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The server nodded and melted away.
Maylis snapped a out cloth napkin and dropped it in her lap. “You’re trying to kill me, aren’t you?” She picked up her wine.
“I’m starving,” he said. “You don’t have to have any if you don’t want.” But he suspected it wouldn’t take much to convince her one piece wouldn’t add so many pounds she wouldn’t fit in her costume. He straightened away from her and rested his forearms on the edge of the table. “When did Tamera… if you don’t mind my asking...”
The mood at the table shifted to gloom, but he realized it was something he had to know.
“Last year. I sometimes think my parents will never recover,” she said softly.
So, her death had nothing to do with him. Not that it would have. He hadn’t seen her in over four years. “And you? Have you recovered?”
“Our relationship was… complicated.” She sipped at her wine. “There was the usual twin things you hear about, like being able to tell what the other was thinking on occasion, having a feeling the other might be in trouble. But—” She hesitated, and the hair at Aiden’s neck raised.
He waited.
“There is one huge thing between me and Tam that is different from a lot of twins.”
“Like what?” He poured more wine in their glasses.
Maylis didn’t drink hers. She picked up the glass and twisted the stem between her delicate fingers and studied the deep red within. “We don’t have the same birthday.”
“So, the two of you were born around midnight, I take it?”
“No. It was a much rarer condition. Tamera was a preemie. She was born four and a half weeks before me. It’s what is called an interval delivery.”
Aiden had no idea what that even meant. “I don’t understand.”
“Our mother suffered complications during an early labor. After Tamera was born, they stopped her labor and hospitalized her. Mom’s health was jeopardized to the point they didn’t even allow her to visit Tamera in the neonatal unit. I came later. Much later.”
“That explains a few things.”
“Like what?”
“I have a brother who was prematurely born. He was in an incubator for a while and not able to be held. My mother believes it’s part of the reason he doesn’t like to be touched much. Not all the time. Our mother can hug him, but he finds it uncomfortable.”
“That never occurred to me,” she said. “Tamera was the same way.”
Aiden didn’t tell her he already knew that. There was something innately remote about Tamera that even his brother didn’t exhibit. “You said something about a pregnancy?”
“Yes. Ectopic. That’s where the egg attaches to outside the uterus. Tamera didn’t tell anyone. She thought she would be” —she curled her fingers into air quotes—“murdering her child. No one could make her understand that a fetus can exist outside the womb. She almost bled to death before they could make her understand.” Her voice had turned low, and he had to lean in to hear.
The server appeared, holding two plates of Greek salad. The gloom that had hovered seconds ago dissipated. Food was a natural mood enhancer. The plates were set before them. “Your pizza will be out shortly.”
Maylis seemed to shake off the cobwebs of the past and took a forkful of salad. Her eyes closed and bliss covered her features. “This is delicious. Where did you find this place?”
“I grew up in Lenox. This place has been here forever.”
“So, your family is nearby?”
He grinned. “Hell, no. They migrated to Florida years ago. They prefer their New Year’s Eves in warmer climes.”
The more they ate, the more they drank, the softer the light became, the more beautiful his co-star appeared. He didn’t give a rat’s ass if the scout appeared or not at this point. So far, Aiden had been able to keep his thoughts on the conversation, reaching over only occasionally to finger one of the long braids that hung down her back. He palmed the thick plait, and she didn’t seem to notice.
She poked fun at her female cast members, sharing some of their dressing room antics.
“I once played one of the nuns inThe Sound of Music. There are seven kids in that show, you know.”
“Yes.”
