“What was that?” Mary Theresa appeared from the far side of the garage. Wearing a short coverup and thongs, she took off her sunglasses and sucked on the part that was supposed to wrap over her ear.
“You mean, ‘Who’,” Maggie clarified with a lift of her shoulder. For a reason she didn’t understand she felt a need to protect Thane from the questions and prejudice shading Mary Theresa’s eyes. “Just a guy who works at the stables.”
“Ahh.” Mary Theresa nodded, as if suddenly wiser. “So now you’re slumming.”
“I just took a ride with him.”
Little lines appeared between her twin’s perfectly plucked eyebrows, and she stared at the open gate as if she could somehow divine exactly why Maggie would deign to ride in the horrid old truck. “You’re lucky it made it.”
“Maybe.”
“No ‘maybes’ about it. That pickup is on its last legs or tires or whatever.” Turning suddenly, she slid her shades back onto her nose. “So…did you hear any more messages from me today?”
“No.”
“Well, I was sending them like crazy,” Mary Theresa said sarcastically.
“Oh, yeah? Why?”
“Just testing.”
Maggie rolled her eyes to the heavens. “Look, I don’t know why I heard you last night, okay? But I did. Don’t do this…testing thing or whatever it is anymore.” Hot and tired, she headed for the house. “I can’t explain it.”
“It’s a crock, if you ask me. I was just proving it to you. You know, you had me going for a while, but it’s all…all too weird.”
“Fine. I know. I can’t explain it, okay?” Maggie lifted a hand and waved off any more arguments as she ducked under a vine of bougainvillea that draped from the eaves of the house. “It’s whatever you want to think.”
She nearly plowed into Mitch at the door from the garage to the kitchen, and he grabbed hold of her arm. His face was hard; the angles seemed to have lost all of their boyish innocence overnight. “We’re cool, aren’t we?” he whispered.
“Wha—?”
“About last night.”
His fingers dug into the muscles of her upper arm. “Yeah, we’re cool.” The old, smothering feeling that she’d managed to discard while dealing with Thane Walker came down on her full force. Images of the night before played in her mind. She yanked back her arm. “Leave me alone.”
“Just so we’re straight,” he insisted, and then, as if sensing Maggie’s mother on the other side of the door, he backed off.
Maggie entered the kitchen and felt the drop in temperature and the breath of cool air, compliments of the air-conditioning unit that was blasting away.
“Maggie?” Mom peered around the corner. With short brown hair and freckles she tried desperately to hide, she was a twenty-five-year-older version of her daughters. “Where were you?”
“At the stables.”
“No note.” Her mother cocked her head to one side and lifted her eyebrows, silently reprimanding.
“I forgot.”
“Remember next time, will you?” She walked into the kitchen from the laundry area, and Maggie was relieved to see that she was steady on her feet. Her words weren’t slurred. No glass of “ice water” melted in her hand.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right,” her mother said, but Maggie wasn’t sure she believed her, for beneath the soft little smile and the crinkle of her green eyes, there was a hint of worry. The edges of her mouth didn’t quite turn up, and her gaze meandered from Maggie’s face to the patio. “You know,” she began, picking up a pitcher and turning on the faucet, “I think something went on here last night while your dad and I were out.”
“Oh?” Maggie stuck out her lips and lifted her shoulders, as if she didn’t have any clue. “What?”
“Don’t know.” Bernice Reilly turned off the tap and began watering the pots of African violets arranged on the counter. “But I’m pretty sure someone got into the liquor cabinet. I mark the bottles, you know, and I can tell if a bottle has been watered down.”
Damn! Maggie tried to keep her expression completely blank, and when the back door opened, she didn’t turn around, just hoped like crazy that her suddenly thundering heartbeat wasn’t visible in her throat or anywhere else.
“You know, not only is it just watered down, but sometimes a bottle is missing. Can you explain that?” Her mother didn’t look at her, just kept watering the damned plants while Maggie’s skin broke out in a horrible sweat.
“Explain what?” Mary Theresa asked as she breezed in. Smelling of suntanning oil and looking the innocent, she glanced at her mother. She plucked a grape from the fruit bowl on the table and winced as she plopped the grape into her mouth. “Ouch.” Turning, she pulled aside her coverup and craned her neck so that she could see the reflection of her back in the mirror mounted on the wall going into the dining room. “Damn, burned myself.”
Her shoulders were beyond red; there were actually tiny blisters visible.
“How many times have I told you to be more careful? Let me see.” Their mother eyed Mary Theresa’s shoulders and sighed. “I think I’ve got some cream that might help. Here.” She reached into the cupboard and pulled out a tube, handing it to Mary Theresa. “Now about last night.”
“What about it?” Mary Theresa smeared cream onto her lobster-red shoulders.
“Mom thinks someone got into the liquor.”
“I don’t think, I know.”
“Really?” Mary Theresa seemed to be barely listening as she applied the cream and readjusted her top. “Well, don’t look at us. Maggie and I were together. It was probably Mitch and his friends.” She snagged another grape and tossed it into her mouth innocently.
Maggie nearly choked as Mary Theresa opened the refrigerator door with the nonchalance of an accomplished actress. She pulled out a can of Diet Coke. “Want one?” she asked Maggie, who, her cheeks burning with embarrassment, couldn’t believe her sister was ratting out Mitch—the guy she’d been making out with, her partner in…in…
“Sure.” M.T. tossed her a can, grabbed one for herself, and popped the top, wincing a little as if her sunburn was flaring again. “I think you should talk to him.”
“I will,” Bernice said as she replaced the pitcher and wiped a drip of water from her fingers onto the shorts of her yellow jumpsuit. Her lips were compressed into a that-kid’s-gonna-get-a-piece-of-my-mind grimace. “Right now.”
Chapter Seven
“I can’t believe you did that!” Maggie whispered once she and Mary Theresa were in her bedroom and the door was firmly shut.
“Did what?”
“Throw Mitch to the wolves like that! Mom is gonna kill him.”
“Better him than me.” Mary Theresa dropped onto a corner of Maggie’s unmade bed and sipped her soda as if she didn’t have a care in the world other than a case of sunburn, as if she wasn’t on the brink of excruciating trouble, as if she hadn’t done anything remotely wrong.
“But—”
“Don’t worry about Mitch. He can handle himself.”
“I don’t believe you!” Maggie set down her drink, picked up some darts, and hurled them one after the other at the back of her door, where a dartboard was covered with a picture of her latest boyfriend, Sean, a wingback on the football team. When he hadn’t been able to convince Maggie to go “all the way” even when he’d told her that he loved her, he’d dropped her for a freshman girl with braces, long blond hair, and legs that seemed to go on forever. He’d bragged about scoring with the girl two weeks later, then promptly discarded her for a sophomore on the girls’ soccer team. Maggie yanked the darts from the board, stood a few feet away, drew back, and took better aim. She let the first dart fly. It pierced Sean square in the middle of his chest, where his heart was supposedly hidden. She’d have to aim a little lower next time.
“It was all Mitch’s idea anyway,” Mary said, pouting a little. “Let him take the heat.”
“What was all his id
ea?” Maggie was sick of the vague innuendoes and secretive glances. “So what’s going on, M.T.?” She threw another dart. Bingo. Right in the crotch.
“Oh, just drinking and getting into the hot tub.”
“So he’s gonna take the fall.”
“What else can I say?”
Maggie threw the darts. One, two, three. All landed close enough to Sean’s head, heart, and other areas to convince her that she hadn’t lost her touch. “Well, just keep me posted, would ya? I’d like to know what the latest secret is. You know, so that I don’t blow it.”
“I will,” Mary Theresa said. “You don’t have to get nasty about it.”
“I’m not,” Maggie argued as Mary Theresa drained her can of soda and, standing, dropped it into Maggie’s already overflowing wastebasket.
“Trust me. I know what I’m doing.”
Maggie didn’t believe it for a minute. Lately, Mary Theresa seemed to be on a collision course with any and all things sensible.
That night Maggie flipped through the channels of her small black-and-white television, listened to Johnny Carson’s monologue on the Tonight Show, then clicked off the set and flung herself onto the bed. Her restless thoughts had slipped to Thane Walker again, and she couldn’t figure out why he seemed lodged in her brain. He was kinda good-looking, if you liked the rough-and-tumble cowboy type. He had a sense of humor, irreverent though it was, and there was a touch of mystery to him that appealed to her. But she knew he was way too old for her, way too hard-edged, way too worldly. Still, she couldn’t quit thinking of him.
“Give it up,” she muttered as she picked up her large black magic ball, the one Mary Theresa had given her on their eleventh birthday. Mad at herself and the world in general, she shook the magic ball for all she was worth.
What’re the chances of me and a guy like Thane Walker? she silently asked, then looked at the answer floating to the surface of the ball. The answer is unclear.
Oh yeah? Well, does he have a girlfriend?
There is a good possibility.
Are you full of crap?
My sources say no.
Right, and I’m the queen of England. She dropped the ball onto the bed, grabbed a dart from the bedside table, launched it, and smiled as it landed on Sean’s left kneecap. “Shows you for messin’ with me,” she whispered as she turned off the light and closed her eyes.
Thane’s face, all tanned angles and planes, swam to the surface of her consciousness, in much the same way as the messages seemed to swim upward in her stupid fortune-seeing ball. She wondered where he lived, who his friends were, if he was with a woman at that very minute. Sighing, she told herself to forget him.
Through the open window, over the sounds of insects buzzing and the hum of traffic on distant streets, Mitch’s voice, low and harsh, seeped into Maggie’s bedroom. She couldn’t believe that he was outside the window, and then with a quick peek through the open pane, realized that he was standing in the shadows, on the far side of the pool, unaware that his voice carried, clarion clear, over smooth-as-glass water. And he wasn’t alone.
“What’s got into you?” he demanded.
Maggie slithered like a snake onto the floor and clasped her knees, wishing she couldn’t hear the damning words as her heart drummed in dread.
“What do you mean?” Mary Theresa asked. Maggie’s stomach tightened painfully.
“Oh, come on, you practically sicced Mom on me, didn’t you?” Mitch was furious. “She grounded me, you know. Threatened to take away my car. Shit, Mary T, why?”
“Because it made more sense. She’ll believe that you and your friends got into her booze and partied. But if I said that it was you and me—”
“You didn’t have to say anything.”
“I did. She knew, damn it. And Maggie, she knows.”
There was a moment of silence, and Maggie didn’t know what was worse, the accusations or the pulsing quietude that oozed through the crack between window and frame. She closed her eyes, didn’t want to think about Mitch and Mary Theresa, wished she could close the window and block out any hint of their conversation.
“Well, at least Mom doesn’t know about us.”
“We’d better keep it that way.”
“I know. I know. I, hell, Mary T, I don’t know what to say.”
“Don’t say anything, okay?”
“It…I mean it was great but—”
“Shh! It’s over! It…it was all a mistake…”
“I know, I know.” Mitch’s voice was filled with self-loathing. “I shouldn’t have drunk so much, shouldn’t have kissed you—”
“Shut up!” Mary Theresa’s voice was sharp. Commanding.
“I’m just trying to apologize.”
“I get it, okay?” Irritation flavored her words. “Just leave me alone, Mitch. From now on, don’t even touch me.”
“I won’t. Believe me. But—”
“Just don’t. We can’t! God, Mitch, this is so sick.”
“You started it.”
“No, I didn’t…I just wanted to teach you a lesson…because of the last time…after the prom.”
“That was different.”
“I know…but…oh, shit, just forget it!”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“You have to.” Mary Theresa was emphatic. “We have to.”
Hot tears formed in Maggie’s eyes—tears of embarrassment and shame that drizzled down her temples to her pillow. She wished she could close her ears as easily as she could her eyes. A sick feeling swept over her and her stomach roiled.
“I’ll try.” Mitch sounded like a whipped puppy.
“Okay. So we never talk about this again. Never! And if any of your friends ever find out, if you ever so much as breathe a word of what happened to anyone, I swear, Mitch, I’ll kill you.”
“Don’t worry.” He sounded sincere. “Just like I told Maggie, nothing happened.”
“Good.”
Maggie let out her breath.
“But Maggie doesn’t believe me.” Mitch sounded worried and Maggie cringed inside.
“Who cares?”
“I do. If she thinks we—”
“She doesn’t! Jesus, Mitch, get some backbone, will you?” Despite her harsh words, Mary Theresa sounded frightened.
“I just worry about her.”
“She’s a wimp. She won’t say anything.”
“Don’t believe it.”
“I’ve talked to her. She’s so damned naive that she wouldn’t believe anything bad about either one of us. I’m her best friend, and you’re, well, believe it or not, you’re her hero. She thinks you’re gonna help her get onto the swim team.”
“I said I’d talk to the coach.”
“Mitch, forget about her, will ya? Leave Maggie to me. I know how to handle her.” Her voice lightened. “That’s the good part of being a twin; understanding another person inside and out.”
Maggie bit her tongue to keep from saying anything.
Their voices became more distant, as if they were walking away from the pool, and Maggie slowly let out her breath in a soft, nearly silent sigh. Oh, God, what was happening to her perfect little universe? How could she look either one of them in the eye? She didn’t know what they’d done together, how far their flirting, kissing, and touching had gone, didn’t want to think about it. Ever. So she’d block her mind. That was it. The way prisoners of war did when they were finally released, so that they could survive. She’d read about it once in history class and now convinced herself that if a man could withstand the atrocities of war, then somehow lock the painful memories away once the war was over, she could certainly push aside any thoughts of Mitch and Mary Theresa.
Besides, she really didn’t know anything about them, did she? Only suspicions that bothered her. She lifted her head, looked out the window, and saw that there was no one by the pool. The water was placid, the stars bright in the heavens, but deep in her heart, Maggie knew that things were far from calm. As sur
ely as if the wind had picked up and raced into her room, she felt her skin prickle with the knowledge that a storm was brewing—a storm that no one, not even God Himself, could stop.
“…and thank you, Father, for the blessings of this family. Give us the strength to hold together during good times and bad. Amen.” Frank Reilly lifted his head as did his entire family. It was the first meal they’d had together since the night when Maggie had found Mitch and Mary Theresa in the hot tub together, and she couldn’t begin to guess what her father suspected or what her mother knew.
Silently they began passing platters of food around the table. Plates of barbecued chicken, potato salad, sliced fruit, and cold asparagus slipped from one hand to the other. No one said a word, and aside from the purr of the air-conditioning system and soft notes of instrumental renditions of old Beatles’ hits floating in the air from hidden speakers there was no noise but the clink of silverware and an occasional quiet cough.
Maggie’s father, a slight man who at five feet ten kept his weight down to a trim 175 pounds, “fighting weight” as he called it, was the patriarch of the clan. Frank Reilly’s word was, and always had been, law. Rigid and determined, ambitious to a fault, he never gave an inch. His thick brown hair had the audacity to silver at the temples, and his mustache, one he’d had since his army days in the mid nineteen-fifties, was more gray than brown these days.
“Excellent dinner, Bernice,” he said, as he always did.
“Thanks.” She managed a smile that seemed slightly rubbery. They exchanged glances and Maggie’s guts clenched. Something was up. Frank slowly set down his fork. “I think we should discuss something as a family.” He placed his elbows on the table and, as if he were praying, tented his hands together. “The other night when your mother and I were out, it seems that you, all three of you, had some kind of party. Not only is liquor missing from the cabinet, but there was evidence of someone getting sick on the other side of the hedge by the hot tub and wet towels left in the laundry room.” He cleared his throat as everyone set the silverware down.