“There’s something different about you,” Trixie observed, setting down her latte to take inventory of her sister.  “And I don’t just mean the cute little dress.”
.        “I don’t have to wear my habit everywhere I go,” Madeleine said.
.        “No, but the last time I saw you you were wearing a turtleneck and wool pants.”
.        “The last time you saw me dressed like that was Christmas.”
.        “Still.  Isn’t that dress a little . . . scandalous?”
.        “Scandalous?”  Madeleine looked down, assessing herself in the relatively modest yet colorful v-necked flower-patterned dress.  “It’s completely appropriate for spring.”
.        Trixie laughed.  “Yes, it is.  I was referring to you and your spiteful wardrobe.  If you hang this in your closet with the rest of your clothing don’t be surprised to find it stoned to death.”
.        Madeleine laughed, taking her sister’s criticism in stride.  “Oh, stop now.  It’s just a dress.”
.        At first Trixie had just been teasing, but now witnessing her sister’s blush and the uncomfortable shifting of her body in her seat, she wondered if there was more behind the choice of the dress than just celebrating springtime.  With recent developments concerning her own reasons for feeling extra pretty at today’s bookstore outing to meet her sister, if she didn’t know better, Trixie would swear there was a man behind Maddy’s disposition.  Considering her own scandalous behavior, Trixie thought it prudent to avoid that area of conversation.  Not that she wasn’t just bursting to tell someone about her new hot young lover, but telling Maddy would have felt more like confession than conversation.  Sex was a topic best dished with Maggy.  Besides, her daughter was working the cafe today, and she certainly didn’t want to talk about getting screwed up against a wall by a nineteen-year-old with Mercy in such close proximity.
.       The sisters chatted a bit, mainly about Mercy, and their sister Maggy off on her honeymoon in Bermuda.  Both agreed Carlson was a wonderful, as well as extremely good-looking man, and perfectly suited for their jet-setting, fabulous Mary Grace.
.        “I hope he makes her happier than her last husband,” Madeleine said.
.        “Yes.  It seems we Tarminsson women aren’t very lucky in love.  Well, present company excluded.”
.        Madeleine widened her eyes, a strange look coming over her face.  “What’s that supposed to mean?”
.        “Well you’re married to God, for Pete’s sake.  That’s a lot for the rest of us to live up to.  I mean, I’m sure He provides His moments of disappointment, but at least you know He’s always got your back.”
.        “Right.”  Madeleine looked down at the table, her expression troubled.
.        “Okay, Mads,” Trixie said, setting down her latte mug with purpose.  “All joking aside; what’s going on?”
.        Madeleine shook her head, avoiding making direct eye contact with her sister.  Still Trixie noticed the tears brimming in her eyes.  Now she was growing concerned.
.        “My God, Mads, what is it?”
.        “I can’t,” she whispered, still shaking her head.
.        “Can’t?  I would say we’ve reached the realm of ‘have to.'”
.        “It’s bad, Beatrice, it’s bad.”
.        The worst thing Trixie could think of was murder.  She doubted Madeleine was capable of that.  So she went with the number two worst transgression of a nun’s existence.
.        “Did you sleep with someone?”
.        Although she didn’t think this a possibility either, judging from the guilty look on Madeleine’s face, apparently she’d hit the nail on the head.  Or at least dented the wall next to it.
.        “No,” Madeleine said.  Then, with more conviction, “No.  But there is someone in whom I’ve taken interest.”
.        “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Maddy, stop talking like a school teacher.  This is serious.”  She arched an eyebrow as if to ask for confirmation.  Madeleine nodded.
.        “Yes.  I fear it is.”
.        She took her sister’s hand across the table and gave it a reassuring squeeze.  Wrong as it may be, inside she was grateful for the news.  A nun breaking her vows was far more scandalous than a forty-year-old divorcee sleeping with her teenaged neighbor.  Wasn’t it?
.        “It’s serious enough that I’ve been thinking about leaving the convent.”
.        Trixie sat back in her chair, digesting the information.  “What?  How?  I mean, when did you meet this guy?  When?  Where?”
.        Suddenly a thought occurred to her.  Madeleine had said she was contemplating leaving the convent for someone.  Had she fallen for one of her fellow sisters?
.        “It is a man we’re talking about here, isn’t it?”
.        Madeleine giggled.  “Yes.  A wonderful man.”  She sighed.  “Oh, Beatrice, I don’t know how this could have happened to me.  That’s what makes it feel so right.  I know God would never have put these feelings in me, would never have made this man cross my path if it wasn’t meant for a very important reason.”
.        “Maybe it’s just about resisting temptation.  God’s big on that testing thing, you know.”
.        “It goes beyond that.  It’s not just about being tested.  I know what that feels like.  This is strong, Bea.  It’s a deeper feeling.  In here.”  She lightly pounded a fist to her abdomen.  “And in here.”  Gentle placing of her hands over her heart.
.        Trixie softened.  She rose from her seat, rubbing her sister’s back.  “I’m going to grab us some chocolate chip cookies.  How many do you think I’ll need?”
.        “A dozen.”
.        “Their cookies are large,” Trixie reminded her.  “Triple the size of a regular cookie.”
.        “Right.”
.        They both waited a beat before declaring simultaneously, “Two dozen.”

*           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *

Sometimes Trixie wondered how it happened that Madeleine and Mary Grace had been born the twins and not she and Madeleine.  Not in the sense that they were so much alike, but in the vein that they were in tune with each other, understood each other, much more so than were the actual twins.  Maggy and Maddy were complete opposites.  Mary Grace was materialistic and flashy, aloof and egocentric.  Madeleine was sensitive, compassionate.  She was soft-spoken and nurturing, inquisitive and analytical.  Trixie could sit and talk with her for hours, on a wide range of topics.  Whenever Trixie and Mary Grace met for lunch, the topic of conversation was almost always Mary Grace, unless she wanted her sister to join in on criticizing someone.  Then the conversation revolved around those unfortunate souls, those not as pretty or savvy or deserving as Mary Grace, who was just waiting for the karma train to come thundering in and run over all of them.  As if Mary Grace hadn’t done it already.
.        “God knew exactly what He was doing when He made you my big sister,” Maddy once said to her during one of Trixie’s I-should-have-been-your-twin-instead rants.  “You comfort me, offer advice, look after me.  Maggy needs that, too, more than I.  Who else could guide us through life the way that you do?”
.         She didn’t feel much like a leader now, however.  How in the world was she supposed to offer advice to a nun seeking her approval to exit the Church?
.        “You divorced your husband,” Madeleine had pointed out during their lunch at the bookstore.  “It’s the same thing.  How did you know the choice was the right one?”
.        “As I recall, you were very much against that choice,” Trixie gently reminded her.
.        “I wasn’t,” Madeleine said.  “My teachings were.  My beliefs, my vows.  That’s the problem with religious faith.  It thinks for you.  Once you choose a life of service, it becomes you.  You are your faith, and you act accordingly.  It’s amazing how a belief system based on free will removes all traces of it from your life the moment you sign up.  ‘What would Jesus do?’ is so much easier to answer than, “What would I do?  What should I do?”  I envy your ability to make choices by yourself, for yourself.  I want to make them now.  Follow my heart.  I know what the Church would tell me to do, and I’ve done it.  Pray.  Ask God for guidance.  Be strong, and honor my vows.  And I have.  And now I believe He’s led me to this choice.  Now I’m asking for your opinion.  Your true guidance.  What would you do, in my shoes?”
.        “So now you’re swapping what would Jesus do for what would Trixie do?”
.        “That’s not fair.  I’m not trading your judgment over the Church’s.  I’m simply asking your advice.  As a sister.  As someone who loves me and wants me to be happy.”
.        Trixie relented with a heavy sigh.  “I think you know what I would do, honey.  I am divorced.  But our situations are different, completely different.  I mean, are you leaving the Church for this man?  Or because the lifestyle doesn’t suit you anymore?  What I’m asking is, if not for this man, would you still want to leave the Church?”
.        “I think I can honestly say, if not for this man, I would not be contemplating leaving the Church.”
.        Trixie nodded.  “I see.”
.        This information troubled her.  In listening to Madeleine’s story of how she’d come to meet Adam Drechsler and how her feelings had developed and grown stronger over time, Trixie couldn’t see one logical reason for her sister’s leaving a party for him, let alone years of service to God.  By her own account she barely even knew this man.  How could a year’s worth of lunches and conversations centered around characters in books qualify as a relationship?  Trixie knew these were the times of people getting engaged who had met over the Internet, but it all seemed so ridiculous to her.  Made her scandalous sexual dalliances with Brody seem normal and quite acceptable in comparison.  And she thought she was the one living in a fantasy world!  But Maddy had been looking for advice, and although the best advice Trixie could think to give was to abandon this foolish notion of ever having anything with Adam, her sister deserved better.  How would she feel if she came looking for advice and Maddy would shoot back at her that she should leave her neighbor alone to find someone her own age?  Advice is never about the obvious; by its very nature it’s the right thing to do.  People looking for advice are never looking for the right thing to do.  They’re looking for permission to do the wrong thing.  And although Trixie certainly couldn’t bring herself to grant that permission, she wasn’t such a hypocrite that she couldn’t straddle the line.
.        So, even though she wasn’t totally convicted in her words, she’d advised her sister to get a handle on where Adam was in all of this, what his feelings may be for her before she uprooted her entire life.
.        “But that’s the problem,” Madeleine had said.  “How can I pursue a man, try to draw him out and be honest with his feelings, while I’m still a nun?  He won’t think of me as a potential life mate unless he can think of me as a potential life mate.  Do you understand that?  I mean, do you get that?”
.        Indeed, Trixie did.  Although she always thought Brody was a cute kid, she’d seen him more as someone Mercy would date than she would.  It wasn’t until he let her know he was available to her that she began to seriously consider him as someone she might be interested in.  Same with his father.  For years she’d been attracted to Ricky, but hadn’t engaged in any kind of serious flirtation due to both their marriages.  Now she was divorced, but he was still with his wife.  Her relationship with his son notwithstanding, she could never think of him as a potential mate while he was still involved with someone else.  In that sense, she could understand Maddy’s wanting to leave the Church before revealing her feelings to Adam.
.        “Well then, my true advice, since he is the reason you may leave the Church, protect yourself.  Your heart.  Go slow.  Maybe guide your conversations to more personal areas.  Find out his background, if he’s ever been in love.  You don’t even know whether he has a girlfriend, or his eye on someone.  He has a whole life outside your Thursday afternoons.  Maybe suggest a lunch together outside the convent.  Hopefully he’ll say yes and you can grow from there.”
.        “What if he says no?”
.        Madeleine had looked so fragile, like even the thought of entertaining that possibility would be enough to shatter her completely.  Trixie had given her a reassuring smile.
.        “Now why would he say that?”
.        Trixie left the bookstore, and her sister, feeling as if she hadn’t helped at all.  Giving her sister, a nun, advice on men?  That was way out of her league.  This was definitely one for Mary Grace to decipher.  She’d set up a dinner date for the three of them once their sister returned from Bermuda.
.        As Trixie slowly made her way down the street toward her house, watching for children riding bikes or rollerblading, unleashed dogs darting out from between parked cars, her mind drifted to Brody and the visit he’d paid her last night.  Mercy was away, house-sitting for Mary Grace, and Trixie had had no second thoughts of leading Brody upstairs to her bedroom after opening her door at two in the morning and finding him on her front patio.  Once again he was fresh from a night out with his friends and more than ready to enjoy the benefits of a warm female body.  He was hard in seconds and they’d barely made it to the bed when he was out of his jeans and inside her.  He spread apart her legs, pressing her knees back and up so far they practically rested on either side of her head, pulled aside the crotch of her underwear and slipped right in.  After a few hard fast jabs that penetrated so deep she practically felt them touch her abdominal wall he was pulling out, collapsing beside her with a loud sigh.
.        “God, that was so hot.”
.        She couldn’t disagree, but it could have lasted at least long enough for her to try for an orgasm.  She was about to roll on top of him to make a go at achieving just that, but he sprang from her bed, quickly pulling his jeans back on.
.        “Some other bed you have to visit tonight?” she asked, not bothering to hide her sarcasm.
.        “Naw,” he said, completely missing it.  He zipped up.  “I’ve got an early day tomorrow.  Otherwise I’d stay and fuck your hair back to its natural color.”
.        Then he’d leaned over and kissed her so sensually, so lustfully that she almost reached the very orgasm she felt robbed of just seconds earlier.
.        “I don’t think you should wear underwear anymore.  You know; just in case I need to pop in quickly.”
.        He kissed the tip of her nose and was gone, leaving her to finish herself off with the vibrator she kept in the top drawer of her nightstand, imagining it was his dick beating against her clit instead of a silver bullet.
.        The appearance of his father coming down the lawn to his mailbox shook her from her erotic memories.  Was it five o’clock already?  She’d had no idea her lunch with Maddy had lasted so long.  But of course it had.  The digital display on her dashboard read 5:01.  Trixie could, and sometimes did, set her clock to Ricky’s daily excursions down to his mailbox.  Unless it was a Sunday or a holiday, unless he was away or gravely ill, at five o’clock without fail, Broderick was collecting the mail from his mailbox.
.        It had been about four years ago when she first caught on to the pattern.  That had been back when her marriage to Tony was starting to come apart and she began to notice not only Broderick’s comings and goings, but how handsome he was.  An older, more confident and accomplished version of his son, Broderick Daniels was the kind of man Trixie had always dreamed she’d end up with.
.        And now I’m fucking his son.
.        Funny how things turned out.