in front of the door like a sentinel, arms crossed over his chest, feet braced wide apart. “Seems pretty normal you’d feel that way if you moved around a lot. Making new friends is hard.” He looked and sounded as if he knew from personal experience, and she recalled that he’d mentioned he’d moved back to town six years ago. But he didn’t pursue the topic. Instead he inclined his head toward the shelves. “There’s a picture of Analise—” he grinned “—the real one, not your doll.”

Sara walked over and picked up the eight-by-ten color portrait. At first she was disappointed. From all the confusion of identity, she’d expected to feel as though she were looking into a mirror. “I can see a resemblance,” she murmured, “but...I don’t know. She’s different. Prettier.” However, the more she stared at the picture, the more she saw of herself—her eyes, her mouth, her nose.

Her sister?

Her twin sister?

Lucas came up behind her, his breath, warm on her neck, and took it from her. “Resemblance, hell. She’s not any prettier than you are. The same hairstyle, a little makeup, a big smile and it’s you.”

Sara moved a step away from Lucas’s compelling nearness and picked up another picture, this one of Clare, Ralph and Analise, obviously taken a few years earlier. “Analise looks so happy.”

“She is happy. Nothing’s ever happened to make her sad.”

The tone of Lucas’s voice drew Sara’s attention. She looked at him closely, beneath the polish, the perfect haircut and expensive clothes, to the pain tucked away at the very back of his eyes. She could see it as clearly as she saw his face. Maybe it wasn’t that obvious to everyone, but she knew what to look for. To her chagrin, the added dimension made him even more attractive, tugged at her more surely than his hand on her arm in the church.

She had to get out of this house and away from these people before she lost complete control of her senses.

“Analise, why aren’t you in bed?”

Sara whirled to see Clare standing in the doorway holding a tray with a bowl of steaming potato soup. In spite of everything, the smell made her mouth water and her soul relax. Her favorite comfort food as well as Analise’s.

Another similarity.

Clare handed her tray to Lucas. “You can’t wear that dress,” she said as she crossed the room to the bed. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance you’ll put on that nice robe your aunt Wilma sent you.” She turned down the bed and plumped the pillows then looked at Sara. “Oh, well, it doesn’t matter. Just go in the bathroom and change into something.”

Sara spotted a door at one end of the room and bolted toward it. With any sort of luck, it would lead not to the bathroom but to another dimension.

The door revealed a huge walk-in closet crammed full of brightly colored clothes. Clare was going to think her daughter was really sick if she didn’t even remember which door led to the bathroom.

Sara looked around desperately and finally spotted a pale pink quilted object that might be a robe dangling from a shelf in the back. She retrieved it, took a deep breath and returned to Lucas and Clare.

Clare smiled. “Why, thank you for humoring me, dear. Now I can tell your aunt Wilma you wore the robe.”

Sara stole a glance at Lucas. He smiled, his eyes twinkling, and tilted his head toward a door at the other end of the room.