"The morning one of the lost twins returned to Mallard, Lou LeBon ran to the diner to break the news, and even now, many years later, everyone remembers the shock of sweaty Lou pushing through the glass doors, chest heaving, neckline darkened with his own effort. The barely awake customers clamored around him, ten or so, although more would lie and say that they’d been there too, if only to pretend that this once, they’d witnessed something truly exciting. In that little farm town, nothing surprising ever happened, not since the Vignes twins had disappeared."
The entire narrative revolves around the two significant events referenced in these opening lines of the novel. The first occurred many years previous to the second when twin girls Desiree and Stella Vignes ran away from home in the aftermath witnessing their father being beaten by a group of white men as vigilante justice for doing something that he actually could not even do. Upon realizing their idea of supremacy actually translated into not being smart enough to realize when a man has been beaten to death and when he hasn’t, the job was later finished for real in the hospital. The second significant event would be the return of Desiree, but not Stella.
"A white man in a tweed jacket asked for wine and Jude uncorked the bottle of merlot, hoping the girl might leave. But as she began to pour, she heard exclamations filtering in from the foyer. The girl turned to her glumly…Then she set her empty glass on the bar and started toward the entrance, where a woman had just walked in. Mr. Hardison was helping her out of her fur coat, and when she turned, passing a hand through her dark hair, the bottle of wine shattered on the floor."
There is a reason why Stella and Desiree ran away together in tandem but all these years later it is just Desiree returning alone. Not too long after the runaway, Stella parted ways with her sister and took off for the other side of the country. Her life took a radically different route than Desiree’s. While both twins manifest the inherited genetic proof of mixed racial heritage with complexions light enough to allow “passing” for white, only Stella actually took advantage. The result is marriage to a bigoted white man and a daughter with blonde hair and violet eyes. The reason that Jude is so shocked she drops a bottle of wine to the floor is that Jude is Stella’s niece.
