Twin Roses: A Beau Rivage Short Story (2 page)

The bear prince would be bigger now, older. The sisters were seventeen, and the idea of being in love with a bear seemed as strange to Ruby as living out a different fairy tale—one where a teenage girl had to accept a monster as her lover. But as children she and Pearl had fallen in love with the bear prince in the same way they’d had crushes on talking animals in cartoons.

He wasn’t a bear; he was a boy trapped inside of a bear. And love at ten was different than love now. Ruby didn’t know what love felt like at seventeen. The only love she knew for certain was the one she felt for her mother and sister. And that was solid, unquestionable, eternal.

When business slowed, Ruby went into the kitchen and found Pearl cutting out dough with a bear-shaped cookie cutter.

“You’re thinking about him, too?” Ruby asked.

Pearl jumped. She was easily startled—she’d get so lost in what she was doing—but today Ruby felt the same way. Their minds were both elsewhere: wondering, hoping, afraid to hope too hard.

“It’s been so long,” Pearl said. “But if everything else is falling into place, maybe …”

“I know you don’t want to say it—I don’t, either—but if he’s alive, why didn’t he ever come back?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he still will, and we can ask him.”

“Maybe,” Ruby said, and then lingered in the kitchen, breathing in the warm smells of butter and vanilla. She didn’t want to go back to her regular life yet—being the girl behind
the counter, thinking about senior year and that book she still needed to pick up for summer reading. Acutely aware of what was missing.

Pearl could get lost in her baking, but while Ruby could be—and usually was—totally engaged in whatever she was doing, there was nothing that would take her away from her thoughts when something was haunting her.
What happened to you, Prince? Are you alive? Will we ever see you again?

On one of their rare summer days off, Pearl and Ruby went to a nearby pond to picnic and swim. Pearl would have preferred to sit in the air-conditioned house, drawing, but her sister wanted an outing, and Pearl’s desire to be with Ruby trumped her desire to avoid the heat.

“I don’t like sweating,” Pearl reminded her sister.

“That’s why you should swim with me.”

“I don’t like smelling like pond scum, either. I like being in a nice, temperature-controlled environment. With food nearby.”

“I brought food,” Ruby said. “Do you think this cooler is full of stolen treasure?”

“Don’t jinx us.”

“What? You don’t want to see that glorious beard again?”

They were nearing the pond when they heard a shrill cry and a bout of frantic splashing. Ruby laughed in delight and ran toward the sound. Pearl hurried after her, muttering, “She totally jinxed us” and “On our day off? Really?” but secretly she was excited.

The bearded man was thrashing at the end of the dock:
his body in the water, chin tipped upward, ratty beard trapped between the planks. He was paddling wildly, trying to climb onto the dock, but fell back with a cry, submerged up to his neck again. He clearly wasn’t a good swimmer, and the heavy clothes he was wearing—Pearl had seen a cable-knit sweater and a fishing vest—made it harder for him to heave himself out of the water.

A bag of treasure lay open on the dock. The afternoon sun glinted off a mix of gold coins and jewelry.

“What did I tell you about keeping that beard tucked?” Ruby asked.

“There’s a nixie in this pond!” the man cried. “Do you want her to drown me? Help me! Help me, you fools!”

“Nixies lure cute guys to their deaths,” Ruby said. “You should be safe.”

“Why did you jump into the water and use your beard as a bungee cord if you knew a nixie lived here?” Pearl asked, unable to resist. She was already taking out the scissors she’d started carrying since they’d met him.

“Who were you robbing this time?” Ruby asked. “The local cash-for-gold place?”

“Robbing?
What are you talking about?
Can’t a man carry a sack of gold coins without being abused?”

“Hmm.” Pearl opened her scissors, taking aim. “I think I’m going to have to cut right here.…”

“Do not
—DO NOT TRIM MY BEARD!
Hey! Hussy! Are you listening? Get a hammer and smash up the planks to free me!”

The man’s beard was so twisted and tangled around the boards that Pearl had to cut it at the midway point, a few
inches below his chin. It took three cuts to free him—then he dropped into the pond like a clown in a dunk tank. Ruby had already waded into the water to fish him out.

The man came up sputtering and spat a stream of water at Ruby. “Fiends! As if it wasn’t enough to cut off the tip—you’ve brutalized the best part! The finest, lushest portion of my beard!”

“What’s that?” Ruby cupped her hand around her ear. “Did you say
thank you
?” The man splashed water at her—angrily, like a child—but Ruby just took his arm and guided him out of the pond. The pockets of his fishing vest sagged with the weight of the water and the rest of the gold coins.

He took a moment to recover—gasping, coughing—then charged down the dock and snatched the sack of gold from where it lay near Pearl. He hugged it to his chest as if he’d retrieved it just in time.

“I wasn’t going to steal your stolen gold,” Pearl said.

“No?
No?
It was enough to steal my beard?” The man trembled with rage. “I won’t forget what you’ve done to me. One day 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 both
like 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 she accompanied the sisters to the door.

“She’s so jealous of her brother,” Mrs. Hansen confided. “It’s nothing to be jealous of, believe me. My son has had that awful Beauty and the Beast curse since he was six. I’m always worried that this will be the year a fairy changes him into a Beast. Can you imagine? Covered in fur, with claws and whiskers?”

“He’ll still be himself,” Pearl said. “He’ll be the same person, just hidden inside another form.”

“I know that,” Mrs. Hansen said. “But I’m not big on transformations. I like things to stay the same.”

“Better go check on that cake,” Ruby said.

“
Yes
. Because she would feel no remorse, let me tell you. Thank you so much for bringing it over. I already paid your mother, but here’s a little something for the two of you.”

They thanked her for the tip and headed down the front walk. “
I
wanted to swipe a crown from that cake,” Ruby admitted. “You should make me one like that for my birthday.”

“
Our
birthday. Maybe I will. If you do the dishes.”

“That could be arranged.”

They weren’t due back at the café right away, so Ruby took a detour, driving through some of the fancier neighborhoods
where the cursed kings and queens, princes and princesses, and other tycoons lived. Ruby liked the Rambles’ house just fine—it had charm, and the perfect amount of space—but there was no denying the appeal of a mansion. These were the castles of Beau Rivage: rooms filled with fairy-tale heirlooms, furniture you weren’t supposed to sit on, treasure that was meant to stay in its chest.

What Ruby really wanted to see was the Wilders’ enchanted rose garden, but it was surrounded by a high stone wall that blocked it from view. Rafe Wilder, another soon-to-be Beast, threw parties all the time, but Mrs. Ramble wouldn’t let her daughters go to those.

Ruby had been scanning the edge of the stone wall, hoping to catch a glimpse of just one enchanted rose peeping over the top, when Pearl yelled, “Dog!”

Ruby hit the brakes. She narrowly missed hitting a white pit bull that ran across the street in front of them.

“Thanks. I was looking at—”

“Unbelievable,” Pearl muttered. She unhooked her seat belt and climbed out of the car.

“Pearl?”

Ruby had been so elated not to have hit the dog that she hadn’t bothered to check where it went. But now she saw that the dog was attacking someone on the front lawn of one of the estates: a man stuck in a hydrangea bush. His skinny legs flailed, and purple flowers shuddered back and forth.

Pearl—who wasn’t exactly a dog person—was clapping her hands and calling, “Hey! Get away from him!”

Ruby ran up the lawn. Even from a distance, she could see that there was more than just an ungrateful bearded man in
the bushes. There was also a sack of jewelry and a large framed painting balanced crookedly on a bed of mulch. A rope made of bedsheets hung from a second-floor window.

Ruby snapped her fingers. “C’mere girl!” She dropped to a crouch and went on snapping and calling, not even sure the dog could hear her over the sound of her own growls.

Finally, the dog released the man’s leg, wheeled around, and dropped onto her back for a scratch. She squirmed in the grass, head and butt wriggling in opposite directions, while Ruby patted her. “What’s your name, girl? Wonder Dog? Defender of Justice?”

Pearl made her way past them to help the bearded man out of the bushes. He was limping, rubbing his chewed pant leg, but at least there was no blood. His pants were stained with mulch and his short beard had bits of flowers stuck to it.

“Do you want us to wait with you until the police arrive?” Pearl asked. “So you can explain how that painting got here?”

“Would
you
like to explain what you’ve done to my clothes?” the man retorted. “I’m sure the police would be very interested to hear why you let your dog assault me—when I was simply minding my own business, sniffing these flowers.”

“That’s
not
what you were doing,” Ruby said.

“Do you know how much these clothes cost?” the man continued.

“Nothing? Because you stole them?” Pearl guessed.

“One hundred dollars! Just for the pants! And this sweater is irreplaceable! They don’t make garments this fine anymore. And now they’re ruined. Ruined!”

“Gosh,” Pearl said. “You’d think we hadn’t just rescued you.”

“You sic your dog on me, then expect me to be
grateful
once you finally call it off? The audacity!” His face was turning red; he lunged forward and spat on Pearl’s shoe.

“Hey! Watch it!” Ruby yelled. “You do that again and I’ll let this dog bite a hole in your ass.”

“It’s fine,” Pearl said, wiping her shoe on the grass.

The pit bull was lying down now, head resting on her paws, watching.