Seven Sisters - Earlene Fowler [9]
She sat down and twisted her legs together under her thin, flowing skirt. “Guess I’ll just spit it out. I wasn’t exactly truthful to you on my co-op application.”
“Oh?” I said, sitting forward and lacing my fingers together.
She looked down at her hands, her face tinted rose. Her stiff, olive green, spiky hair reminded me that I’d promised Gabe I’d make asparagus this week for dinner. “I’m so embarrassed,” she said.
“What did you lie about?” I prompted, feeling slightly alarmed.
“Nothing about my art,” she said quickly, looking up at me with clear pewter eyes.
“So, what was it, your age? Are you really sixty-five?” I laughed, trying to set her and myself at ease. She couldn’t be more than twenty-two or twenty-three. Whatever she lied about couldn’t possibly be that serious.
She laughed with me. “No, I really am twenty-two. I . . . It’s that . . . Actually, the person I put as my next of kin, my dad up north . . . He is, well, sort of . . . but not the nearest next of kin . . . ” Finally she blurted out, “Bliss Girard is my twin sister.”
“Oh.” I sat back in my chair. Not a serious lie, but definitely a surprising one. Her twin? I’d never have guessed it. They couldn’t look more different. “So, I assume you’ve heard the news.”
She straightened her spine. “Bliss and Sam came by last night. They said they told you and his father yesterday, so I figured I’d better come clean.”
“Why the big secret? You’re not ashamed of your family, are you? Cappy’s a great lady.”
She nodded vigorously. “Don’t get me wrong, I love my family and I’m very proud of them. That’s why I use Brown as my professional name. They’re just so overwhelming at times. I think that’s why my mom took off with my dad when she was seventeen and lived up north while me and Bliss were growing up. She’d always felt overpowered by Grandma Cappy and her two sisters and especially Great-Grandma Rose.”
I nodded in understanding. Rose Jewel Brown was more than just the matriarch of one of our county’s richest and most influential families, she was practically an icon. Without her years and years of hosting charity events, General Hospital’s children’s wing would have never been built or sustained. Even now, the Harvest Ball she started back in the forties was still one of the premier charity events in San Celina County. I’d only attended it once, last year, since before that not only were the society people who supported it out of my social league, the ticket price, two hundred and fifty dollars per person, was way beyond my financial range.
“How is your great-grandma?” I asked.
“She just moved to a retirement home outside San Celina. You know, the one on the way to Morro Bay.”
I nodded. I’d taught quilting classes at Oak Terrace Retirement Home over two years ago. Or at least I threaded needles for the already talented quilters. Before I married Gabe, I’d also stumbled across a homicide among the residents, an incident the ladies in my quilting circle there still loved to discuss.
“Why did she leave the ranch?” I asked. The Browns were extremely wealthy people who could afford to hire full-time home care for Rose Jewel.
JJ shrugged. “It’s what Great-Grandma Rose wanted. Says she doesn’t want to die at the ranch. She didn’t even want to visit anymore. All the sisters, Grandma Cappy, Great-Aunt Etta and Great-Aunt Willow weren’t thrilled, but Great-Grandma Rose always gets her way.”
“That’s odd. Most people want to die in their own homes. How old is she now?”
“Ninety-six.” JJ’s dainty young face looked amazed at anyone being that old. “Anyway, between the perfect Rose Jewel, Cappy and her horses, Willow and her politics, and Etta and her winery, I think my mother just wanted to escape to someplace where she could breathe. Not to mention the ever-present Silent Sisters, as Bliss and I used to call them.”
“The Silent Sisters?