Return to Mariposa

Chapter 1

There were boxes everywhere. I hadn’t realized I owned so much—my peripatetic existence had hardly been conducive to gathering stuff, but apparently stuff I had in abundance. I couldn’t fault the boxes and boxes of books—I was both an academic and a dreamer, and books had always been my lifeline.

I couldn’t object to the carton of ancient vinyl LPs, remnants from my mother’s own gypsy past and treasures on their own.

But where had all the other shit come from? How had I managed to acquire four wine openers but no wire whisk? It could have said a lot for my priorities, except that I seldom could afford wines with corks. There were clothes I never would wear, shoes that didn’t fit, a lifetime of other people’s hand-me-downs that were too good to throw out but never felt quite right on me.

And all these things had to find someplace to go to, and no money to get them there.

It was hardly my fault that my deadbeat landlord had defaulted on his mortgage, thereby depriving me of the nice second-floor apartment in the old Victorian house on the edge of Hanover, New Hampshire.

And when you’re a graduate student working on clinical trials, it’s to be expected that funding occasionally runs out. The problem was I didn’t know whether the cruel gods of college loans would countenance any more delays, given that I’d been in school for the last eleven years. Not that I didn’t have the degrees to show for it. A BA in English Lit, surely the most useless degree in the history of higher education. Topping that off with a master’s in modern Spanish literature, and I’d ensured that I was virtually unemployable. My attempts to remedy that dire situation had resulted in being three quarters of the way toward a PhD in plant eugenics, with an emphasis on olive trees. Why I thought the icy northern climes of New England would be conducive to the study of olives still remained a mystery to me.

I knew why I’d chosen it, of course. A long-distance nod to the happiest time in my life, living in the warm, familial confines of Mariposa, the world-famous olive groves and vineyards owned by the patrician Whitehead family in the south of Spain. My family, once upon a time.

As for my worthless boyfriend, I was well rid of him. The truth was, I had lousy taste in men. I didn’t know what I was looking for and so far I hadn’t even come close. It was definitely time for another dry spell. I never held with the idea that a lousy boyfriend was better than no boyfriend at all, and I could happily consign Nick, and Simon, and Tony, and Snake (that’ll tell you how bad my choices tended to be) to the graveyard of failed relationships.

I had two more days in my denuded apartment, two days to either find a new place, pronto, or the cheapest fleabag motel in the Hanover area, leaving my aging Subaru Forrester filled with as many boxes as I could manage. Or I’d be sleeping with those boxes, and even in the so-called spring, New Hampshire was miserably cold.

I was so busy feeling sorry for myself that I didn’t even hear the car drive up our quiet street, the slam of the door, the steps on my stairs. Only the peremptory knock startled me enough to move me from my glum perch on the old sofa with the broken springs.

The knock came again, even more demanding, and I was so not in the mood. “Hold your horses,” I snapped, heading to the door. Whoever it was, I knew I didn’t want to see him or her. Given my recent run of luck, it was probably trouble.

Trouble that wasn’t going to go away on its own. I slammed open the door, about to snarl some off-color demand, when I stopped, struck dumb for one of the first times in my life.

“About time, darling!” My exquisitely beautiful cousin Isabella stood there, and the drizzly gray afternoon suddenly seemed shot with sunlight.

“Izzy!” I screeched, throwing my arms around her. Together we hugged and squealed, jumping up and down as if we were twelve-year-olds spending the summer together after a long winter apart. It had been so damned long.

But then she released me, stepping back and shoving a careless hand through her magnificent mane of golden, pre-Raphaelite curls. “It’s Bella now, darling,” she said with a throaty laugh, looking me up and down. “God, you haven’t changed!”

That wasn’t high praise, but I took it in the spirit intended.

“Neither have you,” I said. A lie. If anything, my magnificent cousin Isabella was even more of everything. More beautiful, more charming, taller, thinner. Everything about her seemed touched with gold.

All our lives I’ve been a pale shadow of my enchanting cousin. We’d been born a year and a world apart, but we’d always been thrown together during those long, idyllic summers at Mariposa. Her hair was always blonder, curlier, longer than mine, her eyes a bright green compared to my changeable hazel ones, her porcelain skin an affront to my adolescent breakouts. To make things worse, our features were almost identical.

She was funny and charming, where I suffered from mortifying shyness. And she had cousin Marcus, the most beautiful man I had ever seen in my life, at her delicate feet which were, of course, a full size smaller than mine.

Somehow I ended up inside the apartment, the door closed behind us. Izzy...no, Bella...eyed the tower of boxes cramming the living room. “Going somewhere, Podge?”

I hated that name. It was bad enough that my mother, while giving me the perfectly respectable name of Kathryn, had insisted on calling me “Kitty” after her favorite old black-and-white movie, and the nickname was even worse when you counted the snarky teenage boys who decided to translate it into “pussy,” thereby mortifying me for all time. At least it wasn’t the cruel, hated nickname from my teenage years.

“Lease ran out,” I said briefly, fighting back my instinctive protest.

“Poor baby! I don’t suppose you have something to drink in this thoroughly tragic hovel?”

Considering this thoroughly tragic hovel was the nicest place I had lived in in the last ten years, I thought about being offended, then dismissed it. Isabella had more money than God, along with all the Whitehead family—privilege ran in their blood. That is, all the Whiteheads who were still considered part of the dynasty and hadn’t been cut off.

“There’s a box of wine in the fridge,” I said.

“A box?” Isabella said in acute horror. “Darling, what have you come to?”

I managed a cheery smile. “You know I’ve always been a peasant at heart, Iz...Bella. It might be a little vinegary by now, but it’s all I’ve got. Take it or leave it.”

Her beautiful nose wrinkled in distaste. The same nose I saw in the mirror, but for some reason, I never thought of my own as beautiful. “It’ll have to do. Do you still have glasses or will I be forced to drink out of the box?”

I laughed. “I can find you a glass. But you’ll have to tell me why you suddenly showed up on my doorstep after all these years.”

“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?”

Reluctantly, I pulled it from my back pocket and handed it to her. She pushed buttons, then cast an incredulous look up at me. “It doesn’t even get internet!”

“It’s just for the basics.” Belatedly, I remembered our silly game. “Who needs all that stuff on a telephone, for Christ’s sake?” I added with a drawl.

Bella grinned at me. “Good answer.” She tucked my elderly phone into her own pocket, ignoring my protest, and gestured toward the iPhone. “Keep it. I’m always losing them anyway. I’ll just use yours for a while and see if I can survive on something less.”

She didn’t mean the slight sting. You learned to survive on whatever you had. Lucky Isabella, the one the gods had smiled on, wouldn’t even know what deprivation felt like.

“Are you ever going to tell me...” I began, but Bella shushed me, refilling my glass.

“Let’s wait till the pizza arrives and I’ll tell you everything,” she said. “I don’t suppose they deliver wine around here?”

“In this benighted country?” I added in her voice. “Only by the caseload.”

“Tempting,” she said. “Right now, I feel I could put away an entire case, but I suppose it would have to be moved along with everything else.”

Her unexpected concern was new too—she usually didn’t bother with how her high-flown actions affected everyone else. “You’re right. If I was leaving this place to the landlord, he’d probably be thrilled, but the bank is taking it over and I don’t think they’d be similarly appreciative.”

Bella grinned at me. “Probably not. Though I’ve known bankers who drink like fish.”

“Total sots,” I said in her voice. “But then, the bankers you’ve known are all Spanish. They’re used to their wine or sherry followed by a siesta.”

She laughed. “You’re way out of touch. Siesta has pretty much gone the way of the dinosaur in the cities of Spain. And I haven’t been in Spain in more than five years.”

This managed to shock me more deeply than anything else about her unexpected appearance. “But why? You love Mariposa. You love Marcus.”

“That’s old news, sweetie. Marcus and I broke off our engagement ages ago. He’s happy staying at Mariposa and charming everyone into buying our olives while I’ve been following my heart all over the world.” She rummaged in the huge designer bag beside her, then tossed her red passport to me. “Take a look.”

It was surprisingly thick, and then I realized that official pages had been added to document all her travel. Africa, South America, Australia, the Pacific Rim. She’d come into Boston a number of times over the years, I noticed blankly, and made no effort to get in touch with me. But that was Bella. She always had a clear agenda and anyone who didn’t fit in with it was easily discarded. But when she was there she was so sunny and charming that her innate selfishness was easy to forgive. You didn’t blame a butterfly for being fragile.

I flipped back, hoping against hope that like everyone else she’d have a lousy passport photo. And then I froze.

The passport photo was lousy indeed. It was a photo of me.

There was no missing the difference. My hair had been photo-shopped into blond, pre-Raphaelite curls, my eyes were now green instead of hazel, but I knew that photograph.

I looked up at Bella, who was watching me without a trace of nervousness, but charm could only get her so far. I cleared my throat, dropping her drawl. “Exactly what the fuck is going on?”

She was saved from having to answer by the sudden sound of the doorbell. “I’ll get it,” she said, uncurling her long legs before I could protest. I stayed where I was, looking down at the passport in disbelief. From a distance, I could hear her voice, my voice, flirting with Al, who ran the deliveries.

“Hey, you clean up nice, Ms. Whitehead.”

“Call me Kitty,” she replied in my voice, not bothering to correct him. “It’s all on my cousin’s tab, isn’t it?”

“Sure is, tip included,” he said with a cheerfulness he hadn’t shown in more than a dozen desperate pizza calls over the last year. “You take care, all right? Don’t forget us when you find your new place.”

“Wouldn’t think of it,” my voice floated back from the hall, further increasing my sense of unreality. She returned to the living room, setting the box down between us, and dropped into a reasonable approximation of a lotus position with no trouble whatsoever. I looked at her in astonishment.

“I’ve got a few paper plates...” I offered hesitantly as she exposed the rich, gooey mess. Ray and Lucy’s made real New York pizza, to die for.

“Do you use plates when you order pizza?” I shook my head. “Then neither will I,” Bella said firmly, helping herself to a slice heaped with olives and prosciutto and peppers.

I had spent the day working hard, packing, and I should have been famished, but a cold knot had formed in the bottom of my stomach, and I wasn’t going to touch the stuff unless I could get some answers from Bella.

I poured another half glass of wine. I couldn’t begin to keep up with Bella’s input, but I was still drinking more than I was used to. The box of wine was, in fact, from a Spanish vineyard, and it had been quite decent when it was first opened. Even now, it didn’t taste the slightest bit vinegary. I would have hoped she hadn’t noticed what wine I had, but Bella had an impeccable palate. Even if she hadn’t read the box, she would have known it was a Spanish vintage.

“So, ’splain this to me, Lucy,’” I said in a fair approximation of Ricky Ricardo’s accent. “What’s going on? And what does it have to do with me?”

“You better settle back, kiddo,” she said, still not deviating from my voice. “It’s a long story.”

“Can’t you condense it a bit? It’s been a long day.”

“It’s a Spanish story,” she said. “These things take time to unfold. Didn’t you read Spanish literature for your degree? The Spanish can’t be rushed. Neither can the ex-pats, who like to think they’re more Spanish than the Spaniards.”

“And where do you see yourself?” I asked, unconsciously slipping back into her tones.

“As someone up to her neck in a shit storm, and if you don’t help me, I might just get buried, literally, which doesn’t seem like a pleasant way to go.”

My tight muscles were beginning to loosen, just as Bella’s tongue was. I reached out for the smallest slice of pizza, brushed off some of the inferior green and black olives, and took a bite. As good as ever. “You might as well get started, my precious,” I drawled in her voice, hoping to bring a smile to her pensive face. “For starters, why haven’t you been back to Mariposa for five years?”

She took a deep breath, then another swallow of the wine. “A number of reasons. Breaking it off with Marcus didn’t please anyone, not Granda who foresaw a dynasty, not Marcus, not our so-delightful cousins, even stick-in-the-mud Ian was pissed at me. Needless to say, decamping with a big chunk of my trust fund didn’t further endear me to anyone. In fact, I was planning to keep away for as long as I could, but fate decided to take a hand.”

“What hand is that?”

“Granda’s, of course. He’s dying,” Bella said flatly.

“So what else is new?” I was unimpressed. Granda was always dying.

“No, this time it’s for real. So real that the forces are gathering. Ian’s been off at a seminar in South Africa, Marcus has been schmoozing with clients in the Pacific Rim, and God knows what the cousins are doing, but they’ve been called home. As have I.”

As I have not, I thought ignoring the familiar pain. “So?”

“Kitty, I can’t. I simply can’t. I’ve got something to take care of—I don’t want to involve you, but you need to take my word for it. It’s a matter of life and death. It’s not that I need Granda’s inheritance; you know I have plenty of money of my own. I just don’t want to break the old man’s heart.”

“Are you sure he has a heart?”

Bella cast me a worried look. “Of course he has a heart. He did what he thought he had to do. You know Granda, he’s always been too full of pride. He couldn’t admit that he missed you or that he’d made a mistake. Even now, he’s afraid to reach out to you. But you should be there. You need to be able to say goodbye. He needs to know his family loves him despite all the bad things he did.”

“How many bad things did he do?”

“More than his fair share, I expect. But he’s afraid he’s going to go to hell.”

I laughed heartlessly. “I expect he will, given his hard-core beliefs. As an Anglican, he’s more Catholic than the Catholic.”

“You’re right, of course. You always saw him better than the rest of us. If he could buy his way into heaven he would, but despite all the money he’s pumped into the churches of Andalusia, he knows it’s not enough. He needs to see me before he dies, and he needs to see you.”

“And how is he going to do that when I’m not welcome at Mariposa?” I fought down my grief and longing. It was my world, he was my family, and I’d been banished. I could never go home again.

“Simple,” Bella said easily. “You go in my place. He gets the benefit of making his peace with me and saying goodbye, plus, without knowing it, he’ll be making his peace with you.”

I stared at her. “You must be out of your mind,” I said.

“You know you want to go back to Mariposa, at least one more time, and don’t deny it. And you’ll make an old man who once loved you very happy.”

“But what if I’m still holding a grudge?”

“Oh come on, Podge,” she said. “You’re not the type to hold a grudge. You are the best of all of us, genuinely nice and loving. He needs your forgiveness, whether he can ask for it or not.”

“You’re insane. I’m not going anywhere,” I said flatly, believing it.

“I haven’t told you everything,,” she said, and for the first time I noticed the faint lines of anxiety in her face, the whiteness around her mouth, the tight muscles on her forehead. Isabella Whitehead was afraid of something, and that fear was more important than her beloved grandfather’s deathbed. I hardened my heart.

“You have to go, Bella,” I said sensibly. “He always adored you. When I would go to visit, he would talk on and on about his glorious grandchild and how brilliant she was at everything. You are his favorite—you can’t abandon him when he’s dying and needs you most.”

“I don’t have any choice in the matter. This business I have to take care of—it won’t wait. And no, I can’t explain it to you. Suffice it to say I got in with the wrong sort of people and I’m paying the price for it. I’ve been stupid, Kitty, really, really dumb, and I need to get myself out of a big mess or...” She let the words trail off.

“Too melodramatic by half, cousin,” I said in her voice. Except that I suspected she was telling me nothing more than the truth.

And she knew me well enough to know I was being drawn in. She pounced.

“Listen, it would be three days at the most. You fly into Malaga, take a smaller plane to Santa Maria de Fe and then drive to Mariposa to spend the day with Granda. He won’t be able to tell the difference once we get your hair fixed. We actually look very much alike—you’d be quite pretty if you bothered to fix yourself up. And remember, he hasn’t seen me for five years, and he’s nearly blind and deaf. You can say goodbye to him, bid a proper farewell to Mariposa. You were never able to, when your crazy-ass mother dragged you away that summer. This will give you some closure.”

Bella knew just what to say, of course. She’d always understood what people really wanted, deep down. “Ian and Marcus aren’t half blind and deaf,” I said. “You were going to marry Marcus—you slept with him. He’d know the difference.”

“We’re talking about Marcus, darling. He’s not much into questioning the status quo. But he won’t even be there, and neither will that snake in the grass Ian. Marcus isn’t coming in till next week, and Ian two days later, and who knows if the girls will make it at all. You’ll have plenty of time to get in and out before they show up. Not that you couldn’t fool them too—you’ve got my voice and mannerisms down pat, and remember, they haven’t seen me in years. But it won’t even come up. You fly in, spend a day at Mariposa, and then head back to Malaga. After that, you can go anywhere you want—the flight back is open-ended, and of course I’ll give you my charge card and one for the street tills...”

“Street tills?”

“ATMs,” she corrected. “You’ll need cash. You get a brand new wardrobe—I’ve been shopping for days. You get a European vacation, cost free, a reunion with your grandfather, no strings, no hassles. You don’t even have to spend the night at Mariposa. Just an afternoon with a dying man, and you’re free. How can you even consider saying no?”

“Because it’s ridiculous,” I said, ignoring the surge of longing in my heart. “Not to mention a felony, travelling on a fake passport. This isn’t like when we were children and played games on the rest of them, and it sure the hell isn’t some stupid Lindsey Lohan movie.”

“Lindsey Lohan?” Bella’s beautiful brow wrinkled. “What’s she got to do with anything?”

“Hayley Mills,” I corrected. She still looked blank, and I realized that while I’d been holed up in New Hampshire, devouring old movies, she’d been out in the real world, living. “An old movie called The Parent Trap, where two twin sisters take each other’s place.”

“But why...? Never mind. This will work. Your life is a mess, Podge. You have no home, no job, you’re completely at loose ends. And did I happen to mention I’ll pay you ten thousand dollars if you do this?”

I’d felt the first tingles of temptation, but her words made me feel sick inside. She was trying to bribe me, pay me, like I was one of the outsiders....

Which I was, I reminded myself, ready to kick her out of my house in affronted pride. And then I saw the fear, real fear in her bright green eyes.

She read my reaction, of course. Bella was always good at that. “I’m sorry, Podge. I know that you’d do it for free, not because I bribed you. But I’ve got the money, and surely you could find a use for it. I bet you have hellacious college loans,” she added with a grin.

Ten thousand dollars wouldn’t even put a dent in them. It would, however, tide me over until I found a decent place and a new job. But there were some things I simply couldn’t do.

“Tell me about this trouble you’re in,” I said. “Are you really in danger? Shouldn’t you go to the police?”

“The police can’t help me. It’s complicated, and the less you know, the better off you’ll be. Suffice it to say I owe someone something, and I need time to get it to him. Which I can do; I just need to concentrate on that, not on wasting my time with deathbed visits.”

I blinked. “Don’t you want to say goodbye to Granda? He adores you.”

She shrugged. “I don’t like death. I’d rather remember him as I last saw him. You’ll say goodbye for me and do it far better than I would. Won’t you, Podge?”

“No.”

A dark look crossed her face for a brief moment, then vanished. Bella wasn’t used to being denied anything, but there was no way I was going through with such a hare-brained idea. These sorts of things might happen in movies, but in real life, it would be impossible.

Bella straightened her back, fixing her steely gaze on me. “Look, Kitty, you’re not in a position to say no. You have no apartment, no job, no prospects, and you’ve been dreaming about Mariposa ever since you left it.”

“I have not!” I denied it, but it was a lie.

“I’m offering you a way out of your troubles, time to figure out what you want to do next, and in the meantime you can make your peace with Granda.”

“Not if he thinks I’m you. And what makes you think I have troubles?”

“You’re sitting in an empty apartment full of boxes and you told me your funding ran out. I call that trouble. And Granda won’t think anything. I told you, he’s really dying this time—he probably won’t recognize anyone anymore. I only need a few days, Kitty. Just to get some people off my back. I’ve never asked you for anything before, I’ve always been your biggest supporter with Granda, trying to get him to invite you back, but he’s a stubborn old bastard. You owe me this much.”

I stared at her. I’d had too much wine, and too many days of uncertainty over the basic necessities of life.

And Lord, how I missed Mariposa, and Granda. I couldn’t bear the thought of him leaving without giving me a chance to see him once more.

If I went, was there any chance in the world I could pull it off? Marcus and Ian wouldn’t be there—they’d be the most likely ones to see through me. And the cousins, Mary Alice and Valerie, wouldn’t know me either, and besides, they weren’t anywhere around. It would just be me and Granda, for one short day, and then I’d be free, ready to take on the new chapter to my life in New Hampshire.

I tried one more protest. “I can’t do something so crazy...”

“You can. Stop being such a wuss, Podge. I’m offering you everything you’ve ever wanted, and all you have to do is say goodbye to Granda for me. You can’t say no.”

She had me, and she knew it. As insane as the idea was, I knew I was caving. I was taking her clothes and her passport and going back to Mariposa, one last time, to say goodbye to everything, including the grandfather who’d banished me. I would forgive him, and maybe I could finally let go of the thrall that Mariposa had always held.

“You’re absolutely certain no one else will be there?”

She kept the look of triumph from her face, but it was easy to see the relief in her eyes. “Positive. Even if they are, it’s been so long since I’ve seen them, they wouldn’t know the difference, but they’re way off in the back-end of beyond, and you know the girl cousins. They don’t like to bother with us. You’ll be in and out before anyone even realizes it.” She leaned back against the wall. “I’ve already made an appointment with a stylist to fix our hair...”

“Our hair?”

“Well, I’m going to have to pass myself off as you, aren’t I? I’m worried about your eyes, though. Mine are green. I don’t remember yours looking quite so brown,” she said doubtfully. “I don’t suppose you can wear contacts?”

“I‘m wearing them. They’re tinted, making my hazel eyes more interesting.”

“Excellent!” she crowed. “Clearly, this was meant to be. We can just get new lenses to make your eyes green, and no one will be able to tell the difference.”

I looked at her doubtfully. I’d drunk too much wine, and the sight of my denuded apartment was as depressing as the gorgeously dressed butterfly across from me. Tomorrow I’d be wiser, tomorrow I’d see another way out of my current, homeless, impoverished mess.

But tonight the answer seemed clear.

“Yes,” I said. “I’ll go.” And I poured myself another glass of wine.