Double Jeopardy Read Online Free PDF

Maria had bundled them into the same large crib at first, and she’d often told the girls that when they were tiny babies, they’d sucked each other’s thumbs as often as their own.
    Later, their bedroom had had twin beds, but when they were little, they’d insisted the beds be close enough so they could hold hands during the night.
    They’d grown up using each other’s clothing, shoes, makeup and sometimes identity; they’d learned to tease relatives and friends who couldn’t tell them apart.
    But Sera had realized early, and painfully, that in certain ways she and her sister were very different.
    At four, Gemma had stolen money from Maria’s handbag for lollipops and told Maria it was Sera’s idea. Both girls were spanked. Sera remembered to this day the feeling of unbelievable betrayal, knowing that Gemma had deliberately lied about her. It was Sera’s first real recognition that her sister was capable of doing things she’d never do.
    Maria soon caught on to Gemma’s tricks, but when the girls started school, Sera more often than not bore the brunt of Gemma’s escapades. Maria was an old fashioned mother, with none of the savvy psychological insights that mothers of twins have nowadays. She delighted in dressing the girls alike, and it was easy for Gemma to insist that Sera was the guilty one when mischief happened in the classroom or on the playground. Because of her love for her sister, Sera always took the blame, but her heart hurt each time Gemma let her be punished for something she hadn’t done. Sera could never have treated Gemma that way.
    As teenagers, Gemma delighted in making a special play for any boy she knew Sera liked. Sera refused to compete. She hid her hurt and turned to art, something both girls had always been gifted at.
    Gemma, always more physically active than Sera, went out for the track team and the cheerleading squad, and Sera began to appreciate and enjoy time spent away from her sister. She joined the drama club, and found she had little talent for acting, but she could envision exactly what was needed for the stage sets. She drew them, and her father taught her the basics of carpentry so she could build them.
    In her senior year, Sera fell in love for the first time. Liam was an actor, not classically handsome or tall but funny and endearing and smart. He always seemed able to tell Gemma and Sera apart, and he seemed impervious to Gemma’s bold sensuality.
    Sera trusted him and gave him her heart, only to have it broken the night of the senior prom when she caught him kissing Gemma. Liam stammered that he thought it was Sera he was with, but it was a pathetic excuse; he’d never mistaken them before.
    Gemma made a halfhearted attempt at apologizing afterward, but that was the moment Sera knew for certain she would have to make a life for herself, a life that didn’t include Gemma. Her sister wasn’t evil, but she was selfish, thoughtless, and manipulative.
    And because of Liam, for a long time Sera was convinced that all men would eventually betray her. Sometimes she still wasn’t sure she’d overcome that belief. She’d had several short-term relationships with men, but she certainly hadn’t loved anyone enough to consider a long-term commitment. Against her family’s wishes, she’d left Vancouver after graduation. She and Gemma had both planned to attend university in Vancouver, but Sera had applied to and was accepted by the University of California in Los Angeles.
    Gemma dropped out of university halfway through her first year. With Aldo’s financial help, she started a boutique, but it was bankrupt in six months. After that, she went from job to job without finding anything that interested her for long. She married at twenty four, to a slick real estate developer no one in the family could tolerate, and divorced fourteen months later, to everyone’s relief. She continued going from one menial job to the next, until eventually she began working as a carpenter’s