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“That was because of his contacts,” Savannah said. “He had dry eyes.”

Ida was not to be deterred. “They were squinty. Just the type of eyes a man who’d run around on his wife would have. So, I suppose the gal’s some bikini-clad beach bunny bimbette half his age?”

“Bimbette?” Despite the seriousness of the topic, Savannah exchanged an amused look with Raine. “Where on earth did you pick up that one?”

“I have lunch with Dottie Anderson in the back office of the Dancing Deer once a month,” Ida said. “We watch television while we eat. Last month we watched a show where new mothers confronted the bimbette babysitters who were sleeping with their husbands. Well, needless to say, things got wild. I’ll tell you, there’s more violence on some of those shows than on the wrestling programs.”

“You watch wrestling?” Raine asked.

“At times. No matter what people say about it being staged, it’s great entertainment. Gwen and I like to make popcorn and root for Hulk Hogan.” Ida jutted out her Lindstrom chin. “Do you have any problem with that?”

“None at all,” Raine said quickly. “I was just surprised.”

“It’s important to try new things. Getting old is kind of like being a salmon…. If you don’t keep moving forward you die.”

“It’s a shark that has to keep moving,” Raine murmured.

“Whatever.” Ida turned back to her younger granddaughter, “So is she a bimbette?”

“Actually, she’s an attorney from the resort’s legal department. One of those hard-edged, ice-water-in-the-veins, career Amazons with brass balls.” The moment she heard the words come out of her mouth, Savannah cringed. “I’m sorry, Raine. I certainly didn’t mean to imply that
you
were anything like that.”

Raine managed a smile. “I know.” But she was a lot like that. And everyone in the kitchen knew it. Cream puffs did not become Xena, Warrior Princess.

“I’ll bet she keeps them in her fancy briefcase,” Ida decided.

“Keeps what, Mother?” Lilith asked.

“Her brass balls.”

They shared a laugh at that.

Savannah sighed and poured more wine from the bottle Lilith had placed in the middle of the table. “When I first moved out, Kevin insisted he didn’t want a divorce. But now he’s playing hardball.”

She combed her fingers through her long auburn hair. The California sun had brightened the red curls with gold streaks. Looking at all that lush hair, the Malibu tan, and bright emerald eyes, Raine thought that Savannah resembled some glorious goddess created by a master alchemist, rather than a mortal woman.

“He called me on my car phone about the time I crossed the California-Oregon border to warn me that the company considered any recipes I created while I’d worked there to be the resort’s intellectual property.”

Lilith lifted a beringed hand to her throat. “Surely you’re not serious, darling?”

“That’s what he’s claiming.”

“We can take care of that,” Raine assured her briskly. “We’ll get you a good lawyer and make the squinty-eyed, cheating bastard regret that he ever messed with a Lindstrom woman.” Sometimes being a take-no-prisoner warrior woman could be a good thing.

When they’d been young, she and Savannah had shared M&Ms, popsicles, chicken pox, Barbie dolls, and the absence of a beautiful, but flawed mother. Later, they fought over bathroom time and hair dryers, even as they shared teenage confidences, secrets, and dreams. Now, during this trying time, Raine vowed to stand by her sister, just as Savannah would have stood by her, with the solidarity of the March sisters.

“I’d hoped we could end things civilly.” Savannah rubbed her temples, momentarily letting down her guard long enough for Raine to see the incredible stress her sister was feeling. “But since I also refuse to cave in and let Kevin keep making money off my creations, I guess that’s going to be impossible.”

“Well, of course it is, dear.” Lilith leaned forward to pat her daughter’s knee before refilling her own glass. “If God had intended for us to be friends with our ex-husbands, She wouldn’t have made them such bastards in the first place.”

Ida retrieved a second bottle of wine from the refrigerator. “He’ll get his comeuppance,” she predicted. “Everyone knows that time wounds all heels.”

As the full, white moon outside the window sailed across a star-studded jet night sky, and both the chardonnay and the conversation continued to flow, Raine couldn’t help thinking how good it felt to be home.

After another restless night spent chasing sleep, the first thing Raine noticed the next morning was that Savannah’s bed was empty. Which was a bit surprising since Raine doubted that her sister had gotten all that much sleep.

It had been sometime after midnight when Raine had realized that the weeping ghost woman in her dream wasn’t a ghost at all, but her sister, crying softly in the adjoining bathroom.

She’d slipped soundlessly out of bed and stood outside the door for a long, hesitant time, torn between trying to offer comfort and allowing her sister privacy. She’d even lifted her hand to knock, then, at the last moment, turned away and returned to bed.

It was a full twenty minutes more before Savannah returned to bed. Once again, Raine considered saying something. Anything. She might be a whiz at coming up with exactly the right words to sway a judge or jury, but personal matters were another story. Try as she might, she couldn’t think of a single thing to say that might ease Savannah’s obviously wounded heart. So, she’d kept silent.

But more than once during the long night, Raine was all too aware of her sister, lying awake in the next bed, only a few feet away, and wished that she could be, just for this one instance, as open and uninhibited as Lilith.

Thinking back on her sisterly failure now, Raine sighed and looked around the pretty little room. The curtains were white priscillas, the lace hand-tatted in a floral pattern. More flowers bloomed on the cream-colored wallpaper, reminding Raine of the day Ida had taken her young granddaughters shopping. Raine had wanted a muted white on white stripe, while Savannah, unsurprisingly, had opted for blindingly red poppies. The delicate purple violets had been a compromise. One that, in time, they’d both come to appreciate.

When she’d first returned to Coldwater Cove, after the clamor of the city, Raine had found the silence of the rural little town unnerving. But over the past days, she’d gradually come to realize that it wasn’t silent at all. The window was halfway open, allowing her to hear the sweet morning song of birds, the rhythmic clang of a buoy out in the bay, and a
click click click
she could almost, but not quite recognize.

She went over to the window and looked out just in time to see the neighbor’s eight-year-old son ride by on his bicycle, playing cards clipped to the spokes. Raine smiled, remembering having done the same thing so many years ago. Unfortunately, that was the week Ida had hosted her bridge club luncheon. Needless to say, her grandmother had not been pleased to discover the face cards missing.

The town was alive with signs of seasonal renewal: the watercolor colors of the flower beds in Pioneer Park could have washed off an Impressionist painting, and the blossoming fruit trees lining Harbor Street looked like giant pink-and-white lollipops. Looking out over the quaint town that resembled a Charles Wysocki painting of spring in New England, Raine thought that if there was a prettier place on the planet, she certainly hadn’t seen it. If she were ever to choose somewhere other than New York to live, she could do far worse than come home to Coldwater Cove.

Not that she wanted to, Raine reminded herself. Turning one’s back on the fast life and a lucrative urban law practice might be fine for Daniel O’Halloran, but not for her.

With that thought firmly etched in her mind, she took a quick shower, dried her hair, and went downstairs to the kitchen that smelled cheerily of just-brewed coffee. Her sister’s head was inside the refrigerator door.

“Good morning,” Raine greeted her.

“Good morning.” Savannah turned around. Her smile was as warm as ever, but smudges beneath her eyes hinted at a sleepless night. “Gram’s already out and about by the way. She said something about running by a friend’s to pick up some plant cuttings that Gwen was all excited about planting out back. She took the girls with her.”

“I assume Lilith’s still sleeping?” So much for her mother’s plan to make pancakes. Raine couldn’t quite keep the note of censure from her voice.

“We were up late. Besides, you know Lilith and her beauty sleep.”

“I know it certainly seems to have worked. Other than her hair, I don’t think she looks any different than she did when we were kids.”

“She may look the same, but she seemed less flamboyant than usual last night.”

Raine sighed and poured some coffee from the carafe into an earthenware mug handpainted with sunflowers. “That’s my fault. I got angry after the hearing and accused her of being selfish and irresponsible.”

“Of course she is,” Savannah said easily. “So, what else is new? Your problem is, Sister dear, that you’ve always expected her to suddenly turn into Mrs. Cleaver. Which isn’t going to happen in this lifetime…. You’ve got your choice between French toast or an omelet.”

“An omelet sounds great.” Raine couldn’t argue with Savannah’s perception of their mother. “But you don’t have to go to the trouble.”

“It’s no trouble.” She took a carton of eggs and a wedge of cheese out of the refrigerator. “Normally, I’d be cooking for a lot larger crowd than just family. Especially on the weekend.”

“It’s not fair,” Raine muttered. She took a sip of coffee and tasted cinnamon. “Having to give up a job you love because your husband was unfaithful.”

“I can always get another one.” Savannah began breaking eggs into a bright blue bowl.

“But you shouldn’t have to. You lost more than your marriage, Savannah. You lost your livelihood, a generous benefit plan, profit sharing. Not to mention that without you in the kitchen, the resort undoubtedly wouldn’t have earned nearly the profits, which makes you a valuable corporate asset. You know, you could always sue to keep your job. Since the company would undoubtedly settle just to avoid the negative publicity, the case wouldn’t even come to court.”

Savannah laughed at that. “Spoken like a born lawyer. I’m not going to fight Kevin to stay at a place where I’d have to work with him everyday.”

“I imagine that would be hard.” Since her sister didn’t seem eager to pursue legal measures, Raine didn’t mention that they could undoubtedly force the company to transfer the cheating rat to another resort. Preferably somewhere far away, like Timbuktu. Or Mars. When she found herself comparing her sister’s rat of a husband with Jack, Raine decided there was no comparison.

“It would certainly be difficult to resist throwing all my pots and pans at his head.” Savannah whisked the eggs with a bit more force than necessary.

“How are you doing? Really?” Raine asked carefully, remembering last night’s weeping.

“As well as can be expected. Actually, my pride is a lot more wounded than my heart. I mean, it’s not as if his sleeping around came as any great surprise.” She sighed as she sprinkled crushed dill into the eggs. “Our marriage has been rocky for a long time. I think the only thing keeping us together, other than my determination not to repeat our mother’s mistakes, was inertia.”

She began grating the cheese into the egg-and-dill mixture. “I knew if I left him that it’d cost me my job at Las Casitas. But since I haven’t exactly been happy there, either—”

“You haven’t?” This was one more surprise in a week of surprises. “I thought you loved your work.”

“I love cooking for people.” Savannah smiled back over her shoulder. “But the resort was so large and impersonal that it wasn’t what I’d imagined back when I went off to Paris for cooking school.” She opened a cupboard and found a shiny, copper-bottomed omelet pan that looked as if it had never been used. Given Ida’s lack of domestic skills, Raine suspected it hadn’t. “I’ve always had a fantasy of something more intimate.”

“Like our teas.”

Savannah flashed another of those smiles that was a twin of their glamorous mother’s. “Exactly.” Butter sizzled fragrantly in the pan, making Raine’s mouth water. “The past year I’ve been thinking of leaving the resort and opening up a small inn. Perhaps a bed-and-breakfast. I even looked for a building, but of course the real estate prices in Los Angeles were beyond my budget.”

She tilted the eggs from the bowl into the pan with a twist of the wrist. “So, on the drive home, it occurred to me that I should just look around here.”

“In Coldwater Cove?”

“Sure. The last couple times I’ve been back, I’ve been amazed at the amount of tourist business the town’s been getting during the summer, now that the Pacific Northwest’s become such a popular vacation spot. I was looking at the real estate ads in the paper before you came down and did some quick number crunching and I think, once Kevin and I divide up our assets, I should be able to swing buying a fixer-upper.”

Life was getting stranger and stranger. Raine was becoming more and more convinced that she’d tumbled down a rabbit hole and instead of landing in Coldwater Cove, had ended up in Wonderland.

“Do you even know
how
to renovate a house?”

“No. But I figure I can learn. The same way I learned to cook. The same way you learned to be a lawyer.”