Broken Hearts, Fences and Other Things to Mend (24 page)

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new text, telling her to disregard the last one.

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“Okay,” I said, turning to the girls as we crossed the deck and

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stood outside the glass doors that led to Bruce’s pristine house.

Though some of the sand had fallen off them during the walk to

the house, they still didn’t look like people I would have, under

normal circumstances, invited inside my own house, let alone

someone else’s. “I need you to be
very careful
with things, okay?”

The girls just stared at me, and I decided to take this as a yes.

I pulled open the door, and the twins followed me inside. “Rosie?”

I called into the dark, cool house. While babysitting twins was

nothing I couldn’t handle, it always helped to know there was

backup around. And I had no doubt that Rosie would be able to

lend a hand in dealing with small children— after all, she’d spent

the last few years babysitting Bruce.

But only silence greeted me, and even though Rosie wasn’t

there, it probably meant that my dad and Bruce were out as well,

which might be a good thing at the moment, considering how

messy these two were.

“All right,” I said. I turned my back on the twins and closed

the door, so that neither could fall into the pool. As I made sure

the door was latched, I decided on the course of action until

Hallie returned— a nut- and- sugar- free snack, and then an im-

mediate return to the beach. “So here’s the plan,” I said turning

back to them. But I was talking to the air. Both girls had disap-

peared, leaving only sandy footprints across the carpet.

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“Okay!” I said an hour later, trying as hard as I could not to

sound as frustrated as I was. “How about we play a game?”

The twins just looked at each other, then back at me, their iden-

tical blasé expressions still in place. It had been a very long hour,

and one that was causing me to doubt my babysitting prowess.

When they had fi rst disappeared, I’d tracked them down in the

kitchen, all too close to the knives, attempting to get something

down from the highest shelf— and getting sand everywhere in

the pro cess.

I had immediately moved us to the TV room, where they had

fl opped onto the couch and basically refused to move or engage

in anything. They didn’t want to read a book, or go back to the

beach, or watch TV. All they wanted to do was complain about

how bored they were. And it was getting annoying. I was also

checking my phone with increasing frequency, hoping that

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Hallie would text me and let me know she was on her way. I was

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all too aware that Josh was going to be picking me up in a few

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hours for what was clearly not a date, and I needed to get ready

for it.

“No,” one twin— I still hadn’t been able to get them to tell me

who was who— sighed.

“Nooooooo,” the other whined. “Games are boring.”

You’re boring,
I wanted to snap back at her. But I restrained

myself. I hadn’t yet sunk to insulting kindergarteners, and saw

no reason to start now. “All right,” I said, determined to be

cheerful if it killed me. “How about—” My phone beeped with a

text, and I pulled it out, happy to be spared from trying to con-

vince them how fun it would be to vacuum the kitchen.

Hallie Bridges

4:45 PM

Hi! Things are taking a little longer to sort out than

I thought.

Might be another hour, so sorry! L

Tell the twins I said to behave!

“Who texted you?” one of the girls asked, sitting up slightly

and looking the tiniest bit interested for the fi rst time all after-

noon. “Your boyfriend?”

“No,” I said, looking over at her, a little surprised by the ques-

tion. “I don’t have a boyfriend.”

“Why not?” the other one asked.

“Because,” I said, wondering why I was defending my love

life— or lack thereof— to someone who still used a lunchbox. “It’s

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a complicated situation. And . . . well, the thing is . . .”

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“
Hallie
has a boyfriend,” the other one said, a little pityingly.

“And he’s—”

“So if it wasn’t your boyfriend, because you don’t have one,

who was it?” the fi rst twin asked, leaning a little closer to try and

see my phone’s screen.

“It was from Hallie,” I said. “She said she’s going to be an-

other hour, and that you both should behave.” The twins just

looked at each other for a long moment, but neither started freak-

ing out about the fact they were under my care for another sixty

minutes, which I took as a good sign.

“Listen,” I said, leaning forward a bit. “I have a dinner to go to

to night. It’s not a date,” I added quickly, and they just nodded,

clearly not expecting anything better from me. “So maybe you

two want to help me get ready?”

“Yeah,” one of the twins said, after a tiny pause, with a smile.

“We could do that.”

O O O

“I’m . . . not sure,” I said, looking at myself in the mirror, a little

worried. It was twenty minutes later, and I was regretting

ever making the suggestion that they “help” me. I had thought

it would be a fun project— when I was their age, I’d loved to

play with my babysitters’ makeup. But it was becoming very

clear to me that Hamptons children were different. The twins

rampaged through my closet, scoffed at most of my clothes, and

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then fi nally picked out an outfi t for me that was maybe the most

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hideous thing I’d ever put on— my running shoes, which they’d

excavated from the back of my closet, paired with a lime- green

striped top and plaid shorts. I’d told the twins I loved the look,

not wanting to insult them or hamper their creative spirit. But

now that we were in the bathroom, and they had taken over my

makeup and hair, I was feeling less generous.

I was wearing bright blue eyeshadow on one eye, green on

the other, dark red lipstick, and bubblegum- pink blush. The

ends of my hair were singed from when they’d gotten to the

fl atiron before I could get it away from them. I looked terrible,

and it was getting harder to keep pretending I liked what they

were doing.

“I’m hungry,” one of the twins said, dropping the blush brush

with a clatter onto the bathroom counter.

“Me too,” the other one said. They exchanged a look and then

bolted from the bathroom.

“Hey,” I called, standing up to hustle after them— and promptly

falling over and hitting the tile fl oor, hard. “Ow,” I mumbled, rub-

bing my shoulder. I looked down and saw that probably when my

eyes were closed to get mismatched eyeshadow applied, they had

tied my shoelaces together. “Girls,” I yelled after them as I tried

to undo the knots, then gave up and just pulled my feet out of the

shoes and ran downstairs.

I fi nally found them in the kitchen, both holding giant candy

bars. “Where did you get those?” I asked, then looked behind

them to a cabinet that was open. It looked like it contained what

must have been Bruce’s reserve of noncaveman food— meaning it

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was almost all sugar. “Oh, no,” I muttered, thinking about what

Hallie had told me about Olivia going crazy. Both twins grinned

at me and then bolted from the kitchen.

O O O

“Sophie?”

“No.” It was another hour later, and I was sitting on one

of the kitchen stools, holding one of the twins— I still hadn’t been

able to get them to give up their true identities— by the make-

shift leash I’d fashioned out of something called “trussing

twine” that I’d found in one of the drawers. My back was to the

cabinet that held Bruce’s secret stash. I didn’t know what Hallie

was talking about with regard to Olivia, since
both
girls seemed

to go crazy with the sugar rush.

They had been absolutely bouncing off the walls after they

inhaled the candy bars, and I tried my best to corral them, run-

ning from room to room, catching priceless art before it crashed

to the fl oor. I found myself waiting— and then hoping— for the

inevitable crash. But maybe, like a watched pot never boils, a

much- needed sugar crash never arrives, since both of them had

a huge excess of energy, all of which they seemed to want to

channel into destruction.

They’d left grubby handprints all over the white walls, had

almost fl ooded the laundry room when they’d started the washer,

and had emptied the perfectly sorted and alphabetized spice

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containers all over the kitchen.

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I had fi nally managed to catch one of the twins as she made a

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desperate grab for more Pixy Stix, and was now basically holding

her as bait, since I knew her sister would come and look for her

before too long, probably so that they could plot the downfall of

their next victim or small industrialized nation. The girls, I’d

found, were ruthless, creative, and indefatigable, like Batman

villains, only smaller. My eyes were fi xed on the kitchen clock

and on my phone, as I watched the time when Josh was supposed

to pick me up getting ever closer, and I still had no response from

Hallie.

“But
Sophie
—” the twin whined.

“Nope,” I said. I looked down at my phone again, hoping that

there would be a text from Hallie, one telling me that she was

on her way, which would mean I would have plenty of time to

take a shower, remove the horrible makeup, and put on something

else— pretty much anything else would be a marked improvement.

Getting cleaned up was extra- essential now, because in addition

to the bad hair, makeup, and clothes, I was now covered in sand,

suds, and spices, after trying to reduce the twins’ messes as

much as I could. There was a clump of tarragon that I hadn’t

been able to get totally out of my hair, it was making me sneeze

intermittently.

The twin in front of me let out a long, put- upon sigh, the kind

of which I was pretty sure I hadn’t started giving to my elders

until I was at least thirteen. “Well,” she said, huffy, “can I at least

play a game on your phone?”

I considered for a moment— since she would be right in front

of me, I would be able to intervene if the phone was in danger of

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being broken. And, frankly, playing a game on my phone sounded

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just like the kind of quiet, occupying activity that I was very

much in favor of at the moment. “Sure,” I said, not letting go of

the string as I reached for my purse and unlocked my home

screen. I handed it to her, making eye contact the way Hallie had.

“Be careful with it.”

She gave me a nod, and I realized as I watched her zip through

my pages of apps, that I probably didn’t need to be worried about

her damaging my phone. She had clearly been using one since

birth and was already a pro. A few seconds later, I heard the fa-

miliar sound track to Grand Theft Flamingo, the game that in-

volved trying to steal various exotic animals and sell them on the

black market. After a few moments of no mayhem and no escape

attempts, I could feel myself start to breathe a little easier. I

made a mental note to be sure to ask Hallie how much she was

being paid, and to tell her that, what ever it was, it should be

doubled.

I had just started to relax when two things happened at the

same time. The second twin poked her head into the kitchen, and

my phone beeped with a text.

“Text message!” the twin holding the phone squealed as I

made a judgment call and tried to move closer to her sister, so I

could maybe keep both of them in the same room for more than

a few seconds. “Wait, who’s Gem- ma?” She pronounced it wrong,

with a hard
G,
but nonetheless, it was my name. I could feel the

blood drain from my face, and I realized whoever texted me must