They were identical twins.
They were not identical people.
Evelyn loved crowded restaurants.
Nora hated them.
Evelyn woke before six every morning.
Nora considered anything before eight an insult.
Evelyn had built an interior-design company and could spend forty minutes discussing fabric texture.
Nora was a residential architect who cared about whether walls remained standing and considered throw pillows a form of social deception.
Their first real argument happened four months after they met.
Evelyn wanted to throw Maisie an enormous fifth birthday party.
Nora refused.
“Twenty people maximum.”
“That’s not a party.”
“That is exactly a party.”
“I know a venue.”
“No venue.”
“Why?”
“Because she is five.”
“So?”
“Five-year-olds need cake and other children.”
“And decorations.”
“Maybe.”
“And a princess.”
“No.”
“Ponies?”
“Absolutely not.”
Evelyn stared.
“You are no fun.”
Nora pointed at her.
“This is genetic betrayal.”
Maisie eventually chose a backyard party with seventeen guests, purple balloons, and no ponies.
Evelyn secretly bought a pony-shaped piñata.
Nora allowed it.
That was compromise.
Maisie stopped calling Evelyn Mommy after the first day.
Not because anyone corrected her harshly.
Nora simply explained.
“That is Aunt Evelyn.”
Maisie frowned.
“But same face.”
“Same face. Different person.”
“Aunt Evelyn.”
“Yes.”
Maisie accepted this faster than any adult had accepted anything.
Within a week, Evelyn became Aunt Evie.
James became Uncle James before he and Evelyn were even married.
He protested.
Maisie ignored him.
Nora dated no one.
Her marriage to Maisie’s father had ended badly enough that she claimed romance had been canceled as a concept.
Rebecca disagreed.
Frequently.
Two years after the interrupted wedding, Rebecca introduced Nora to a structural engineer named Caleb Ross.
Nora threatened never to speak to her again.
Then went on the date.
Then another.
Evelyn said nothing.
That required tremendous restraint.
James told her he was proud.
She told him to mind his own business.
He reminded her that interfering in family relationships was apparently hereditary.
She threw a pillow at him.
They finally chose a new wedding date eighteen months after the first.
Smaller.
Eighty guests.
No Beaumont Estate.
No enormous ballroom.
The ceremony would take place at a renovated greenhouse outside Milwaukee, halfway between Evelyn’s life in Chicago and Nora’s.
Evelyn asked Nora to stand beside her.
Nora refused.
Evelyn was hurt for approximately seven seconds.
Then Nora explained.
“I don’t want the first official family photograph where we stand side by side to be one where everyone spends the day talking about how identical we look.”
Evelyn stared.
“That is annoyingly thoughtful.”
“I know.”