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“But anyone with eyes can see that’s not why you’re so misty.”

“I’m just so happy.”

“Well, I guess I don’t have the market cornered on happiness … though Lord knows it sure feels that way.”

“Joe and I …”

“You don’t have to say it. It’s written all over your face.” Dolly hugged Laurel, her flowery perfume floating up around her. “Oh, sugar, you’ve just given me the best wedding present I can think of.”

“I honestly didn’t expect it to turn out this wayfor either of us.”

“Funny thing about love,” Dolly observed with a wry grin. “It’s like a mule that way … just when you get tired of pushing it, and sit back to take a breather, it goes off and kicks you right in the gut.” Dolly gave her a little shove. “Now go on, get out of here. Get on home, where you can celebrate properly.”

“But you haven’t even cut the cake!”

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“Sweetie, I wasn’t talking about you toasting me and Henri. You and that goodlooking husband of yours … you two have your own toasts to make.” She winked, and gave Laurel another little push. “Don’t worry about Adam. I just looked in on him-he and the twins are having a grand old time. I’ll have Felipe take him home later on … after you and Joe have had a chance to get reacquainted.”

“But what about you … your honeymoon? Isn’t Felipe driving you to the airport?”

Dolly smiled and smoothed a wisp of hair from Laurel’s cheek. “Henri and I … we changed our mind about St. Bart’s. We’re spending our honeymoon right here. After all the backing and forthing we’ve done, isn’t it about time we stayed put?”

Laurel kissed her aunt, and said good-bye to Henri and the others she knew, but she didn’t see Annie. Probably she was in the bathroom, or in the dining room checking on the triple-layer white-chocolate cake she’d made for the occasion. Laurel felt the tiniest bit relieved. She didn’t really feel like talking to Annie right now. Since Joe had moved out, things had been sort of strained between her and her sister. On the surface, of course, they acted as if nothing was wrong … but underneath, every time she spoke with Annie, Laurel could feel the tip of something sharp and jagged buried underneath. She’d find herself wondering, Is she just biding her time until she thinks I’m over him?

Joe had gone to get his Volvo, parked a few blocks away, and would meet her in Bayside. She could hardly wait to get home.

Outside, walking briskly east toward the garage near Third Avenue where her own car was parked, Laurel became aware of the staccato tapping of heels coming up rapidly behind her.

She turned, and saw Annie, hurrying to catch up with her. She had on a saffron-colored raincoat made of some silky fabric, and in the dusky light, she seemed to glow, the scissoring of her long legs sending the coat’s hem billowing, causing Laurel to think of a skydiver parachut-

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ing to earth. And now Annie was waving at her to wait, waving so energetically that a passing cabbie, thinking he was being hailed, lurched to a stop.

Laurel waited. Seeing her sister, as always, brought forth a grab bag of feelings. Love, affection, resentment, guilt. What now? she wondered. Laurel felt herself holding tight to her joy, hogging it the way a kid might have kept a special toy all to herself. Why did she feel worried, as if Annie might somehow try and take this from her?

Laurel only wished that whatever Annie was rushing to tell her could have waited just a little while longer. If only she could just leave now, and float home on this heavenly cloud of hers.

But she couldn’t put Annie off. She owed her that much at least.

“Dolly told me,” Annie panted when she’d caught up, “about you and Joe. I wanted to tell you … well, really just to say how happy I am for you …” Laurel searched her face, but Annie’s expression was sincere.

“Thanks,” Laurel told her, feeling suddenly awkward, not knowing what else to say except, “You’re not leaving, too, are you?”

“No. I just wanted to catch you before you took off. I’m going back now to help serve the cake.”

“I saw it. It’s beautiful. It looks like the ceiling of a Victorian parlor … all those rosettes and swags and curlicues.”

“That’s where I got the idea, actually.” Annie laughed. “From a mansion in Newport. You want to hear something really funny? I showed a picture of a cake just like Dolly’s to Hy Felder … and he ordered one for his daughter’s wedding. I’m charging him a small fortune.”

“How’s it going with Felder’s?”

“Looks like it’ll be another few months before the grand opening, but I’m beginning to gear up to go into production.”

“The rate you’re going, you’ll need a factory the size of Brooklyn before too long.” Laurel felt impatient, wanting to stop chattering, be off.

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“It’s true what they say about number two-we try harder.”

“You’ll never be second at anything,” Laurel observed with a little laugh. She glanced over at Annie, who now appeared lost in her thoughts. “By the way, have you heard anything from Emmett?”

Annie looked away, but not before Laurel had seen the hurt in her eyes. “Not a thing. You know what they say, a clean break heals the quickest.”

“I figured maybe you two would …” Admit it, you were hoping they’d get back together so Annie would be out of the running as far as Joe was concerned.

No, it was more than that. Laurel had genuinely liked Emmett… and she missed having him around. His sense of humor, the way he kept Annie … well, centered, sort of.

“Well, we’re not,” Annie spoke a bit too sharply. Then, catching herself, she added lightly, “I guess I’m just not cut out for marriage. Or maybe I’ll end up like Dolly, marching down the aisle when all my friends are having grandchildren.”

“What about kids?” Laurel asked. “Don’t you want at least one?”

Annie was silent for several long minutes while she contemplated the progress of a tour bus trundling slowly past.

“I was just remembering,” Annie said at last, softly, “those first weeks in New York when you used to cry all the time. I felt so bad, like I’d done this terrible thing that you’d hate me for. I guess that’s how mothers must feel a lot of the time.”

“I didn’t hate you,” Laurel said. “I just felt so … well, uprooted. Like Dorothy in The Wizard ofOz. As if I’d been picked up by a cyclone and carried off to this strange land where I didn’t know anyone, and all the time I was scared.”

“Say it, why don’t you?” Annie brought her head up, and gave Laurel a sharp, wounded look. “You blame me for taking you away. It’s all my fau>Z, knV >;? Everything.”

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A deep calm flowed through Laurel. For maybe the first time ever, she felt as if she were in charge, as if it were her role, her duty, to protect and comfort her sister. “No, Annie, I don’t blame you. You did what you had to do. And I followed … like I always did.”

“You could have stayed behind.”

“What choice did I have? Without you there, it would have been awful. No. If I blame anyone, it’s Dearie. She just checked out on us. You know, you loved her more than she deserved.”

“She was the best mother she knew how to be.”

“To you, maybe. But you’re the one who really mattered to me.”

“We’re sisters,” Annie stated matter-of-factly. “Sisters look out for each other.”

“But don’t you see? It was always you looking out for me. Never the other way around.” She stopped. “It was partly my fault, too. I let you take over.” She touched Annie’s arm. “Look, I’m sorry about the way things have been. It’s just that with Joe gone …” She let her voice trail off, not sure what, exactly, she wanted to say.

“I know.” Annie’s eyes, shining with emotion, met Laurel’s, and Laurel felt as if they’d just made an unspoken pact.

Laurel watched a woman in a plaid coat up ahead, waiting for her little dog to lower its uplifted leg. The sidewalk, she saw, had a scattering of leaves-as if, without her ever noticing, winter had sneaked up and stripped the trees.

“You’ll come for Thanksgiving, won’t you?” Laurel asked gently.

“I wouldn’t miss it.”

“You can carve the turkey.”

Laurel was remembering their first Thanksgiving in New York, when all they had was frozen turkey TV dinners. Annie, peeling back the foil on hers, had quipped, “I don’t know why everyone makes such a big deal about carving the turkey. Look how easy it is.” Since then, it had become an annual joke with them.

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Annie rolled her eyes. “It wasn’t all so terrible back then, was it?”

“No,” Laurel said softly. “It wasn’t.”

“There’s one thing I’ve always wondered about, though. Remember when Joe and I used to tease you about your mystery boyfriend? Just what were you being so secretive about?”

Laurel thought about Uncle Rudy, and wondered if the time had come for Annie to know that she wasn’t the only one who’d been brave in order to protect someone she loved. But what was the use? She didn’t need to prove herself. Not anymore.

“You know something,” Laurel said, her lie coming easily, “I don’t even remember anymore. I was probably just playing hooky.”

Annie shrugged, as if she weren’t completely convinced but had decided it was so long ago it no longer mattered much.

“Well, I guess I’d better get going,” Laurel told her. “Joe’ll be wondering what’s kept me.”

“Joe? Oh, yeah … sure. Well …”

Laurel watched her sister start to step back, looking suddenly awkward and slightly forlorn, as if she were a teenager again, only this time there was no one for her to take care of … and maybe no one to watch out for her, either. Not looking where she was going, Annie caught the side of her heel in a deeply indented crack in the sidewalk. Thrown off balance, she lurched forward.

Laurel started to catch her, and even managed to grab hold of Annie, but her stance was somehow wrong, and she went sprawling onto the sidewalk with Annie on top of her.

After the first shocked moment, Laurel was able to sit up, pushing Annie up with her. As they sat there with Annie’s yellow parachute of a raincoat puddled about them, Laurel felt overcome, realizing how much she loved her sister. How much she still needed her in all sorts of little ways.

Suddenly, she found herself giggling.

Annie, laughing a little, too, and wiping her eyes on

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her sleeve, said under her breath, “Don’t look now, but that woman with the dog … she’s looking at us like she thinks one of us is getting mugged.”

Pulling herself up, Laurel helped Annie to her feet, brushing off the wet leaves that clung to Annie’s saffron coat.

To the woman with the Yorkie, staring at them openmouthed, Laurel called: “It’s okay … we’re sisters!”

Enilo(

puogue

A Los Angeles, 1983

nnie handed her car keys to the parking valet, and started up the canopied walkway leading into the Beverly Hills Hotel. Driving in from LAX, stalled in traffic much of the way, she’d felt tense and wound-up. But here, in this lovely shade, tubs of pink azaleas and ruby rhododendrons flanking her on both sides, she felt herself begin to unwind. She glanced at her watch. Twelveforty-she had hours until her meeting. Time for a short nap, and maybe afterwards a swim.

Then, nodding to the gre่n-and-gold-uniformed doorman as he held open the heavy glass door to the lobby, she thought of who she was meeting, and why, and she felt her stomach tighten.

Emmett.

More than a year and a half since she’d seen him, and in all that time no letters, phone calls, not even one postcard. Then last week, the shock of his voice over the phone drawling, “Hey, there,” as if it had been merely days, not ages, since they’d last spoken. He had his own realestate agency now, he told her, in Westwood. He was “doin’ okay,” which, given Emmett’s laid-back way of putting things, could have meant anything from a hole-inthe-wall with an answering machine to some swank address with a dozen employees. But he hadn’t just called to shoot the bull. He had something he thought she might be interested in.

Bel Jardin. It was on the market, and he had an exclusive listing.

Annie, so close now to seeing her childhood home, felt her heart begin to race.

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That she might once again actually live in Bel Jardin seemed like a fairy tale too good to be true… .

Suppose it’s way more than you could possibly afford. Why didn’t you at least ask him the price over the phone? What was the point of flying out here half-cocked just to take a stroll down Memory Lane?

Because, face it, Bel Jardin was not the only reason she’d come.

She imagined Emmett’s sharp blue eyes taking in her telltale bitten nails, and then crinkling in amusement. Could he want her out here just for herself? Could he possibly know how, after he’d called, she’d felt as if she were going to jump right out of her skin … and how, in the heat of July, she’d had to soak in a hot bath to stop her shivering?

No, no way. He couldn’t be thinking of her that way. By now, he was probably married, might even have a child. He hadn’t mentioned a wife, but then why should he? It was just a business call.

She tried imagining how his wife might look-all arms and legs and sun-streaked blond hair, sleek and tanned, Colgate smile. She probably played volleyball on the beach in her string bikini like in those Pepsi commercials. Malibu Barbie.

Except Emmett was no Ken doll. Not by a long shot. Did he still wear those old cowboy boots? Or had he switched over to huaraches? Did he still get that funny cowlick when his hair was damp? Had he forgotten he ever loved her?

“May I help you, ma’am?”

Someone was speaking to her, Annie realized, a white-jacketed young man behind the desk.

“A reservation for Annie Cobb,” she told him, her voice crisp, businesslike.

“Do you have any luggage?” he asked after she’d signed in. He looked like a Ken doll, she thought: blond crewcut, great tan, even white teeth.

“Just this.” Annie, who always made it a point to travel light, hefted her single suitcase-a Mark Cross shoe bag, cinnamon calfskin with chocolate-colored straps,