Charlotte's Homecoming. Janice Kay Johnson
bothered with earrings this morning, either.
She was trying; Faith had to give her that. No, the fact that she was here at all was amazing enough.
Be grateful for that.
Faith was trying, too—to be grateful, that is. She was trying not to hate the fact that Char could hardly stand to look at her.
Char was handling this stay she’d felt obliged to make by sticking to business. They talked about Dad and how they’d take care of him once he came home, about the corn grown almost tall enough to open the maze to the public, about how much jam would sell and about whether they could afford to increase the hours of the teenage girl Faith had recently hired to help out part-time.
And Rory. Char wanted to talk about him, too. Faith was the one sliding away from that conversation because she knew perfectly well that Char would want to take action that Faith didn’t believe was justified. It wasn’t as though she still loved him; he’d killed anything she’d once felt for him a long time ago, but she did have memories of the Rory she once had loved. And he’d give up eventually on his own, wouldn’t he? When he couldn’t get a rise out of her either way?
But that was one of the many ways she and Charlotte differed. Char’s instinct was always to come up swinging. Literally, when they were kids—Char was the only girl at their elementary school who was called in to the principal’s office not just once, but twice for brawling. Both times she was defending Faith, who hadn’t seen any need for defense.
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