Eve’s Wedding Knight

Chapter 7

Eve’s mind was spinning like a bogged-down wheel, going absolutely nowhere. “Uh…” was all she could think to say.

“Did you hear what I said?” Jake growled again. “There’s some things we need to go over before your fiancé gets there. It’s important. Capish?”

Smile, she thought. Let them think it’s Sonny. “Can’t you come now? I mean, why…”

There was an impatient exhalation. “Look-your sister Summer knows me. We met during that business with her ex-husband last summer. If she sees me, she’s gonna know something’s going on. Is that what you want? You want your family in on this?”

“God, no.” Smile, dammit. Remember to smile. “Okay, then, I guess I’ll see you in a little bit. Yeah…bye for now, darling. Mnun-hmm…me. too…” She made sickening kissy sounds into the phone, taking great pleasure in imagining Jake’s face as she did so, and hung up on the ambiguous hiss of his exhalation.

“That was Sonny,” she announced, and smiled widely for the benefit of the three pairs of eyes that had been trying their best to watch her avidly without appearing to do so at all. “He’s coming over in a little while. Hey, guys-I really hate to ask it, but I’d kind of like to, you know…clean up a little bit before he gets here? Would you mind terribly…?”

“Of course not, dear,” said her mother, patting her shoulder. “We’ll go, and let you get yourself spruced up.”

Mirabella exchanged a look with Summer and complained, “We just got here.”

“And we can come back later.” Her mother leaned over to plant a kiss on the undamaged portion of Eve’s forehead. “There’s a nice mall just up the road. We can kill a few hours there. Anything we can get for you, honey? Some pj’s, maybe?”

Eve made an attempt to hitch herself up on her pillows and tried to look pitiful. “Maybe you could pick me up something casual to wear…everyday stuff, you know? Something that buttons in front, so I don’t have to pull it on over my head?”

There was a brief knock on the door, and a nurse stuck her head in. After smiles and a cheery “Well, hi, there!” for the visitors, she turned the smile on Eve. “Miz Waskowitz, your doctor’s here to see you.”

My doctor? Eve had never been sick a day in her life-not counting the occasional tropical bug or spider- or snakebite-and except for her gynecologist out in California, did not have a doctor. However, before she could think of an appropriately noncommittal response, the door opened wider and a man she’d never seen before slipped past the nurse and into the room.

He was tall and thin and looked very fit, with hair that Eve suspected was prematurely silver, although it might have been his jovial manner that made him seem ageless. He seemed to bound into the room, rather like an overly friendly greyhound, with that slightly stooped-over gait very tall people often use in an effort to seem less so. Tucking the large brown envelope he’d brought with him under one arm. he beamed at her and said in a thick Georgia accent, “Hello there, Miss Eve. Well now-you don’t look s’bad.”

“Uh…hi. Mom, everybody-this is…my doctor. Dr.-”

“Dr. Shepherd-good to meet you.” He lunged forward to pump all three hands with immense enthusiasm, and added in the polite Southern way, since it was apparent they were about to, “Don’t rush off.”

“Yeah, Mom, maybe you guys should stick around.” But her voice was faint and breathless, and went unnoticed in the flurry of polite assurances and hasty goodbyes.

Eve kept her smile rigidly in place until the door had closed behind her mother and sisters. Then she filled her lungs with air and whispered, “Okay, you’ve got about two seconds to prove to me you are who you say you are and tell me who sent you, before I start screaming bloody murder. One…two…”

Instead of answering, Dr. Shepherd held up a hand, asking for-demanding-silence. Moving with surprising quickness for one so angular, he went to the door and opened it a crack, looked through, then opened it a little wider. As if he’d been waiting for a signal, Jake stepped into the room.

Eve let out the breath she’d been holding, in one great gust. “Okay, you want to tell me what in the hell’s going on? Who the devil is this? First you spend the night guarding my room ‘just in case,’ so I’m seeing bogeymen under the bed, and then you send some strange guy in here without warning me? For all I know, he’s some kind of hit man, for God’s sake!”

From mild pique, the anger level in her voice had escalated with each sentence until the last three words were delivered in a splutter of full-blown outrage. Most of her annoyance, she acknowledged, was due to the absurd little surge of joy she’d experienced at her first glimpse of the FBI man’s glowering face. A ray of sunshine he definitely wasn’t, and she couldn’t imagine why she should be so happy to see him. The only reason she could imagine was so ludicrous and unlikely, it didn’t even bear acknowledging, must less thinking about.

Obviously unimpressed with her diatribe, Jake barked right back at her. “Waskowitz, do me a favor-shut up a minute and listen. Cisneros is probably on his way here as we speak, so no telling how much time we have. This-” he nodded at the silver-haired man, who thrust his jaw toward her and grinned toothily, rather in the manner of FDR “-is Dr. Matthew Shepherd. He is in fact an M.D., but he also consults for the Bureau. We think we may have come up with a solution to your problem. Matt?”

At his cue, the doctor lunged forward, opening the brown envelope as he did so, and extracted several X-ray films, which he laid across the foot of Eve’s bed.

“Are those mine?” she asked as she raised herself up and hitched forward to get a better look.

“In… a manner of speaking.” Dr. Shepherd took a pair of rimless glasses from his jacket pocket, put them on and peered through them down his long, bony nose at the films. After a moment his gaze vaulted the tops of the glasses to twinkle conspiratorially at her. “Actually, they are about to become your X rays. See this here?” He was once more bent over the films, pointing with a long, elegant finger.

Eve nodded and dutifully said, “Uh-huh,” though she hadn’t seen anything but fuzzy shades of gray. “What does it mean?”

Dr. Shepherd straightened, whipped off his glasses and beamed at her. “What that means, young lady, is that for the foreseeable future, you are gonna have to keep your upper spinal column as immobile as possible. That means wearing an orthopedic device to limit movement, sleeping in a specially designed bed…ahem…alone-” Eve’s sharp intake of breath barely interrupted him. “In addition to which, I would recommend a program of extensive physical therapy…”

Eve was barely listening. Her eyes had slipped past the doctor to find Jake’s, and’ she clung to their steady and bottomless gaze as he added, without inflection, “Which gives us a reason to keep you here in the area, as well as cover in case you need to get in touch with us-or vice versa. If you need us, you’d just call your doctor. Or, say, if we need to contact you, your doctor’s office would call you-maybe change the date or time of an appointment, for instance.”

“My God,” Eve whispered, “it takes care of everything.”

Jake grunted. “It buys you some time. What you do with it’s gonna be up to you.”

“I understand. Jake…I don’t know how to thank you.”

Something black and angry slashed across his face, gone so quickly, she couldn’t be certain she’d seen it at all. Because in the next instant he’d disappeared soundlessly into the bathroom as the outer doorknob turned and the door cracked open to admit the croaking sound of a naturally boisterous voice trying its best to whisper.

“He’s in there with her now? Yeah…that’s good. Sure, you bet I wanna talk to him. Okay…thanks, sweetie-you’re a doll.”

Yeah, Sonny, and it’s a good thing you’re such a flirt, Eve thought. Because even while he was stopping to sweet-talk the nurse, she barely had time to flop back against the pillows and arrange an appropriately pain-wracked expression.

Meanwhile, for the second time that day, Jake found himself reduced to the indignity of skulking in the bathroom like an illicit lover. The space was so small, he couldn’t even pace to release his nervous energy, which he could feel building up inside him like pressure in a steam locomotive. Through the barrier of the door he could hear the muffled murmur of voices, mostly the doctor’s, explaining his patient’s “condition” and outlining the plan for her “treatment.” That was punctuated intermittently by Cisneros’s questions in his Vegas big shot’s bark, loud and brassy, like something out of an old Rat Pack movie. Every time he heard it, Jake had to remind himself to. unclench his teeth.

What was it about the man that got to him so? When had Cisneros stopped being just another case and become his own personal crusade? He thought about it while he waited, having nothing better to do. But the fact was, he knew it hadn’t been one big moment of truth, but rather a lot of little straws-too many things he knew about Cisneros but couldn’t find a way to prove, too many investigations that led nowhere, too many cases evaporating before they could even get to trial. Too many witnesses turning up missing, or suffering memory lapses following a tragic “accident” involving a loved one. Little straws…the last one the hit-and-run death of a key witness’s wife and seven-year-old daughter as they walked to school, just three blocks from their house.

The day that happened, Jake had cut out early and gone home to find his wife on her way out the door with her suitcases. “I deserve to be happy,” was all she’d said when he’d pressed her for reasons. She hadn’t wanted to talk about it; plainly, she’d meant to be gone before he got home.

It didn’t matter-he knew the reason. And he knew the fault was all his. For too long, all his time, energy and passion had been focused on getting Cisneros; he’d had nothing left over for his wife. What he’d told Eve-that it had happened overnight-had been a lie. The simple truth was, Sharon’s love for him had died a long, slow death by starvation. And it was a whole lot easier to blame Sonny Cisneros than his own shortcomings as a husband.

He swore inaudibly and closed his eyes, wrenching himself out of the past and back to the present. Which for the first time in a long while was looking like it might just give him a future to look forward to. After Hal Robey had drowned in that hurricane last summer, he’d been ready to pack it in. He’d actually looked into it-leaving the Bureau-but something had held him back, kept him from taking that final step. And now, by God, it looked as if he was being given another shot. He had a witness, and this one he wasn’t going to lose. He’d be careful, take it slow and easy…one step at a time.

He still had to convince Eve to go along with the program, but he was confident she would. Of course she would; she knew what the stakes were as well as he did-better than he did. It was her life that was on the line, after all, though the risks, if they were careful and she did what she was supposed to do, should be minimal. Minimal, he told himself. At worst, they’d get nothing concrete enough to take to court, she’d bide her time and break off the relationship, and that would be that But if things went the way he hoped…at last, Sonny Cisneros was going down.

The tap on the bathroom door sent a shot of adrenaline through his system.

It was Shepherd. The moment Jake opened the door Matt said tersely, “He’s gone. I told him we needed to run more tests, get her fitted with the collar before she can be released tomorrow morning.”

“He’ll be here with the limo to pick me up,” Eve put in. Beyond Shepherd, Jake could see her sitting upright against the pillows, one eye purpling and bloodshot, the other glittering like moonlit water. In spite of the bandages she had a pugnacious look-a beat-up prizefighter on an adrenaline high.

Jake flashed her a sharp glance, then said to Shepherd, “Where? He’s not taking her back to Vegas-”

Eve shook her head, then caught herself. “Oops-gotta remember not to do that, don’t I?”

“The collar’ll help you remember,” Dr. Shepherd said cheerfully.

“I hope so. Anyway, no-actually. Sonny’s being really sweet about this-he says he figured I’d want to be close to my doctor and my family, so he’s made arrangements for us to stay at this new resort he’s building on Hilton Head. That’s not far from Summer and Riley’s place-”

“Really,” said Jake thoughtfully.

“And just a hop and a skip from my brand-new office here in Savannah.” Dr. Shepherd aimed his FDR grin at Eve and began gathering up the scattered X rays. “Well-I’ve got things to attend to, looks like. I’m gonna leave you two to work out details between you. Jake, I’ll have that collar ready by this evening, if you want to-”

“Yeah-fine.” Jake silenced him with a surreptitious hand gesture and the smallest twitch of his head toward Eve.

“Right-see y’all later.” With a wave and a wink, Shepherd tucked the X rays under his arm and bounded from the room.

The silence he left behind was thick as cobwebs. Jake felt it settle around him as he turned, so that he seemed to be moving through a sticky, gauzy curtain of his own guilt.

“What was that all about?” Eve demanded, not quite suspicious, just wary, watching him with her head cocked to one side, and that bright-eyed, titmouse look about her again.

“What was what?” he countered, about as convincing as a cookie thief with crumbs on his chin.

“That.” She mimicked his little warning head jerk, then grimaced. “Oh, shoot-I’ve got to quit doing things like that.”

“Like the doc said, that’s what the collar’s for,” Jake said sourly. “To keep you from doing things like that.”

“Uh-huh… He said he’d have the collar ready by this evening. He said that to you, Jake. He said he’d have the collar ready for you. What have you got to do with my neck brace?”

She sure didn’t miss much. Which, he reminded himself, was exactly what was going to make her one helluva witness.

Instead of answering her, he walked over to the window where he stood for a few minutes looking out at the parking lot, slowly filling up now, with Sunday-afternoon visitors. Then he turned, leaned against the wall and folded his arms.

It was a small room; he could almost have reached out and touched her, and yet he felt that she was far, far away from him. Which was, of course, the way he wanted it. Detachment, that’s what he had to have if he was going to make this work. Keep a professional distance, keep the operation and its goal in front of him at all times. Care about her safety-that went without saying. But beyond that-stay away.

But as he stood there staring at the Eve lying just beyond his arm’s reach in her hospital bed, he couldn’t keep himself from seeing instead all the other Eves he’d met over the course of the last twenty-four hours, the Eves from which he hadn’t managed to keep that critical distance.

The battered bride, reeking of garbage and tanked on vintage champagne, taking him by surprise in his van and then turning to him with terror and pleading in her eyes…

The sleeping beauty he’d had no choice but to undress… and it had been like Pandora opening her box, revealing every adolescent male’s fantasy… Lush femininity wrapped in creamy skin and all tied up in garters and lace… Long, smooth legs in silky white stockings that he could feel wrapped around him-hoo boy, and how was he supposed to put that mischief back in the box? Tell himself he hadn’t seen it? Order himself not to remember?

Oh, and for God’s sake, don’t remember the brave but doomed princess who’d stood with her head trustingly bowed, like Anne Boleyn baring her neck to the headsman, while he relieved her of her jewelry. And why was it he could still feel that mouth-watering sensation he’d gotten when he’d thought-just for an instant-of putting his mouth on the little red mark the clasp had made on her skin?

Why was it he could still feel the weight of her body in his arms, the warm, moist pool of her breath against his shoulder as he’d carried her into the hospital? The shivers of suppressed laughter-mostly nerves, he knew, but dangerously contagious nonetheless-that had made him think of tumbling her into something soft and near and romping with her there with the mindless abandon of puppies and children and very new lovers.

And finally, the one image that had brought him back to her room last night and kept him company through the hours of his vigil while she slept…one solitary tear slipping down her cheek, leaving its trail of silver…

“There’s something else, isn’t there?” Her voice was quiet, not accusing, just accepting. Waiting.

Jake shook his head, not in answer to the question, but to chase the images of those other Eves from his mind. And he frowned, not at her, but as a means to force himself to concentrate on the Eve that faced him now with her bruises and bandages and a bright, intelligent gaze. Finally he took a breath, let it out slowly and said, “That time I just bought you-I said it’s up to you what you do with it?”

She nodded, her face grave. “I understood what you were saying. I have to find a way to break up with Sonny without making him suspicious.” She looked away before she swallowed. “It’s not going to be easy.”

“How would you feel,” Jake said carefully, “about doing something…a a little bit more… preemptive than that?”

Her eyes came back to him. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, how would you feel about helping us nail your…fiancé?” He said it warily, not certain about her reaction. Regardless of what she’d told him about her feelings and how she’d gotten involved with Cisneros, the guy had been her lover. Breaking off a relationship was one thing; taking somebody she’d been intimate with and putting him in prison for life was another.

She wasted no time in dispelling his doubts as she exhaled in an explosive little gasp of surprise. “Help you-you mean like…spy? On Sonny?”

Jake drew a hand over his face, muffling his swearing. “Jeez, Waskowitz,” he finally muttered. “Spy? You think I’d go to this much trouble to save your ass and then get you killed? No. All we want you to do is plant some listening devices-”

“Bugs!” she cried gleefully.

He snorted. “Okay, we’d like you to bug Sonny’s private space-bedroom, office, car-anywhere he’s likely to do business-”

“What about his telephone?”

“That’s…tricky.”

“You could show me how.” She was sitting up straight in bed, as eagerly predatory and bright-eyed over the idea of those bugs as a little banty hen who’d just scratched up a whole nest of the six-legged kind. “And-oh, God, now I get it-you’re going to hide the bugs in my collar! That’s what Dr. Shepherd meant when he said he’d have it ready for you. That is so cool.”

“You don’t miss a trick, do you?” said Jake dryly.

Eve shrugged. “It’s a no-brainer. That was my question, remember? What’s with the collar? So it’s obvious.” She gave herself kind of a shivery little hug, then looked past him toward the window as she said pensively, “I guess great minds do think alike. I was going-I was planning-to see if I could find anything out about Sonny’s… business-” Jake’s breath expired like a pressure valve letting go, but she raised her voice and rushed on before he could interrupt. “All right, I know-but the thing is, I’m not sure I can. What if I can’t?-I don’t know if I’m a good enough actress to break up with Sonny without making him suspicious. I’d always be afraid…looking over my shoulder-”

Jake pushed away from the window. It took only that to bring him close enough to her to take her by the shoulders. “Listen to me,” he said in his softest, growliest voice. “You are not to do anything except what we tell you to do, capish? No poking around, no snooping, no lurking in places you shouldn’t be. You’ll plant the bugs only where it’s possible to do so without arousing suspicion, and that’s all you’ll do, or no deal. You understand?”

She nodded and whispered, “Capish. ”And her eyes clung to his face as if she were mesmerized.

As for Jake, after the first sweeping search for the verification he needed, and finding it in her eyes and her nod, his gaze zeroed in on her mouth and stayed there. He watched it form the word as she whispered it, saw the first fine sheen of perspiration appear on her chin and upper lip, like diamond dust on her skin. He felt the tickle of a pulse in his fingers where they gripped her shoulders, and his own heart slamming hard against his ribs.

Her lips parted. She drew a breath in the soft, careful way of someone afraid of shattering a soap bubble…or preparing to be kissed.

He let go of her as if she’d burst into flames and spun away, holding up one hand in a vague gesture that was meant to be the “I’m sorry” he couldn’t quite form into words.

Lord help us, I’ve lost my mind, he thought, staring morosely down at the parking lot from his safe haven by the window. It was the only explanation. As if this whole thing wasn’t balanced on the razor’s edge as it was…

“Jake?”

He didn’t want to turn around. Didn’t want to answer her. Sure as hell wasn’t going to look at her.

“I’ve been thinking. You know, about what you said before? About how could I change my feelings so quickly? And what I told you, about Sonny, and it being a matter of tim-ing… well, that was true, but I think it was only part of it. I know this is going to sound like I’m trying to justify myself with the benefit of hindsight, but… somewhere inside, I think…I knew.”

“Knew…?” With great reluctance he shifted so that he could look at her, one shoulder against the wall, arms casually folded, one ankle crossing the other. Aloof, he told himself. Completely detached.

She had pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them, and above the drape of hospital bedding, her eyes were the luminous violet of a twilight sky. “Knew…that it was wrong. Oh, not that I knew Sonny was a crook, I don’t mean that. Just that he was wrong…for me. That I was wrong to marry him. Because I kept finding excuses. For God’s sake, we were in Vegas-the world capital of weddings! I could have married him months ago-that’s what he wanted. But I said no, I wanted my family there. Then I got the bee in my bonnet about Savannah, and I insisted on that particular church even though there was a three-month waiting list. What was that? I’m not even religious.” She let out a breath and looked away, and he watched a blush deepen under her natural tan, like time-lapse photography of a ripening peach.

“What you said? About being ready to ‘jump his bones’?” She sounded ashamed but hell-bent on confession. And why tell him? he wondered. Her relationship with Cisneros was the last thing he wanted to have to hear about. But she was going doggedly on, in a low, tense voice. “It wasn’t…quite like that. I mean, that wasn’t what it was about. When I opened that bottle of champagne and went looking for Sonny, it wasn’t because I wanted him so much, I just couldn’t wait to…” She collected another breath, a quick little in-and-out, stalling for time, then dragged her gaze bravely back to him. “I think…what I wanted more than anything else, was to be convinced. I had all these butterflies. I was thinking, My God, Evie, what are you doing? Are you crazy? All of a sudden I wanted to prove to myself I wasn’t crazy. I wanted Sonny to make love to me-I mean really knock my socks off-so I’d know I was doing the right thing by marrying him. As if sex was enough…” She swallowed, looked away again briefly, then came back to him with a wry smile.

Detach, he thought, silently grinding his teeth.

“See, I have this awful tendency, where emotions are concerned. I sort of go overboard in the opposite direction from what I’m really feeling, you know what I mean? Like, I cry at parties and make jokes at funerals-that sort of thing. Terrible. So…the more uncertain I was about whether I wanted Sonny, the more I… Well, you know.”

She groaned and bowed her head, resting her forehead on her drawn-up knees. He saw her shoulders begin to shake, but it was a moment before he realized that she was laughing. “Oh, God…” She lifted her head, but covered her eyes with her hand. “I bought all this sexy lingerie. I mean, what was that? It sure as hell isn’t me. That thing I was wearing-”

“You mean, the teddy?” Jake asked, in a tone of polite interest. Complete detachment.

The hand came away from her face and something sparked in her eyes, something bright and breathtaking and too quickly gone, like a bluebird flashing across the periphery of his vision, or a fish breaking the silver surface of a lake at dawn. She cleared her throat. “Actually, I believe the technical term is merry widow.”

“Ah,” said Jake. Detached? Sure he was. On the outside, anyway. Only problem was, somebody had forgotten to clue his vital organs in on the plan. So there was his heart pumping away like crazy and a furnace firing up in his belly, sending all that heat and blood flow to the parts of his body where he needed it the least and leaving him critically short in other vital areas-like his brain.

She made another small, throat-clearing sound “I’m strictly into cotton and comfort myself.”

“Uh-huh.” Her face was so demure and still. And what did that mean, he wondered, in light of what she’d just said about always showing the opposite of what she was feeling? Did that mean that right now her heart was banging away like the Energizer Bunny and her temperature soaring and all her nerves jumping and twitching and pulses thrumming like jungle drums?

Aw, hell, he thought. Just because he was crazy, didn’t mean she was. And with everything she’d had come down on her in the last twenty-four hours? No-no way.

He shook himself and straightened; oxygen starved, he found himself fighting an urge to yawn.

Which Eve was quick to pick up on. “You must be tired. You didn’t get much sleep last night. Or did you sleep at all?”

He shrugged and didn’t answer her; the last thing he needed was for her to be concerned about him. For her to be nice-on top of everything else. He frowned at his watch. “I’ve got some things to do. It’s almost lunchtime-I need to be going before they show up with your tray. Didn’t your family say they were coming back later on?” She nodded. “Okay, then. I’ll see you this evening. Should have everything in place by then. We’ll…ah…go over the details with you-make sure you’re up to speed on the equipment, arrangements for making contact, get you familiar with the collar… Okay?” Again he waited for her nod.

“Capish, ” she said with a faint smile.

So it was he who nodded. “Okay, then. See you later.”

He opened the door a crack, looked through it, up and down the corridor. He threw one last look over his shoulder at the woman huddled in the middle of her hospital bed, arms hugging her drawn-up legs, forehead resting on her knees. Then he slipped out of the room and left her there.

Mirabella and Summer came out of the third-floor rest room just as the elevator doors were closing.

“What?” Mirabella demanded, as Summer checked abruptly with a small exclamation of surprise.

“Oh…nothing. I’m sure it wasn’t…” But she went on frowning for a moment in the direction of the elevators, before shaking her head and turning away. “I thought I saw somebody I knew, but…I’m sure it wasn’t.” She shifted some of the shopping bags she was carrying in order to consult her watch. “It’s past noon. I’ll bet she’s going to be right in the middle of eating lunch. We should have picked up something. I’m starving.”

“You want a breakfast bar?” Mirabella was rummaging in her cavernous handbag. In her sixth month of pregnancy she was constantly ravenous and never beyond reach of a food source.

Summer shook her head. “Thanks, but I believe I’ll wait for some real food.” She leaned against the wall while Mirabella hunched over the water fountain. “I hope Evie likes the stuff we got for her. I hardly know what her taste is anymore. It’s been so long since we all used to go shopping together… borrow each other’s clothes…”

“You used to borrow each other’s clothes. The only thing of Evie’s that ever fit me was that poncho she brought back from Baja, remember? I think you were a freshman that year.”

Summer gave soft huff of laughter. “Yeah, I remember. She and a bunch of her friends took off down there in a Volkswagen bus. Pop had a fit. Didn’t he call the CHP and try to have them stopped, or something?”

Mirabella nodded, popped an antacid tablet into her mouth, drank water and swallowed before she answered. “He’d have called out the marines, if he could. He was sure something terrible was going to happen. As usual, where Evie was concerned, he was wrong. They were fine-probably had an absolute ball, too.”

Summer shifted restlessly. “You know what? We probably are, too-wrong to worry about her, I mean. Bella, as long as I can remember, Evie’s been doing crazy, wild things and driving everybody mad with worry, and it always turns out to be for nothing. She’s just not like the rest of us. She doesn’t know the meaning of the word fear.”

“That’s just it-” Mirabella interrupted herself with a soft burp; indigestion had been a major annoyance with this pregnancy. “She’s never afraid. That’s why-”

“Who’s never afraid?” her mother asked, coming from the rest room just then, shaking her hands irritably. “I hate those hand-dryer things.” She gave up and wiped them on her slacks.

“Evie,” said Summer, handing over some of her parcels.

Her mother gave a bark of surprise. “Why would you think that about Eve?”

Summer and Mirabella looked at each other. “Well, Mom,” said Mirabella with exaggerated patience, “she’s always done such wild and crazy things. Skydiving, spelunking, whitewater rafting-is there anything terrifying she hasn’t done?”

“She’s never been a mother,” said Summer dryly, and they all smiled. Then, still smiling but in a different way, their mother shook her head.

“I can’t believe she managed to hoodwink the two of you all these years.”

“Hoodwink? What do you mean?” the sisters said together.

“Oh, my dears, don’t you know?” Ginger Waskowitz looked at each of her daughters and laughed softly. “Eve didn’t do all those things because she wasn’t afraid. She did them because she was.”