Dinner with the Enemy

Lily's POV

I had spent four long days inside the Sinclair house while Margaret taught me how to be her daughter, and I never thought I would have to walk back through its doors. Tonight every window was lit, and there were white flowers on every table, like the house was dressed up for a party instead of a lie. A man in a black suit opened the car door for us before the engine had even stopped.

Ethan took my hand as I stepped out. He was walking with a cane tonight, and he leaned on me just enough that anyone watching would believe he needed it.

"Breathe," he said into my ear. "You look like you're walking into a fire."

"I am," I said.

"Then smile while you do it."

Eleanor and Richard got out of the second car behind us. Richard was already smiling, but Eleanor's face gave away nothing. She looked at the house the way a buyer looks at something she isn't sure she wants.

Margaret Sinclair was waiting in the doorway in a long blue dress. The moment she saw me, she opened her arms.

"My darling girl," she said, and hugged me tight. Her perfume was so strong it made my eyes water. Then, with her mouth right next to my ear, she whispered, "One wrong word tonight, and your brother's hospital bills stop on Monday."

She let me go and smiled at me like a loving mother. I smiled back, because I had no other choice.

I thought about the paper Marcus had shown us the night before, with her name printed under Richard's. I wanted to scream at her. Instead, I said, "I missed you, Mom."

"And Ethan," Margaret said, turning to him. "Look at you, standing on your own two feet. It's a miracle."

"It certainly is," Ethan said. His voice was polite, but his hand tightened on mine.

Inside, Mr. Sinclair shook hands with everyone. He was the same quiet man with tired eyes who had sat with me for hours that week, making me learn every name in the Blackwood family. But tonight, when he got to me, he held my hand a little too long and looked at my face like he was trying to read something written on it.

"Hello, Daddy," I said.

He blinked, and then he let go. "Hello, sweetheart," he said softly. But he kept looking at me.

Then I heard heels on the stairs, and my stomach dropped.

Vanessa came down slowly, like she wanted everyone to watch. She was wearing a dark green dress with thin straps. It was the same dress I was wearing. Not one like it. The exact same dress, from the same store, in the same color.

Rosa had laid it out for me that afternoon and said it was a gift from the Sinclairs.

Now I understood why.

Everyone in the room went quiet. Vanessa walked right up to me and stood by my side, so close our shoulders touched. Two women with the same face, the same hair, and the same dress.

"Oh no," Vanessa said brightly. "Cousin, we match! How funny."

Eleanor looked from Vanessa to me and back again. She didn't laugh.

"Your cousin," Eleanor said. "The shy one, I take it."

"That's me," Vanessa said, and she smiled at Eleanor with all her teeth. "I'm Vivian. Everyone says we look like twins."

"They do," Eleanor said. "How lucky for you both."

Dinner was in a long room with a glass table. I sat next to Ethan. Vanessa sat right across from me, so every time I looked up, I saw my own face looking back.

Under the table, Ethan put his hand on my knee. My whole body went still. His hand was warm through the thin green dress, and he didn't move it. Not when the soup came, not when Richard told a long story about his golf game, not once.

I couldn't tell if he was doing it to calm me down or to drive me crazy. It was doing both.

"Vanessa," Vanessa said halfway through the meal. It was strange to hear her say her own name to me. "Do you remember the summer we went to the lake house? When we were ten?"

The table went quiet again. I felt Margaret go stiff at the end of the table. This was a test, and Vanessa was enjoying it.

"Of course I remember," I said.

"Then tell everyone what happened to your horse," Vanessa said. "It's such a sweet story."

My mind went blank for one terrible second. Then I remembered Ethan's voice on the second night of lessons, and the notebook on my knees.

"Butter didn't go to the lake house," I said. "Daddy sold her the spring before, because I fell off and broke my wrist. I cried for a week, and you told me I was being dramatic." I picked up my glass of white wine and smiled at her. "I never forgave you for that."

Mr. Sinclair laughed out loud. It was the first real sound he had made all night. "That's true," he said. "She cried for a whole week."

Vanessa's smile froze on her face. She looked at Ethan, and I knew she understood that he had taught me. Her eyes went cold.

Under the table, Ethan's thumb moved once across my knee. It was such a small thing. I felt it all the way up my spine.

After dessert, Mr. Sinclair found me alone by the window while the others moved to the living room.

"You look so much like her," he said quietly.

My heart jumped. "Like Vanessa?"

"No," he said. "Like my mother, when she was young. Vanessa never did." He shook his head, like he had said too much. "Forgive me. I'm an old man, and I've had too much wine."

He walked away before I could answer. I stood there with my hand pressed flat against the cold glass, feeling like the floor had moved under me.

In the living room, Margaret stood up with a tray of glasses.

"A toast," she said. "To Ethan, who came back to us. And to my daughter, who never left his side."

She went around the room handing out glasses of white wine. I watched her the way I had learned to watch everything in that house. She gave a glass to Eleanor, then to Richard, then to me.

Then she got to Ethan.

For just a second, her body blocked the tray from everyone else. Her right hand moved over the last glass, quick and small, like she was brushing away a fly. If I hadn't been looking right at her, I would have missed it.

Then she turned around, smiling, and held the glass out to my husband.

"To your health, Ethan," Margaret said.

Ethan reached out and took it.