She answers on the first ring.
“What’s wrong?”
“Bad news,” Anne says.
“I gathered that much. What is it?”
Anne pauses, and while Tessa can appreciate her assistant’s flair for drama in the editing room, she bites her tongue when faced with it in real life.
“We got a message from the first lady’s team. On the office line.”
Tessa drops her head into her hand.
She doesn’t need Anne to tell her they’ve been fired. Good news goes to cell phones. Bad news, though, only bad news is delivered via an office line on a weekend when no one is around to take the call.
“Let me guess. After careful consideration, they’ve decided to go in a different direction?”
“Got it in one.”
More words stream from Anne, but Tessa isn’t listening. This is what she deserves. What difference does her professional reputation make, given what the Winters family is going through?
But it’s a jagged pill to swallow. Her work. Her life. Like a bad magician, Oliver has pulled the tablecloth out, and everything is crashing to the floor.
“Tessa? Are you there?”
“Yes,” she says quietly into the phone. “I’ll call you back, Anne.”
Her assistant is still talking when Tessa ends the call.
Vaguely, she realizes the shower hasn’t stopped. The biscuit sitting next to her coffee is still warm. Very little time has passed, but everything feels different. If yesterday had the surreal sensation of a fevered nightmare, today a stark reality is setting in.
A knock on the apartment door rouses her from the immobility that’s taken hold of her limbs, and she drags herself to answer it on autopilot.
If she were thinking, she’d realize she’s not expecting anyone and the chances of opening the door to a reporter while still in her pajamas with sleep-tangled hair are better than average.
But when she unlocks the door and swings it open, Tessa’s mouth drops. She can’t find her voice.
It’s not a reporter. It’s Margot.
Margot is here.
Tessa drinks in the sight of her sister. In an instant, she comprehends how much of herself she left behind when they parted. There’s been a hollow place at the center of her she’s carried ever since.
But there’s no time to dwell on either the magnitude of that loss or the sensation the sight of her sister brings, the tingling rush of lifeblood into a limb whose circulation has been blocked.
Because something is wrong.
One look at her sister, her face drawn and haggard, hair a cloud of unruly curls around her shoulders, her eyes puffy from tears, and Tessa understands immediately that something is very, very wrong.
Margot reaches out to grasp her without a word, pulling Tessa into a tight embrace that won’t allow her to hide the way her body is shaking. Tessa can do nothing but hold on for dear life.
Whatever horrible thing has brought Margot to her door, Tessa’s not sure if she has the strength to face it.
“Margot . . .” she whispers. It’s a question. One she doesn’t want to hear the answer to.
Her twin sister clutches her tightly, and Tessa flashes to the night their lives changed forever when they were ten years old. A single-car accident on an icy road. A policeman at the door. They’d clung to one another while their mother collapsed in the doorway in her pale blue nightgown.
Margot says the words she dreads. Her heart is already breaking.
“It’s Mom, Tess.”
Like in her dream, Tessa is falling. The wind is rushing past, and all she can do is brace herself for the impact.
“She’s gone. She died in her sleep last night. They think it was a heart attack.”
Tessa’s mouth opens and pulls in a sharp, involuntary gasp, absorbing the blow as it lands.
Footsteps sound in her ears and, with a sinking sensation, Tessa realizes she’s not done falling yet.
“Margot?” Ben is standing behind them. The look of concern on his face doesn’t negate the fact that he’s wearing nothing but a towel around his waist, his hair wet from the shower.
Her sister’s grip on her loosens, and Tessa opens her mouth to speak, but it’s too late. Margot’s face has gone slack and white. Tessa sees the exact moment her confusion gives way to understanding and, in that moment, Tessa loses her sister all over again.
This time maybe for good.
Margot backs away from the scene she’s stumbled into, shaking her head like she’s been punched. Tessa reaches for her, but Margot bats her hand away.
“No, Margot, it’s not . . .”
What’s she going to say? It’s not what it looks like? Who would believe that tired old line anyway?
“Don’t,” Margot says, shaking her head again.
“What’s happened?” Ben asks, slower to comprehend the monumental shift taking place beneath their feet. He takes a step toward Margot, but she backs up so quickly she bumps against the wall in the hallway outside Tessa’s door.
He stops, shocked by her reaction, then the realization of where they are sinks in and his face changes. He glances down at his own bare chest and the towel slung around his waist.
“Margot,” he says. “You don’t understand—”
“I said don’t! Don’t talk to me.” She holds up a hand and Ben falters.
“I should go,” Margot mumbles, more to herself than to either Tessa or Ben. “I . . . I’m going now.”
She turns and flees down the hallway, bypassing the elevators and heading for the stairwell.
“Margot!” Ben rushes past Tessa, gripping his towel to keep it from falling. “Margot!”
But it’s too late. The door slams behind Margot and she’s gone, leaving both her sister and her husband in her wake.
Tessa crumples to the floor. Their mother is dead. And Margot will never forgive her.
8
KITTY
“I’ll never forgive you for this!”
Kitty, seated on a creaky piano bench in the deteriorating old house, turns to watch the drama play out, just as it did once before. The intervening years peel away, and the mold and rot fade into the background, giving way to the warmth of polished wood and the smell of pipe tobacco.
Fallbrook comes alive, at least in Kitty’s mind, along with the souls of those who once called it home.
The Cooke family. Their voices carry the hollow echo of time passed.
Ruby Cooke, the eldest daughter, is young still, already showing signs she’ll become a beauty one day, but her pretty mouth is tight and her eyes hot with indignation.
“Papa, it’s not my fault,” cries her younger sister, Cora, while Ruby drags her forward with an iron grip upon her arm.
The sisters, bedraggled and dripping with dirty water and pond muck, stand in the library, presenting themselves before their father’s pristine mahogany desk. A puddle forms beneath their feet.
As daughters of the big house, they don’t have the immediate sense of having crossed a line, but the Donnelly children, who stand behind them, are servants. At times like this, it hardly matters that they form one band of roving children who wander the grounds together. In the presence of Everett Cooke, the Donnellys know their place.
The youngest of the lot, little Peter Cooke, stands in the back as well. He’s only four, but he’s recognized the look on his father’s face and grips Aiden’s hand as he tries to hide himself behind the older boy’s legs. Ruby, however, doesn’t notice the storm brewing on her father’s face. She’s concerned only with tossing her sister to the wolves.