Sorry this is sooo late! Had trouble sleeping the last few days so I was overtly tired. Enjoy!
Chapter Twenty
"One week?" Maddie groans, flopping back onto her sister's bed. Izzy falls next to her, their shoulders pressed together on the small, twin-sized bed.
"Yeah," she replies, sighing.
"How are we supposed to get them back together in only seven days?"
"Beats me," Izzy replies. "Nana said it took them, like, seven years to finally get together in the first place."
"And that was when they liked each other," Maddie adds. The girls let out twin sighs of frustration, before Izzy suddenly sits up.
"Maybe we don't have to make them fall back in love," she says, smiling down at her twin. Maddie's face twists in confusion.
"What do you mean?" she asks. "Isn't that what we did all of this for in the first place?"
Izzy rolls her eyes. "No, dimwit," she huffs. "We did this so we could finally be together!" She motions between herself and her twin. "And all we gotta do to do that is show Ma and Mama how much we love each other and don't want to be split apart again!"
"But weren't they already talking about that?" Maddie points out. "Knowing Mama, she'll come up with a way that everybody will be happy and nobody will even have to see each other every day; she's sneaky like that."
"Then we'll have to be sneakier," Izzy retorts, grinning evilly. Maddie furrows her eyebrows in concern.
"You know," she says, "for somebody who has absolutely no blood relation whatsoever…you really look a lot like Ma."
Izzy's evil smile just widens at that and she steeples her fingers together as if hatching a plot.
R&I R&I R&I
The first step, Izzy had shared, would be getting Marie out of the way.
"As long as she's around, this whole situation's gonna be awkward," she's told her twin as they tossed a baseball back and forth on the front lawn.
"It already is awkward, Iz," Maddie had pointed out, glancing over at their mothers, who looked entirely too uncomfortable in each other's presence whenever their own mothers left them to retrieve more tea or snacks from the kitchen. Marie sat between them, seemingly oblivious to this.
"But it wasn't last night," Isabella replied. "When she wasn't here, which means she has to be the one to go."
"But how are we going to get rid of her?" Madison sighed, shielding her face from the sun with her mitt, blinking the glare out of her eyes.
"We just gotta show Ma that she's not as perfect as she seems." Izzy threw the ball to her sister.
"Okay, but how?" Maddie grunted as she threw the ball back.
"I have no clue," Izzy revealed. "But I'll think of something."
The idea comes to her that evening, while she and Maddie set the table for dinner.
"Hey, Mads?" she whispers, eyeing Jane and Marie, who are smiling nauseatingly at each other, their heads close together as they whisper in each other's ears. She wrinkles her nose at that, just as Maddie looks at her and the other girl follows her line of sight, matching Izzy's expression.
"Yuck," she hisses, shuddering. Izzy chuckles.
"Agreed," she says, "but I think I know how to get rid of her."
"How?" Madison asks, excitedly. Izzy gives her an evil grin.
"Baseball," she whispers. Maddie furrows her brows in confusion and Izzy groans. "Uncle Tommy has a guy that gets us really good seats every single year for the Sox."
"Okay, but Mama doesn't really like baseball that much, unless I'm playing. I don't really think she'd like to go to a game."
"She doesn't have to," Izzy points out. "But I bet Marie would go."
"And that proves what, exactly?" Maddie asks. "That Marie likes baseball?"
"No, Marie hates baseball," Isabella informs her.
"What? How do you know?"
"You didn't notice it before?"
"Notice what?"
"The face she made!"
"What face?"
"Ugh, Madison!" Izzy groans.
"Isabella!" Maddie mimicks, earning a raspberry from her annoyed twin.
"The eye roll? The look of complete and utter boredom while we were playing earlier? The forced cheers? Didn't you notice any of it?"
"I don't really pick up on social cues very well," Maddie tells her with a shrug. "Besides, I was trying to pay attention to the ball flying at my face, remember?"
"You could catch that thing with your eyes closed," Izzy retorts, rolling her eyes. "Anyway, the point is: Marie so does not like baseball, but…"
"But…?" Maddie asks, leaning forward.
"I bet that's not what she told Ma," the girl says with a grin. "Otherwise, I'm, like, 99% certain she wouldn't even be here right now."
"But what if you're wrong?" Maddie asks. "What if Ma really just likes her for her?"
"Mads, they're nothing alike!" Izzy hisses. "There's not a single similarity between Ma and that prissy, spoiled little—"
"Madison," a voice calls out, startling them both. "Isabella; are you girls finished setting the table yet? Dinner's almost ready." The girls look up, seeing their grandmothers staring at them from the kitchen. Constance is tossing a salad, while Angela stirs a pot of sauce.
"Almost, Nana," the girls chorus, getting back to the task at hand, Izzy setting down the dishes as Maddie places the silverware appropriately.
"We really don't know all that much about Marie," Maddie continues. "What if she's a nice person?"
"You obviously haven't seen the way she looks at Mama, either," Izzy replies, nodding towards the woman in question. Maura is standing next to Constance, slicing bread as she talks to Constance and Angela. Across the kitchen, Marie and Jane embrace and Maddie's stomach drops at the withering glare that the blonde sends her mother, though nobody else seems to take notice.
"What's the plan?" she asks, turning back to her twin, fire in her eyes.
Izzy just grins, setting down the last plate.
What's going to happen next? Find out on Wednesday!
Also, congrats to Angie Harmon on her People's Choice Award!