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hold up for ransom. Your panties were their mother lode.”
    They thought, they drank, they bit their lips and played with their hair. Actually, it was Poppy who played with her hair.
    “Alice and Poppy,” Yolanda continued, “the two of you should go to the hotel. You can tell the manager that you’re Elinor’s friends. Show them her picture. Say she left something behind and you’ve come to get it.”
    “Me?” Poppy asked. “Me?”
    “Well, not me,” the hairdresser-slash-nail-tech replied. “No one would believe I’m Elinor’s friend.”
    They blanched and blinked and deep-breathed again.
    “Why doesn’t Elinor go herself?” Alice continued. “Or have CC go in her place?” She’d meant to say CJ, really she had, but “CC” had slipped out. It had been a tongue-in-cheek way she and Poppy had referred to CJ when they were kids, CC meaning “carbon copy,” the besmirched, lesser twin who’d not been quite as grand or as snooty as Elinor. When they were fourteen, snooty had been good.
    Yolanda stood up and walked to the fireplace. “If Elinor is being followed, the blackmailer might mistake CJ for her. If he thinks either one of them is snooping, who knows what he’ll do.” She looked at Elinor. “Did he say what his next step will be?”
    “The note said to stay where I am, which I suppose means at the country house. I don’t know if I’ll hear more in a day or a week.”
    “In the meantime, maybe we can learn something.”
    “Oh,” Poppy said, “I don’t know if I can do this.”
    “Yes, you can,” Alice said. “You’re stronger than you used to be.”
    “I am? That’s right. I am.”
    Yolanda ignored them. “You should bring a picture. Preferably one of the three of you: Elinor, Alice, and Poppy. That way, whoever you show the picture to will know that you’re friends.”
    “What if the hotel people say, ‘I remember her. But she left nothing behind’?” Alice asked.
    “Ask if they’re sure. Ask if someone else might have already picked something up.”
    “And if they say yes?”
    “Ask what he looks like. Act as if it’s fun, as if he must be another of Elinor’s friends.”
    “What if it’s not a he but a she?” That came from Poppy.
    “I can’t imagine a woman being this scary,” CJ said.
    No one mentioned Poppy’s mother.
    Then Elinor asked, “Do you think you can do this? Pretend you’re my friend?”
    Alice smiled. If nothing else, this game might be safer than the one she’d been playing. “We are your friends, Elinor. You’d do it for us.” Wouldn’t she?
    “But what if the person we ask turns out to be the blackmailer?” Poppy asked.
    Yolanda shrugged. “Look, I have no idea if this will work. But we can try.”
    “Please,” Elinor said. “For the sake of my marriage.”
    More sighing and drinking and hair curling followed.
    Then Yolanda said, “Do you have a recent picture? Of the three of you?”
    Elinor opened her eyes and looked at her sister. “CJ?” she asked with a smile. “Surely you have a camera somewhere in the cottage. Would you be a dear and fetch it?”
    Fetch it?
    As if she was Luna?
    Elinor was in fine form today.
    Oh, Poppy, I’m so sorry. I completely forgot. And please. For the sake of my marriage.
    Puuuhleze, indeed, CJ thought. If Elinor weren’t her twin, and if this wasn’t CJ’s house, and if CJ didn’t know that all the bs was simply an indication that Elinor was totally terrified, she would have said, “Good luck” and left.
    As for the others, well, Alice and Poppy should at least have known that when Elinor was involved, nothing turned out to be simple.
    CJ went into the kitchen, leaned against the counter, and thought about Mac. Did she really know him anymore? She had turned off her feelings for the sake of the family, for the sake of her sister. Once, she’d actually thought that life could go on unaffected, that she could marry and have other children. Once, she’d thought she could accept that