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or fishing trips; Monica was definitely not the outdoor type. And the boys had always responded to Jessie in ways they never responded to Monica.
    That was why Monica had taken such pleasure in stealing Todd away from her. She knew it had broken Jessie’s heart—and that did trouble Monica’s conscience, especially because of the underhanded trick she’d used to accomplish her task—but in the end, Monica believed, it had all worked out for the best. Jessie would never have been happy with such a button-down Wall Street kind of guy as Todd, and he sure as hell wouldn’t have been happy with a hippie-chick wife like Jessie. He needed a business-savvy wife like Monica, someone who strove to be part of the one percent, not someone whose sympathies were always inclined toward the ninety-nine percent. So maybe Monica’s means, and her motivation, had been a little shady in stealing Todd away from her sister. But the end really did justify it all. No two people could be happier than Todd and Monica.
    At least, Monica wanted to believe that, as she swallowed the last of her second glass of wine.
    She heard the tires of a car crunching gravel in her driveway out front.
    â€œShe’s here!” Aunt Paulette shouted, stumbling out of her chair in excitement. A couple of tarot cards fluttered up from the table, disturbed by the breeze she’d stirred up. One fell to the floor. Monica noticed it was The Lovers.
    The Twins.
    No, she and Jessie weren’t twins.
    Far from it.
    But Jessie had been carrying twins when she miscarried. . . .
    â€œOh, she’s here, she’s here!” Aunt Paulette kept repeating, happily scampering out of the dining room through the sunroom and toward the front door. “And that precious little girl, too! Helloooo! Jessie! Abby! It’s Auntie Paulette!”
    Monica walked over to the back door and peered out through the screen. Todd was still swimming laps.
    â€œShe’s here,” she called out.
    Her husband stopped mid-stroke and looked up at her.
    â€œAnd now the fun begins,” he said.
    â€œGet out and help her with her bags. It’s a long hike up to Mom’s house.”
    The driveway ended at Monica’s house, and the only way up to Mom’s house—now, Jessie’s house—was by foot up a rather steep hill. Monica would have to get used to her sister and her niece traipsing past.
    She turned away from the door. From where she was standing, Monica could see the driveway through the sunroom and through the large picture windows that fronted the house. A young man was emerging from the driver’s door of a black Lincoln town car and going around to open the door in back. Monica took a deep breath. She recalled again the harrowing phone calls she’d gotten from Jessie in those first few weeks after she’d moved to New York, how terrified she had been, how she’d thought she was seeing ghosts and strange apparitions of bloody babies, how convinced she’d been that Emil was lurking somewhere out on the street, watching her, waiting for her. For a while Monica had thought she might have to have Jessie committed. Her sister had seemed to be cracking up. Finding her a place in the city hadn’t helped her. In fact, it had seemed to make things worse.
    But, then, all at once, everything had changed. A few months after Jessie’s move to the city, they’d gotten a call. Emil was dead. He’d been shot by Mexican police in a drug bust in Ciudad, Juarez. U.S. agents had identified his body through fingerprints. Jessie was at first uncertain whether she could believe it, but Aunt Paulette did a psychic reading and announced she could no longer see Emil anywhere on the planet, meaning that he must really be dead. That seemed to convince Jessie.
    From that moment on, she’d been like a woman reborn. She’d started writing for magazines and newspapers, and two years later, had had a book published