Twin Roses: A Beau Rivage Short Story Read Free

you’ll suffer as I’ve suffered!”
    With that he slogged away, wet clothes squishing against his body, gold clanking—off to his home, or a hole under a rock, or wherever he kept his treasure.
    “Do you want to add this beard chunk to your collection?” Pearl asked Ruby.
    “Next time we see him I’m going to recommend beard extensions. I think he’d appreciate that.”
    “I don’t think he appreciates anything.”
    “Such a pessimist, Pearl.”
    “Beard extensions. Now I can’t stop picturing it.”
    Ruby grinned, bright red lips catching the sun. “Ten times as luxurious as before!” She stripped down to her red bikini and waded into the pond again, shivering, shaking her hands. “Cold! It’s so much colder when there’s no hot bearded guy in here warming it up!”
    Pearl unfolded her towel and lay down on her stomach. “Watch out for that nixie.”
    She opened her sketchbook and started with a scribble, uninspired but needing to make a mark. Gradually, the scribble morphed into a crown, spiky and studded with gemstones. Not that a bear prince wore a crown. But it was the idea, the symbol; she could draw a crown, and to her it meant
our prince
, but to anyone else (except maybe Ruby) it would just be a picture of a crown.
    She didn’t know why she felt the need to be coy within her sketchbook. No one ever looked at it, except maybe Ruby, and it wasn’t as if she kept secrets from her sister. Their mother had always told them to share everything, and that was what they did. Possessions, friends, information, happiness. Whatever one sister had, she split with the other.
    Absently, Pearl drew a line down the center of the crown, dividing it into two halves. And then her hand hovered above the page.
What was that for?
She started filling in one side of the crown with shadows, and as she did, the halved crown made her problem plain.
    You couldn’t divide a prince. You couldn’t share him like a cookie. Like a threesome, maybe, but there were some things she
didn’t
want to do with Ruby.
    Quickly, Pearl filled in the rest of the crown. Who knew if the prince would even return? And if he did, if they would bothlike him—love him? It was silly to worry about that when she didn’t know if they’d ever see him again.
    That was what she told herself. Still, she worried. It grew in her like a cancer, the one secret she wouldn’t share.
    “If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you were worried they won’t like your cake,” Ruby told her sister.
    “What?” Pearl blinked like she’d just emerged from one of her dazes. There was a flour smudge on her brow and Ruby had the urge to wipe it off, but if she did, she’d drop the cake they were carrying. It was one of Pearl’s finer creations, special ordered for a Royal birthday party: a two-tiered chocolate cake frosted with almond buttercream and covered with a pattern of marzipan crowns.
    They stopped on the Hansens’ front porch. Ruby made sure her half of the tray was secure, then reached out and rang the bell.
    “They’re going to love it,” Ruby said. “And if they don’t, they’ll at least pretend to.”
    Mrs. Hansen opened the door. “Oh, wonderful,” she said, admiring the cake. “Did you girls make that?”
    “Pearl did.” Ruby nodded in her sister’s direction. “She’s the cake wizardress.”
    “Well, it
is
a work of magic. Let’s put it in the kitchen. Careful not to trip.”
    Slowly, the sisters followed Mrs. Hansen to the kitchen and set the cake down on the table. A pigtailed little girl leapt up from where she was watching TV and climbed onto one of the kitchen chairs to get a better look.
    “Is that for me?” the girl asked.
    “It’s for your brother, sweetie. You know that.”
    “
Can
it be for me? I want it.”
    “Hush. Get down from that chair. And don’t take any of those crowns—I’ll know.”
    The girl stayed where she was, staring at the cake like it was her prey.
    “I mean it,” Mrs. Hansen said before