Mirror Image

hips and turned in the seat to face him. She wanted to touch him, to comfort and be comforted, but she satisfied herself with simply facing him.
    Everyone was in bed when they arrived home. Silently they went together to Mandy’s room, and, as they had promised, kissed her good night. She mumbled sleepily in response but didn’t wake up.
    As they moved down the hallway toward their respective bedrooms, Tate said offhandedly, “We’ll be attending several formal functions. You probably should take that dress on the trip.”
    Avery spun around to face him. “You mean you want me to go?”
    He looked at a spot beyond her head. “Everybody thinks it would be a good idea.”
    Unwilling to let him off that lightly, she gave his lapel a tug. His eyes connected with hers. “I’m only interested in what you think, Tate.”
    He deliberated for several tense moments before giving her his answer. “Yeah, I think it’s a good idea. Eddy’ll give you an itinerary in a day or two so you’ll know what else to pack. Good night.”
    Bitterly disappointed in his lukewarm enthusiasm, Avery watched him walk down the hall and enter his room. Dejectedly, she went into hers alone and prepared for bed. She examined her dress, looking for damage done by Carole’s ex-lover, whoever he’d been, but thankfully found none.
    She was exhausted by the time she turned off the lamps, but when an hour went by and she still hadn’t fallen asleep, she got out of bed and left her room.
    * * *
    Fancy decided to enter through the kitchen in case her grandfather had set up an ambush in the living room. She unlocked the door, disengaged the alarm system, and quietly reset it.
    “Who’s that? Fancy?”
    Fancy nearly jumped out of her skin. “Jesus Christ, Aunt Carole! You scared the living shit out of me!” She reached for the light switch.
    “Oh, my God.” Avery sprang from her chair at the kitchen table and turned Fancy’s face up toward the light. “What happened to you?” She grimaced as she examined the girl’s swollen eye and bleeding lip.
    “Maybe you can lend me your plastic surgeon,” Fancy quipped before she discovered that it hurt to smile. Touching the bleeding cut with the tip of her tongue, she disengaged herself from her aunt. “I’ll be all right.” She moved to the refrigerator, took out a carton of milk, and poured herself a glass.
    “Shouldn’t you see a doctor? Do you want me to drive you to the emergency room?”
    “Hell, no. And would you please keep your voice down? I don’t want Grandma and Grandpa to see this. I’d never hear the end of it.”
    “What happened?”
    “Well, it was like this.” She scraped the cream filling out of an Oreo with her lower front teeth. “I went to this shit-kicker’s dance hall. The place was swinging. Friday night, you know—payday. Everybody was in a party mood. There was this one guy with a really cute ass.” She ate the two disks of chocolate cookie and dug into the ceramic jar for another.
    “He took me to a motel. We drank some beer and smoked some grass. He got a little too sublime, I guess, because when we got down to business, he couldn’t get it up. Naturally, he took it out on me.” As she summed up the tale, she dusted her hands of cookie crumbs and reached for the glass of milk.
    “He hit you?”
    Fancy gaped at her, then gave a semblance of a laugh. “ ‘He hit you?’ ” she mimicked. “What the hell do you think? Of course he hit me.”
    “You could have been seriously hurt, Fancy.”
    “I can’t believe this,” she said, rolling her eyes ceilingward in disbelief. “You always enjoyed hearing about my romantic interludes, said they gave you a vicarious thrill, whatever the hell that means.”
    “I’d hardly classify getting hit in the face romantic. Did he tie you up, too?”
    Fancy followed her aunt’s gaze down to the red circles around each of her wrists. “Yeah,” she answered bitterly, “the bastard tied my hands together.” Carole didn’t have to know that the “bastard” she referred to wasn’t the drunken, impotent cowboy.
    “You’re crazy to go to a motel room with a stranger like that, Fancy.”
    “I’m crazy? You’re the one stuffing ice cubes in a Baggie.”
    “For your eye.”
    Fancy slapped away the makeshift ice pack. “Don’t do me any favors, okay?”
    “Your eye is turning black and blue. It’s about to swell shut. Do you want your parents to see it like that and have to tell them the story you just