Chapter Three

Chapter Three

Sophia would have far rather stayed home and spent time on the phone with Hunter on Sunday morning, but then again, she didn’t want an outdoor wedding either.

“What you want and what you get are two different things,” she murmured, quoting one of her grandmother’s favorite sayings.

The old girl had been tough on Sophia, but not any more so than she’d been on Clara. They had to share a room in the little apartment behind the lobby desk until they were sixteen. Sophia thought about their birthday that year as she applied her makeup. Mama Lizzy had told them that they could have their own room in the hotel for their special birthday present, but it had to be on the second floor. Her reasoning was that the ground floor had to be saved for folks who couldn’t climb stairs.

“Yeah, right,” Sophia said with a giggle. Her grandmother hadn’t fooled her one bit. If her room had been on the ground floor, sneaking out the doors and through the wrought-iron gate at the back of the courtyard would have been easier than on the second floor.

But she had been so excited to have a full bed instead of a twin size, and to put her personal things on a whole dresser without having to split it down the middle and share it with Clara. But that night she had lain awake until almost dawn, feeling as if someone had died and things would never be the same again.

A knock on her door brought her out of the past and into the here and now. “Clara?” she called out.

“Nope, it’s me,” Lizzy answered, and then peeked into the bedroom. “Do you feel like a teenager again in your very own room with a balcony?”

“Little bit,” Sophia answered. “Why did you put us on the second floor when you gave us our own rooms?”

“So you wouldn’t sneak out at night,” Lizzy answered. “Besides, I thought you’d enjoy having a balcony. Breakfast is on the bar. I’ve already eaten, and we’ve had a change of plans. My friend is picking me up here, so you can ride with Clara.”

She was gone before Sophia could say that she’d rather drive her own vehicle. She tucked her cell phone into the pocket of her silk pajama bottoms and headed downstairs. When she reached the lobby her phone rang. She fished it out and smiled when she saw that Hunter was calling.

“Good mornin’, darlin’,” she said. “I miss you so, so much, and I’ve only been away from you for a few days.”

“I miss you too,” he said, but there was something in his voice that didn’t sound right.

“Is everything okay in the big city?” she asked.

“Not really, but I don’t want to discuss it on the phone. I’ll be there tomorrow about noon and we’ll talk face-to-face,” he answered. “Lots has happened since you’ve been gone.”

“Is this about us?” Her heart felt as if it had turned to stone. Hunter was the love of her life, and if he broke up with her now, she would never get over it.

“We are fine, darlin’. I love you, but I’ve got to go now,” he said. “Lots to do today so I can come to Dogwood and spend some time with you.”

“Okay, then, I’ll see you about noon tomorrow,” she told him.

The call ended.

The worrying began.

Five years ago she and Hunter had gone to work at the same time for the Big Red Oil Corporation in Houston. They flirted for a few months, and then he asked her out, and it was all history from then on. They worked together on jobs that involved all kinds of PR work, setting up events, managing travel arrangements, and even supervising the promotional crew for the huge business. For the past two years they had lived together, and right after the new year they had put a down payment on a condo that would be ready when they came home from their honeymoon. Everything had gone exactly according to their plans, except, of course, for the actual wedding. Surely nothing could be wrong, could it?

“Good mornin’,” Clara said.

Sophia whipped around at the sound of her sister’s voice right behind her. “You shouldn’t sneak up on people like that.”

“I didn’t,” Clara protested. “What’s got you in a tizz this morning? You look like the weight of the world is on your shoulders. Are you still wishing that you didn’t have to share your wedding day with me?”

“Yes, but that’s not what’s on my mind today,” Sophia admitted. “Hunter called and he’s coming to Dogwood tomorrow.”

Clara started walking toward the kitchen. “And that’s a bad thing?”

Sophia followed her across the lobby, through the dining room and into the kitchen. “No, it’s wonderful, but he only has enough vacation days for our honeymoon. I had extra days because I haven’t taken any time off for the last five years. He talked like he would be here from now until the wedding.”

Clara opened the lid of a stainless-steel warmer to find pancakes and bacon. “Maybe he really had more time and he wanted to surprise you.”

Sophia picked up a plate, stacked pancakes on it, and then added several strips of bacon. “I’ve seen his payroll stubs and they show exactly how much time he has accumulated.”

Clara poured two cups of coffee, set them on the table, and then fixed her own plate. “You really are nervous, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am, but how can you tell?” Sophia asked.

“Food is our go-to for comfort when we’re sad or when we’re nervous,” Clara reminded her.

Sophia set her plate on the table and eased down into a chair. “I figure stress eats calories.”

“If that’s the truth, then we should both be five pounds lighter than we are now by the time we get married,” Clara teased as she joined her sister.

“Do you ever wonder how our lives would have turned out different if our mother had stuck around?” Sophia asked.

“Not so much now that I’m grown, but I used to think about it a lot,” Clara answered. “Especially . . .” She paused and blushed.

“Go on,” Sophia said.

“My freshman year in college,” Clara said, and then stopped to take a bite of her pancakes.

Sophia pointed her fork at her sister. “You’re stalling by putting food in your mouth, because if Mama Lizzy catches us talking with a mouthful, we’ll be in big trouble.”

Clara finally swallowed and then took a sip of coffee. “How is it that we revert to being kids when we come home to this hotel? I live in my own apartment in Palestine. I’m a loan officer in a really big bank and people respect me, but when I’m here I feel like I have to obey the rules.”

“Remember that song that talks about always being seventeen in your hometown?” Sophia asked.

Clara nodded. “Yes, I do, but I believe we’re always ten years old in the Dogwood Inn.”

“You got that right, sister,” Sophia agreed. “Despite the way we feel about it, I hate to see Mama Lizzy sell the place. It’s been in the family for decades.”

“Yep.” Clara nodded again. “It’s a sturdy old girl, and I fear that whoever buys it will destroy the vintage feel. I bet the first thing the new owners do is put in an elevator and tear off all the wallpaper.”

“And take out the four-poster beds and make everything all modern,” Sophia added.

“Oh! My! Sweet! Lord!” Clara gasped.

“What?” Sophia glanced at both of her shoulders. There weren’t many things in the world that terrified her, but spiders did, and the look on her sister’s face said there might be one about to crawl onto her neck.

“It’s nothing to do with you,” Clara said quickly. “I just got a vision of new owners ripping all the dogwood trees out of the courtyard.”

“No!” Sophia clamped a hand over her mouth. “Those trees have been there longer than the hotel itself. Mama Lizzy said they built this place around the dogwoods to keep from cutting them down. Maybe when she sells the place she could put a condition in the contract that says the trees can’t be touched.”

“That’s a good idea,” Clara agreed.

We just agreed on something,Sophia thought. That’s the first in a very long time.

* * *

Clara slid into the pew beside Trevor and kissed him on the cheek. “Good mornin’, darlin’.”

“It is now that you’re here.” Trevor smiled and took her hand in his.

Your romance is all sticky-sweet now, but what happens after ten years?the pesky voice in Clara’s head asked.

She had never had a single doubt about marrying Trevor—until that moment. Of all the places, it had to happen in church. She remembered the unfinished conversation she had had that morning with her sister, when she had almost confessed to understanding their mother a little better. She was a college freshman when she had a big pregnancy scare herself. She had already broken up with her boyfriend and had to sweat it out alone for a week before she had enough nerve to take a test. She still got queasy when she thought about how she’d felt that day as she waited the few minutes for the results of the test to show up. During that week she came to understand her mother better than she ever had before. When the test showed a negative line she went to the doctor the next day and got birth control pills.

Sophia nudged her on the shoulder and whispered, “You were going to tell me something about our mother at breakfast, and then we got off on a tangent about new owners for the hotel.”

“Later,” Clara whispered. “Have you figured out why Hunter is coming so soon?”

“Nope, but his tone told me it’s not good,” Sophia answered.

Lizzy leaned up from the pew behind them and tapped Clara on the shoulder. “Shhh . . . you can talk when you get home.”

Clara winked at Sophia, and she held up five fingers. Clara knew what she meant. They might be seventeen in their hometown and ten years old in the hotel, but in church they were only five. Thinking back to when they were that age caused Clara to realize that sitting side by side on a pew was one of the only times that they whispered without arguing. Did that mean there were magic powers in church—in addition to numb bottoms by the time the sermon was finished?

That morning the preacher began by reading the whole twenty-third psalm. Clara listened while he read all the verses, but soon after that she went into la-la land as Sophia had called it when they were kids. That was the place where she blanked out everything around her and sank down deep into her own thoughts. And there was no way her sister could make her believe that she hadn’t taken trips down the path to that land either.

La-la land that particular Sunday meant pondering whether she was getting cold feet about being married. Was it normal to worry about something that might—or might not—happen ten years down the road? When the preacher asked Trevor to deliver the benediction she still didn’t have a clear answer. She needed some time alone to sort it all out.

Everyone stood up and began shaking hands with their neighbors and friends, but before things got too noisy, she whispered to Trevor, “Sophia is having a tough time today and I feel like she needs me. Would it upset the family too much if I took a rain check on dinner?”

“Darlin’, you do whatever you need to do,” Trevor answered and kissed her on the forehead. “But you have to be there next week because the folks tell me they have a surprise for us that day.”

Clara gave him a quick hug. “Do you know what it is?”

“Nope,” he replied. “But they say we’re going to love it.”

“I hope your grandma is making her famous brownies,” Clara said. “We both love those. Maybe she’s even making an extra pan for us to freeze for the first night in our house.”

“Might be, but I get the feeling it’s something bigger. Call me later,” Trevor said and then disappeared into the crowd with his family.

“Aren’t we going out to the ranch?” Sophia asked.

Clara shook her head. “We took a rain check for next Sunday. Let’s go into Palestine and eat the buffet at the pizza place, and then go to the ice cream store and have banana splits for dessert. We’re both under stress, so that should burn off all the fat grams, and we’ll vent for a couple of hours.”

“I’ve got a better idea,” Sophia said. “Let’s order the pizza for takeout and go back to the hotel. We can eat it out in the courtyard, and you can tell me what you were going to say about our mother.”

“I’ll agree if we can stop on the way and get a quart of rocky road ice cream,” Clara said.

“And a quart of orange sherbet,” Sophia added.

Clara chuckled.

Sophia rolled her eyes. “We might be friends someday, but honey, we’re too old to be the kind of twins who feel pain when the other one hurts.”

“We weren’t raised to be like that.” Clara looped her arm in Sophia’s. “Mama Lizzy raised each of us to be our own, independent person.”

Sophia patted her sister’s hand. “Do you think she raised our mother like that?”

“I don’t,” Clara answered. “From what little I’ve learned through the years, Mama Lizzy and our grandfather were superstrict with Mother and she rebelled against it. She must have been about sixteen when he passed away, and that’s when she really hit a rebellious streak. I believe that Mama Lizzy felt guilty about the way things turned out, and when she took us to raise she tried a different method.”

* * *

Sophia put the ice cream and sherbet in the freezer and then joined Clara in the courtyard. Her sister already had the pizza box open and was scarfing down her first piece. She motioned for Sophia to sit down and twisted the tops off the two beers that were sitting on the table.

A soft breeze ruffled the first few blossoms on the dogwood trees that surrounded the courtyard. A cardinal came to rest on the cast-iron gate that led from the back side of the U-shaped yard into the alley. Everything seemed peaceful except in Sophia’s heart and mind.

She would be so glad when the wedding was done and over with, so that she could go home to Houston and begin her life as Hunter’s wife, but . . .

Why does there have to be a but?she asked herself.

“Do all brides get cold feet and have second thoughts?” Sophia whispered as she sat down across from her sister.

“I don’t know about every woman, but this one right here is feeling a little chill on her toes,” Clara answered.

“You?” Sophia almost choked on a bite of pizza. “You’ve always had things so lined up and in order. I can’t believe you would have a single second thought in your head.”

“What if,” Clara said in a low voice, as if she was afraid the cardinal might carry tales, “ten years down the road I have regrets, or worse yet, what if Trevor does? What if, after I have children, I get fat and he doesn’t love me anymore? From what I’ve read, kids change more than just a woman’s body. They change relationships. What if Trevor and I don’t grow together but we grow apart? I love him too much to cause him that kind of pain.”

Sophia could hardly believe her sister was confiding in her, or that Clara was echoing some of her own thoughts and fears. “I saw a meme the other day on the Internet—I can’t quote it exactly, but the idea was that in a relationship, true love doesn’t happen by accident. It requires deliberate effort and takes work, but in the end it’s worth it. You and Trevor won’t grow apart. You kind of share one root, and it will just keep getting deeper and deeper.”

“That helps,” Clara said, “but are you preaching to me or to yourself?”

“Maybe both of us,” Sophia admitted. “Until Hunter gets here tomorrow I’ll probably keep feeling like the other shoe is about to drop.”

“What if the other shoe is that Hunter is about to call off the wedding because it’s too hick town for him?” Clara asked. “Or if one of his old loves has come back into his life and he’s figured out that she’s his soulmate?”

“Hunter is not that kind of man. I could hear worry in his voice, but he dearly loves Mama Lizzy, so I don’t believe he would do something that mean.” Sophia took a sip of the beer and then picked up a slice of pizza.

“If you’re wrong, I have no problem with you two getting married in some fancy venue,” Clara said. “Trevor and I can fly out to Vegas for a weekend and get married.”

“Thanks, but the invitations have been sent, and if I’m wrong about him on this, evidently I don’t know him at all and maybe we should postpone the wedding,” Sophia said between bites. “Let’s talk about what you said this morning.”

“Have you ever been late and sweated it out until you found out you weren’t pregnant?” Clara asked.

“Nope,” Sophia answered. “I take my pill faithfully. After what happened with our mother and our birth, I’m terrified of having children. What if it’s in our genes not to love our children? After all, she gave birth to us and Mama Lizzy says she didn’t even want to hold us. As soon as she could, she left town and never came back, not even one time. I wonder if she even asked Mama Lizzy for pictures of us, or if she just pretended that we never happened. Her obituary didn’t list any children, just that Elizabeth Delaney was her mother.”

Clara finished off her first slice and took several gulps of her beer. “What if she didn’t come back because she had regrets and couldn’t bear to face us?”

“I never thought of it that way,” Sophia answered, “but I will admit that even though we can’t complain about our lives, I was really mad at her for a long time. Other kids had a mother to bring cupcakes to school parties, and they lived in houses with yards and neighbors with kids.”

The cardinal finally flew away and a blackbird took its place.

Clara finished off her beer and stood up. “We had a Mama Lizzy who brought the fanciest cupcakes, made by her chef here at the hotel, to our parties. We had a courtyard where we pretended that our dolls were princesses and we were queens. And who needed neighborhoods when we had a new group of guests to dote on us every few days?”

“I guess we are twins after all. You are the light side in more ways than just your blond hair and I’ve got the dark streak. You saw the good in being raised in a hotel and I remember the downside,” Sophia said.

Clara patted her sister on the shoulder. “Everyone has two spirits. No one is totally good or totally bad, except maybe for the folks who have severe mental disorders. Kind of like our flavors of ice cream.”

“How’s that?” Sophia asked.

“Basically, I try to find the good in everything, but sometimes I let doubts and fears creep in. Your dark side has a light side that has hope written on it. I like rocky road, which is dark. You like orange sherbet, which is light. Does that make sense?”

“More than you think,” Sophia answered. “Speaking of ice cream?”

“I can agree with you on that.” Clara stood up. “I’ll bring it out here. One scoop or two?”

“Three,” Sophia said, “and you’d better be right about stress destroying calories and fat grams.”