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“Thanks for the advice.”
A chill April wind blew through the open door. Bits of paper whispered across the parking lot.
Beneath the streetlights, his shiny car stood out from the dull vehicles around it. She pushed her hair out of her eyes, struggling against an insistent need to call him back.
Patrick opened his car door. “Get moved to a different room.”
She patted her back pocket for her key card. “Yeah.” She shut her door and made a beeline for the window shielded by a smudged curtain and a white sign that dripped the word Office in black.
Only several moments after he’d turned the car in a wide, swift circle, without looking at her, did she move away from her lookout position.
THE NEXT MORNING, the college student on duty behind the counter at Cosmic Grounds came to Daphne’s table and passed her a red Sharpie. Smiling shyly, he said, “I found this for you.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it.” He was already gone, the back of his neck shiny red.
She ducked her head and returned to the classifieds of the Honesty Sentinel.
Fortified by a cup of the kid’s strongest brew, she started her search. Pickings were slim, but she had to find something she could do. Then she’d worry about coming up with a résumé to impress a prospective employer.
Fifteen minutes later, she’d circled only three jobs that required no experience.
What would Raina think? It all depended on which Raina Daphne met here for coffee—the one who’d sat hunched in the corner of Patrick’s office chair, or the one who’d shown up at the coffee shop two days earlier. The second one didn’t seem likely to die of shame if her twin took a menial job.
Daphne rested her forehead in one palm and started at the ads again. She could always go back to jury consulting. Considering the mess she’d made of her last case, she could slip by the local jail and set the felons loose on an unsuspecting populace.
Inhaling with all her might, she swallowed hard. The negative stuff was getting too difficult to deal with on her own. She had to find a meeting. It had been over a week since her last one, but the thing they’d drummed into her addled head in rehab had been the importance of always finding an AA meeting.
“I thought I’d find you here. Good thing you keep coming, or they’d be out of business.” Raina’s voice at her side made Daphne jump.
Daphne set the marker on the table. “Hello, Raina.”
Today’s perfect outfit was a pink tweed suit and patent-leather pumps.
“Are you on your way to work?” Daphne asked.
“I had a meeting, but I’m planning to look for something like a job.”
“Like a job?”
“You know, one that pays.” Raina sat across the table. “My mother’s health began deteriorating after I finished college, so I helped her keep up with her charity work. We’re close to D.C., you know, but we’re such a small town in a small county. Our social services don’t always stretch to help everyone who needs them.” She smoothed her perfect hair. “When Mother couldn’t do everything she wanted, I did what she asked.”
“That’s good work.”
“But it was my mother’s. Not that I resented being her right hand. I enjoy helping people.”
“Who have you been helping? Children?”
“And adults. Anyone who doesn’t have a job. Anyone who needs something to eat.” She looked away and her uncomfortable expression made Daphne wonder if Raina thought she needed help, too.
“I’m fine. I don’t have your kind of money, but I don’t need to be rescued.”
Raina met her gaze straight on. “I wasn’t thinking of you that way. But I knew you’d take it personally.” She gripped another steamer trunk-size purse, this one in pale pink that matched her suit. “Remember, I accused you of coming for my money and I refused you before you got a chance to ask.”
“That’s true.” Daphne sipped her coffee. “I guess that proves something.”
“That I’m tactless?”
“No. That it’s easier to care for people you don’t know.” Daphne thought about all the people she’d assisted by selecting the juries that freed them. It had been great. She’d thought she was helping the innocent find justice until she’d actually learned the truth about her last client.
“I’d like to help you if you’d let me.” Raina flipped her bag open. She pulled out a square opaque plastic container, topped with a blue lid. “To make up for my heavy hand, I’ll admit I brought you breakfast. I’m sure they didn’t feed you at that hotel.”
“Let’s ask Patrick if anyone would be foolish enough to eat there,” Daphne said without thinking.
“He told me you were upset that I’d sent him.”
“Not upset.”
“You had every right to be. I don’t know why I didn’t come myself. Maybe then you’d believe I want you to stay with me.”
Her sister’s face revealed her regret. Daphne let her qualms go and leaned across the table to touch the container. “You cooked for me?”
“Not exactly.” Raina popped the lid. “I didn’t make it although I’m an excellent chef. But our cook made an egg casserole with prosciutto and Parmesan this morning—”
“Our cook?” Daphne pictured Patrick spooning something from a silver dish across a long table from Raina. Did he and his son live with her?
“Mine now, I guess.” Raina’s expression tensed and Daphne patted her hand.
“You mean she worked for your mother and you? I’m sorry.”
“Who’d you think might be living with me?”
Daphne wasn’t about to utter Patrick’s name. “No one.”
Raina’s skin stretched even more tautly across her high cheekbones. “Funny that we’re hurting each other even when we don’t want to. I’m not seeing Patrick Gannon. He’s been my best friend since childhood. His parents were my mother and father’s closest friends.”
“He says he’s divorced.”
“And he’ll be dealing with Lisa, who’s no picnic, until Will is out of college or older.”
She took another container from her purse and popped that lid, too, revealing fresh-cut strawberries, blueberries, grapes, pineapple and melon, all very tempting. Daphne licked her lips. She could see how Eve might fall for an apple.
“What’s with Patrick and his son?” she asked.
“His ex-wife did horrible things. Bad enough to ensure that she lost custody of Will. He and Patrick are both trying to get over her.” Another box held utensils. “She thought I was having an affair with him, too.”
“Were you?”
“You’re blunt.”
“We’re getting to know each other.”
“I never had an affair with my best friend, who was married and the father of a young son. I have some morals.”
“I’m sure you do, but things happen. People are complex.”
“Not me. Not that complex.” Raina waved at the bowls. “Eat up.”
Daphne pulled one closer. “Okay. I’ll interrogate you later, but people who say they aren’t complex usually are.” She studied the containers. “Are you going to share this with me?”
“I already ate. You should take better care of yourself. My mother believed that old adage about breakfast being the most important meal of the day.”
“You really do miss her.” Daphne’s own maternal role models had been so terrifying she’d been glad to escape.
Raina exposed her pain with a brief, sharp nod.
“You’re different today,” Daphne said. “A mix of yesterday morning and afternoon.”
“I didn’t know what to expect yesterday. In the morning, I assumed you’d come for the money, but then I was determined to make you stay.”
“Make me?”
“I managed, didn’t I?” Her smile melted most of the barriers around Daphne’s heart. “By last night, I had time to think. I feel a bit awkward this morning. Don’t you?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Believing that you want to know me, but you don’t expect anything else from me seemed gullible, considering.”
“But now you trust me? How did you make that change so quickly?”
“I made a start.” Raina plucked a strawberry from the box and popped it into her mouth. “And I’m hoping for the best.”
“Finally, I see why Patrick is so protective of you.”
Raina didn’t answer, just looked at her like “What are you saying?”
“You’re innocent. An unkind person could take advantage of you.”
“Come on. I’m tired of hearing that. I’m as mature as any other woman my age. I’ve had a life.” Raina passed a white brocade napkin. “Did you and Patrick discuss a job?”
Daphne slid the napkin into her lap, anxious that no one else should glimpse it. The food was a delightful surprise—even though bringing one’s own food into a café was inappropriate—but the costly linen felt a little too much.
She picked up one of the heavy forks. “There’s an A on the handle.”
“For Abernathy.” Raina reached for the newspaper, scanning the three positions Daphne had circled. “What about the job?”
“I’m not going to work for Patrick. This really is the family silver?”
“We eat with it if that’s what you mean.” Raina ran her French-manicured index finger around the first ad. “Child minder?” She tapped her cheek. “That’s a fancy name for a nanny, you know. For Elena Hennigan and her husband. They want a live-in caregiver for their boys, but they don’t say so here because who wants to stay in someone else’s home these days? Do you want to live in and take care of toddler boys, aged four and two?”
“I want a job, but little kids make me nervous.” What if she only knew how to be the kind of child minder who’d made her younger years a living hell?
“Florist’s delivery?” Raina read the next circled item. “You’d find that fun?”
“Fun?” Daphne shook her head. “I need a job. Fun isn’t part of the equation.”
“But you’d like to enjoy what you do, wouldn’t you?” Raina studied her sister. “Do you ever wonder if you might be prejudiced against wealthy, spoiled women?”
Again Daphne admired Raina’s ability to laugh at herself. Another surge of affection warmed her.
“I thought of one other thing last night,” Raina continued. “I had one paying job.” Suddenly fascinated with the blue lid from the silverware box, Raina twirled it with her index finger and thumb. “I wrote papers for other students one term in college. If anyone had ever found out…”
Daphne formed the word What? with her lips, but couldn’t produce sound. Already, she’d built an image of her sister. Listening while Raina blew it up was like hearing a nuclear explosion. “You—?”
“My father was angry because my grades weren’t—” she lifted her head and shook it “—what he expected from an Abernathy. He threatened to cut off my tuition. I had to make money.”
“You cheated?” Daphne covered her mouth, but too late as the guy from the counter leaned in for a closer look.
Raina followed Daphne’s eyes. By the time she turned back, her skin was burnished pink. “You never did anything wrong?”
Daphne stared at the breakfast Raina had brought. “Plenty of bad stuff. Probably worse than you can imagine. But I never—”
“Well, now you know I’m not perfect.” Raina pushed her chair back. She waved at the plastic on the table. “Just throw that stuff away when you finish.”
“I’m not going to throw away your silverware. Raina, wait. Talk to me. I was surprised. I never meant…”
“You didn’t like what I said.”
She disappeared in a whirl of pink tweed before Daphne could gather up the silverware and damask and plastic and her own bag. Finally, with everything in her arms, she ran to the door.
As it closed in her face, she hit the glass, elbows first. Her right funny bone sang a teeth-clenching song.
“Hey,” said the kid behind the counter.
Daphne looked at him as she fumbled with the metal handle.
He nodded toward the square outside. “She’s mean.”
“She isn’t.” Already, she was protective of Raina, who’d dared to confess one sin. “Leave her alone.”
She finally got the door open and peered both ways on the sidewalk. A woman in red was pushing a stroller, and Daphne hopped back to give her room. A guy in a suit that had never touched a rack looked her up and down so deliberately she could almost see herself burying her fist in his stomach. Maybe she had something against rich, spoiled men, too. A little boy sailed his big, green plastic airplane just beneath her chin, roaring an engine noise.
She couldn’t see Raina.
“What’d you say to her?”
The kid from the counter had followed. Not much else to do.
She shrugged. “That I was disappointed in her.”
