Someone Like Her by Janice Kay Johnson

between Helen Peterson and Lucy. Her hair was short and styled, her eyes brown rather than blue, but the bone structure and shapeof the face was the same. She’d remained as slim as her daughter. Today she wore a light blue skirt and short jacket over a white blouse.
    He shook hands and mused that although the two were sisters they didn’t look much alike. Marian was shorter, plump, darker-haired.
    “We missed you at church,” Helen told Lucy, studying Adrian quite frankly. “We thought we’d stop by to be sure you were all right.”
    “I took Adrian to the service at Saint Mary’s so he could meet Father Joseph.”
    “Are you Catholic?” her aunt asked.
    Lucy’s eyes rolled.
    He shook his head. “Mom was raised Catholic, though. She grew up in Nova Scotia. My grandmother is French Canadian.”
    “Really.” Lucy’s mother actually sounded interested. “She sounded so very British.”
    “My grandfather was.”
    They all looked at him and waited. Apparently he was expected to elaborate.
    “Ah… Grandpère emigrated when he was a teenager. He let my grandmother decide on the church, but he talked about home a lot. That’s what he always called England. Home.” Adrian pictured his grandfather, tall and white-haired and invariably dressed in rumpled tweeds like any country squire. He smoked a pipe, too, although he chewed thoughtfully on it more often than he actually lit it. “He graduated from Cambridge with a first in English literature and was…a gentleman, I guess you’d say. Mom loved his stories. I suppose those were what she reached for, when she got confused.”
    “That makes sense,” Lucy mused. “Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Beth from Little Women… And of course she’d have loved My Fair Lady. ”
    “But Elizabeth Taylor?” her mother asked.
    “My grandfather admired her,” Adrian said, recalling his grandmother’s pique when Grandpère had rented several Elizabeth Taylor movies to share with his grandson. Cleopatra and The Taming of the Shrew. “Wait. Wasn’t she in Little Women, too?”
    “All the pieces go together, don’t they?” Lucy observed.
    Did they? As far as he was concerned, the missing years gaped horrifically, and he sensed that those pieces would never be found.
    Lucy invited her mother and aunt to lunch. What else could she do? “I’ve made burritos,” she told them.
    “Beans?” Aunt Marian said. “You know they give me…” She cleared her throat. “Indigestion.”
    “No, no,” her mother said. “Everyone’s coming to the house. I have a turkey roasting. It’s Sunday.” A cardinal sin, apparently. “How could you forget?”
    “I didn’t forget, Mom!” Lucy’s cheeks colored. “I just…well, didn’t call you. I’m sorry.”
    So, she’d ditched her family for him. It should bother him, how pleased he was to know that.
    Her mother and aunt left at last. When Lucy came back from seeing them out, Adrian said wryly, “I can guess what everyone in the family will be talking about this afternoon.”
    Lucy made a face. “I’m afraid so. I’m sorry. I should have known if I didn’t let her know in advance Mom would come by to find out why I wasn’t at church.”
    “Close family?” The idea was foreign to him.
    “You have no idea,” she said in a tone of loathing. Giving herself a little shake, she went to the refrigerator. “What can I get you to drink?”
    As they poured drinks, he asked, “If you don’t like having all your family nearby, why do you live here?”
    She slipped by him into the dining room, enabling him to catch a scent he hadn’t noticed outside. Lavender, maybe?
    “I ask myself that at least every other day.” Setting the drinks on the table, she sighed. “It just…happened.”
    “Happened?”
    Dumb question; of all people, he knew how easily life just happened. Hell, hadn’t most of his been in lockstep with his father’s expectations?
    Again, she whisked past him, not being obvious, but also clearly