With a finger to Phyllis’s lips, Caroline shushed her. “I can’t live with regrets.”

  Phyllis pulled Caroline’s ponytail around, running her fingers through the ends of it, smiling through her tears. “Your hair is so long….”

  “Randy liked it that way.”

  “I do, too.”

  “I like yours short.”

  “I always hated the color of my hair.”

  “Really?” Caroline grinned at her twin. “I loved mine. It was different.”

  “And being different mattered?” Phyllis’s eyes grew serious.

  “I was already different,” Caroline told her. “My hair was a difference I didn’t have to hide.”

  “I HAVE A SON. His name’s Jesse.” They’d spent the past hour and a half talking about their childhoods and teenage years. Which, for Caroline, led to Jesse.

  “A son?” Phyllis glanced around them as though, now that his name had been spoken, Jesse would magically appear. “Where is he?”

  “He’s seventeen and a student at Harvard.”

  “I have a nephew!” A huge smile accompanied Phyllis’s words. “He’s a genius and attending one of my old alma maters!” She sobered. “That’s why you and Randy married so young.”

  Nodding, Caroline wondered when her worth was going to diminish in her twin’s eyes. And how she was going to handle it.

  “I CAN’T WAIT for you to meet Calvin and Clarissa. Wait until I tell him that it was his aunt who saved his life!”

  “How do you think Matt’s going to react?”

  Phyllis gave her a hug, like the others she’d bestowed in the past hours, and Caroline soaked it up as though it were the first. She had a feeling every hug she received from her sister for as long as she lived would feel that way.

  “Matt already loves you,” she said softly in Caroline’s ear. “Just as I do.”

  “SO, YOU WANT TO TALK about twin studies?” Caroline asked sometime later when the first silence fell between them. She didn’t know about Phyllis, but she was overwhelmed. With what had already happened, and all that was still to come.

  “We have so much more to talk about,” Phyllis said. “Not the least of which is this.” She pointed down to Caroline’s protruding stomach.

  “I’m pregnant.”

  “I suspected as much. You don’t have enough weight on you anywhere else for that to be the result of lazy living.”

  Caroline nodded, bent her head.

  “You said your husband died last summer.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So it’s a pretty sure bet the baby isn’t his.”

  Caroline wanted to die. Phyllis’s reception of her had been more than she’d ever dared dream. And now, so soon, she had to step down in her sister’s eyes.

  “That’s right.”

  She felt Phyllis’s finger under her chin, lifting her face. “It’s okay,” Phyllis said. “This isn’t some small Kentucky town stuck in the Dark Ages. This is the twenty-first century and unmarried women have babies all the time.”

  “It wasn’t planned.”

  “That’s what I figured.”

  “It was a one-night fling.”

  “Caroline.” Phyllis smiled, raising her hand to kiss the back of it, holding it against her cheek. “In all that research you did about me, you must’ve missed something kind of important.” She made a face. “Not that I’d want this particular information broadcast, you understand.”

  “What?”

  “Calvin and Clarissa are the result of a one-time fling—on the sound board in the recording studio at Montford. I’d just met Matt that day….”

  “You’re kidding!” Caroline started to laugh. And to cry.

  She had no idea where life would lead her, but she had a pretty good idea that wherever it was, she wouldn’t be going there alone.

  At least not in spirit.

  THE LAST THING John expected when he pulled into his driveway Thursday at dinnertime was to see Caroline sitting on his front porch. He’d missed her truck parked across the street.

  “What’s up?” he called, leaving his car in the driveway.

  “Just wanted to talk for a minute, if that’s okay,” she said, her usual timidity mixed with a glow he didn’t recognize at all.

  “Sure,” he said, but his chest was tight as he led her inside. Something was going on and he was still trying to figure out how to deal with what he already knew. His discomfort was not diminished by the fact that he’d been thinking about calling her.

  Or by the little spark of pleasure he’d felt when he’d first seen her sitting there, looking cute in a pair of black cotton pants and a white blouse. She still didn’t wear makeup, but he was used to that now. He actually liked it.

  As though from long habit, she took her seat at the counter in his kitchen while John poured her a glass of juice.

  “I have some big news,” she said.

  “You’re having twins.” He was joking, of course, trying to introduce some levity.

  His heart dropped when she didn’t immediately express her horror at such a thought.

  “No,” she said. “That would’ve showed up on the ultrasound.”

  He’d forgotten about that.

  “But, as a matter of fact, this does have to do with twins.”

  She seemed different. And that was making him nervous as hell. “What do you mean?”

  “I am one.”

  “You’re one what?”

  “A twin.”

  “You said you were an only child.”

  “I also said I’m adopted.”

  True, she had.

  He’d never seen her so full of energy. It was making him edgy. Either that or scaring him, and he preferred edgy.

  “Maybe you should start at the beginning.”

  And when she did, John wished she hadn’t. In a way, the story was too fantastic to believe. And in another, it all made perfect sense. A far-too-intelligent woman trapped in a life that was suffocating her, in some backwoods town, grieving and alone. That woman finding a new lease on life, a new identity and doing everything she could to learn about her new life. It explained her obsession with the computer. Her Internet research skills.

  “That’s why you came to Frankfort. On account of Phyllis.” A part of him wanted her to deny it.

  “Yes.”

  “You were using me to get to her.” He didn’t love Caroline Prater. Didn’t feel anything for her, other than concern because she was pregnant with his child. Being used didn’t matter.

  The light that had been shining in her eyes since he’d first come home now dimmed. “John, it wasn’t like that.”

  It seemed pretty clear to him that it was. And really, this wasn’t a bad thing. He’d been worried about doing something ludicrous like starting to care for her. This nipped that little problem in the bud.

  “Can you honestly tell me you didn’t approach me with hopes of making some kind of contact, no matter how third-party, with your sister?”

  Her eyes dropped and he knew he had her. He was free. He’d won.

  So why didn’t he feel like celebrating?

  SHE SHOULD HAVE STAYED. Should have fought for herself. Fought harder for their friendship. All the way home, Caroline’s inner self berated her.

  And what could she have said? asked the woman who’d lived in Grainville all her life. He was right. She’d gone to him with one purpose in mind. To be close, however vicariously, to her sister.

  She could’ve told him all that had changed at some point during their dinner together in Frankfort. Except then she’d be acknowledging her feelings toward him—attraction at least—and that wasn’t their story about what had happened. They’d both been lonely, grieving, dreading the holidays. There’d been nothing personal. That was the version they’d recounted to each other and to anyone else they needed to tell.

  So, this division between them was for the best. Life had been getting too complicated. She’d slept in his bed one night the week before and missed it every night since. She thought of things to tell him all day long. And dreamed about that one kiss they’d shared not long ago…

  Pulling up in front of Mrs. Howard’s, she laid a hand on her belly.

  Sara would have her daddy. And Caroline would have her life. It was all working out just fine.

  PHYLLIS CALLED a little after seven to invite Caroline over for dinner. And to move in with them.

  Laughing, Caroline told her she had studying to do, but accepted an invitation to spend the weekend with her sister’s family, giving them a chance to get to know each other before they made any other offers.

  The second time the phone rang, she grabbed it instantly, hoping it was John.

  “Caro?”

  The bottom dropped out of her stomach when she heard the tears in her mother’s voice. “Hi, Ma. What’s wrong?”

  “He’s drinking again, Caro. Not just two or three like before you left, but all the time. He broke Gram’s old rocker last night, stumbling to the table for supper.”

  While her mother loved that old rocker, she wouldn’t have called just because of that. She wouldn’t have spent money on a long-distance call unless something life-threatening had happened.

  “He hit you today, didn’t he?” she asked, her throat tight with anger. And fear.

  She might be different from her adoptive mother, but she loved Grace with all her heart. And in spite of his illness, she loved her father, too.

  “Y-y-yesss…”

  Without any conscious awareness that she’d been considering it for weeks, Caroline made her decision.

  “It’s okay, Ma, I’ll come home. You go over to Mrytle’s and stay until I get there. And don’t worry, we’ll get help for Pop. He’ll be okay again, just like before.”

  “I know you don’t understand, Caro, but I love him so….”

  “I do understand, Ma,” she said softly. “I love him, too.”

  And if she was going to be the type of woman her sister could admire, the type of woman she could admire, she’d have to listen to her heart and do what she knew was right.

  With tears streaming down her face, Caroline pulled out her old bags and began filling them methodically. She’d go see Phyllis tonight; she couldn’t bear to leave without one more hug. She’d tell Mrs. Howard in the morning, just before she left. And call Montford to withdraw from her classes. If she drove twelve hours a day, she could make it home by Monday. She hoped her father wouldn’t go beating down Mrytle’s door before then.

  But if he was running true to form, he’d be on his best behavior for the next few days. He’d always been that way after he hit either one of them.

  And then there was Jesse to consider. If she was home in Grainville, with her parents, and Randy’s family, and all her friends who—once they’d recovered from their initial shock over what she’d done—would look after her, he’d stay in school.

  Her family needed her. She had to be there for them. It was all she knew how to do. It was who she was. It was who her sister would expect her to be.

  And if a small part of her was running away from a man who wanted for her what she’d always wanted for herself—to have the right to live the life she felt meant to live, to speak her mind and quit tempering her strengths—then so be it. John might want those things for her, but she was kidding herself if she thought he’d ever be available to insure that she got them. He wasn’t going to join the living again.

  When he’d buried his young wife, he’d dug his grave right beside Meredith’s.

  She had to get as far away from him as possible before she made the biggest mistake of her life and fell in love with a man who would never love her back.

  HER FIRST MONTH HOME, Caroline ached so badly she wasn’t sure she’d ever recover. The only joy in her life, other than the small flutters she was occasionally feeling, were her phone conversations with her sister. Phyllis called every other day. Without fail.

  “John was shocked that you’d left,” Phyllis had told her the first week. The night before she’d gone home, she’d confessed to Phyllis that John Strickland was Sara’s father.

  “Shocked that I left without telling him, maybe,” Caroline had returned, an unusual bitterness entering her voice. Maybe she had gone to Frankfort to meet him that first time because of Phyllis, but she certainly hadn’t made a baby to get close to her sister.

  The jerk should have been able to figure that out.

  After this particular conversation, Phyllis never mentioned John to her again.

  Which didn’t stop Caroline from thinking about him all the time. She’d thought they were friends. Real friends.

  Friends didn’t send checks in the mail to cover the expenses of having a baby. Friends attended doctor’s appointments and made plans for childbirth classes.

  But then, perhaps the fault was hers. In spite of all the warnings he’d given, all the protestations she herself had made, she’d begun to think of John as more than just a friend.

  HE DIDN’T WANT TO GO. The annual end-of-term barbecue at the Parsons’s home was something he’d looked forward to last year. He and Lauren had officially announced their wedding date that night. He’d supposed his coming marriage would bring him the peace and contentment his friends all seemed to feel. Instead, the announcement had only increased the sensation of a rope tightening around his throat.

  One beer into this year’s event, he stood out in Will’s barbecue gazebo, where he’d wandered hoping for a few minutes of less frenetic energy. Keeping his friend company while he cooked, John glanced over at the redheaded woman who’d followed him, a determined glint in her eye.

  “Her son is staying at Harvard for the summer session,” she told him.

  He nodded, hoping Phyllis would take the hint and go away. Caroline Prater’s life was no business of his.

  “Her father’s still drinking.”

  “Maybe they should take him to AA.”

  “They have. It’s taking longer this time, but she won’t give up on him.”

  That sounded like her.

  Docile on the surface she might have been, but underneath, Caroline Prater was made of steel.

  “The doctor says the baby’s growing just fine.”

  He nodded, already in possession of that information. Carolyn had written a short note when she’d first returned to Grainville, giving him both her contact information and that of her doctor. He’d figured it was her way of keeping their agreement to allow him involvement in his daughter’s life.

  In any case, he’d called the doctor immediately, and he did so after every appointment.

  “She’s hoping, after Sara’s born, to enroll in a community college about fifty miles from the farm. She likes their day-care facility.”

  And would she be driving that old truck fifty miles each way through winter storms?

  “She put an ad in a Louisville paper, trying to find someone to run the farm for her until she gets back on her feet.”

  John spun to the side, facing Phyllis directly. “What do you want from me?” The question was delivered more harshly than he’d intended.

  His friend didn’t flinch. “What do you want for yourself?” she asked, then turned and walked away.

  Just like a damned psychologist, full of questions but offering no answers.

  SHE’D HAD NO RIGHT to take his unborn child so far away from him. About the only contact he could possibly have with his daughter at this point was her heartbeat at the end of a stethoscope and she’d robbed him of that. She’d had no right. Sara was as much his child as hers.

  She had no right to take his unborn child away….

  The litany got John to the airport, down the jetway to his seat, through the car rental line and down the long, deserted country road into Grainville. He drove through the town and back out the other side to take another long, deserted country road to the address she’d given him more than four weeks before.

  She had no right to take his unborn child away propelled him down the dirt path that served as her driveway, out of his car and up the rickety wood steps to her peeling front door.

  He raised his hand to knock. Hesitated.

  She had no right to take—

  “John?”

  He swung around. Dressed in the flower-stitched denim outfit he’d seen her wearing the day she’d come from shopping in Phoenix, with her hair up in its usual ponytail, Caroline was sitting on an old porch swing that looked like it might break at any moment.

  “You had no right to take my unborn child so far away from me.”

  Smooth, Strickland.

  “I know. I probably wouldn’t have done it, but my family needed me.”

  And he didn’t. And her family came first. He understood both facts.

  “I let you down.” It was hard for him to admit.

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “Yes, I did. I took the first out you gave me.”

  “You were honest with me from the beginning.”

  The Kentucky air was cool compared to Arizona, yet it felt oppressively warm.

  “I told you what I needed to believe at the time. I don’t know anymore if it was right.”

  He wanted to sit down. To ask for a glass of iced tea. Or a piece of pie. The place called for it—and for all the other things that he was sure had gone on here for years and years. Family things. Bonding things. Real things.

  Grainville was in the middle of nowhere. A backward town. Lacking money and success and class. But it was peaceful. There was a sense of life, of continuity, as though things didn’t end, the way they did in his world. Even the dust held memories.

  It seemed to remember the footsteps of her husband, the laughter of her son, the wail of a cow giving birth.

  He was tired. Losing his mind.

  “Can I get you some tea? I made some this morning. I got it out just as the sun was coming up so it’s steeped just right.”

  “That sun tea you told me about? Yes, I’d like some, thank you.”

  He waited outside, standing there on her warped wood porch, an interloper, on the outside of something he couldn’t see into. Something bigger than he’d ever known before.