and settle down in the Junction with you to live happily ever after. You said you were just sick. That you were just aching to stay home and watch old movies and eat a barrel of popcorn and have yourself a good long cry.”
Lena made a low sound in her throat. “Well, now you say all that, I kind of do remember—and then you said how you’d like to go to prom…”
Lori’s date, a friend, a fellow biology student, had come down with mono and had to beg off. And then there was the fact that Lori had had a secret crush on Tucker since long before he and Lena had started going out.
Lena smiled a musing smile. “Yeah. Once you said how much you’d like to go to prom, things kind of took their natural course, now didn’t they?” She giggled. “I’m still amazed at how well we pulled it off.”
Lori had to agree on that point. “Me, too.” For twins who’d always claimed they weren’t joined at the hip like most identicals, it was surprising how easily they’d each slipped into the other’s skin.
Lena said, “Even Daddy and Mama were fooled. Remember Daddy, snapping away, taking all those pictures of you in my dress, telling you how beautiful you looked, thinking the whole time he was talking to me?”
Lori couldn’t help grinning at the memory. “And you spent the night dragging around in my pajamas…”
Lena giggled some more. “Mama kept checking on me. She’d say, ‘Lori, sweetie, it’s not the end of the world to miss your prom.’ And then I’d let a few tears dribble down my cheeks and hang my head the way you used to do, all pitiful-like, and whisper, ‘Mama. Please. I’d prefer to be alone.’ And then you, what do you know? You went and got yourself crowned prom queen.”
“No. I got you crowned prom queen.”
Lena pretended to scowl. “I have to admit, I was just a teensy bit jealous when I learned I won—and I wasn’t even there to get that rhinestone crown on my head.”
“You? Jealous? Never.”
“And then you came home so late. It was practically dawn. I was pretty darn put out with you about that—about you going out with my boyfriend and having such a fine old time, you didn’t want to come home.”
Lori felt a deep and awful stillness within herself then—the stillness that came with telling too many lies, with spending too many years waiting for those lies to catch up with her. She’d been vague that night—or rather, that morning. She’d told Lena that she and Tucker had gone out for breakfast. Since Lena would never in a thousand lifetimes have imagined that Lori would go to a motel with Tucker, the lie had worked. Lena never questioned it.
Lena said, “It was a crazy time, wasn’t it?”
“Oh, yeah. It sure was.” The night with Tucker had been like a world apart, the one special, enchanted evening when, at last, her every dream of being Tucker’s girl came true. And then she’d come home and looked at her twin and it hit her like a safe dropped on her from a tenth-story window: she’d betrayed her own sister. Even if Lena and Tucker were going their separate ways, it still felt to Lori like a line she’d had no right to cross.
But she had crossed it. And from that morning on, things only got worse. Tucker came to the door to beg Lena to take him back—because of the night before, Lori knew it.
Lena sent him away and told Lori, “It’s the best thing. And he knows it, too.”
By the next night, with all the turmoil inside her over the forbidden things she’d done and the lies she’d told everyone to cover those forbidden things up, she was a complete wreck.
“And then, the next night,” Lena said, eerily echoing the direction of Lori’s thoughts, “you took Daddy’s car and, pouf, you just disappeared.” Lena sent her a reproachful look. “You never did tell me what happened, with Brody’s dad that night. You never told me how you met him, how you—”
Lori put up a hand. “I can’t. Not right yet.”
That was another promise Lori had made herself. She was going to tell Lena the whole truth, too. But it only seemed right that she should tell Tucker first. Just as it only seemed right to wait until after the wedding to break the news to Tucker.
The wedding meant so much to Lena. If word got out beforehand that Tucker Bravo was Brody’s father, there was going to be talk. A lot of it. Lena’s big day would be thoroughly overshadowed.
Lori refused to let that happen. Tucker had gone all these years not knowing he was a dad. What difference could it make if he waited two weeks more?
“Did you hear yourself?” Lena let out a whoop. “You just said, not right yet. Lori darlin’, I do believe this is progress. Always before, you refused to tell me, period.”
“Well, I am working up to it.”
Lena gave her a full-out, blinding sunny smile. “Oh, Lori. It’s about time.”
Tuesday, purely by accident again, Lori met up with Tucker on Center Street, in front of his law office. They exchanged greetings and he asked her how she was enjoying her visit to town.
“I’m having a great time,” she told him. “Just great.” And before he could ask her another question, she glanced at her watch. “Oh. I really am running so late.” Late for exactly nothing—but he didn’t have to know that. “I have to get going.” She zapped him with a toobright, fake smile.
“See you later, then.”
“Yes. See you…” And she hurried on by.
She couldn’t believe it. She’d run into Tucker four times in her four days in town.
It was beginning to feel as if fate itself were taking a hand here. As if her own guilt and cowardice were conspiring to throw him in her path at every possible opportunity—maybe to give her the chance to say what needed saying.
Well, too bad for fate. She would tell him when she planned to tell him—in two weeks, after the wedding—and not a day earlier.
Wednesday, Lori and Lena and Brody spent a lazy afternoon out at nearby Longhorn Lake. Lori watched her son play in the sun at the edge of the water and knew the day of reckoning was swiftly approaching.
How much time was Tucker going to want with Brody? Would she and Tucker end up in an ugly custody battle? How would Brody deal with finally learning who his natural father was.
Those questions, and the thousand more that haunted her, wouldn’t be answered until she talked to Tucker. And that wasn’t going to happen until after the wedding.
Lori decided she’d put all thoughts of Tucker out of her mind.
For now.
There was no point in second-guessing. The moment of truth would be on her soon enough. And after that, she’d get plenty of answers—whether she wanted them or not.
Thursday morning, as Lori lingered alone in her mother’s kitchen enjoying a second cup of coffee, the phone rang. She snatched the cordless handset off the wall without giving it a second thought. “Hello?”
“Just
