“I just thought you’d want to,” she’d said as they were driving into the city one day, the traffic stalled as they were trapped on the Bay Bridge. Rain had been steadily falling, the water on either side of the bridge choppy, cars all around them. “I’m going to do it! I’m going to make James Cahill fall in love with me. It would have just been easier if you helped me out, you know. He’s got a wandering eye, but we’ll see to it that he is kind of like blinded by us—can’t get away from us, you know, sees us everywhere he goes so that he can’t get us—or you—or me—out of his mind. We’ll be everywhere—looking hot, hot, hot—always ready to be with him, you know, sexually or romantically or whatever, so that he never gets a chance to find someone else; then we could really get him to marry us. Other guys will look at us, but we’ll only have eyes for James!”

“Marry?” Sophia repeated.

Julia’s eyes twinkled mischievously. “Of course, silly.” She laughed in delight, her enthusiasm contagious. “How else are we going to get what was really ours in the first place?”

Julia had explained how their mother, Deidre, had given the twins up for adoption even though she herself had been estranged at one time from her mother, their grandmother, Marla Amhurst, who had married a Cahill—James’s father!

“So he’s not related to us?” Sophia had asked, intrigued, and really, James was handsome. She’d seen pictures Julia had on her phone.

“Not really. His mother is half-sister to our grandmother or something like that. It’s no biggie. But the point is, he’s rich, rich, rich. Going to inherit mega millions, and I’d like to be a part of it. I thought you might want to also.”

Sophia had stared down at a picture of James.

“I don’t know . . .”

“Well, that’s fine.” Traffic had begun to move again, and as they inched across the dark water, Sophia had thought of her life, how lonely and empty it had been, and now she and Julia could be together.

So Julia had dropped it for a while, but as the weeks had bled into months and they’d become closer, Sophia had slowly decided her sister was right. Julia had sworn no one would get hurt, not really. They were just reclaiming what they should have gotten in the first place.