Carlynn and Lisbeth could feel the power of the place they lived. They understood it better than their father knew. They never took it for granted. Right now, they could feel the mansion at their backs, its cold gray stucco exterior rising above them, high above the ocean and the cliff that held it precariously in place. They knew that next to the mansion, beyond the cypress and chaparral, was Fanshell Beach, where their father often took them to see the seals or comb the beach for shells. Sometimes he’d take them to a different beach, where they could explore the tide pools, the wondrous worlds filled with tiny sea animals and underwater gardens.
Pelicans often made their gawky way across the sky behind their house, and in the winter, whales swam right through their backyard. Sometimes they had nightmares about the whales, or at least, Lisbeth did. Very little ever seemed to bother Carlynn. Although they were physically identical, right down to the unruly cowlick on the crown of their heads which their mother, Delora, complained about as she tried to force their pale hair to behave, they were two different girls. And Delora made sure the world knew it. She refused to dress them alike, or send them to the same school, or, if truth be known, treat them equally. Carlynn’s hair was long, its platinum waves cascading down her back, but Delora kept Lisbeth’s hair cut short, the curls bouncing around her face when she walked.
Carlynn was in the second grade at the Douglass School, a private school in Carmel. The Mediterranean-style building was nestled in a stand of tall trees, and in addition to academics, it offered tennis and badminton, drama classes and riding lessons. Carlynn always had a healthy, rosy glow to her cheeks.
Lisbeth, on the other hand, attended Esley Rhodes School, a less prestigious private school not far from her sister’s, but a world apart in amenities and in the quality of the teachers. Carlynn’s teacher had taken her class to the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge in May, but Lisbeth’s teacher would never have thought of such a thing. Franklin ended up taking Lisbeth himself, not wanting her to feel left out of that celebration. The girls didn’t know the difference between their schools, at least not at the age of seven, but anyone familiar with the educational institutions in the area would know that Carlynn was getting the better education. And anyone who spent more than five minutes with Delora knew the reason for that difference.
Franklin rested his hand on the back of Lisbeth’s head. “And you two are also wonders of the Seventeen Mile Drive,” he said. “Twins. Perfectly look-alike little girls. Wish your mama didn’t insist on chopping off your hair, Lizzie.”
“I look like Shirley Temple, though,” Lisbeth said so quietly she could not be heard above the sound of the ocean. She was the quiet twin, a shyness borne of her uncertainty about her worth. People always spoke with wonder about Carlynn’s ethereal hair and barely noticed Lisbeth’s. But Rosa, their housekeeper, had told Lisbeth her haircut made her look like “that adorable Shirley Temple,” and Lisbeth carried that description of herself in her heart.
Franklin Kling tried to be fair to both girls. Perhaps he went overboard in his caring for Lisbeth, he realized, because he had to make up for the little concern his wife showed her second daughter. That’s what Delora Kling always called Lisbeth—“my second daughter,” as if Lisbeth were years younger than Carlynn instead of a half hour. Delora might as well have said “second-best.” That was what Franklin heard, what made him bristle each time she said those words, and he feared that’s what Lisbeth heard as well.
Delora had not known she was carrying twins when they checked into the hospital seven years ago. She’d been thrilled at being pregnant and cheerier than usual during those nine months. Ordinarily, she tended toward a moodiness that Franklin found hard to predict. Together, they’d fixed up one of the upstairs bedrooms in the mansion as a nursery, buying beautiful furniture and pasting up wallpaper that was both pink and blue, ready for any eventuality. But Delora had not counted on the possibility of two babies. Before she and Franklin got married, they’d talked about having a family, and she’d made it very clear she wanted only one child. “I barely have what it takes to be a mother at all,” she’d said in an honest assessment of her abilities, as well as of the amount of love she had to give. “So, promise me you’ll be happy with only one.”
He had promised. He’d loved Delora, loved the spark in her when she was happy, and she had been happy most of the time back then, when he was first falling in love with her. It had been easy for him to dismiss her infrequent dour moods as aberrations. But her parents, with whom they’d first lived in the mansion, were killed in a car accident shortly after he and Delora were married, and since that time, she’d been depressed more often than not.
Delora’s delivery of Carlynn had been remarkably smooth, given that the baby was her first, and she’d even refused the twilight sleep her doctor had offered her. She and Franklin had already selected a name for the child if it turned out to be a girl. Delora wanted to name her after her beloved parents by combining their names: Carl and Lena. Franklin had said little in the matter; he was an easygoing man and he hoped that, through this child, Delora might finally be able to lay her grief over her parents’ deaths to rest. It didn’t occur to him until later that she was trying to re-create her own family—a father, mother and one doted-on child, all living together in the family mansion on the Circle of Enchantment.
Franklin had paced dutifully in the waiting room while Delora was delivering, and he’d been overjoyed when a nurse came out to tell him about the birth of his daughter.
“But we’re not done, yet.” The nurse had smiled at him. “There’s another one.”
“Another one?” He had not understood.
“You are going to have twins.”
He’d sat down at that, amazed, grinning, and forgetting Delora’s staunch opposition to having more than one child. What was taking place in the delivery room, though, would forever color his wife’s feelings toward her children. Carlynn had slipped easily into the world, causing her mother the least pain necessary. But the second baby had struggled. She was breech, “backward from the start,” Delora would say later—and often. Delora writhed in pain, finally begging for the twilight sleep which promised her relief. When she awakened, she discovered she had been cut open to deliver this second daughter. Every tiny movement, every flick of a finger or blink of an eye, made her cringe with pain. For days the unexpected baby went nameless, and while Carlynn took quickly to the breast, Lisbeth could not get the knack of it, as if she was somehow able to discern, to feel, her mother’s disdain for her. Sometimes, Franklin watched her struggle with the nipple, and it seemed to him that the tiny infant was so afraid of doing anything to upset Delora that, in her anxiety, she simply could not get the sucking right. Franklin understood his daughter’s anxiety all too well. He experienced it much of the time around Delora himself.
In those first few days in the hospital, when he bottle-fed the nameless infant while Delora nursed Carlynn, Franklin decided he would like to name the baby Lisbeth after his own mother, who was still living at the time. Delora did not get along well with his mother, and he doubted she would agree to the name. When he broached the subject with her, though, Delora said, “I don’t care what we name it,” and he’d recoiled in horror. “Name her,” he said, thinking protectively of the little white-haired angel he held in his arms.
The nurses told him Delora’s antipathy toward the second twin would pass in time. She would love both her babies equally, they said. Right now she was in too much pain to think about anyone other than herself. They did not know, and neither did he at the time, what Delora had known all along: she truly had room enough in her heart for only one child.