“I blew it big time.”
“How? What’s been going on while I was gone?”
Sighing softly, she shook her head.
“You two sure hit it off fast,” Lily commented. “I, er, assume he rings your chimes?”
Emma tried a shaky smile. “An entire carillon.”
Twisting her cup, she glanced at her sister.
“Logan thought I was you,” she said.
“What?” Lily sat up at that. “What do you mean, he thought you were me?”
Emma shrugged.
“He barged in on the morning after you left and assumed that I was you and I sort of never told him I wasn’t.”
“I don’t believe it. What do you mean you sort of never told him? What’s there to say? I’m Emma Carter, Lily’s twin sister.”
Emma cleared her throat and met her sister’s outraged eyes.
“Actually, Lily, there are a few other people around here who think they’ve seen you this past week.”
Might as well confess the entire thing.
“You pretended to be me? Why? I don’t get it.”
“From envy maybe. Or for fun. I don’t know. It seemed harmless at first. It was a bit scary, too. Your life is so different from mine. I wanted a chance to experience it. Really experience it. So I put on some of your clothes. It was as if I put on an entirely new personality. I felt daring, and competent and, I don’t know, different. You have so much that you take for granted. Try living in a small town all your life. A small Southern town, where there are traditions galore. Where what the neighbors think counts more than doing what you want to do. Where adventure is hiking the Blue Ridge Trail. Maybe it’s the old grass-is-always-greener syndrome. I don’t know.”
Lily looked at her oddly.
“Actually I would have loved to grow up in a small town, if someone paid me some attention. I always envied you. You had a stable environment and siblings to play with and love. Mom. I scarcely know my half-brothers and half-sister. Heck, I hardly know our mother.”
Emma stared.
“We’re even, I don’t know Dad. Though I did have lunch with him one day. He thought I was you, too,” she said gloomily.
Lily laughed.
“That’s not surprising. He can’t see beyond his nose, unless he’s holding a script in hand. So you pretended to be me. What did you do?”
Emma spent the next few minutes relating her week in California. Lily found it hilarious and laughed frequently. Once or twice Emma caught a glimmer of amusement, but every time she mentioned Logan, guilt and depression reared up.
She couldn’t excuse the seductive lure of pretending to be someone else as a lark anymore. She’d lied and a man thought he was falling for her. How could she have been so stupid?
“So now he’s furious and even I can’t blame him,” she ended. “Yesterday at the barbecue Phil told me how Logan hated liars. Logan even mentioned it a couple of times, but I just couldn’t find my way to confess. It’s even worse because of his wife, I guess.”
“I’ve heard about his wife. She played around on him. She was frivolous and flighty and pretty as all get-out. He’s always shied away from pretty women since I’ve known him,” Lily said pensively.
“Well, I’m no beauty.”
“Of course you are. I am and we’re twins.”
Emma looked at her sister in astonishment.
“Maybe with the right clothes.”
