“You found your way out here to the porch?” Cara stood in the doorway, looking at Darcy curled up under a blanket on the porch swing. “It’s my favorite place in the entire cottage. I should have known you’d zero in on it.”
“Can’t have you monopolizing it. Consider it mine.” She was trying to be flip, but it came out a little shaky. “Since I’m liable to be tossed out of here in the morning, I need to gather rosebuds where I may. Who said that anyway? Shakespeare?”
“I have no idea.” She crossed the porch and nudged Darcy’s legs out of her way to perch on the end of the swing. “But there’s no need for gathering rosebuds. No one is kicking you out. Eve understood that you’d be upset.”
“No, she didn’t. How could she? I walk into her home and upset her, then fall apart and have to be sent to bed like a kid.”
“You had reason.” She leaned back on the swing. “She knows that. We just don’t know what the reasons are, Darcy.” She paused. “So I’ve been designated to find out because they thought it would be easier for you to talk to me. Is that true?”
“You know it is.”
“Then will you tell me about your twin? You’ve never mentioned her. And I don’t remember ever reading about her on your fan pages.”
“You read my fan page?”
“Only when I knew you were going to room with me. I wanted to know what to expect.”
“And you found me just as spectacular as you thought I’d be?”
“Absolutely.” She reached out and covered Darcy’s hand with her own. Darcy seemed so terribly vulnerable in this moment. Just as beautiful, but everything about her seemed infinitely fragile, like crystal on the verge of shattering.
“You’re lying because you want to make me feel better.”
“Well, maybe not absolutely, but close. Tell me about your twin.”
“Her name is Sylvia Marie Jordan. We were born in a hospital in Nice, France. I came first, and Sylvie was born twenty minutes later.” She smiled bitterly. “I always came first, you know. All our lives I came first. I was the star.”
“Jordan? Your name is Nichols.”
“My mother changed it when she started being a stage mother and began pushing me for auditions. Felicity thought Nichols had a better ring to it. What do you think?”
“Both are good.”
“That’s what I thought. Though I liked Jordan better. But what does a six-year-old know? What I wanted didn’t matter. Felicity had already divorced my father and was on to number three. But number three was disappointing, too. So she decided that she’d have to concentrate on someone she could control. Someone who would do whatever she wished and not argue—who couldn’t argue.”
“Sylvie?”
“Heavens no, she was a disappointment to Felicity, too.” Her gaze shifted to the lake. “Sylvie was very … slow. I told you I was first, didn’t I? Sylvie had brain damage. She also developed a blood disorder that would probably have killed her before she reached adulthood.”
“Dear God,” Cara said. “What a tragedy.”
“Sylvie didn’t see it that way.” Darcy steadied her voice. “She was always so happy. Everything was beautiful as far as she was concerned. I’ve never known anyone to enjoy life as much as Sylvie.” She added softly, “Each day seemed like a miracle to her. Everyone thought I was the star, that I was the one who lit up everything around me, but it was her. It was always Sylvie.”
“That must have been a great comfort to you.”
“I didn’t think about it. It was just the way she was. My other half, my better half.” She shrugged. “Until Felicity decided that I had to earn my way. She’d been an actress and a model before she decided she preferred being supported in the way she deserved by sundry husbands. But she knew enough to know that talented child actors could be pure gold on the TV networks. I’d just turned six, and I was the right age. Oh, and I was very talented. I could sing. I could dance. My line delivery was faultless. I was being called a modern Shirley Temple. So Felicity took me back to New York and dedicated six months to being a stage mother until I got my big break. Then she hired a nanny for me and went back to Nice to live the good life. Needless to say, I was everything she could ask of me. I was fantastic. Of course, it was instinct driven by necessity. But it worked for her.” She paused. “And it worked for us.”
“Us?”
“Sylvie and me. I was a star. And Sylvie was safe.”
“Safe?”
“Medical treatments are expensive. She was in and out of hospitals a lot of the time. Felicity kept talking about putting her in a charity facility. She even took me to see one.” She closed her eyes. “It scared me. Sylvie was always smiling. No one was smiling there.” Her eyes were glittering with unshed tears when she opened them an instant later. “But Felicity said if I did whatever the producers wanted, they’d pay me a lot of money, and Sylvie would never have to go to a place like that. She’d even set up a trust fund so that Sylvie would be able to stay at a wonderful sanitarium in Zurich where she’d be with other children with the same problems she had. She’d be so very happy. Isn’t that what I wanted?” She swallowed. “Of course, it was. Only one thing wrong. Felicity didn’t want any publicity about a sick little girl struggling for her life in the background. I was going to be the star of Golden Days. Everyone was going to tune in every week to lift their spirits and laugh and see funny, sweet, Darcy Nichols. Felicity didn’t want any depressing stories hovering over me and spoiling my aura. So I wasn’t to tell anyone about Sylvie. Felicity buried all the records. I couldn’t even visit her.” She moistened her lips. “I’ve seen her only a few times over the years. Once I made Felicity take me to the sanitarium to make sure it was everything she’d told me it was. The other times were when she was ill, and I thought she needed me. The last time was a couple years ago when I had to check on her myself after I heard she was having a bad reaction to a blood transfusion. I had to make sure that she was okay.”
“Your mother kept her word about her care?”
“Yes. The sanitarium was a beautiful place with wonderful people, and Sylvie couldn’t have been happier there.” Her lips twisted. “As far as keeping her word, I made sure of it. Before I’d agree to sign a second contract when I was ten, I made Felicity do what she’d promised and set up that trust fund that guaranteed Sylvie would be protected until the day she died. Felicity wasn’t pleased because that was a lot of money. But she had control of everything else I earned, so she let it slide.”
“But she still wouldn’t let you visit your sister?”
“No, she put that into the contract. But that was okay. Sylvie and I had already gotten around that problem.”
Cara frowned. “How?”
“We’re twins,” she said simply. “Haven’t you heard that twins have a special connection? It’s true, you know. Oh, I don’t mean an actual psychic connection. I don’t know about that kind of thing. But occasionally I’d get pictures of what she was seeing. Or feel what she was feeling. And there was always that knowledge that she was there with me, part of me. When I first had to leave her, we were both terribly upset. But then, after we were apart for a little while, we both began to realize that we were still there for each other. Felicity couldn’t take that away.”
“No, I can see that,” Cara said softly. “I don’t believe you let your mother take much away from either of you, Darcy.”
“You’re wrong. But it could have been worse. Sylvie was happy.” Her face clouded. “Until she wasn’t. Until I couldn’t feel her any longer.”