That Night on Thistle Lane. Carla Neggers
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of the summer, and they couldn’t wait to find out what happened next.
* * *
With Peter Rabbit and Knights Bridge’s little ones safely back with their families, Phoebe locked up the library and walked across South Main Street and through the common to Main Street and the Swift River Country Store, a town fixture for the past hundred years. It sold everything from galoshes to canned goods and fresh vegetables to a decent selection of wine. The afternoon heat had eased but it was still warm when she headed back to the library with two bottles of pinot grigio, already chilled. Olivia would bring a bottle of some kind of red from a California winery owned by Noah Kendrick, Dylan’s best friend and founder of NAK, Inc., the high-tech entertainment business that had made them both fortunes. The only thing Phoebe knew for sure was that her choice of white wine wouldn’t be nearly as pricey as whatever red Olivia brought.
Having a friend fall for a wealthy Californian had its unexpected advantages.
Normally she’d have walked home but her visit with Maggie and Olivia meant she had her car. She got in, set her wine on the front seat next to her and shut her eyes a moment, listening to the rustle of leaves as a gentle breeze floated through the shade trees on the wide library lawn.
Finally she started her Subaru and turned off South Main onto Thistle Lane. The library stood on the corner. Thistle Lane led away from the common, connecting to a back road with views of the reservoir in the distance. On her trips to the library as a girl, Phoebe had dreamed of living on the quiet, tree-lined street, away from the chaotic life she had out in the country with her parents and younger sisters. Thistle Lane represented order, independence and, at least to a degree, prosperity.
In less than five minutes, she turned into her short paved driveway. An old American elm graced the corner of the yard next to hers, holding on against the ravages of Dutch elm disease, in part due to intervention by the town. It was a beautiful tree, a symbol of the past and yet very much part of her everyday world. When she bought her house eighteen months ago, she’d thought she was being practical, never mind that she was the only one to make an offer. The house was built in 1912 by one of the early directors of the library, then sold to a series of owners, until, finally, the town was forced to take possession when the heir to the last owner couldn’t be located and property taxes went into arrears.
Phoebe rolled up her car windows, shut off the engine and collected her wine bottles as she stepped out into the shade. With its new roof, furnace, windows, wiring and plumbing, the house was no longer a notch above a tear-down. It still needed a new kitchen and bathroom, but she had to save up before she tackled any more big projects. Right now, she was concentrating on some of the fun cosmetic work—paint, wallpaper, gardens and restoring flea-market and yard-sale finds.
With her painting skills and eye for color, Olivia had been a huge help, but The Farm at Carriage Hill and her new life with Dylan were creating uncertainties for her. Phoebe had welcomed having Maggie and then Olivia move back to Knights Bridge, but that didn’t mean more changes weren’t coming. Change was inevitable, Phoebe thought. Her own life was more settled than the lives of her sisters and most of her friends. Her job at the library was secure. She had no plans to move, go into business for herself or get involved with a man.
Five years from now, her life would likely look more or less as it did now.
“Just without an avocado-green refrigerator in my kitchen,” she muttered happily as she headed down the curving stone walk with her wine.
The narrow clapboards of her small house were painted classic white. At Olivia’s suggestion, Phoebe had chosen a warm, welcoming green for the front door. It was framed by pink roses that she’d pruned and trained to climb up the white-painted trellis by the porch steps. When she’d moved in, the yard was an overgrown mess. She didn’t have Olivia’s green thumb, but she’d nonetheless managed to save many of the shrubs and perennials that had come with the property.
As she started up the steps to the small, covered porch, she saw that her twin sisters had arrived ahead of her. They were seated on wicker chairs that Phoebe had reclaimed and painted white, adding cushions in a mix of pink, blue and white flowers. Ava and Ruby, at twenty-three the youngest of the O’Dunn sisters, were fraternal twins, but they were so much alike that people often assumed they were identical. In both appearance and temperament, they took after their late father, Patrick O’Dunn, an auburn-haired, green-eyed, gorgeous-looking dreamer, as hopelessly impractical as the widow he’d left behind almost ten years ago.
“Thanks for coming,” Phoebe said as she unlocked the front door. “Olivia and Maggie will be here any minute.”
“This is going to be so much fun,” Ruby said, tucking a pink rose blossom behind her ear. She had on a long black skirt and a white tank top, her short, wavy hair dyed a purple-black that made her skin seem even paler, more translucent. “We brought all our goodies. Makeup, wigs, hairpieces, curling iron, needles and thread. We’ve already done up a half-dozen masks. Three are simple. You’d be able to recognize whoever’s wearing them. Three are more elaborate. It’d be tougher to recognize who’s wearing them.”
Ava smiled. “We will not fail you.” She twirled a rose stem in her fingertips. Her hair was its natural reddish brown, trailing down her back in a loose ponytail. Her skirt, which came to just above her knees, was a deep, warm red that worked surprisingly well with her turquoise lace top. “A masquerade ball in Boston. It doesn’t get much fancier than that.”
Phoebe pushed open the door. “Dylan has extra tickets if you want to go.”
“I wish,” Ava said wistfully, tossing her rose over the porch rail into the grass. “We have to work, and classes start again next week.”
“Otherwise we’d go in a heartbeat,” Ruby added.
No doubt they would, Phoebe thought. “It does sound grand,” she said as she led them inside. “Maggie and Olivia are counting on your theatrical flair. What do you think of Maggie in the blue gown Grace Kelly wore in To Catch a Thief and Olivia in Audrey Hepburn’s black dress from Breakfast at Tiffany’s?”
Ava turned, intrigued. “Do you have the dresses?”
Phoebe nodded. “I have the dresses.”
“Oh, wow. Excellent. Ruby?”
“Grace’s icy-blue chiffon gown? Audrey’s little black dress?” Ruby laughed. “That’s fantastic.”
“I even have pearls and a cigarette holder,” Phoebe said.
“Where did you get them?” Ava asked.
“I’m thinking of including them in our vintage fashion show,” Phoebe said evasively. Her sisters followed her into the kitchen, where she put the wine in the refrigerator, a relic that, somehow, still worked.
Ava leaned against the counter, a cheap wood that Phoebe had painted creamy white, her first renovation when she’d moved in. “So, Phoebe,” Ava said, crossing her arms on her chest. “Have you decided what you’re wearing?”
Phoebe got out wineglasses and set them on the cracked Formica counter, sidestepping her sister’s question. The twins were in graduate school—Ava in New York, Ruby in Boston—but they were spending the summer in Knights Bridge, living at home to save money. They had student loans that would take years if not decades to pay off, and big dreams that might never pay off, but Phoebe hoped everything would work out for them, believed in them. She knew they felt the same way about her but suspected they had their doubts about her choices. Not her library work. Her solitary life—or what to her sisters seemed like a solitary life. Meaning she didn’t have a man.
She’d had one, once. She’d been on the road to marriage and a happy ending of her own, but it hadn’t worked out that way.
Everyone in town knew her story—Phoebe O’Dunn, jilted at twenty, within forty-eight hours of finding her father dead from a tree-trimming accident. She’d shielded her mother and sisters from the depth of her pain, but the shock had taken its toll. Broken hearts healed but that didn’t mean life was ever the same. Phoebe had