grinned and winked at her, but Sarah couldn’t help completing the thought in her mind. Unlike the rest of the time, when you look like you just rolled out of bed. But Heath hadn’t said that, and didn’t think it. That was Sarah’s insecurity speaking.
It took fifteen minutes to clean up Scottie, coax him out of his pajamas and into some semblance of decent clothes. Five more minutes were spent swapping out Harper’s Elsa costume (which was what she’d meant by “party dress”) for an actual dress. That left Sarah ten minutes to dress herself. She dug through boxes, but couldn’t find her good fall clothes. She ended up throwing on a flowery sundress because it was the only pretty thing she could lay hands on, but topping it with a woolly cardigan against the September breeze. Not her most polished look, but it would have to do. She swiped on some bright lipstick, gathered the kids and the dog, and set out for the common room.
They were only a few minutes late, but when she got there, the room was empty, the tables and chairs were missing, and Heath was nowhere to be seen. She had a minor heart attack, until she caught the sound of Heath’s rich laugh floating in through the open window, and looked out onto the Quad. Her husband stood on the lush, green lawn, surrounded by the missing furniture, and a gaggle of leggy, giggling girls.
“Hey, what are you doing out there?” Sarah called, laughter in her voice as she stuck her head out the window. With Heath, you could always expect the unexpected.
He turned, flashing a movie-star grin.
“Here’s my lovely wife now. Girls, may I introduce your new dorm cohead, the amazing and brilliant Mrs. Sarah Donovan. Babe, come on out. It’s a beautiful day, I thought, why not party on the Quad?”
Party on the Quad? Girls whooped and high-fived at that. Did Heath understand who he was dealing with? Sarah had some of these girls in her math classes in years past. They were the worst offenders, the delinquents, the old-school Moreland girls, accustomed to bad behavior and few repercussions. She’d have to sit Heath down and have a talk about setting an example.
Sarah led her children and the dog down the hall and out the front door of Moreland Hall. They stepped into the sunshine of the perfect September day. Harper ran to her daddy, who hoisted her up onto his hip. Max, their German shepherd mix, ran circles on the lawn, as Scottie chased after him, squealing. Music filtered out from a dorm room farther down the Quad. And those Moreland girls—the same ones who surfed the Web in her classroom and snarked behind her back—made a fuss over her, and said how much they liked her dress. She didn’t buy the phony admiration. As they circled around her, long-legged and beautifully groomed, drawling away in their jaded voices, Sarah felt like they might eat her alive.
It was the first day at a new school for Bel Enright and her twin sister, Rose. Bel hated Odell Academy on sight. But she’d promised Rose to give it a real try, so she kept silent, and smiled, and pretended to be okay when she wasn’t.
It was early September. Their mother had died in May, and Bel was still reeling. The cancer took their mom so fast that Bel couldn’t believe she was gone. Mom had been Bel’s best friend, her inspiration. She’d worked in an insurance company to support her girls, but the rest of the time, she was an artist. She painted, and made jewelry from found objects. She wrote poetry and cooked wonderful food. They lived in a two-bedroom apartment in the Valley with thin walls and dusty palm trees out front. But inside, their place was beautiful, furnished with flea-market finds, hung with Mom’s landscapes of the desert, lit with scented candles. Mom was beautiful—the raven hair and green eyes that Bel had inherited (where Rose was blond like their father), the graceful way Mom moved, her serene smile. And now she was gone.
Bel had this fantasy that the twins would go on living in the apartment, surrounded by Mom’s things, by her memory. But they were only fifteen, and it was impossible. Rose was the practical one, and she made Bel understand this. In the week after Mom died, Bel lay in bed and cried while Rose made funeral arrangements and phone calls. Mom was a dreamer, like Bel, and hadn’t provided particularly well for the twins’ future. Who expected to die at forty, anyway? She’d left no will and no guardian, only a modest insurance policy, which Rose insisted they save to pay for college. Bel didn’t know if she wanted to go to college. But she understood that they needed a place to live, or they’d wind up in foster care. Rose called all of Mom’s friends and relatives. Her brother in San Jose, her cousins in Encino, her BFF from childhood, her girlfriends from work. Rose also called Grandma—Martha Brooks Enright, their father’s mother, whom they hadn’t seen since Dad died when they were five. Bel objected to that. Why invite Grandma to the funeral when she hadn’t bothered to see them all these years? She wouldn’t even come. But Rose said they had to try because there was no telling who’d be willing to take them in.
All the people Rose contacted came to the funeral, including Grandma. Mom dying so young, leaving the twins orphaned, tugged at people’s heartstrings. Everybody cried, and said pretty things, but it was empty talk. The only person who actually offered to take them in was their grandmother—who was Rose’s first choice, and Bel’s absolute last. Grandma gave Bel a cold feeling. She was so remote, in her tailored black dress and pearls. She was also the only person who didn’t cry at the funeral. Bel noticed that. She noticed that Grandma didn’t seem to like Mom much, based on how she talked about her. Grandma, being such a blue blood, maybe hadn’t been happy about her son marrying a girl from the wrong side of the tracks. Bel’s parents had met in college, at an event honoring the Enright family for endowing a major scholarship. Mom was one of the scholarship recipients. That’s how different their situations were. John Brooks Enright was there representing his rich family, and Eva Lopez was there to say a required thank-you. But opposites attract. They fell in love.
When Dad died, Mom moved the twins back to California, and they didn’t see Grandma again, or even talk to her on the phone. She sent checks on their birthday; that was it. After the funeral, when Grandma took them to a restaurant and offered to have the girls come live with her, Bel confronted her. Why hadn’t Grandma come to see them all those years? Wouldn’t you know, she claimed it was all Mom’s fault, that she’d tried to visit, but was told she wasn’t welcome. Bel didn’t believe it for a minute, and afterward, she told Rose so. But Rose thought maybe Grandma was telling the truth. And besides, what choice did they have? Grandma was the only one willing to take them in.
At the end of May, a week and a half after Mom died, the twins went east to live with their grandmother in her big house in Connecticut. Grandma let them keep one painting each to hang in their rooms, but everything else went to Goodwill. They got on the plane with just one suitcase. Grandma would buy them new clothes better suited to life in a cold climate. It turned out that Grandma was very, very rich; something their mother had never told them. Rose thought they’d won the lottery. But to Bel, it all felt wrong. The Mercedes, the big house with its echoing rooms and elaborate décor, the housekeeper who came every day but barely spoke. She tried to settle in, to get used to the strange new circumstances. Maybe eventually she would have succeeded. But then the rug got pulled out from under them all over again when Grandma announced that she was shipping the twins off to boarding school come September.
Boarding school was something rich people did, but to Bel, it just seemed cold. Not only would they go to some pretentious prep school, but they would live there, and come home only for holidays. The whole idea was the brainchild of Warren Adams, Grandma’s silver-haired, silver-tongued boyfriend. Warren was a lot like Grandma: good-looking, dressed fancy all the time, talked with an upper-crusty accent. Bel didn’t trust him. Warren claimed he was merely Grandma’s lawyer, but if that was true, why did he hang around her house so much? He said he’d been a close friend of Grandpa’s, but then why was he moving in on Grandpa’s wife? And he insisted that boarding school was the best place for the twins, but Bel suspected
