She grew into a confident beauty. With her heart-shaped face, wispy blonde hair, and turquoise eyes, she was aware of the effect she had on people and wielded her power with total composure. Other than typical adolescent meltdowns, I could only recall one time when she hadn’t been in complete control of her emotions.
Over three years had passed since that afternoon, but the memory still made my stomach lurch. Ben and I had a meeting that evening to finalize details about our reception. My last client canceled, so I decided to drop by his place and surprise him. We’d been so busy with work and the planning, we hadn’t had much alone time, and he’d become a little distant. I attributed his moodiness to wedding jitters.
Rather than knock to announce my presence, I used my key to enter the expensive downtown condo where we would live until we found the perfect house. One of the area’s most popular decorators furnished the place, but it was too masculine and impersonal for my taste.
I dropped my purse on the heavy mahogany table in the foyer and called for Ben. He didn’t respond. Music drifted from the bedroom. The door was ajar, but I tapped on it, stepped inside, and heard water running.
Ben complained I lacked spontaneity and a spirit of adventure in bed. He wanted me to initiate sex more, to be more passionate. I checked my watch and discovered we had almost two hours before our meeting. Plenty of time to be spontaneous.
I slipped my sweater over my head and wriggled out of my pants, humming along to a Taylor Swift song in the background. A glance in the full-length mirror revealed my mismatched underwear, but he wasn’t going to see them, so who cared? I unhooked my bra and tossed it onto the bed, then stepped out of my panties.
The bathroom door was closed but knocking politely didn’t fit with the take-charge image I planned to project, so I turned the knob and entered the steamy room. A thick sheet of fog covered the rain-glass custom shower, but I could see the silhouette of my fiancé under the water spray.
I tiptoed closer and saw him standing with his head tilted, shampoo cascading in frothy rivulets over his shoulders. I placed my hand on the tile wall and was about to commit when I noticed something was off. In addition to the sudsy trails now making their way to the small of his back, two hands clutched his well-toned ass. For a moment, I remained immobile, unable to process the scene in front of me. Then I glimpsed strands of smooth blonde hair and a pair of tan arms. I called her name. She peeked out from behind him, her face distorted by the steady stream of water.
Stumbling back, I caught myself on the edge of the gigantic bowl-shaped tub. I felt as if I should apologize for putting us all in such an awkward situation. After racing from the room, I grabbed my pants and hopped on one foot while pulling them up. I maneuvered my sweater over my head and snatched my undergarments from the bed just as Ben came barreling through the door with a towel wrapped around him.
“Grace! Wait. It’s not what it looks like.”
I didn’t bother to ask what else it could be. In an instant I had become a cliche: a woman scorned. The added indignity of having my own sister betray me contributed a touch of originality to the humiliation.
Chapter 2
I don’t know how, but I got home without taking out an innocent bystander and found Lesroy waiting for me. Stella had called to tell him I was upset and requested he check on me. I never asked my cousin if he’d known about Stella and Ben.
And now? Well, now it was obvious my distraught mother expected me to set aside my painful memories and join her in finding out why my sister hadn’t been on that plane. It was clear I wouldn’t be going back to sleep, so I flung off my grandmother’s quilt and dragged myself to the shower.
The hot water cleared my mind enough that I realized before leaving for Mom’s, I needed to do my own research. First, I double-checked with the airlines to see if what she had told me about Stella’s supposed homecoming was accurate. It was true she had booked her seat and had failed to show.
Next, I logged onto Facebook and found my sister’s page. As angry as I’d been at her, I never got around to unfriending her. Silly, I know, but I couldn’t make myself click on that most final of social media options. I blocked her posts before she left the country but never cut the online cord.
As usual, her shining face stunned me. I tried to shut out the images from that devastating day and its aftermath. But her choice of profile picture made it difficult. It was a photo of us taken at my engagement party.
In typical Stella fashion, her long wavy hair shimmered with blonde highlights and cascaded over her bare, bronzed shoulders. The only jewelry she wore was the locket Gran gave her on her sixteenth birthday. It was identical to mine. The gold ovals had an antique finish engraved with our initials. Inside were pictures of the two of us. One was of me with Stella on my lap when I’m about ten and she’s five. In the other, we’re a few years older and standing in an embrace, heads turned to beam at the camera.
Gran would stare at them and say, “You girls are so beautiful, you make my heart hurt.”
In most of Stella’s pictures, her face glowed with her wide-lipped smile, one custom designed for anyone lucky enough to be caught in its path. But in her profile picture, it’s her eyes that made it hard to turn away. They
