Lunch Date

Jade tapped the table impatiently with her neat, plain fingernails. Sasha, in a very typical Sasha fashion, was late. It was already 11:45 AM, fifteen minutes past their agreed upon meeting time. Her sister was never the punctual sort. In fact, she was the wild, unruly, noncommittal, free spirited sort. It never ceased to amaze Jade how someone who looked exactly like her and who shared her same upbringing could demonstrate such a blaring contrast in character, personality, and taste.

"A true artist..." Jade said quietly to herself.

"Who is?"

Jade turned around to greet her twin sister.

"Oh, you have graced me with your presence!" She teased.

"Yes, I have, and I have come bearing gifts." She slyly replied, responding coyly and playfully to Jade's obvious sarcasm.

"Well, this I simply must see!" Jade replied, relaxing her begrudged attitude and lightening up a little.

Sasha fumbled around in her ridiculously too-large over the shoulder bag for a moment and pulled out a flat package, neatly wrapped in brown paper and tied with a little burlap ribbon. Jade took it from Sasha's outstretched hands, looking at her sister with a degree of playful skepticism.

"Ooh, how crafty of you!" She teased, removing the burlap ribbon.

"That's just the packaging!" Said Sasha with bashful excitement, "Wait till you get to the guts of that thing!"

Jade removed the paper, which revealed a flat box with a flap top on the narrow end. From there she pulled out a framed object, and upon turning it over completely lost her breath.

Tearing up a little, she looked up at Sasha, who still hadn't seated herself at the restaurant table.

"It's beautiful, Sasha... it's just... it's perfect."

Jade sat the painting down beside the table and stood to wrap Sasha in the most loving of sisterly hugs.

"I'm sorry I missed the wedding, Sis." Sasha replied.

"They needed me at the New York gallery, and it was vital that I be there to meet a very big wig client. But, I figured if I couldn't be there to see you two stupidly beautiful people tie the knot, I could at least paint my vision of it, with the help of a little Facebook stalking." She winked.

Jade picked up the painting of her and her husband, Seamus, with their faces just about to meet, and each surrounded by a beautifully rendered artistic aura, just to appreciate it one more time.

"It's perfect, Sasha, truly. It's my favorite thing you've ever made for me."

Both of the sisters sat down to actually have the lunch they had intended.

"So... you know what I've been up to, tell me what you have been doing!" Jade said to Sasha over her menu. "it's been eight months since you left for Thailand, and I KNOW you have juicy things to tell me about your tour abroad afterward!"

"Well!" Sasha said, slamming her hands down on the table with her menu, and lighting up in the face, "Let me tell you." She pursed her lips and scrunched up her nose while she paused for a very overly played dramatic emphasis.

"...There's a boy?" Jade flatly asked, half with intrigue and half with an eye roll.

"There is a boy!" Sasha blurted, wiggling her fingers up in the air by her face.

"His name is Roman, you know, like the Roman Empire, and he plays drums in a rock band!"

"Are you two ladies ready to order, or should I give you a few more minutes?" A previously unseen waiter interjected.

"Seared ahi tuna salad," the twins said in unison, before erupting into a childlike fit of giggles. Even for all their differences, they were still very similar in certain ways.

The girls had been very close all through childhood. Sasha has always been the artist. She could create something out of anything. She painted, she drew, she sculpted, she knitted, she collaged, she photographed, she built furniture. She could craft literally anything, with the skilled precision of a professional artist after only one or two attempts.

Jade had always been more academic and calculative. She loved living things and was fascinated by how things worked. She looked at the world around her with wonder and awe and felt an inherent need to know as much as she could about as many things as she could.

And so, Sasha sowed wild oats after high school, and eventually became a nomadic free-loving hippie, never tied to one place or person for two long, and Jade got a masters degree in microbiology and married a neurosurgeon. This was their first meeting for over a year.

As their lunch progressed, Sasha told Jade about all of her wild adventures during her international travel, and about the rockstar boyfriend with whom she had completely fallen in love, or whatever her version of romantic love was. Jade realized that as much as she sometimes resented Sasha's whimsical nature, she had truly missed her sister.

"Let's do this again soon." Jade said, hugging Sasha goodbye.

"Please?" Said Sasha

"Be safe!" Jade shouted, watching Sasha climb into an Uber, and waving goodbye.

"How was brunch?" Seamus asked, walking up behind Jade as she removed makeup that evening. He had just gotten home from a long day at the hospital. He wrapped his arms around her, hugging her from behind and resting his head on her shoulder. She put her hands over his and rubbed his forearms affectionately, looking at their shared reflection. She liked the way his chocolate colored skin looked against her golden tone. She liked his angular jaw against her oval face. They had only returned from their honeymoon a month ago, and they still felt all of the fluttering affection stereotypically associated with newlyweds.

"Lunch was great; look what my sister painted for us!" Jade said, walking away from her vanity and gesturing toward the painting, which she had hung over the headboard of their bed.

"Wow," Seamus said. "A perfect likeness of a very handsome man" he teased.

Jade just gave him a flirtatious eye roll in response.

"I'll have to meet this sister of yours soon!" He said.

"We've been together two years and I still haven't had the pleasure."

Jade knew she should probably have introduced them long ago. The thought just made her nervous.

Years ago, in their early college days, Sasha had slept with a boyfriend of Jade's. It put a seemingly insurmountable rift in their relationship. They had never fully addressed it. To Sasha, it was likely a heat of the moment disregard for Jade's feelings. He was a horrible boyfriend, and it was bound to end one way or another, but at the time he was the whole world to Jade, so the betrayal cut very deep. Though they made amends, there had always been mistrust after that. Jade felt skeptical of Sasha's impulsive nature, and she feared that Sasha and Seamus might not like each other because of it... or worse, that they'd like each other too much.

"I'll introduce you soon, now that she is back from traveling and done with that big art show in New York that just happened to be the same day as our wedding" Jade told her husband with a little sneer.

They finished getting ready for bed, and snuggled up. Seamus wrapped his tall body around Jade. "I love you" he sleepily breathed into her ear.

"I love you" she whispered back. They stopped talking, and they fell asleep holding each other.

A shrill noise awoke Jade in the middle of the night. She startled and jolted upright.

"What the fuuuuuck?" Seamus frowned beside her, rolling over and covering his head with a pillow to block the noise.

"There is someone at the door," Jade said, as she realized that's what was happening.

She picked up her phone and glanced at the time. "Who could be knocking at 2:38 in the fucking morning?" She perplexed out loud before grabbing her robe. She nudged Seamus, who had gone back to sleep.

"Someone is here!" She said.

They got up and went downstairs together. Seamus peeped through the hole in the door.

"It's the police," he said gravely.

Then he carefully opened the door.

Two serious looking policemen stood on the front porch. One was standing to the side addressing someone through his radio, and the other one stepped up to greet Jade and Seamus.

"Are you Jade Starling?" He asked severely.

"It's Jade Mahoney now, but yes... is everything okay?" Jade asked, her heart pounding through her chest.

"But, you are, to be clear, Jade, the sister of Sasha Starling?"

"Yes, Sasha is my sister. Has she done something?" Jade asked, not sure if she really wanted to know the answer.

"Jade, I'm very sorry, but I'm afraid there has been an accident."

"What? What sort of accident? What do you mean?" Jade said, panicking.

"Mam, I'm very sorry, but your sister, Sasha Starling, was hit in a head on collision earlier this evening. Our first responders did all they could, but the bleeding was impossible to stop. She's gone. She is dead."