A Little Romance: Stories for Hopeful Hearts Read online

  She meant pick the keepsake, but truth was, they had no idea what their Aunt Hope had worth keeping.

  ~~~

  The house was a big Edwardian affair on a large swath of groomed land: The front yard was of flowers and shrubs, and a huge back yard that was fenced. There were a few big trees out there, and it looked like one had a rope swing, though the grass had grown up under it, so no one had used it in quite some time.

  The house and grounds were adjacent to about ten acres of land—rolling hills of grassy fields and a slight ravine that had a stream and some trees. The leaves of those would all turn gold and orange with the autumn, as others did around here. School would be starting next week.

  Inside, to their great surprise, the twins saw their lives flash before their eyes. Even if they hadn’t seen their Aunt Hope, she had clearly seen them in every phase of their lives up until they had left home for college.

  “Mother must have sent these.”

  Eva said, “Mother won’t go anywhere near a camera. She thinks they make you look older, so she won’t have them in the house anymore.”

  Ella said, “Dad then? He never did seem to go along with whatever grudge Mother was holding.”

  “More likely, as he’s quite the shutterbug, but he never said a thing about sending anything to Aunt Hope, I mean. What a funny man. Do you think he’ll tell us now what went on?”

  Ella, recalling the lack of underwear, said, “Do you suppose he had a thing for Aunt Hope then? Do you suppose she was a floozy?”

  Floozy—one of their mother’s words for women who were flirts . . . and worse.

  Eva was examining pictures, but said absently, “ÒNo, of course not. Mother and Dad are close in age, that would make Aunt Hope about fifteen or sixteen years older than him too.”

  “So, maybe she was a tart in her day. After all, Mother was pretty, and odds are Aunt Hope was too. Do you see any photos that might be her?”

  Eva said, “A tart. A floozy. You don’t get out much, do you, geek? But goodness, I hope she was. Someone in the family should have had some fun without worry and consequences. Heaven knows neither one of us did.”

  They laughed again, and then silently walked through the rooms with photographs of them on the walls and mementos of their childhood set on the tables and shelves and mantles of the old house: fliers for talent shows and school events, church raffles and summer camps.

  Then they went into a lavish bedroom—obviously their aunt’s private domain. There were pictures of men on the walls—mostly smiling at sporting events they had won. Many of the photos included a woman too—she was dressed in obviously expensive clothes and seemed to be enjoying herself too.

  To the twins’ surprise, there was their father with that same older woman, who they realized now looked a lot like their mother . . . only not so bitter.

  Eva said, “Aunt Hope?”

  “She looks charming.”

  “She looks like she had a lot of fun in her day.”

  “Is that—?”

  It was—their aunt with a famous racecar driver, another with a famous international yachting captain, and also photos with a baseball star of a few decades ago and a younger version of a recent vice president.

  “What an interesting life she must have had. No wonder there isn’t much money left—good for her.”

  Ella said, “I don’t mind that, as long as she had fun. Oh, but I suppose the money would have helped with the kids. Sorry about that, Evie.”

  “We’re not a charity case. But I do like this house. We could use the room, especially as the kids get older and they’d want their own rooms and friends to come over.”

  Ella said, “What’s going to become of all this?”

  Eva shrugged. “Who would want it? Do you think they’ll just toss it all and bulldoze the house and cut down the trees? Seems a shame.”

  They—she meant the executors, who had contacted the twins, but the women had never met them either.

  Ella said, “Maybe we can put in an offer—look, there’s when we tried out for cheerleading. You made the squad.”

  “And you didn’t, but you didn’t seem to care. I don’t have money to put in an offer, I barely have enough to pay the rent.”

  “Rent? I thought you—”

  “Mother and Dad gave us money for a down payment, but Rodney put it into the business instead. He’s not the businessman that he father was, and the old coots moved down to Arizona to live and good riddance too.”

  “Eva, if you need help, you only have to ask.”

  “I know, same with Dad—which is exactly why I can’t.”

  “There’s no shame in— Okay, I get why you can’t ask Dad, but you could have asked me.”

  “Rub it in.”

  “What, that you have a life? That you have kids who adore you and options if you want them? Plenty of people in town would hire you to do whatever you wanted. Me, they don’t even look me in the eye, and I’m not even sure they ever did. What did they say about never being able to go home again?”

  Eva said, “This coming from a woman with a fancy car and classy clothes and a career in the tech industry with travel and . . .” She sighed. “You have the world.”

  Ella said, “It’s not all that glamorous. It’s hard work and I don’t have any friends. I’m what they call a trouble-shooter, and sometimes that requires I fire people.”

  “Don’t you dare tell me you have regrets. I spent years envying you.”

  Ella didn’t think her sister was serious. She said, “Not regrets, no. And we’re two different people, no matter how we look.”

  Eva said, “Okay, no regrets, but what then? You don’t sound happy, even for you.”

  “I’m . . . lonely.”

  Eva was disbelieving. “Lonely—in a city that big? In a corporation that employs how many?”

  “Fifty thousand, but most of those are scattered around the world.”

  “Which reminds me: You’re also a world traveler.”

  Ella shrugged. “Lonely, there is no better word.”

  Eva said, a little too smug, “No man in your life either?”

  Ella said, “Same old problems—I’m either smarter than them and they get scared, or they are smarter than me, and we end up competing.”

  Eva didn’t have any sympathy. She said, “Sounds like your expectations are stuck on the intellectual. Have you considered looking outside your high-tech bubble? There’s a bigger world out here than you remember.”

  Ella blushed.

  Eva said, “You have!”

  Ella said, “I know this sounds . . . unusual. At least for me, but I go horseback riding sometimes.”

  Eva rolled her eyes, because visions of the covers of romance novels passed before her eyes. They both read them in high school—it was like girl porn.

  Boys had magazines of naked women; the twins and their friends had their romance novels with explicit scenes. Their mothers couldn’t complain too much—the city library had plenty of those books too, because they were quite popular.

  Eva said, “You always did take after Dad. You have the same kind of brain that he does—analytical. As a teacher, I understand that now. I didn’t before. I used to envy you two, always planning something together. I suppose that’s why I wanted to be more like Mother. At least, I thought I did.”

  Ella said, “We did spend a lot of time in his workshop. We didn’t mean to leave you out of anything, Evie. I guess we didn’t notice. It’s just that you didn’t seem interested.”

  “I wasn’t interested. That stuff bores the heck out of me, but I missed what you had . . . it seemed like you and Dad were closer then you and I—and I’m your twin sister.”

  Ella said, “I’m sorry, Evie. If we hurt you, it wasn’t intentional.”

  Eva shrugged. “I know that . . . now. I was a hard lesson and I learned it the hard way, but it came with benefits.”

  Ella nodded. “Your kids. I don’t even have houseplants.”

 
“They need to know their aunt. I wish we’d have known ours—seems she thought about us more than we thought about her. I wonder what kind of woman she was.”

  Ella nodded and murmured, “I want to come home.”

  Eva said, “I want to run away.”

  They both turned to their photos on the wall of Aunt Hope’s bedroom.

  Ella said, “Why don’t we then—just for a few days.”

  “Why don’t we what?”

  Ella said, “Switch places for a bit.”

  Eva smirked. “That sounds like a very bad movie.”

  “Look, you’re not married any longer, so it’s not like I’d be sleeping with your husband. And the kids, well, they could use some quality time with their aunt, you just said so . . . in a way.”

  “Only Robbie would notice, the other two are . . . well, the girls are into their own things. They are like miniature versions of Mother.”

  Ella said, “Fine, I know just what to do with that.”

  “But what about your job?”

  “I’ve moved into management—that means I have a desk job now, so not much traveling involved. It’s authorizing expense reports and checking schedules and handing out homework—that is, project assignments. I can do that long-distance. Just pretend the software geeks are little kids in a grade school class and you’ll be fine. Nobody comes in to talk to me, and the only time they do is when they are in trouble. Otherwise, they avoid me like the plague. You could spend sometime in the city, and in my office, and the only ones who need to know the difference are the security guards, and really, they are the folks I know the best.”

  Eva was considering. She said, “How much you get paid for that?”

  “Fair enough, if that sweetens the deal. You take my paycheck, and I’ll take your child support.”

  Eva smirked again. “Good luck with that, and don’t hold your breath. I have some money squirreled away, Robbie can show you where it’s at—for emergencies only, and by that I mean if the roof starts leaking or the toilet needs a plumber.”

  “How old is he again?”

  Eva said, “Five, going on thirty-five though.”

  “Remember when we were five?”

  “I remember when we were born . . .”

  Eva then pointed to another set of photos: the blessed event, with their father holding his new girls—one in each arm. Their faces were red and pinched, their mouths were open and clearly they were crying quite a bit.

  But his smile was huge—and so was the one on their Aunt Hope, who had a hand on each of their heads, and her own head on their father’s shoulder—she was standing behind him.

  Ella said, “The nurse must have taken the picture. Bet this was the last time we were together.”

  Eva said, “El, did you mean what you said?”

  Did she mean about buying the house or about changing places? Didn’t matter—Ella meant both.

  They continued their trek through the house, and through their past . . .

  ~~~

  Ella and Eva were semi-famous from the moment they were born. Well, Ella wasn’t famous until Eva came out three minutes later. Or was it the other way round?

  They were twins, the first ever in their small town—some said even in the county—and their birth was only the first time they’d be competing for which came out first.

  It was a race, their father often said, and as to which was which . . . well, their parents figured they’d switched them time and again as they couldn’t tell one from the other.

  Didn’t really matter, as the girls were named Eva Ella Labelle and Ella Eva Labelle, and of course in school, the kids (nasty things, children) called them the EELs.

  Even so, they had a very nice life. They were identical, but didn’t flaunt it. They dressed similarly with the same clothes their mother bought them to match, but they didn’t wear things on the same day like most people expected of them. It annoyed their mother, but after kindergarten, they girls showed their independence.

  From early on in life, it was assumed that the girls would not be great beauties like their mother (given their father’s contribution of gangly limbs and long features), but even so the girls were quite pretty and smarter than most (they got that part from their father as well).

  In fact, on a scale of one to ten, they were a definite seven in looks and hovering between eight and nine on the brain side, depending on the subject.

  Their father was a ten on the brain side, of course. He grew up on a farm, but put himself through college, which he managed to finish well before he was twenty-one. By then, he’d also invented a few things to make farm life easier so farmers wouldn’t die so young and so easily from horrid accidents on machinery—like his own father had.

  Given that the town wasn’t that diverse—mostly northern European stock from Scandinavia, their father’s French contribution gave them enough of a difference to be noticed by most of the boys in school, and later also most of the young men—even before the twins got old enough to date.

  It didn’t hurt that their mother was quite social too, even if not the brightest candle in the lampposts—as their grandmother used to say. Grace Granger had come from a rich family on the other side of the county, and her prospects were legion—she had many.

  How she managed to end up with their father was a mystery, but Ella suspected now that it has something to do with Aunt Hope, and maybe that is what the rift was between them. Their father could have made greater fortunes in some larger venue, but he didn’t like to stray far from the town where he grew up, nor the farm where his family had settled over a hundred years back.

  Resigned to her role in the town, Grace Granger Labelle (their mother) worked on church committees and in the PTA. Whenever anyone needed a volunteer for some worthy cause, their mother was one of the first in line, and she’d always drag her daughters along. The twins had a younger brother too, but after the age of seven, he was not allowed to spend too much time with his mother by paternal decree.

  Their father explained that was because it would be way too easy for the boy to be labeled a Mama’s boy and also a sissy—which would cause the boy to be picked on in school for such a thing.

  The twins often thought perhaps their father had personal experience with this. He was close to his mother, who had come to live with them for a bit when the girls were first born. By the time they were five, the old woman had been put in a home for the elderly where everyone else smelled just as she did—like mothballs and eau de cologne—and the woman never did come out again.

  Only once did the family go see her, and that was on the event of her marriage to an elderly gentleman who stood beside her in a military uniform that no longer seemed to fit. It was loose in the shoulders and tight around the waist, but still, he stood their proud, and their grandmother looked quite happy.

  As their mother pulled the girls away, they looked back to see their father kiss the cheek of his mother. They held together for a moment, and then their father never looked backward, though wiped a bit at his eyes.

  After that, the family seemed to forget about the old woman until the son and heir was born six months after the twins had turned seven. The twins remembered the ‘good news’ only because their mother had fainted away at their birthday party, falling face first right into the birthday cake.

  Anyway, their mother’s social engagements, as she called them, was why many of the mothers in town followed the social careers of the twins. Other girls their age had Sunday school friends, and neighborhood friends too, and eventually friends from their classes in school.

  But the Labelle family lived out on their father’s farm, which was his father’s farm, and so on back for five generations. In fact, this county had been named after some of those kin, but their father’s grandmother had been the only remaining heir way back when (that had to do with three sons dying in World War One) and so the family and farm name changed to Labelle instead of something like Lundquist or Lundgren or Lundberg or was it just Lu
nd?

  They lived on the farm until their grandfather passed. Then just like that, their father sold it to start his new business—something to do with his inventions.

  Now their father was one of the wealthiest men in the county, so men knew about him too. Those men weren’t envious, as their father had worked very hard for what he had—and still did. Ella seemed to have inherited her father’s curious and inventive nature. Eva, however, had been more interested in their mother’s social engagements.

  At least, that’s what everyone thought back then.

  As for why their father thought they were competitive—well, that came later, and mostly had to do with school and boys. It was anyone’s guess who might be valedictorian—it turned out to be Ella, because she got honors points for advanced physics and chemistry, while Eva got the same grades, but her classes were mostly to do with English literature and composition and journalism.

  Ella’s speech was short and sweet, and that summer they both worked at the same drive-in—a hamburger joint that had been there since their parents were their age. Both of the girls dated, though Ella didn’t have long relationships, and Eva never did go out with someone that her sister hadn’t dated first.

  No one noticed that much, because that was also the summer that their younger brother was killed in an accident. He was riding his bike at night after sneaking out of the house and was struck by a drunk driver—a hit and run.

  The family was devastated; back then, their Aunt Hope had been somewhere in Asia, and couldn’t arrive in time for the funeral. Both girls offered to put college on hold for another term, but their father wouldn’t have it. He threw himself into his work again, after checking their mother into a clinic for women. She remained there for over a year.

  ~~~

  Then the twins went away to college: Ella back east to study technology at an expensive, prestigious school, and Eva at a state university to in education and library science. It was the first time they had been so separated, and it seemed to suit them well.