Lizzie looked at the soggy biscuit and egg yolks in her dishrag. In a quiet voice, she said to me, “Shame to waste all this good food. He wants breakfast? Let’s give it to him.”
I couldn’t help grinning. I liked the way Lizzie thought when she was mad. “I’ll have your breakfast right out, Blake,” she said in a sweet voice. She hurried back to the kitchen, plopped the mashed, dirty food into a plate, and smothered it all in scrambled eggs.
I got the mop and followed Lizzie out with the plate, bracing myself for what would happen when he bit into the mix. But Blake didn’t notice the mess she’d just served him right away, because there was some kind of commotion at the window. I went to see what everybody was gawking at and saw a black limousine pulling up to the front of the parking lot. A chauffeur got out and opened the door.
Lizzie spotted her before I did. “It’s her! Amanda Holbrooke.”
I groaned. “What is she doing here?”
Lizzie’s eyes practically twinkled as she watched her get out of the car. “She looks like a movie star. Like Princess Grace or something. I love the way she dresses.”
“You expect me to eat this slop?” Blake hollered across the room. “There’s a piece of that broke plate in here!”
Lizzie swung around. “What’s the matter, Blake? You were in such a hurry for your break-fast—”
He flung the plate off the counter, which sent it crashing onto the floor again. This time the plate didn’t break. His face was mottled red, and I thought his blood pressure was probably around stroke level.
Lizzie bent down and started cleaning up the mess again. I grabbed a clean dishrag from one of the bus trays and stooped down to help her, but I couldn’t help watching the front door for Amanda to come in. I figured she knew it was the day we’d all been waiting for. The day we turned eighteen, when we were old enough to file a lawsuit and take all her money. That was probably serious business to her, and she probably hadn’t slept in days for worrying over it.
I couldn’t wait to hear what she was going to do about it.
She stepped into the smoky place, and heads began to turn. A hush seemed to fall over the room, even though the country song blaring over the speakers kept droning on.
The intercom overhead momentarily cut the music off. “Number thirty-one, your shower is ready,” Belinda, our cashier, crowed.
A big, burly man in a dirty black T-shirt that didn’t quite cover his massive paunch got up, dropped his cigarette on the floor, and stepped on it as he started toward the back.
Lizzie had gotten to her feet, still clutching the offensive plate. She watched Amanda with as much interest as I.
Amanda spoke to Belinda, and the intercom crackled again. “Lizzie, Kara, come to the front, please.”
Lizzie shot me a look. “Be nice, Kara. Maybe she just wants to wish us a happy birthday.”
“She’s up to something,” I said through my teeth. But I followed her to the front, nonetheless.
Amanda stood there, all pristine and out of place, smiling as we came toward her. She took Lizzie’s shoulders first and kissed her on the cheek. “Happy birthday, sweetheart.”
Lizzie looked at me, and I stiffened as Amanda took my shoulders. “Kara, you’re as beautiful as ever. Oh, you’re both a sight for sore eyes.”
I never could understand how she knew me and Lizzie apart, but she always had. She’d always called us by name with confidence, even though Eloise still got us mixed up at least half the time. I knew that my face was just the slightest bit rounder than Lizzie’s, and I had a mole on my right temple near the hairline, but that wasn’t enough to tip off most of the people we saw every day.
But Amanda always seemed to know.
“Your father would be so proud of you.” Her mouth trembled a little as she smiled. “Please, would you mind sitting in my car while we talk? I have birthday gifts and some things to tell you.”
Lizzie’s eyes widened. “Sure. I’ve never been in a limo before.”
“I have.” I thrust my chin high. “I dated that limo driver who worked for the casino. It’s not that big of a deal.”
But I followed them out the door, anyway, if for no other reason than to leave Blake in there high and dry, and hungry to boot.
There was a chauffeur at the car door, and he waited as we got inside. It was like a mini living room, nicer than the one in our trailer. I tried to look unimpressed, but Lizzie glowed as she looked around her at the gadgets and furnishings inside.
Amanda just watched us, this nervous smile on her face. “Can I offer you something to drink?”
“A drink?” Lizzie was practically gushing. “You got a kitchen in here, too?”
She leaned down and opened a small refrigerator. “I have some bottled water and some soft drinks. What do you like to drink, Lizzie?”
“Water’s fine.”
I ordered a Diet Coke. I knew Lizzie was trying not to take advantage, but hey, I didn’t ask to be lured into a limousine, so I figured I might as well make the best of it.
I expected a canned drink, but Amanda got me a glass, filled it with ice, and poured the fizzing drink. She handed it to me.
Then she looked at me for a long time as tears rimmed in her eyes. “Well, the day has come that I’ve waited for since you were three.” She stopped and swallowed hard. “You’re finally eighteen, and now you can live wherever you want and make decisions for yourself.”
“Yeah, and one of those decisions is to go after what is ours,” I said. “What you stole from us.”
Amanda didn’t look mad. She only regarded me with sad eyes. “Look, I know this is not easy for you. You’ve been told a lot of lies all your life. I don’t blame you for not trusting me, but I’ve come to tell you that you don’t have to hire a lawyer or let your grandparents manipulate you into suing me. I want to share all of it with you, just as if you were children from my own womb. When you were very little, I promised your father that I would always take care of you. I’ve tried to do that. I’ve tried to watch over you all your lives, to be there when you needed me. But now I want you to come live with me as my own daughters, finish your high school education, go to college, learn the business . . .”
I could see that Lizzie was buying into it, believing that this woman would come here and take us back with her and treat us like we were her own kids. Boy, I thought, she must really see us as a threat. And I started thinking that we must have a pretty good case if she would go to these lengths to distract us from it.
“People don’t just ride into town in a limo and offer you all that unless they want something,” I said. “What do you want?”
“I just want you home, where you belong.”
“Home?” Lizzie’s expression was soft. “What do you mean, home?”
“I have a beautiful house up in Jackson. It was the mansion your Grandfather Holbrooke built. I had your playhouse from our old yard moved there, and I’ve kept all the things that were in your room. I’ve saved all the presents I’ve bought you over the years, all the things that I got for you but couldn’t give you. All the letters that came back unopened, because Eloise and Deke wouldn’t let you have them.”
“I don’t believe you!” I stared at her, trying to see some evil in her face. “Eloise warned us you would do something like this. She said you would do anything to keep us from getting in your way. She said you killed everyone in our family for that money. I don’t know how you got away with it, but she warned us that we were a threat to you.”
Amanda’s face changed, and I could see the anger hardening her face. “You would believe that woman who squandered the ten million dollars meant for you and Lizzie?”
Lizzie’s mouth fell open. “Ten million dollars?What ten million dollars?”
“They won it in court when they sued me for the estate. Didn’t you even know about that?”
Lizzie looked at me, but my eyes were fixed on Amanda. “We knew there was a check that came every year, but we didn’t know how much . . .”
r /> “And why do you think they want you to sue me now? They want to keep living off of you, squandering your inheritance. They don’t want to be cut out, because the payments have stopped coming. Without you two, they have nothing.”
I have to admit that her words sounded true, and I sure knew that Eloise and Deke were capable of what she was saying . . . but I couldn’t be sure.
Amanda dabbed at her eyes and drew in a deep breath. She reached into a compartment and brought out two wrapped boxes. “Look, let’s just calm down for a minute. It’s your birthday, and I brought you gifts.”
She handed one to each of us. They were wrapped in silver paper, like something a department store would have done, with skinny little ribbons ruffled up at the top.
“I hope you don’t think I’m trying to buy your love.” Her voice shook. “I just want to show you a little of what belongs to you. All of what I own is yours. If you come back with me, you can live in my house and eat at my table. I can show you your history, remind you of what it was like when we were a family and your daddy was alive—” Her voice broke off, and for a minute she even had me going. “I’ve missed you . . . ,” she whispered.
We both just stared at the presents in our hands, and finally, she said, “Go ahead. Open the gifts.”
Lizzie tore into hers first, and I fiddled with the tape and watched to see what she got. We hadn’t gotten many presents in our lives. The last one I remembered was the one Amanda gave us on our tenth birthdays.
Lizzie got to a white box. “Go ahead, Kara. I don’t want to open mine until you’re opening yours, too. If I do, I’ll ruin your surprise.”
Slowly, I tore the paper off, and then we opened the boxes at the same time.
Lizzie gasped, and I just stared. Mine was an elegant string of pearls, like something out of a museum. It was something Julia Roberts or some body would wear to the Academy Awards. No way it was real.
Was it . . . ?
“They belonged to your Grandmother Holbrooke,” she said. “Your father’s mother.”
“It’s so expensive,” Lizzie whispered. “Kara . . .”
I couldn’t seem to utter a word.
“They’re yours,” Amanda said, “and they’re just a sampling of your inheritance.”
My heart pounded out of control. “Our inheritance, huh? I thought you took that.”
“The court awarded it to me,” she said. “But you’re not listening, Kara. I told you what’s mine is yours.”
“But why should it be yours?” I asked. “If you admit it should be mine, then why don’t you just give it to us?”
“I’m offering to do just that. But on my terms. I’m not just going to hand that much over to you to squander. I want to take you home, nurture you, teach you. I want you to be educated, and I want to train you to take care of what is yours. Most of all, I want us to be a family.”
I didn’t like the sound of all that schooling and training. It sounded like a bunch of rules, and I was finished with rules. “There’s something not right about this, Lizzie. It’s a snake waiting to strike. We can’t fall for it.”
But I could see that Lizzie was already caught—hook, line, and sinker. “But, Kara, it’s what we’ve dreamed of! We could get out of here. We’re eighteen. We can leave this place!”
I finally realized that if I stayed in that car a minute longer, I would be duped, too. I set the box down on the seat and reached for the door. “I’m leaving.”
Lizzie caught her breath. “Kara, we need to at least talk about this!”
“We’re not talking here.” I got out of the car.
Amanda took my hand to stop me. She didn’t grab, exactly, just kind of touched me. “Kara, I don’t want you to go. I don’t want to lose you again. I’ve waited all these years . . .”
I looked back at her, and for a moment, I wanted to believe. But faith didn’t come easy for me. “Lady, you can’t lose something you never had.” With that, I stormed back into the truck stop.
Blake was waiting to pounce. Thinking I was Lizzie, he lit into me about his nasty breakfast, but I just pushed through the swinging doors into the kitchen and locked myself in the bathroom until I felt composed enough to come back out.
I thought of calling Eloise and telling her to set up that appointment with that lawyer, that I’d seen a sample of what was mine and I was ready to claim it. But I knew she was probably already doing that. She hadn’t talked of much else for the last few days.
After a moment, I heard a knock on the door. “Kara, it’s me. Let me in.”
I opened the door, and Lizzie slipped inside. For a moment, she just leaned back against the door, clutching that white box in her hand. I slid up onto the sink and looked down at my feet.
“She wants us to go with her tonight. She gave me this cell phone.” She pulled the phone out of her pocket. “She programmed her number in and told me to call her when we’re ready. She doesn’t want us to tell Eloise and Deke, because they would try to stop us. And they would, Kara. She makes a good point about them using us. If we leave, they don’t have a chance of getting any of that money.”
I wanted to cry. “I can’t believe you’re buying into everything she’s telling you.”
“I can’t believe you aren’t! Look at our alternative. We can come to work here every day and keep hiding our pathetic tips from Eloise and Deke, because they’ve always stolen from us. We just didn’t know how much until today. Or we can call Amanda and get into that car with her and let her take us back to the home she’s got waiting for us. We can stop being Barton rednecks and turn into ladies, Kara.We’ll have someone who loves us and wants what’s best for us.”
“She doesn’t want what’s best for me! If she did, she’d just write me a check. I didn’t see her writing any checks.”
“Why would she, when she wants us to have all of it?”
“Sure, if we fly right and do everything she says. And I’m still not convinced that she doesn’t have some surprise accident waiting for us, just like she had for our mother and our father and our grandparents.”
“I don’t believe she had anything to do with that.”
Lizzie’s words rang of betrayal. “Well, I believe she did.”
We stared at each other for several minutes, and finally Lizzie got this sad look on her face. “Well, I guess it all comes down to what we believe, doesn’t it?”
For the first time in our lives, I realized with stark clarity that Lizzie and I didn’t really share the same heart. We were separate, two different people with radically different ideas. She wanted to leave me . . . to join our enemy. “You’re going to go, aren’t you?”
“I’m thinking about it. Kara, we have nothing to lose.”
“Nothing but our lives . . . or at the very least, our freedom. Eloise warned us. She said—”
“Why would you believe anything Eloise says now when she’s told us nothing but lies? She doesn’t care about us. She never has. She used to lock us in closets, Kara! Deke would have used us up if we’d let him! They’ve both treated us like trash. You believe them over Amanda Holbrooke?”
“They’re what I know!”
Tears sprang to Lizzie’s eyes, but she held her eyes wide to keep them from spilling. She looked down at a stain on the concrete, and I got off of the sink and turned to look in the mirror. I wasn’t crazy about what I saw, but I didn’t like the looks of her much, either.
When Lizzie spoke again, her voice was flat. “I’m tired of struggling, Kara. I’m tired of knowing that somewhere there’s more, just not for us. I’m tired of dreaming about getting out of here. This is our chance.”
I turned around. Those tears were rolling down her face. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen her cry. “Lizzie, you’ll fall for anything. Rich ladies don’t drive up in shiny limousines and give us expensive necklaces and offer to take us back to their mansions. It just doesn’t happen.”
“She says it was ours all along. Our father married her. He
must have seen good in her. She says we used to call her Mommy.”
“Give me a break!” I slapped my hand against the sink. “Lizzie, don’t you think we’d remember that?”
Lizzie wiped one of those tears. “Sometimes . . . I think maybe I do.”
“Well, you don’t. And neither do I.”
“I’m going with her, Kara.”
I felt the way I felt that day after the abortion, when my gut hurt like it had been kicked with a boot. “You can’t,” I whispered.
“I can.” Lizzie stepped toward me, her expression pleading. “I’m going with her, whether you come with me or not.”
I didn’t answer, so she finally turned to the door and opened it. She scrunched up her face against the tears and leaned her forehead against the doorjamb. “Kara, please don’t make me leave you.”
I crossed the room and made her look at me. “Please don’t go. You have a choice, Lizzie. You can stay.”
“And you have a choice, Kara. You can come.”
I started to cry then and I knew I couldn’t go back into that smoke-filled dining room and work like nothing was wrong. So I pushed out the back door of the kitchen and took off running through the woods, crackling the sticks and sweeping through the leaves.
I can’t explain the misery I felt. It was like somebody with a dull knife had cut me right down the middle. Lizzie and I were twins, but it seemed so much like we were one. I’d never been without her. Never.
But wasn’t that what twins grew up to do? Some of them got married and moved on, had their own families, their own children . . . some of them saw the vision of a new life.
And some of them stayed behind.
I got to the old trailer and stood in the trees, looking at it. Inside those dirty walls were dark memories of closets and whippings, of being cursed at and degraded, of being groped and afraid.
I admit, I was confused. Part of me wanted to let Lizzie have her own way, to get in that car and ride off into the sunset with her and Amanda Holbrooke.
But I knew better.
As I trudged around to the front door and went in the trailer, I felt as weak as I had that day when I woke with that IV in my arm.