Sisters. Nancy Robards Thompson

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СКАЧАТЬ It didn’t take a genius to conclude that “wardrobe mistress” was really just code for glorified rock-and-roll groupie.

      Ginny was beside herself and called begging me to do something. When I wouldn’t go rushing down to New Orleans to whisk Jane back to Florida, my mother took all her anger out on me. I was in New York, for God’s sake. And to be honest, if Ginny was even half the mother to Jane that she was to Skye and me, I didn’t blame Jane for wanting to get the hell away from her.

      Even though I want to be irritated with Skye for pressuring me to drop everything and come, a pang of guilt needles me. The truth is, it won’t be that difficult for my boss to replace me while I’m away.

      For the past seventeen years, I’ve been a house model for the designer Gerard Geandeau. The oh-so-glamorous job boils down to serving as a human mannequin on whom he fits his samples. It requires spending hours a day, nearly naked on my aching feet. Not a plum modeling job by any standard. Still, there’s plenty of fresh meat clamoring for my position.

      Gerard was not very compassionate about my asking for time off. He had no time to listen to my reasons.

      Accident-smaccident. He had no sympathy.

      It’s the studio’s busiest time of year, planning the spring collections. Work cannot come to a screeching halt because I must take personal leave for something so trivial as my mother being in a coma.

      He didn’t say it that way, but he might as well have. He’s always been the temperamental creative type, prone to temper tantrums and flippant remarks, but he’s never thrown a flaming arrow at me.

      His lack of understanding hurt.

      As a compromise, I stay so he can finish the piece he’s fitted to me. It’s two days later before I get to Dahlia Springs.

      I hope once I get back, he won’t have decided to keep my replacement on permanently, leaving me out in the cold.

      Sometimes when the spotlight hits just right, all the style and beauty can’t disguise that the under-belly of the fashion world is a very ugly place.

      I’m reminded daily that I am a forty-year-old woman competing with fresh-faced babies. Just the other day, I was talking to an eighteen-year-old who came into the studio for a fashion-shoot fitting. She couldn’t believe I was still modeling at my age.

      “How have you managed to work so long?” It was all she could do to keep her mouth from gaping. “I’m not half as old as you and my agency’s telling me to lie about my age.”

      She hasn’t even hit her stride as a woman and already she’s over the hill. Where does that put me?

      “That’s why you’re doing the print work and they fit samples on me in the back room,” I told her. “Just don’t get fat and you’ll get work.”

      And don’t get old.

      I didn’t say that. But it’s the truth. I was young and hot once. To be working at forty, I’m the exception, not the rule. I have no idea how I’ve managed to pull it off this long. Every day I wake up fearing the other Manolo will drop.

      Sometimes I detest this business. But what else would I do with myself?

      Skye picks me up from Dahlia Springs Municipal Airport. It’s the first time we’ve seen each other since she and her husband, Cameron, and their gaggle of kids came up to visit. How long has it been now—five years?

      Waiting to disembark the small commuter plane, I stand last in line behind the ten people who were on my connecting flight from Atlanta. Who would’ve thought such a crowd had reason to come to Dahlia Springs? Had the entire population been on a field trip?

      Everyone except for Nick Russo, my ex-husband.

      My stomach pitches at the thought of being within miles of him. Okay, I’ll confess, I’ve never gotten over him. I’m not morose about it, but of all the guys I’ve been with since Nick and I split up eight years ago, none has compared.

      It’s like being infected with a virus (as unromantic as that sounds). For the most part, I live a satisfying life—have the occasional date or lover, and then comes the Nick outbreak and I realize I’m better off on my own.

      I called him to let him know I was coming.

      To warn him? Ha.

      But he did sound happy to hear from me, even suggested we get together.

      Oh, God, it’s been a long time.

      Don’t get too carried away. People change.

      Yes, they certainly do.

      I’m dying for a cigarette, but I know it might be a while, since you can’t light up inside the airport, and I know Skye will have a fit if I ask her to wait while I smoke.

      I take a deep breath and hitch my purse up on my shoulder, mentally preparing myself for what I’m about to walk into. Like a prisoner marching to her death, I follow the person in front of me as we walk single file down the metal steps onto the tarmac.

      Humidity envelops me, and I can feel my hair expanding with each stride across the hot pavement. It’s hot in New York, but God, there’s nothing like the Deep South in the dead heat of August.

      Geographically speaking, Dahlia Springs is in north Florida—just over the Georgia line, but it’s the unofficial southernmost border of the Deep South. That’s not an insult. The fine people of Dahlia Springs pride themselves on being the deepest of the Deep South.

      As you travel farther into Florida, the less Southern it becomes, until around Fort Lauderdale, it’s almost as if you’ve crossed the border into a different country.

      When I finally enter the tiny airport, it’s eerie how it looks exactly as it did that day I flew out all those years ago. It even smells the same—a blend of Juicy Fruit gum, jet fuel and floor wax—for a moment, it takes me back to the day I left. That day when for the first time in my life, the world held so much possibility.

      Well, Toto, I’m certainly not in Oz anymore. It’s confirmed when I look over and see Skye waiting for me on the other side of a cordoned-off area that separates the gates—all two of them—from ticketing and baggage claim.

      There she is: Skye Woods, my twin sister. Once upon a time we looked so much alike people couldn’t tell us apart, but that’s where the similarity ends. We’re as different inside as summer and winter. In fact, I always used to tease that Ginny misnamed Skye. She should have called her Winter. Apply that any way you choose….

      Yes, we’re that different. We never had that twin-bonding thing going on; never could read each other’s minds; never shared a secret twin language or anything cute like that. Until we were about six years old, Ginny used to dress us alike—as if we were her very own living baby dolls. But right around that time is when everything changed, including my sister and me.

      Skye sees me walking toward her, but she doesn’t smile. Oh, great. For a split second I worry that she has bad news, but there’s something in her icy expression that says she’s mad because I didn’t drop everything and get here sooner.

      I did the best I could. She better get over it.

      She’s СКАЧАТЬ