Carolina Moon

charm him into marrying me. I’ll take good care of him, of course, and spend his money like water. I might even be faithful, too. I was with the others, for all the good it did me. Then, with luck and time, I’ll be a rich widow, and that, I think, will suit me best.”
    The way it suits Mama, she thought bitterly. Bitterly.
    “You’re more than you think you are, Faith. A hell of a lot more.”
    “No, honey, it’s likely I’m a great deal less. Maybe it would’ve all turned out different, just a few shades different, anyway, if Hope had lived. You see, she never even had the chance to live.”
    “That’s no one’s fault but the bastard who killed her.”
    “You think not?” Faith said quietly. “I wonder, would she have gone out that night, gone off to have her adventure with Tory, if she hadn’t felt as closed-in here as I did? Would she have climbed out that window if she’d known that she’d be free to do as she pleased, with whom she pleased, the next morning? I knew her, better than anyone else in this house. That’s the way of twins. She’d have made something of herself, Cade, because she’d have quietly chipped away at the bars. But she never got the chance. And when she died, the illusion of balance in this house went with her. They loved her best, you know.”
    Faith pressed her lips together, heaved the cigarette over the rail. “Better than you or me. I can’t count the times afterward, one of them would look at me, me who shared her face, and I’d see in their eyes what they were thinking. Why hadn’t it been me out there in the swamp instead of Hope.”
    “Don’t.” He got to his feet. “That’s not true. No one ever thought that.”
    “I did. And it’s what I felt from them. And I was a constant reminder that she’d died. I was not to be forgiven for that.”
    “No.” He touched her face, saw the woman, and the child who’d been. “That she’d lived.”
    “But I couldn’t be her, Cade.” The tears that sheened her eyes shone in the dim light, made them, he thought, so brutally alive. “She was something they shared the way they couldn’t share anything or anyone else. But they couldn’t share the loss of her.”
    “No, they couldn’t.”
    “So Papa built his shrine to her, and found his solace in the bed of another woman. And Mama got colder and harder. You and me, we just went the way we’d already been directed. So here we are in the middle of the night, with no one to call our own. And we still have nobody who loves us best.”
    It hurt to hear it, and know it was true. “We don’t have to stay that way.”
    “Cade, we are that way.” She leaned against him, rested her head when his arms came around her. “Neither one of us has ever loved anyone, not enough to put that balance back. Maybe we loved Hope enough, maybe even back then we knew she was the one who held it all steady.”
    “We can’t change what happened, any of it. Only what we do about it now.”
    “That’s it, isn’t it? I just don’t want to do anything, about anything. I hate Tory Bodeen for coming back here, for making me remember Hope, miss her, grieve for her again.”
    “She’s not to blame, Faith.”
    “Maybe not.” She closed her eyes. “But I’ve got to blame someone.”

12
    T he matter had to be dealt with, and as quickly and efficiently as possible. Money, Margaret knew, spoke to a certain class of people. It bought their silence, their loyalty, and what passed for their honor.
    She dressed carefully for the meeting, but then she always dressed carefully. She wore a crisp suit in dignified navy, and her grandmother’s single-strand pearls at her throat. She’d sat, as she did every morning, at her vanity, not so much disguising the signs of age, as she considered age an advantage, but using them to show her character and her station.
    Character and station were both sword and shield.
    She left the house at precisely eight-fifty, telling Lilah that she had an early appointment and would then be attending a luncheon in Charleston. She could be expected back at three-thirty.
    She would, of course, be on time.
    Margaret calculated the business she had to attend to before making the drive south would take no more than thirty minutes, but she had allowed forty-five, which would still give her time to tend to her short list of errands before the lunch.
    She could have hired a driver, even kept one on staff. She could have assigned the errands to a servant. These