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“It is,” she agreed, though something in her voice was hesitant. “Granny’s kind of a handful.”
The woman was about to turn ninety. I doubted she could be too much of a handful.
“So it’s like a farm? Animals and stuff?”
Juliet laughed, something wistful in the sound as she leaned back into the seat and stared out the window. “Used to have. She loved horses, but can’t care for them now. She still has chickens, some goats…”
“Pigs?” I asked. I couldn’t imagine a farm without pigs. I’d seen theWizard of Oz,after all.
Juliet’s face lost its smile. “No, and definitely don’t bring up pigs around Gran.”
“Seriously?” I asked. Juliet sounded strangely alarmed and I needed to understand why.
“She hates pigs. Like really hates them.”
“Who hates pigs? They’re so cute. Look.” I pulled up a gif of a pig waving a pinwheel out a car window. “Cute.”
“Not cute. She thinks pigs are possessed by the devil.”
Gran did sound like a handful, I decided. “Huh.”
“Something about being attacked at the Achilles tendon by one at some point.”
I had no idea what to say to that, so another “huh” escaped me and I turned my attention back to the windows.
After a moment, a huge two-story brick house came into view, lit up against the darkness, with wings reaching out on each side of the main structure. There were huge trees towering over the smaller wings, casting parts of the enormous structure into shadow. A fountain stood in the center of the circular drive, surrounded by a lawn that rolled around the property and spread out beyond. The whole place was lit up like a national monument. I guess maybe because they were expecting us.
On one side of the house, the lawn reached down a hill and I thought there might be water back there, shaded by trees hanging at the bank.
“It’s incredible,” I said, my voice holding a reverence I hadn’t intended. I’d seen plenty of waterfront property, but this wasn’t Malibu. There was something much more stately and reserved about this kind of luxury, about the way it was tucked quietly back here along the shore of a river. I’d never had known Maryland had houses like this or that Juliet had grown up in one. Not that I knew much about Juliet.
“It was a plantation originally,” she explained as the car pulled to a stop in front of the house. “The original house was actually built in early 1700, and it’s evolved over the years. The British took over the property during the War of 1812 when they blockaded the Chesapeake,” she was saying, but my attention was no longer on Juliet’s words or on the hulking historic house before us. It was laser-focused on something else. Someone else.
A woman had just stepped out the front door and stood on the front steps, watching our car with wide eyes, dark hair cascading in waves around her face as the lights caught her in their glow.
Juliet stopped speaking, following my gaze out the window. “And that,” she said. “Is my little sister. Tess.”
Tess. Everything I didn’t feel when I looked at Juliet jumped to attention when I spotted her sister.
The weekend had just become a whole lot more interesting.
Chapter Four
Tess
Gran had gone to bed by the time two dark cars pulled into the driveway. Juliet had called an hour ago, so I’d been watching for them, unsure how to feel about seeing her with my ridiculous celebrity crush. I bit a nail as I stepped out onto the porch to greet them.
My sister slid from the back seat of the car looking every bit the movie star she was. I hoped everything was going to meet her standards. The security guys had looked around the property for God-only-knew what, and asked me questions about our alarm system (nonexistent), our security perimeter (also nonexistent) and our emergency evacuation CONOPS (seriously? Once they explained what a “CONOPS” was—a concept of operations, in case you’re wondering—I explained that was also nonexistent).
My big sister Juliet lived in a world I could barely begin to understand, where movie stars were people you actually knew. People like Ryan McDonnell.
Sigh. Deep, lovelorn sigh.
My sister had never really belonged here, and she didn’t fit in any better now, with her huge dark glasses and slim-fitted pink capris and high-heeled sandals. The second I saw her, I felt myself inching toward invisibility again. I loved her, but my life worked better when Juliet wasn’t standing at my side, begging the world to wonder how two sisters could be so different.
I pushed down my own insecurities and smiled at her.
“You look great,” I told her. It was true. She always looked great.
