That Night on Thistle Lane

With her painting skills and eye for color, Olivia had been a huge help, but The Farm at Carriage Hill and her new life with Dylan were creating uncertainties for her. Phoebe had welcomed having Maggie and then Olivia move back to Knights Bridge, but that didn’t mean more changes weren’t coming. Change was inevitable, Phoebe thought. Her own life was more settled than the lives of her sisters and most of her friends. Her job at the library was secure. She had no plans to move, go into business for herself or get involved with a man.

Five years from now, her life would likely look more or less as it did now.

“Just without an avocado-green refrigerator in my kitchen,” she muttered happily as she headed down the curving stone walk with her wine.

The narrow clapboards of her small house were painted classic white. At Olivia’s suggestion, Phoebe had chosen a warm, welcoming green for the front door. It was framed by pink roses that she’d pruned and trained to climb up the white-painted trellis by the porch steps. When she’d moved in, the yard was an overgrown mess. She didn’t have Olivia’s green thumb, but she’d nonetheless managed to save many of the shrubs and perennials that had come with the property.

As she started up the steps to the small, covered porch, she saw that her twin sisters had arrived ahead of her. They were seated on wicker chairs that Phoebe had reclaimed and painted white, adding cushions in a mix of pink, blue and white flowers. Ava and Ruby, at twenty-three the youngest of the O’Dunn sisters, were fraternal twins, but they were so much alike that people often assumed they were identical. In both appearance and temperament, they took after their late father, Patrick O’Dunn, an auburn-haired, green-eyed, gorgeous-looking dreamer, as hopelessly impractical as the widow he’d left behind almost ten years ago.

“Thanks for coming,” Phoebe said as she unlocked the front door. “Olivia and Maggie will be here any minute.”

“This is going to be so much fun,” Ruby said, tucking a pink rose blossom behind her ear. She had on a long black skirt and a white tank top, her short, wavy hair dyed a purple-black that made her skin seem even paler, more translucent. “We brought all our goodies. Makeup, wigs, hairpieces, curling iron, needles and thread. We’ve already done up a half-dozen masks. Three are simple. You’d be able to recognize whoever’s wearing them. Three are more elaborate. It’d be tougher to recognize who’s wearing them.”

Ava smiled. “We will not fail you.” She twirled a rose stem in her fingertips. Her hair was its natural reddish brown, trailing down her back in a loose ponytail. Her skirt, which came to just above her knees, was a deep, warm red that worked surprisingly well with her turquoise lace top. “A masquerade ball in Boston. It doesn’t get much fancier than that.”

Phoebe pushed open the door. “Dylan has extra tickets if you want to go.”

“I wish,” Ava said wistfully, tossing her rose over the porch rail into the grass. “We have to work, and classes start again next week.”

“Otherwise we’d go in a heartbeat,” Ruby added.

No doubt they would, Phoebe thought. “It does sound grand,” she said as she led them inside. “Maggie and Olivia are counting on your theatrical flair. What do you think of Maggie in the blue gown Grace Kelly wore in To Catch a Thief and Olivia in Audrey Hepburn’s black dress from Breakfast at Tiffany’s?”

Ava turned, intrigued. “Do you have the dresses?”

Phoebe nodded. “I have the dresses.”

“Oh, wow. Excellent. Ruby?”

“Grace’s icy-blue chiffon gown? Audrey’s little black dress?” Ruby laughed. “That’s fantastic.”

“I even have pearls and a cigarette holder,” Phoebe said.

“Where did you get them?” Ava asked.

“I’m thinking of including them in our vintage fashion show,” Phoebe said evasively. Her sisters followed her into the kitchen, where she put the wine in the refrigerator, a relic that, somehow, still worked.

Ava leaned against the counter, a cheap wood that Phoebe had painted creamy white, her first renovation when she’d moved in. “So, Phoebe,” Ava said, crossing her arms on her chest. “Have you decided what you’re wearing?”

Phoebe got out wineglasses and set them on the cracked Formica counter, sidestepping her sister’s question. The twins were in graduate school—Ava in New York, Ruby in Boston—but they were spending the summer in Knights Bridge, living at home to save money. They had student loans that would take years if not decades to pay off, and big dreams that might never pay off, but Phoebe hoped everything would work out for them, believed in them. She knew they felt the same way about her but suspected they had their doubts about her choices. Not her library work. Her solitary life—or what to her sisters seemed like a solitary life. Meaning she didn’t have a man.

She’d had one, once. She’d been on the road to marriage and a happy ending of her own, but it hadn’t worked out that way.

Everyone in town knew her story—Phoebe O’Dunn, jilted at twenty, within forty-eight hours of finding her father dead from a tree-trimming accident. She’d shielded her mother and sisters from the depth of her pain, but the shock had taken its toll. Broken hearts healed but that didn’t mean life was ever the same. Phoebe had deliberately shut the door on romance, at least for herself.

But it was fine, all fine, because she was fine. She loved her work, her family, her friends, her town. She couldn’t be more content than she was right now.

Ava looked out the window over the sink at the backyard flower garden, dominated now, in mid-August, by hollyhocks that ranged from soft white through three shades of pink to deep maroon. “You’re not going to the ball, are you, Phoebe?”

Phoebe changed her mind and decided to pour the wine now. She grabbed the pinot grigio out of the refrigerator and set it on the counter. “No, I’m not going,” she said matter-of-factly as she rummaged in the utensil drawer for a corkscrew. “Do you both want wine?”

Ruby plopped her tote bag onto a chair at the table. “Phoebe, you know you’d have a great time. You never go anywhere—”

“I have so much to do here. I’m taking vacation days before the end of the summer. I’ll go someplace then.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. Someplace.” Phoebe held up a glass. “Wine?”

“Sure,” Ruby said with a sigh. “Just don’t think I’ve given up.”

“Me, either,” Ava said. “You should go to this ball tomorrow, Phoebe. Maybe you’ll change your mind when you see the masks Ruby and I made. Anyway, wine for me, too. I’ll get our goodies out of the car.”

“Hang on, I’ll help.” Ruby withdrew a square of golden-colored soap from her tote bag and tossed it to Phoebe. “Check it out while we’re setting up. It’s a new soap Mom, Olivia and Maggie are trying out. Mom wants your opinion.”

Olivia and Maggie were experimenting with making their own artisan goat’s milk soaps to sell at The Farm at Carriage Hill. If it worked, Elly O’Dunn’s goats could go from being an expensive and impractical hobby to earning their own keep. Phoebe was happy to do what she could to help and knew Ava and Ruby were, too, although Ava in particular wasn’t crazy about their mother’s goats—especially when she had to clean up after them. They all appreciated the mildness and purity of the soaps.

Phoebe took in the gentle lavender scent of the bar Ruby had tossed her. “It really is lovely, isn’t it?”

“Olivia’s already designed the labels,” Ruby said. “Dreams do come true, Phoebe. Olivia’s are.”

“I know. I want yours to come true, too.”

Ava stopped in the hall doorway. “What about your dreams?”

“My dream,” Phoebe said lightly, abandoning the soap for her wine, “is to see Maggie and Olivia all set for their charity ball. Go grab your stuff. I’ll get the dresses.”

* * *

Three hours, two and a half bottles of wine, a pot of vegetable curry and much laughter later, Phoebe was again alone in her kitchen. Olivia and Maggie had precise instructions, beautiful handmade masks and everything else they needed to transform themselves into their own versions of Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly.

The dresses had worked out even better than Phoebe had imagined.

The dresses.

Ava had recognized them first. “Phoebe, these aren’t like the dresses Audrey and Grace wore in Breakfast at Tiffany’s and To Catch a Thief. They are the dresses.”

“Close copies,” Phoebe had said, then again deflected questions about where she’d gotten them.

She turned out the light in the kitchen and walked down a short hall to a small back room. For most of the past eighteen months, she’d used it to store paint supplies, tools and junk she’d collected from the rest of the house but wasn’t sure what to do with. Then, on a rainy night earlier that summer, she’d cleaned everything out, wiped down the walls, mopped the floor and considered the possibilities. A guestroom? A study? A spa bathroom?

In another life, it would have made a great baby’s room.

She felt the same pang of regret she’d felt that night, but it was ridiculous. If her father hadn’t died and her steady college boyfriend hadn’t given her an impossible ultimatum, she wouldn’t have ended up on Thistle Lane at all, with or without babies.

Florida.

She’d have ended up in Florida.