“So Miss Sleepy Head finally wakes up. Morning honey.”

Faith Anderson briefly placed a hand on her younger daughter’s messy hair as she sat down at the breakfast table, before heading back to the stove to deal with the pancakes.

“Morning Mom,” Renee mumbled, brushing hair out of her eyes and reaching almost blindly for the orange juice, which Louise actually had to slide across the table to her.

“Marcia called for you.”

“Did you tell her I’m not here?” She groaned, taking a sip of the tangy liquid and yanking down the hem of the baggy t-shirt that constituted her pyjama top.

“I told her I haven’t seen you in a month.” Her mother shook her head slightly, not appreciating the fact that she’d had to lie on her daughter’s behalf. “You know you really should call her.”

“And have her trace the damn thing and track me down like she’s the FBI and drag my butt to God knows where? No. The note told her I was taking a break and not dead or whatever and it’s not like I had anything important to do anyway.”

Louise tried not to laugh at Renee’s little over-dramatisation – although she actually wouldn’t put it past Marcia to do that – but still she had to snicker. “Hell yes you do. You are coming with me and helping me shop for Ben’s birthday.”

“God do I have to?” Renee started picking at a slice of toast her mother offered her. “I hate shopping for men, I never know what to get.”

“Hey, after Justin ‘I own more crap than God’ Timberlake Ben should be easy.” Her sister lightly slapped her around the head, to which Renee just had to poke her in the side, to which Louise just had to give her a shove.

“Honestly girls, you’d think you were both still five.” Their mother shook her head before placing a stack of pancakes on the table that both sisters started attacking eagerly. “Speaking of Justin though he called for you honey.”

“Did you tell him I’m not here too?” Renee asked – not that she minded Justin knowing where she was, she just wondered how many people her mom had lied to in the all of twelve hours since she’d got to their home in Florida.

Apparently they’d moved out of Pittsburgh when she got big and they had a nice little suburban home in Kissimmee, which Renee had actually had to look up in her alter ego’s address book. Hell, she’d had to look her own California address up in her alter ego’s address book. It wasn't huge but it was quite big enough for the three of them. That had been another nasty little surprise – her parents were apparently divorced and her father had stayed back home while her mom and sister swapped states.

“I tried but he just laughed and asked what time you’d got in last night. That boy knows you far too well.”

“Aww, little Ren and Justy-Wusty,” Louise said in a baby voice to which she was replied with a banana peel flung at her plate. Renee’s aim was a little off; it had been meant for her head.

“Louise your sister has been here less than twenty four hours, do you think you could knock it off and give her a few hours’ grace?” Faith scolded her eldest daughter with a light tug at her short dark hair. “I’m just glad you two worked everything out, I was worried I was going to lose my chosen son in law for a second there.”

“Mom!” Renee whined, pushing a slice of pancake around her plate with her fork, drenching it in syrup.

“I still remember her coming home from those stupid awards…” Louise paused to take a sip of coffee. “I thought she was going to be all full of herself because she’d met JC but nope, she’d gone all junior high over the idiot with the fro.”

“I am going to hurt you one of these days.”

“Bring it on sister dear. Quentin ain’t here to protect you now.”

“Hey I don’t need a bodyguard to kick your ass, alright, I can do it all by myself.”

Finally sitting down at the table with her daughters, Faith sighed and picked up the newspaper. Every time – she imagined she’d have her two daughters back under the same roof and they’d have a nice, adult family gathering, but no... every time they morphed straight back into pre-teens.

***

“You know I really wish they’d stop closing off stores for you.” Louise muttered under her breath as she flipped through a rack of polo shirts, one steady eye on the over eager assistant who was hovering close by.

She always hated it when they were the young males; they spent their whole time staring open mouthed at her baby sister. She didn’t even look like “the” Renee Anderson – it was a pair of cargo pants and a denim jacket, and if the guy hadn’t done the double take and peered under the baseball cap he wouldn’t have even realised they were anything but normal shoppers. She could only thank God that it wasn't the weekend when all the school kids would be on the loose.

“Kind of attention drawing isn’t it?” Renee muttered.

“Just a little.”

“This makes what, third store today?”

“Fourth if you count the guy at the drive thru who offered to clear out the restaurant for you.”

“He doesn’t count, there was only like one old couple in there anyway.” Renee scrutinised a red shirt before deciding that it wasn't really Ben’s colour. “Throwing fifty people out of Gap on the other hand… I just want to do my damn shopping.”

“I’m just worried you haven’t got security.” Louise bit her lip lightly. “Are you sure you don’t want to just go home?”

“I’m not putting myself under house arrest, Lou.”

“I’m just worried about you darlin’. I mean if some nutcase can get into your hotel room…”

“Never ever mention that again in my presence.” She gave a slight shudder. That had been the whole reason for this stupid trip. Well, obviously she’d wanted to check up on her family and see how fame had affected them, and she needed to get back in touch with her grandma and do some detective work on the necklace, but mostly she’d just wanted to go home where her mommy would keep her safe. “What does Ben think of yellow?”

“Hates it.” Louise replied succinctly.

“Maybe not then.” She replaced the shirt on the rack. “We got cologne, we got him that stupid radio car that he is way too old to be asking for… I don’t know. Do we need shirts?”

“He’s got like fifty pairs of jeans and barely enough shirts to last a week.” Her big sister informed her. “We are getting him shirts.”

“Lou? Do you ever wonder what it’d be like if I never got famous and they just treated us like normal people?”

“They only treat me special when I’m with you, honey.” Louise laughed. “Any other time I’m just part of the common crowd. Besides, there was no way you were ever gonna be anything but some huge star.”

“I was that much of a brat about it?”

“No…” She paused to look at the blonde next to her, narrowing her eyes a little.

This was very unlike Renee. She always seemed to glow in the little privileges of being famous, and she never seemed to look back to her life before. She’d always been so forward focussed. Come to think of it, Renee wasn't normally so calm; she was kind of a whirlwind. You could see why she was if you spent even a second with her on promotion – she’d just got too used to living her life that way. She wondered idly what had brought it all on.

“That’s not what I mean. You just always lived for singing and dancing and we all just knew that was what you should do with your life is all. That’s why we all got behind you.”

“You don’t get annoyed that you’re just my sister to guys like that?” Renee briefly nodded her head in the assistant’s direction. His attentions hadn’t escaped her notice either.

“Hell you can keep guys like that, I can do without the pimple squad,” Louise whispered evilly and Renee let out a small giggle. “And sure it bugs me on occasion but, you know, it’s not a big deal. I know I’m a hell of a lot more than just your sister.”

“You are also the anti-Christ.” There was a sharp elbow to the ribs from elder sister to younger.

“Shut up or I’m telling him you’ll kiss him.”

“Ben like green?”

***

Well, she had hung around in her room for a whole hour now, hoping that Claire would take the opportunity to catch her alone. It hadn’t happened, so Renee could only assume that she was at least for the moment on her own. She really wished she wasn’t – she had a lot of thoughts roaming around her head and nobody to discuss them with.

In a weird way, coming home to people who were so familiar was even more of a head spinner than being dumped in the middle of an entourage she’d never met before.

It seemed like her mother was constantly worried about her, asking if she was okay to go out by herself and if she’d been sleeping well and piling food on her plate at meals. A phone call to her father had revealed him to be having the time of his life in Pittsburgh with one of his personal assistants, and a trip on the internet had wielded a number of rumours that her father had divorced her mother because she took so much more of a business hand in Renee’s career than he did which meant she was never home. There were also a couple about cheating, but unfortunately for Renee she couldn’t really ask anybody who would actually know because they all assumed that she’d lived through it and knew.

It was food for thought, however. Her mother was constantly worried about her. The stress of having a famous daughter had split up her parents, who in her own reality were still together and seemingly fine. And she couldn’t get Louise’s statement out of her head – that she was no one special unless she was with her starlet sibling. That was horrible, she hated the thought that Louise would be disregarded just as ‘the sister’. On the one hand she wasn't sure she could live with that, knowing that she was the cause of all their strain and stress and their worry about her even stepping outside without security.

If she went back to obscurity, she could avoid all that.

On the other hand she then thought that they would still be living it, these people in this reality. It would still be their problem; they’d just have a different Renee - apparently a sleazier and ever so slightly more flamboyant one. Maybe it would be easier for them to have a new Renee, the quieter one who could appreciate from a different perspective how much their lives had changed. When she thought about it from that angle, she wondered if coming home to her family had done anything except screw with her already overloaded mind.

Technically they weren’t ‘her’ family but still… it was her mom and it was Louise. How was she supposed to leave them in such a huge mess? But how did she know what mess the other Renee might have got her own parents into?

That was before she even started on the Justin problem. It transpired that her mother loved him, her sister treated him like an annoying little brother though not without some affection, and her father really didn’t like him so much. What that meant for her and him she didn’t know, but it was yet another confusing thought to add to the ever-growing stockpile.

Apparently her grandmother was alive and well and still living in Maryland. So she could plausibly go and visit her and try to hunt out the necklace while she was there. When she would get to do that she didn’t know, especially seeing as once she got back within Marcia’s clutches she had a feeling she’d be watched like a hawk. It was like living in a goldfish bowl. She had her little miniature castle that she could hide in but she had to leave it some time and as soon as she did… it was all too confusing.

She really didn’t know what to do and her indecision wasn’t exactly a huge motivation to go after the stupid little piece of onyx that had caused her all the trouble in the first place. But Claire had had a point, she needed to find it so she could make the choice, not some cosmic stopwatch that said her time was up and it was deciding for her.

“Ren!” Came the distinctive yell of her sister from the living room. “Lover boy on the phone!”

Forcing herself up from the bed Renee quickly passed into the living room, glared at Louise, and took the cordless telephone out onto the patio where she could sit by the pool. “Hey.”

“Lover boy? Is that what you call me when my back’s turned?”

“No that’s just her being annoying. You’re so lucky you were raised an only child.”

“Excuse me? Little brothers here?”

“Yeah but you had a good few years without them when it was all about you.” She pointed out.

“True.” Justin chuckled. “So you wanna tell me why you skipped out and I got the Bitch from Hell cussing me out because she thinks I kidnapped you?”

“Did you tell her to fuck off?” Renee groaned.

“This is me, Justin, I hate her remember? I said way worse.”

“Good.” She sat on the edge of the pool and began rolling her pant legs up so she could put her feet in the water. “I was just getting pissed off with the promotion and with you gone I was by myself half the time anyway so I just wanted to come home. I was coming back for Ben’s birthday anyway.”

“By yourself? With an entourage that big you couldn’t find anyone to hang with?”

“Some of us don’t have a Trace on call. You don’t have to be alone to be lonely you know.”

“Hell yes I know. Are you okay baby? Seriously, I’m a little worried over here.”

“Join the club. I think my mom and Lou are already running it but I’m sure you could wangle yourself a junior committee position.”

“I know I already told Marcia you weren’t here but you know if you need to you could come out here with me.”

“No thanks, J.” Renee gave a soft smile. That actually didn’t seem like a terrible prospect but she’d come home for a reason. “You’ve got your circus going on right now and I think I need some quiet.”

“Well it’s an open offer babe, you know that,” he told her softly. “Listen I really shouldn’t have stopped to call you so are you gonna be at your momma’s all week?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. I’ll call you first chance I get but I gotta get my ass in gear. I love you, baby.”

“You too.”

The tone in her ear signalled that the connection had been severed and she clicked off the phone, slowly kicking her legs through the water and staring at the ripples like they could tell her why a basic five-minute conversation was now weighing so heavily on her. It just bothered her that he cared; she didn’t know why.

She didn’t know what, she didn’t know why; she knew a big fat nothing.