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“Not that many years,” Bella protested, an enchanting pout on her mouth. Her new name suited her.
“Seven since I last saw you. Twelve since we spent any time together,” I pointed out with my usual accuracy.
“And whose fault is that? You were the one to walk out on Granda.”
“I was sixteen—I didn’t have a choice,” I said flatly, ignoring the stab of pain her words brought me. No, it hadn’t been my choice to leave with my unstable mother. Someone had to take care of her, and I was the only one left.
Granda hadn’t seen it that way. I imagine if there’d been such a thing as a family Bible, my name would have been struck from it. As it was, my letters were returned unopened, my phone calls refused, and according to Isabella, my name was never allowed to be mentioned. It wasn’t as if I were dead—it was as if I’d never been born.
I’d made peace with it, though it had taken a while. When I was sixteen, I’d had no choice; by the time I was twenty, my sense of responsibility for my erratic mother had taken over, as well as my anger at my autocratic, cold-hearted grandfather. Screw them all, I was just fine on my own.
Until Isabella showed up and reminded me of all I lost. “Let’s not argue,” she said, pouring herself a generous glass of the merlot, then gave me a significant look until I followed suit. She held the glass up. “To family,” she said, tossing back her gorgeous mane of curls.
“To cousins,” I amended firmly, and clinked glasses with her.
She grinned, her eyes lighting, and drank deeply. “Bloody Christ!” she said with a shudder. “This stuff is completely ghastly!”
“’Bloody Christ!” I mocked her faintly British tones perfectly. “Completely ghastly or not, it will have to do.”
Bella giggled. “You always could mimic my voice perfectly,” she said, her own voice a perfect match to my now flattened vowels. “Remember that time when we were fourteen and switched places for a week? We could have carried it off for the entire summer—they had no idea.”
I smiled at the memory. Even a taste of being the glamorous Bella had been a treat. “They never did find out, did they? Or did you tell them?”
“Never!” She drained her glass, shuddered, and poured herself another, still maintaining her approximation of my Americanized voice. “We tricked them all.”
“Everyone but that wretched little snake Ian,” I said, continuing the game. “I swear he suspected something.” My hair was in a knot at the back of my head, and I released it, tossing it with a perfect approximation of Bella’s signature gesture. I didn’t have her curls, or her coloring, but at least it was long. “But then, he always was a devious little wretch.”
Bella giggled. “I never could figure out how Marcus could have a brother who was so different from him.”
“I’d wonder if Auntie Florence had cheated on her first husband, but that woman was born a saint. You could practically see the arrows of martyrdom piercing her breast.” That had been Isabella’s line—she’d always had the gift for summing up other people in faintly cruel, concise terms.
Isabella pealed with laughter. “So true!” she said with a sigh. “Tell me, you got anything to eat in this dump?”
“I suppose we can call out for pizza, darling,” I drawled.
She frowned. “You’ll need to be careful with the ‘darlings.’ Don’t overdo it.”
I looked at her in surprise. “Huh?” I said brilliantly, my accent slipping.
She grinned at me. “I’ll make a bet with you. I bet I can keep up with your voice longer than you can keep up with mine.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t want to gamble with you.”
I had been speaking in my normal tones, but she shook her head reprovingly. “I don’t wish to gamble with you,” she corrected in her perfect, throaty drawl. “You need to lower your voice a little.”
“And you need to get your head out of your ass. Darling,” I added for good measure, back in her voice again. In truth, it came naturally, except for the slightly extravagant way she spoke. We’d come from the same background, spent those long, endless summers together. It was almost second nature.
“So. Food?”
“I can always ring up for pizza.”
She tossed me her phone. Latest model iPhone, with all the bells and whistles, complete with a Prada case. “Use mine,” she said.
I shrugged, managing to remember the number that was programmed into my humbler phone, and placed the order. To my astonishment, the voice at the other end of Ray and Lucy’s Pizza didn’t ask for a credit card number, simply said, “Where to, Miss Whitehead?”
I gave them my address, too startled to correct them, and broke the connection. “How did they know whose phone it was?”
“Apps, darling. It’s all about apps. Where’s your phone?”
