At least she’d only broken down in front of a patient once.
Libby tracked Alice down in the Gazette’s office and her twin glanced up, blinking, as the bell over the door tinkled. Libby’s heart rolled at the familiar sight—a reassuring salve in the turmoil that was her life.
“You’re drawing again!”
Alice grimaced. “Trying to. I have an idea for a sketch to accompany my article about tree vandals, but between my uncooperative fingers and this expletive deleted desktop publishing program, I’m going nowhere fast.”
“I thought Jim did the layout?”
“He does, but it’s Lillian’s birthday and he’s taken her to Canberra for a couple of days. Heaven help him, but I’m in charge of getting this edition sorted.” Alice stood up and kissed Libby. “It’s great to see you.”
Libby unloaded her shopping bag. “I brought lunch.”
“Bad morning?”
“Does it have to be a bad morning for me to have lunch with my sister?”
Alice paused mid-rip of a salad dressing sachet. “I want to say no.”
Guilt spiraled on a continuous helix. Since her ex-friend’s heartless betrayal, Libby knew she was relying on Alice in ways she’d never done before. It wasn’t only for support either, but for much needed friendship. Unfortunately, it threw up in stark relief how many years she’d put that woman ahead of her twin.
“If you’re too busy …”
“Don’t be silly. Besides, I can’t afford to say no to a free lunch.” Alice grinned and forked spinach, roasted squash, pine nuts and goat’s cheese into her mouth. “Mmm, yum!”
“The paternity test came back,” Libby blurted out. That was one thing she’d noticed about herself since the apocalypse—she no longer had the ability to make polite chit-chat.
“And it’s conclusive that Nick’s Leo’s father.”
The fact Alice hadn’t framed it as a question pressed down on Libby like lead weights. “Oh, Al! I didn’t want to believe them. I’ve babysat him, I’ve changed his diaper and played with him.” Her voice cracked. “What does it say about me that I didn’t notice he looks so much like Nick?”
Alice’s eyes filled with sympathy. “You trusted them so you never had a reason to look.”
“Fat lot of good that did me. I feel so stupid!”
“You’re not stupid or foolish or any other of those words you keep using. And you’re not alone. Mom and Dad and I didn’t notice, and neither did Rosa or Rick. I doubt anyone in the bay noticed. And let’s be honest, if any of the hardcore muckrakers suspected, we’d have heard about it ages ago.”
Libby’s mouth dried and she took a slug of water. “I keep going over and over twenty years of friendship. It can’t have been fake for all those years, can it?”
Alice chased a stray pine nut around her bowl. “I suppose not. Then again, if she loved you, how could she do that to you?”
“Nick says he loves me but he did it to me!”
“He does love you,” Alice said quietly.
“What makes you so sure?”
“I’ve googled. Most men leave their wives when their mistress gets pregnant. Nick didn’t do that.”
“He says it was never an affair. He says it only happened once.”
“Do you believe him?”
Libby sighed. “Sometimes. Other days I’m convinced he’s lying. I mean, I know if the timing’s right, it only takes once for a woman to conceive, but the fact he lied to me about it for two years drives me crazy! It makes me think he’s hiding information.”
“It’s hard, but doesn’t it help that he truly hates himself for causing all this pain? I mean he’s done everything you’ve asked so far. Did the counselor have any suggestions?”
Libby shuddered as she recalled the two sessions she’d attended by herself. “None that were useful. She said that for this to have happened, I must have ‘given away my power’ to Jess and Nick and ‘lost myself.’ I told her she’d lost me.”
“That sucks. But well done you. Bad help’s worse than no help.”
“Exactly. That’s why I’m reading self-help books.” Libby stabbed at the chicken breast in her Caesar salad. “It’s the double whammy that undoes me. Two people who supposedly love me hurt me.”
“She hurt Nick too.”
Libby was finding that hard to acknowledge. “You should be on my side.”
“I’m on both your sides,” Alice said sadly. “But not hers.”
“You know I’ve always believed that underneath her ‘don’t give a damn’ layer, she was a kind and decent human being. Hell, dogs love her! She’s always been generous to me, but it turns out I’ve been deluding myself about that too. I mean, God! Not only did she do what she did, she can’t see anything wrong with it! She hasn’t even hinted at being sorry. She’s acting as if she’s been wronged.”
“And that surprises you?”
“Yes!” Libby realized Alice had stopped eating. “What?”
Her twin shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It does. What were you going to say?”
Alice took a moment to raise her eyes from their intense examination of a piece of cheese. “In all the years I’ve known her, I’ve never heard J—her apologize for anything.”
Libby opened her mouth to say “That’s not true” but quickly closed it. Her automatic habit of defending that woman was now well and truly broken. Alice’s quietly spoken words brought old memories bubbling to the surface and many of them involved Alice being upset at something Jess had said or done. All of them showed Libby telling her twin not to be so sensitive, to learn how to take a joke and not be a wet blanket. Yet again, guilt pinched and her appetite vanished as it often did these days.
She pushed away the rest of her lunch. “I’ve been reading about toxic friendships, but there are no clues there either. She was fun and she made me laugh, although now I realize it was often at the
