Since this was release week for BAKED WITH LOVE, I decided to put one more snippet up about it. Here, we get a glimpse of just how close the sisters are to one another, and how much they know about each other. I love this scene because I can just SEE sisters talking like this. ( it’s told, BTW, from Maureen’s POV)
“Here’s your wedding album,” I said, holding it up.
“Let me see.”
I handed it to her, and she started flipping through the pages.
“We were so stinkin’ young, and I was so stupid,” she said after a few minutes.
“It still boggles my mind Mom and Daddy didn’t try to talk me out of getting married at barely eighteen.”
“You weren’t stupid.” Colleen reached out and rubbed Cathy’s arm. “Young, yes, but you’d known Danny practically since birth. Everyone who knew the two of you knew you were going to get married someday. And we all loved Danny. He was perfect for you.”
“Not everyone,” I said, flipping through another album. “Eileen didn’t like Dan and never had, even when we were little.”
“What! Why not?” Cathy asked.
I put the album down and took another out of the container. “You know Eileen. She was a natural bullshit detector. Inherited the trait from Nanny.”
“Truth,” Colleen said, then sipped her tea.
“She told me she didn’t think Danny was the wonderful guy he seemed and he wasn’t being totally truthful, maybe even lying to you about something. She never told me what it was, but she believed it right up until he died.”
“How come you never told me this?”
“Why would I? From the outside, you two appeared happy, and you never gave any indication you weren’t. Neither Coll nor I knew anything to the contrary until you confessed what had been going on in your marriage.”
“Eileen was always a little fey, as Nanny would call it,” Colleen said. “Sensitive to what was going on around her.” She flipped through the album in her hand.
I nodded.
“Hey, found your picture,” Colleen said a moment later. “Good gravy, I forgot all about Lucas’s hideous tuxedo.”
“Let’s see.” Cathy stretched out her hand for the book.
There were about a half dozen pictures of Cathy and Danny, then a few of Lucas, taken in the same living room we were all currently sprawled in.
Cathy laughed as she flipped a page and found a photo of Lucas and Eileen and me. He was dressed to attend prom, that dumb tuxedo shining back from the camera flash, while we were in our pajamas.
“I remember when this was taken. Eileen dragged you down the staircase screaming she wanted a picture of the three of you. What were you guys, ten?”
“Nine,” Colleen said.
Lucas had picked us up and settled us each on a hip. Eileen was smiling like she’d just won the lottery, while I was staring at Lucas.
“She loved him so much,” Cathy said, a mote of wistfulness in her voice. “Followed him around every time he was here, wanting to sit in his lap, show him some new gymnastics move she’d learned in class.”
“He was always so patient with her, too,” Colleen said. “With the two of you, really. He never got annoyed about all the oxygen Eileen sucked out of a room whenever she was in one.”
“Lucas never got annoyed at anything,” I said, staring at the picture. “Still doesn’t.”
Cathy peered over the album at me, her head at an angle and a question in her eyes.
“Eileen wasn’t the only twin who thought Lucas hung the moon,” she said, pointedly.
When I didn’t respond to her baited statement, she held the album up. “Look at this picture.”
I did. “Okay. So?”
“You’re the only one not staring at the camera. All your attention is focused on Lucas, like you can’t take your eyes off him.”
“In these pictures, too,” Colleen said, flipping through Cathy’s wedding and graduation album. “There isn’t one time you’re not staring at him.”
I’d never noticed it before, but they were right. We’d had hundreds of pictures taken over the years before camera phones became a thing, and in almost every one where Lucas was present while I was, I was looking at him.
“And now he looks at you whenever you’re in a room together,” Cathy said with a smug smirk gliding across her mouth.
I rolled my eyes and took a sip from my teacup.
“She’s not wrong,” Colleen added.
I shrugged and flipped through the album in my hands.
“I find it interesting she isn’t arguing with us on this,” Cathy said to Colleen.
“Hmm. Makes you wonder why not.”
“Oh, I know why she isn’t. You do, too. I just wonder if she realizes we know.”
I tossed the album down onto the cocktail table and stared at both of them. “You know, that crap didn’t work when I was a kid. It certainly isn’t going to now.”
Intrigued? I hope so. If so, here’s where you can get your copy: BWL
Peggy Jaeger, Author 