A Mum For Amy. Ann Evans

with all three of them, but she hadn’t been able to stay angry at her sister for long. Alaina could seldom stand up to their parents, but she didn’t have a mean bone in her body. She would have done anything for her younger sister, including raise Maggie’s illegitimate baby as her own—an idea Connie and James Tillman had unbelievably considered the best solution for everyone.

      A solution that Maggie had hotly refused to consider.

      The moment Alaina opened the front door of her huge home in North Miami, Maggie found herself swallowed in a tight, welcoming hug. It surprised her a little. Alaina was reserved and not much of a “hugger.”

      Alaina had always been delicately beautiful, articulate and poised, everything that Maggie had never been and never would be. Just shy of thirty, she had an elegant sophistication now. She looked trim and spotless in white shorts, with long, bare legs that were sun-gilded to a rosy gold. There wasn’t a blond hair out of place, in spite of the fact that she looked like she’d just come off the tennis court.

      Maggie had to hide a secret grimace. Any time she had played tennis, it had strictly been baggy pants and sweat marks at the armpits of her T-shirt.

      Alaina drew back, still holding Maggie’s arms. “I’ve missed you so much!”

      “You have?” Maggie replied in a stunned tone, without thinking. She wasn’t used to this kind of effusive greeting from Alaina. Her sister tended to welcome you like a queen inviting a television crew into the palace.

      “Of course,” Alaina said. “Come on, I have your room all ready. It’s Delia’s day off, so the place is a mess, but a little clutter never used to bother you much. Close your eyes if you can’t bear it.”

      Maggie kept her eyes open as she followed her sister through the house. She made a mental note to look up the word clutter in the dictionary when she got home. Alaina’s definition must be an iced tea glass sweating on the coffee table without a coaster and a tennis racket tossed onto a chair. Everything else looked model-home perfect and boring—from the impressive baby grand piano placed artfully by the floor-to-ceiling windows, to a massive piece of modern sculpture that soared skyward in the foyer.

      Maggie thought suddenly of her lumpy but comfortable couch at home, snagged at a neighbor’s garage sale, and her mismatched dining chairs. Her apartment boasted the kind of decor that came from seldom having guests and never seeing your own home with fresh eyes. Compared to this place, it was a disaster.

      Honestly, it was amazing that she and Alaina were actually sisters.

      “Same old dump, I see,” Maggie remarked.

      Alaina smiled back over one shoulder. “It’s awfully bland, isn’t it? But Gil insisted we use a professional designer for the common areas. He feels a certain impression has to be maintained. The house has to say something about who he is.”

      “Oh, it does,” Maggie replied.

      She clamped her tongue between her teeth to keep from divulging more. She didn’t like Alaina’s husband, Gil. He might be a brilliant, prominent pediatric surgeon, but Maggie thought him overbearing and a complete snob. And the few times she’d been around him, he’d been so bossy with Alaina. Of course, that hardly differed from the way her parents had always treated her sister, but it seemed a little unfair that Alaina should have gone from one domineering household to another.

      But…maybe Alaina, never much for taking chances or bucking authority, liked it that way.

      She led Maggie down a long hallway. Finally, she came to a door, opened it, and stepped aside. “I redecorated the back bedrooms a few months ago. I hope you like yours. I don’t care if it is all last year’s colors.”

      Maggie had been about to make a playfully snarky remark about being stuck with “last year’s colors,” but when she stepped into the room, the beauty of it took her breath away. The furniture didn’t match, but actually worked together instead of looking like a hodgepodge. Cream and rose hues, with a touch of green for accent. All the soft colors of a Victorian garden party. The curtains at the tall windows were real lace, billowing an invitation in the soft breeze.

      Noting Maggie’s silence, Alaina said, “Do you think it’s too girly? Gil refuses to put any of his relatives in here.”

      Maggie turned to face her sister. “Al, it’s gorgeous. You really did miss your calling. You shouldn’t have let Mom and Dad talk you out of a degree in interior design.”

      Alaina shook her head. “That was just a silly dream. I didn’t really have enough imagination to sustain that kind of career. So now I’m exactly who I should be.”

      Maggie frowned a little. And who was that?

      She didn’t know her sister all that well anymore. They had always been very different people, but as the years had gone by, the gap had widened. They certainly didn’t have mutual friends and interests, or kids or husbands. Just their parents.

      And Alaina knew better than to encourage that particular point of connection.

      Maggie turned back to the room, feeling a tightness in her chest, regretting that she and her sister had become so distant. She made the sudden, impassioned decision that from now on she would try to rectify that, try harder to be a real friend to Alaina.

      She rolled her weekender to the bed and hefted it on top. Alaina went into hostess mode, pointing out the bathroom and a basket of high-end toiletries that put Maggie’s hotel freebies to shame. She promised to bring more hangers if Maggie needed them. Would she like scented ones?

      Maggie had to laugh. “I don’t think I’ll need more. I usually drape my good clothes over a chair and ball up everything else in a corner.”

      “Even after all these years?” Alaina asked. “Mom would be horrified.”

      “It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve shocked her. Or Dad, either.”

      “It doesn’t have to be that way.”

      Maggie gave her sister a wry smile. “Don’t start. That’s just the way it is. We’re pleasant to one another. I still love them. Didn’t I come up for Dad’s retirement party? We’re just not destined to be close.”

      Alaina went to the windows and fiddled with the curtains while Maggie unzipped her bag. Somewhere in the distance she could hear wind chimes tinkling sweet notes.

      “Are you going to stop by to see them?” Alaina asked, still intent on the drapes.

      “I doubt it. I only need to stay a couple of days.”

      “Mom would probably like to see you. Since Dad’s retired he doesn’t have enough to do, and she says he drives her crazy.”

      “I can imagine,” Maggie replied. It wasn’t hard to picture her father trying to rearrange her mother’s household chores or deciding on the spur of the moment to remodel the family room. “Maybe I’ll swing by for an hour or two on my way out of town.”

      Maggie visited Connie and James Tillman mostly out of obligation now. She still considered herself a dutiful daughter. But when she came up to see them, their time together was deliberately brief. Her parents were better taken in small doses, and there was a coolness to all of their interactions, as though they were guests she’d only just met at a party and not the people who’d raised her.

      She pulled a blouse out of her suitcase, shaking out the wrinkles. From the corner of her eye, she was aware of her sister turning from the window.

      “I wish things could have been different,” Alaina said suddenly.

      “Different how?”

      “You know. About the baby.”

      Maggie looked up. Alaina, never comfortable talking about unpleasant family history, seldom mentioned those early days when Maggie had discovered she was pregnant.

      Her sister grimaced. “I wish I’d tried harder to make them see how wrong they were back then.