Miranda's Revenge by Ruth Wind

Author:Ruth Wind
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Silhouette
Published: 2007-12-04T16:00:00+00:00

Inside Miranda found Juliet asleep on the couch, Josh’s silly soft red dog snoring beside her. The television flickered without sound, and there were stacks of shower thank-you notes ready to be addressed. Feeling buoyant and alive, Miranda silently picked them up and carried them over to the table where another stack, already hand-addressed, awaited stamping. It was pretty easy to see where Juliet had left off. She made a cup of tea and bent over the task. A small thing she could do.

Juliet started awake about twenty minutes after Miranda had come in, and stiffly sat up. “How long have you been here?”

“A while. Why don’t you go to bed properly? You need your beauty sleep.”

She shook her head. “If you don’t mind too much, I think I’m going to go sleep with Josh. It’s getting harder and harder to sleep in my own bed, without him. It’s just…not right.”

“I do not mind in the slightest. I was surprised you were sleeping here anyway.”

“We want the wedding night to be special, to have a marker.”

“Then I think you have to stay here tonight, sweetheart.”

Juliet looked ready to cry. “I have nightmares sometimes.”

“About the rape?” Miranda moved to sit beside her sister on the couch, rubbing her shoulders lightly. Juliet bore it better than usual—none of the girls could manage casual touching very easily. Their mother had been so very terrible about it. It felt odd to Miranda to be rubbing her sister’s shoulder blades, but she kept it up anyway, her hands feeling hot, as if they had medicine in them. And who knew? Maybe they did.

Juliet sighed. “Yeah.” She rubbed her face with both palms. “Yes. My therapist says it will get better as time goes by, and honestly, it is, but sometimes—one shows up. Less often when I’m sleeping next to Josh.”

Miranda smiled. “If I were a nightmare, I wouldn’t want to cross Josh, either.”

Juliet laughed, and then to Miranda’s complete surprise, she turned and gave her a big, hard hug. “Thanks, Mirrie. Maybe I can handle staying here if you’re here.”

For one fleeting moment, Miranda felt the comfort of her sister’s arms without fear, a safe and solid place where she might, if she required it, land. And Juliet would catch her. An unnamable emotion welled in her heart, closing her throat for a long moment, and Miranda—mistaking it for fear—pulled away in hasty panic. “Is there…um…anything you want me to do in the morning? I’m going to stop by and see Desi, of course, and I’m going to meet the sari guy sometime in the early afternoon, but I’m happy to run errands or whatever you need.”

Juliet gazed at her sister for a moment, then brushed a strand of hair from Miranda’s forehead. “You have the best hair of all of us. Desi’s is nice, but yours is like a magic cloak or something.”

“If it was, I would long ago have used it to make myself invisible.”

“No,” Juliet said, smiling gently. “You never wanted to be invisible.

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