“Thanks for coming,” Phoebe said as she unlocked the front door. “Olivia and Maggie will be here any minute.”
“This is going to be so much fun,” Ruby said, tucking a pink rose blossom behind her ear. She had on a long black skirt and a white tank top, her short, wavy hair dyed a purple-black that made her skin seem even paler, more translucent. “We brought all our goodies. Makeup, wigs, hairpieces, curling iron, needles and thread. We’ve already done up a half-dozen masks. Three are simple. You’d be able to recognize whoever’s wearing them. Three are more elaborate. It’d be tougher to recognize who’s wearing them.”
Ava smiled. “We will not fail you.” She twirled a rose stem in her fingertips. Her hair was its natural reddish brown, trailing down her back in a loose ponytail. Her skirt, which came to just above her knees, was a deep, warm red that worked surprisingly well with her turquoise lace top. “A masquerade ball in Boston. It doesn’t get much fancier than that.”
Phoebe pushed open the door. “Dylan has extra tickets if you want to go.”
“I wish,” Ava said wistfully, tossing her rose over the porch rail into the grass. “We have to work, and classes start again next week.”
“Otherwise we’d go in a heartbeat,” Ruby added.
No doubt they would, Phoebe thought. “It does sound grand,” she said as she led them inside. “Maggie and Olivia are counting on your theatrical flair. What do you think of Maggie in the blue gown Grace Kelly wore in To Catch a Thief and Olivia in Audrey Hepburn’s black dress from Breakfast at Tiffany’s?”
Ava turned, intrigued. “Do you have the dresses?”
Phoebe nodded. “I have the dresses.”
“Oh, wow. Excellent. Ruby?”
“Grace’s icy-blue chiffon gown? Audrey’s little black dress?” Ruby laughed. “That’s fantastic.”
“I even have pearls and a cigarette holder,” Phoebe said.
“Where did you get them?” Ava asked.
“I’m thinking of including them in our vintage fashion show,” Phoebe said evasively. Her sisters followed her into the kitchen, where she put the wine in the refrigerator, a relic that, somehow, still worked.
Ava leaned against the counter, a cheap wood that Phoebe had painted creamy white, her first renovation when she’d moved in. “So, Phoebe,” Ava said, crossing her arms on her chest. “Have you decided what you’re wearing?”
Phoebe got out wineglasses and set them on the cracked Formica counter, sidestepping her sister’s question. The twins were in graduate school—Ava in New York, Ruby in Boston—but they were spending the summer in Knights Bridge, living at home to save money. They had student loans that would take years if not decades to pay off, and big dreams that might never pay off, but Phoebe hoped everything would work out for them, believed in them. She knew they felt the same way about her but suspected they had their doubts about her choices. Not her library work. Her solitary life—or what to her sisters seemed like a solitary life. Meaning she didn’t have a man.
She’d had one, once. She’d been on the road to marriage and a happy ending of her own, but it hadn’t worked out that way.
Everyone in town knew her story—Phoebe O’Dunn, jilted at twenty, within forty-eight hours of finding her father dead from a tree-trimming accident. She’d shielded her mother and sisters from the depth of her pain, but the shock had taken its toll. Broken hearts healed but that didn’t mean life was ever the same. Phoebe had deliberately shut the door on romance, at least for herself.
But it was fine, all fine, because she was fine. She loved her work, her family, her friends, her town. She couldn’t be more content than she was right now.
Ava looked out the window over the sink at the backyard flower garden, dominated now, in mid-August, by hollyhocks that ranged from soft white through three shades of pink to deep maroon. “You’re not going to the ball, are you, Phoebe?”
Phoebe changed her mind and decided to pour the wine now. She grabbed the pinot grigio out of the refrigerator and set it on the counter. “No, I’m not going,” she said matter-of-factly as she rummaged in the utensil drawer for a corkscrew. “Do you both want wine?”
Ruby plopped her tote bag onto a chair at the table. “Phoebe, you know you’d have a great time. You never go anywhere—”
“I have so much to do here. I’m taking vacation days before the end of the summer. I’ll go someplace then.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. Someplace.” Phoebe held up a glass. “Wine?”
“Sure,” Ruby said with a sigh. “Just don’t think I’ve given up.”
“Me, either,” Ava said. “You should go to this ball tomorrow, Phoebe. Maybe you’ll change your mind when you see the masks Ruby and I made. Anyway, wine for me, too. I’ll get our goodies out of the car.”