It burned like liquid smoke all the way down her throat and tasted worse than cough syrup. Stubbornly she gulped down another couple of slugs. Maybe it was extremely doubtful that rum was ever going to be her vice of choice, but she was determined to give it a lion’s try.
She reached for Paige’s present and pulled at the red bow, trying to fathom the strange, unsettling dissatisfaction that had hounded her like a shadow all day. She’d been as restless as a wet cat, and had the stupidest inclination to cry. She’d never been restless, and the whole world knew that Gwen Stanford was no whiner or crier.
Nothing had even gone wrong. Josh and Jacob, thank heavens, were tucked in bed and sleeping harder than tired puppies. Jacob’s first day in school had been a landmark, but the rest of the day had been pretty status quo. She’d carpooled, done accounting all morning, somehow got talked into mothering a den of Cub Scouts, made cookies for the church bake sale, shopped, took the kids out to dinner for her birthday and survived their sugar high after overdosing on cake and ice cream. The day started and ended at a hundred miles an hour, but that was like saying the Pope was Catholic. Hardly headline news.
As she opened the package from Paige, though, her heart stopped racing like an overheated engine. Strangely, her pulse started chugging in slow time. Real slow time. One look at the gift put a thick, heavy lump in her throat.
Days before, her oldest sister Abby had sent a dress for her birthday—ivory Chinese silk, as simple and elegant in style as it was sexy. Maybe the arrival of that dress had been the pinpoint moment in time when this pervasive, stupid moodiness had begun. She loved her sisters. The three women had always been impossibly different in nature and temperament, but they were unbeatably close. And Abby had unerringly chosen a dress that fit Gwen perfectly, a dress she loved and yearned to wear—yet doubted she ever would. A working bachelor mom with two young, rambunctious sons just had no time or occasion to dress up in silk.
The gift from Paige was equally personal and equally unsettling, but in an entirely different way.
Slowly Owen lifted the cameo from the velvet box, tilting it this way and that in the fading sunset light. Paige was a cameo maker, so the choice of gift from her younger sister wasn’t in itself a surprise, and Paige was an incredibly fine artist.
But this was beyond fine.
The cameo had been carved in two shades of coral. The woman in profile had short, cropped curly hair-actually, almost identical to Gwen’s own hairstyle-and her arms were raised as if to joyfully embrace life. Turn the cameo just so in the light, though, and there appeared to be a sober-faced woman trapped in the darker shade of coral. The effect was subtle, but there appeared to be two women in the profile—one a shadow of the other.
Gwen reached blindly for the glass again and rapidly gulped another hefty slug of the warm rum. It burned her throat as hot as the last one did... as hot and stinging as this whole day had burned on her heart.
Her younger sister knew her. Too well. Damned well. Painfully well. The cameo was exquisite and could not have been a more personal present. At this particular moment, though, it hit her like a swift, sharp bullet.
Her entire life, she’d felt like a shadow.
This dissatisfied malaise wasn’t really birthday caused, Gwen recognized. For some time, the nagging, lost feeling had been there. Sometimes she wondered exactly whose life she was living. Her life-style was more straight-laced than a saint’s, with certainly no goof-off time built in. There never had been. But heaven knew, she’d never planned to be this good. Growing up, she’d never once aspired to be a saint. Where her two sisters had always had huge, identifiable life goals, though, Gwen had really only wanted one thing. Ron. From the day she met him in first grade, she’d fallen for him like a princess in a fairy tale.
Gwen lifted the rum glass, discovered it was empty and generously poured herself another splash. She squeezed her eyes closed, as if it would make swallowing the medicine a little easier.
Her divorce from Ron was two years old now. Ancient history. Yet his influence on her life certainly wasn’t. With a flash of rum insight, she recognized morosely that she had always lived in Ron’s shadow. She had become a bookkeeper, because that was a career she could pursue at home with the kids—and because it paid Ron’s medical school bills. They lived in St. Augustine, because that was where Ron originally wanted to set up his medical practice. She’d never pursued dreams of her own, because Ron’s career was so much more important than anything she wanted.
No one had ever twisted her arm to make those choices. All through those years, she’d never thought of herself as being a doormat. She’d thought she was being loving and supportive.
Somehow that looked different on her thirtieth birthday. Somehow—with the help of another gulp of rum—it occurred to her that she’d turned into a dependent, boring mouse. She didn’t have a clue who Gwen Stanford even was anymore.
She’d been a wife, but she couldn’t really remember being a woman. Of all the female roles she’d assumed—mom, wife, now ex-wife, bookkeeper, sister, daughter—she had no memory of setting a single goal that hadn’t been to please or appease other people.
With two young sons—and God knew, Jacob and Josh were her life—she certainly couldn’t take up a life-style dancing naked on tabletops. But it ached, like the stab of a knife, that not once in her entire life had she ever done anything reckless....
“Gwen? Are you alive and awake over there?”
Gwen startled at the sudden deep voice, but then realized it was just Spence.
Her vision seemed oddly blurred, and real dusk had fallen now. The sky was no longer ruby and purple, but washed in a hushed royal blue. Even if it were pitch black, though, she would never mistake anyone else for Spence McKenna. His backyard bordered hers. They shared a fence—and two six-year-olds. His April had just endured the same landmark day in first grade, in the same class as her Jacob.
If she’d thought about it, she might have guessed he’d stop by for a few minutes to share parenting notes. She hadn’t thought about it, and at the moment, seemed incapable of thinking about anything clearly. For some reason her tongue seemed thicker than molasses. It was a mighty struggle to sound normal. “I’m awake. Just buried in a few dark thoughts for a minute there. Come on over. Did April survive her first day with Mrs. Cox?”
“She did, but I don’t know about me,” Spence admitted. “I don’t know what I was expecting with Mrs. Cox, but I thought she’d be older, wiser, warmer. Instead she looked younger than a teenager and seemed meaner than a drill sergeant. I figured I’d ask for your perspective, since your Josh survived her last year.”
“Well, Josh survived her, but I have to admit not being thrilled with her, either. We’ve had some runins. I just think she’s too tough for the little ones. Jacob came home announcing that school was stupid.”
“So it wasn’t just my April. Hell. Deserting her in the door of that classroom was tougher than chewing nails. There are parts of this single parenting business that I sure wish came with a manual.”
Gwen chuckled. “I take it your angel’s now safely in bed and you’re headed straight for the fortitude?” Even with her blurred vision, she could see he was carrying a glass as he unlatched the fence gate and ambled toward her.
“Yeah. Full-strength iced tea.” She caught a flash of white teeth when he noticed the bottle at her side. “That looks more like what the doctor ordered. Somehow I’d never have guessed you were a dark rum fan.”
“I
