LITMIR.BIZ

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that you didn’t insist on a new condom the second time around. We make little subconscious choices all the time and then act on them without even knowing that’s what we’re doing.”

      It was Juliet’s turn to use the silent treatment. Mostly because she was speechless.

      “You know,” Marcie continued, “like when you pull into the parking lot of an ice-cream shop without even realizing that you were hungry for ice cream.”

      “I hardly think craving a hot-fudge sundae can be in any way likened to having a baby.” She pulled off her pumps, one by one.

      “The brain’s ability to see to the needs of the subconscious can be the same in both cases.”

      None of this was making sense. And it wasn’t anything she’d needed, or expected, when she’d dialed her twin’s number. “Is Hank there?”

      “No.” Of course not. It was Thursday and Hank worked late at the hardware store on Thursdays doing inventory.

      With one hand, and leaning from side to side where she sat, Juliet pulled off her panty hose, wadded them and tossed them in the wire-framed designer laundry basket in a corner of the closet.

      “So you’re accusing me of going out that night with some thought in the back of my mind that it was time to get pregnant?”

      “No! Of course not, Jules.” Marcie’s voice gentled. “I know you better than that. I’m only saying that when the proper circumstances presented themselves, you acted on them. You were with a man who attracted you. He was intelligent and confident enough to argue with you, he was gorgeous, he was from a stable family well known for honest dealings, and—the crèmede la crème—he was leaving the country for an indefinite period of time! There’d be no one to get in touch with, to answer questions from, to avoid, or to call. No one to turn to in case you got cold feet about going it alone.”

      “You actually think I thought all that through?”

      “No. But I think the sense of freedom spoke to you.” Juliet’s heart sank when it became obvious that Marcie wasn’t going to budge on this one. Usually when that happened she was at least partially correct.

      The laugh track sounded again.

      Except for her insistence on staying in Maple Grove.

      Juliet started unfastening the buttons on her blouse. “Can I have some time to think about this?”

      “In other words, you want me to shut up and never mention it again?”

      “Yeah.”

      “Only if you promise to…no, forget that. Yeah, I’ll let it go.”

      “Only if I promise to what?”

      “Nothing.”

      “What?” Her blouse hung half-open.

      “I was just going to say that I promise to leave this alone if you’d quit worrying about Hank and Maple Grove.”

      That wasn’t fair. Marcie’s happiness was at stake. “I—”

      “Don’t say it,” Marcie interrupted. “You don’t need to. I know you can’t stop.”

      “I just—”

      “I know, Jules,” she said, her voice low. “Truth is, I’m not even sure I want you to stop.”

      Juliet froze, afraid to hope. “You mean it, Marce? You’re actually thinking about moving here?” Her heart rate sped up as she ran through the possibilities.

      “Not really,” Marcie’s reply wasn’t as disappointing as it might have seemed. It wasn’t the adamant no that was all she’d ever issued in the past. “I just don’t want you to quit asking. It’s good to know I have a place to go.”

      “Always, sis.”

      “Yeah. Still, it’s good to hear, you know?”

      Juliet did know. After losing everything they had to go live in squalor in a trailer the size of one of their bedrooms at home, security had gained a pretty high spot on the priority list of both girls. Right beneath the need to provide it for themselves.

      In the space of a weekend, she and Marce had gone from living in a San Francisco mansion with every possible luxury and socially prominent parents to a rusty, skinny, two-bedroom trailer in Maple Grove with a broken woman who had no training, no marketable skills and not enough esteem to pull herself up. They’d left behind the man who’d lost his fortune and found himself a rich woman who was happy to keep him in the style to which he’d grown accustomed in exchange for his company. The man who’d come home one Friday afternoon to bid a cold adieu to the wife he’d grown to hate and to the children he’d never wanted and didn’t intend to see again.

      Juliet could still remember the moment when, thinking that she could solve everything by wrapping her skinny arms around the man she’d adored and telling him that she’d help him get his money back, her father had shoved her away so hard she’d landed on her butt on the ground.

      “You going to tell me what kind of criminal Mary Jane’s father is?” Marcie asked when the line hung silent.

      “He’s been harboring illegally gained money in a bank account in the Cayman Islands.”

      “No way.”

      “I know,” Juliet said, shrugging out of her blouse and leaving it on the floor beside her. “I couldn’t believe it, either. I’m still not sure I do, but the evidence is pretty conclusive. Eaton James gave me the account number today just before lunch along with paperwork showing who opened the account. It’s in Blake’s name.”

      “Oh, God.”

      “Yeah, and it was opened during a period of time he already admitted to being in the islands.”

      “Damn.”

      That was exactly what Juliet thought.

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      “HAVE YOU CALLED HIM?” Marcie’s question started the butterflies fluttering around inside her again. She’d spent the past hour telling her twin about the day’s events, the shocking developments in a trial of which she’d thought herself in complete control.

      Juliet lay in her bed, pillows propped up behind her, the comforter pulled to her hips. Darkness, broken by a moonlit glow from the open shutters, gave the room a sleepy feel.

      “I have no reason to call him,” she said aloud, something she’d been repeating to herself since Eaton James had delivered his startling testimony that afternoon. “I hardly know the man.”

      “You had dinner with him two weeks ago.”

      She wished she’d never told her sister that.

      “And very clearly said a permanent goodbye,” she muttered.

      “But you were there in the courtroom. You heard the whole thing. And, even if you haven’t spent many hours with him, you did fill those hours with some…fairly intimate communication.”

      “We had sex.” They’d also had a baby. But since he didn’t know that, it didn’t count. Did it?

      “Do you want to call him?”

      “Dammit, Marce, can’t you just leave me in blissful self-deception for a while?”

      “If that’s what you wanted, you wouldn’t have called me.” Her sister said. And then added, “Would you?” with a little less confidence.

      “No, I wouldn’t have. I rely on the absolute honesty between us,” she admitted. “I always have.”

      “Okay. So…why do you want to call him?”

      Juliet sighed, ran a hand through hair that was loose and falling free around her face. “I don’t know. I just feel

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