All dressed up for me, sugar?
The words came to her like smoke, like mist on the bayou. Serena stared into the mirror and imagined she saw him standing behind her, his hot amber gaze roaming over her body, his artist s hands coming up to cup her shoulders and pull her back against him. She closed her eyes as she clutched the shirt to her chest and for just a second imagined his arms around her.
«Serena?»
Her heart jolted in her chest as she swung toward the door.
«Shelby.» She couldn't hide the surprise in her voice or any of the other feelings that sprang up at her sister's sudden appearance in the doorway. They had had no direct contact since that fateful day in Gifford s study. Serena hadn't been able to find it in her to be the one to take the initiative, and Shelby had shown no desire to do so either. Serena had wondered how long they would go on in limbo. It appeared her question was about to be answered.
«May I come in?» Shelby asked, sounding as formal as a stranger.
«Yes. Of course,» Serena said, folding her arms in front of her, Lucky s shirt caught between them.
«I came by to pick up the last of our things,» Shelby explained as she stepped in and closed the door behind her.
Serena made no argument, even though she knew all of Shelby's and Mason's things had long since been packed and sent to the Talbot home in Lafayette. Shelby had taken the crucial first step. What difference did it make if she had felt the need for an excuse?
Serena watched her sister as she moved slowly around the room, Shelby's normal energy level subdued as she straightened a doily here, a lampshade there. As always, she was impeccably dressed in a delicately printed sundress with a full skirt. Every honey-gold hair was in place, smoothed into a chignon at the back of her head. Noticeably absent from her ensemble was the expensive jewelry she so loved. The only ring she wore was her engagement diamond.
Serena watched her with a strangely detached curiosity. The initial rush of confusing emotions had subsided, leaving her feeling blank and empty again, vaguely wary of her sisters motives.
«I suppose you're still angry with me,» Shelby said. Her tone of voice was almost annoyed, as if she didn't believe Serena had a right to be angry, but her movements and quick sideways glances said she was nervous about what the answer to her statement would be.
«No,» Serena said, turning to watch her in the mirror.
Shelby looked up and frowned at her. «Serena the Good,» she said bitterly. «I should have expected as much. Forgive all those who sin against you.»
«I didn't say I'd forgiven you. I said I wasn't angry. Anger isn't what I feel when I think about you.»
«What do you feel?»
Serena was silent for a long moment as she contemplated her answer. «I don't know if it has a name. It's like grief, I guess, but different, worse in a way.»
Their eyes met in the mirror and Shelby suddenly looked genuinely sad.
«We were never very good at being sisters, were we?» she said softly.
Serena shook her head. «No. I'm afraid we never were.»
Shelby moved several steps closer, until they stood side by side, close but not touching, alike but not the same. Her gaze riveted on their images in the looking glass. «How can we look so much alike and be so different inside?» she whispered as if she were asking the question of herself.
Serena said nothing. There were no easy answers. As a psychologist, she could have cited any number of theories on the subject, but as a sister none of them meant anything. As a sister all she knew was that she and her twin were standing on opposite sides of a chasm that was too wide and deep to be bridged. There might have been a point in their past when they could have found some common ground and reached across, but that time was gone and they both knew it.
«I wish things hadn't gone so wrong,» Shelby said, her dark eyes filling.
That was as much of an apology as she was going to get, Serena thought sadly. There would be no remorse, no expression of regret for what had happened, for what could have happened. Shelby was incapable of taking blame. She was like a thief who was sorry the police had caught her red-handed, but not sorry she'd committed the crime. She was only sorry things had gone wrong.
«Me too,» Serena said softly, knowing they had blank slate of her emotions filled suddenly with a complex mix of feelings, like a tide rushing in, and, as she had said in answer to Shelby's earlier question, the strongest was something like grief. They may both have been physically alive, but whatever had been between them was dead and she wanted to mourn it like a lost soul.
«My word, Serena,» Shelby murmured, still staring at their reflections in the mirror, «you look all done in.»
«I'll be all right.»
«Yes, I'm sure you will be.»
«Will you?»
«We'll manage,» Shelby said, lifting her chin a defiant notch.
She moved back a step. The distance between them widened. Her reflection in the mirror grew smaller. When she reached the door and turned the knob, Serena found her voice.
«Shelby?» Their eyes met again in the glass. «Take care.»
A single tear rolled down her sister's cheek and a faint smile touched her mouth. «You too.»
Serena watched her go, feeling as if she were losing a part of herself she'd never really known. Then, bone-weary and heartsick, she crawled onto the bed, curled up with Lucky's shirt, and did the one thing she did really well these days-she cried herself to sleep.
Gifford slipped into the room quietly. He set the plate he was carrying on the dresser and walked around the end of the bed to look down at his sleeping granddaughter. The tears were still damp on her cheeks, her breathing still shaky. She held an old blue workshirt wadded up in her hands, reminding him of when she'd been no more than a toddler, dragging a ragged yellow security blanket around the house with her everywhere she went.
He remembered the day they'd put her mother in the ground, how he had slipped in that night to check on the girls because Robert had been too lost in his grief to think of it. He had found Serena asleep on top of the covers, still wearing the little black velvet dress and white tights she'd worn to the funeral, one patent leather shoe on and one off. The tears had still been damp on her cheeks, and she had clutched in her hand that ragged old blanket.
He remembered it like it was yesterday even though tonight he felt every one of the years that had passed since then. The love he'd known for Serena that night hadn't lessened a whit. It didn't matter that Serena had grown into a woman or that life had complicated things between them. He still experienced her pain more sharply than if it had been his own. His grief over what Shelby had done was magnified by the grief he knew Serena was feeling. Her pain over Lucky's defection was more than enough to break his own heart.
He knew he had pushed her over the years and bullied and manipulated her, but he hadn't done anything without loving her, and he just about couldn't bear to see her suffering. He couldn't change what had happened between them, and he couldn't mend the rift between her and Shelby, but he could do his best to knock some sense into that big Cajun rogue. In fact, it was the least he could do, all things considered.
Careful not to wake Serena, he leaned across the bed and pulled the coverlet back over her. He looked at her again, turned slowly, and shuffled out of the room, taking the dinner plate with him and shutting the light off on his way out.
Lucky checked the rope attached to the nose of the half-submerged rowboat one last time, then slogged out of the bayou and onto the bank. The day was hotter than summer in Hades. The sun beat down on the bare skin of his back through a haze of humidity, burning him an even darker shade of brown. Sweat rolled off him. He pulled on a pair of worn leather work gloves and took up the end of the rope he had looped around the trunk of an oak tree, paying no attention to his discomfort. He focused his mind on his job.