Then, "Did you tell them?"
Carrie didn't pretend not to know what Chloe meant. "Yes. I told them before we...well, just before. They kind of insisted that they get to share more than just my body."
"Good for them."
Carrie thought it was time to change the subject. "Now, it's your turn in the hot seat. Tell me about Beck O'Malley."
Chloe inhaled deeply, as if she was going to protest the way Carrie ended the conversation about herself. Then she seemed to let it go.
Carrie watched as Chloe let herself think about her former boyfriend. "I really, really cared for him. We'd moved to Divine, because he decided to take up a new career - beekeeping - and because big cities just aren't for him."
"Wow. A beekeeper? That's not a career you hear about every day."
Chloe smiled, and Carrie could see fondness on her sister's face, and in her eyes. Fondness, and a shadow of regret.
"He is such a resourceful man! You name it, he could do it. Beck was a jack-of-all-trades, and could teach himself to do most anything. He believes in stepping up to the plate, you know? I think that's what attracted me to him in the first place. He was kind, and tender, and generous. Carrie, he treated me like a queen." Chloe lowered her head. "It shames me that I just couldn't love him the way he deserved to be loved. I guess that's why I didn't see his proposal coming. I didn't love him the same way he loved me." Chloe stopped talking for a long moment.
Carrie gave her sister the quiet she needed. Chloe, of the two of them, had always been the most sensitive in nature. The woman hated to hurt anyone's feelings. She could hardly imagine what the last month had been like for her.
"How could I say yes to him, when I knew that deep and abiding love for him just wasn't inside of me? I hurt him, and I honest to God never meant to do that. And now...now, I've decided that maybe I should just leave Divine. It's a good place, with a lot of really good, decent people. But it's not my place. Not anymore."
* * * *
Chloe Rhodes only had six years on her little sister. Yet despite the horrors Carrie had been forced to endure at the hands of that sick bastard when she'd been not much more than a kid, in many ways Carrie remained almost heartbreakingly na?ve. If Chloe ever doubted the truth of that, the conversation they'd just shared on the back patio had convinced her.
Chloe had watched, with concern, as her sister had grown into a woman - but a woman who held herself in tight control and apart from others. Carrie didn't make many friends. In the seven and a half years they'd lived together after Chloe had found her again, her sister had never invited a girlfriend to sleep over.
Before the loss of their parents, Carrie had been outgoing, friendly, often the one others gravitated toward. In the aftermath of their personal tragedy, that Carrie had disappeared, Chloe had feared, forever.
She'd always been very worried about her baby sister's social life. Carrie had actually never dated, except that one time just a few years ago, and it hadn't seemed to her as if that relationship had meant all that much to her or lasted very long at all.
Chloe wished she'd been wiser when Carrie had first come to live with her. But by the time she'd figured out what had happened to her baby sister at that last foster home, it had seemed to her as if Carrie had somehow gotten over it.
Now, as a grown woman, Chloe understood as she hadn't when she'd been a young twentysomething that her sister hadn't likely "gotten over it" at all. She did sense, however, that she had finally made peace with her past, more or less. She'd be willing to bet that miracle had come about very recently. And it did occur to her that if she lived closer, she could be there for Carrie from here on out.
She'd seen what family could mean in Divine. She'd be willing to bet that sense was as strong, if not stronger, right here in Lusty.
It was useless to think that if they'd been kids in a town like either of the two, that her and her sister's lives would have been so very different. Yeah, it was useless, but a body couldn't help her thoughts sometimes.
Chloe