The Twin's Daughter

by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

What we must have looked like to them: Mother and Richard huddled together in dressing gowns, the knife on the carpet, Kit with his pistol now pointed at Richard’s head.

  The only one in the household who did not come was Emma. Poor Emma, my sister—what a world she would wake to tomorrow. How I pitied her. But that did not stop me from doing what I needed to do.

  With steadfast assuredness, I raised the finger of accusation, pointed straight at Aliese.

  “That woman is not my mother!”

  It made sense to none of the others, save Kit, but it made perfect sense to me, for in that moment she had ceased to be.

  • Forty-four •

  I have taken up my father’s profession.

  Or, that is to say, I have taken up his habit: writing, for itself, without any thought of financial gain. One could say that I am a teller of stories, of sorts.

  Kit has had a table carried down from the house, so I can sit here in front of the lake as I write my story. Telling one’s story—is that not what we humans want, to be heard?

  It is summer as I write this.

  We finally made it to the Swiss lakes. It is where we live now.

  It is different here in this country, with its vast open landscape, the clear greens and blues and whites everywhere after the closed grayness of misty London.

  I like the house here in Switzerland. It has only one floor at ground level and one staircase, leading down to a never-used basement, as opposed to the three staircases in my old house. I find this desirable, prefer it this way. Flatness is good. It hides nothing.

  I like the lake here in Switzerland too. It makes me think of Mary Shelley and her monster, a book I have read repeatedly since we have been here. The crescent-shaped body of freshwater, the majestic mountains with their snowy top hats and the narrows on the far shore—it is all quite inspirational, to borrow a word from divinity, divinity being one of those things I do not have much use for any longer.

  Mary Shelley—I often wonder what it would be like to be her, to have a book for the ages spring whole from a waking dream. Is that what creation was like for Father?

  I will never know. I can only know what it is like for me.

  Creating a monster, particularly a sympathetic monster like Frankenstein’s, it is quite an ambitious undertaking. “What terrified me will terrify others,” Mary Shelley wrote of her waking dream. How remarkable, to have the assurance that what one feels about a thing, others will have too.

  Again, was it like that for Father?

  Again, I do not know.

  Am I happy now? Have Kit and I had a happily ever after?

  Such a thing is impossible to say, certainly not before a life story is at its end.

  I will say that for the longest time, I was tormented by the notion: How could I have judged so badly? How could I have not known whom I was supposed to love? The fact that Aliese and her sister wore the same face seems little exoneration, and I have been further tormented with wondering: How much of me is Aliese? How much her sister?

  “Happy”? What is that after such a tale?

  My aunt was murdered, Father died under pathetic circumstances, Aliese—whom I had once loved as my mother—was responsible for all. What is “happy” after all that? It would take another lifetime to cipher it all out.

  Some things we will never know the answer to. Kit says this is all right. He says that life without mystery would be like a static story and that it should not bother me that one big mystery remains:

  The tunnel that stretched between Kit’s and my houses back in London—where did it come from? Was it, as Kit once claimed to believe, a way to connect lovers between one house and the other? Or was there something more sinister there?

  Kit says that if this were a novel, we would have found a secret diary in one of our houses to go along with the secret tunnel, and that the secret diary would detail the history of the tunnel’s origin. But Kit also says that would be too neat, too tidy. The tunnel was built a long time ago and whoever built it for whatever purpose must now be dead. And while the dead do speak sometimes—I now believe it was Aunt Helen crying out to me from the grave the day of her funeral, begging me not to forget her—they rarely do, and I doubt this will prove one of those instances.

  I watch Emma, who was my sister, thought now by those around us to be my first child, as she plays down near the water, her nanny close by her side to ensure that she does not venture too close to the edge, as she is inclined to do if we do not all keep watch. She looks so much like her mother and aunt. Emma is the daughter and niece of twins, the daughter of two murderers. What are her chances for the future? Only time will tell. But we will continue to raise her as our daughter and, when the time comes, we will have answers to her questions.

  When news of what happened came out, Mary Williams took it upon herself to visit us at the house in London, which we have since sold, suggesting we place Emma in an orphanage.

  I told Mary Williams to go hang.

  Kit says it is all right to live in a world of uncertainty. He says that at least it is not boring.

  Kit says a lot of things these days. I never mind.

  Sometimes, I even say things back.

  I talk about being the witness, the observer, and how it’s impossible for the observer ever to know everything about the other people in the story—their complete histories, their motivations—and how some things will, by necessity, remain a mystery.

  Kit says this is the same argument he gives me. Do I not realize this? he points out. Then he says that I expect too much from myself, that I always have, that I am not God—however much I might try to be!—and that I cannot be expected to know everything.

  In the beginning, Emma used to ask for her mother and father, missing them. “Mama?” “Papa?” She looked for them everywhere. This was heartbreaking to see, and it hurt me too. For while I knew what her parents had done, I also knew what it was like to lose my own parents, my sun and my moon, even though as it turned out, the sun was never quite the celestial body I believed it to be. Knowing she would never see them again was hard. But after a time, she looked for and asked for them less and less, like a river slowly, drop by drop, overcome by drought. Now she never asks at all. It is amazing how quickly small children forget the past, as though none of it ever happened. I wonder if my own child could forget me so quickly.

  Aliese and Richard finished out their days on this Earth at the end of twin ropes. I had to stay for the trial, but I did not stay in London to read about them swinging. Justice decreed that they should, but their end gave me no pleasure. What good could be achieved by yet more death? Some would say justice, some would say revenge, but I had already had enough of death to last me a lifetime.

  Kit says he believes Richard loved Aliese greatly, and she him, but that sometimes when two people love, the end result is a dark and twisted thing, and not as it should be. He wonders what their lives would have been if Aunt Helen had never come to knock on Aliese’s door. Perhaps they would have gone on doing whatever it was they did together, but without disturbing the fabric of the rest of the world.

  I try not to think about what Aunt Helen thought about during her last moments on Earth. When I do allow myself to think on it, I prefer to believe that, terrified as she must have been, right up to the end she believed that Richard had come to wreak some sort of revenge on her and that she was nobly defending her sister. I prefer to believe that he slipped in back of her chair, slitting her throat swiftly from behind so that she never saw it coming. I prefer to believe that she never knew it was her own sister’s hand commanding the knife.

  I no longer wish to dwell on death and twisted things, and so I look up from my writing, look over at the child playing on the lawn with Emma, a much smaller child.

  My own daughter, Helen.

  Helen is dark, like me, with black hair and flashing eyes, but she is also a resilient thing, reminding me of her namesake great-aunt in happier times. Helen’s birth—the pain and the glo
ry—I remember every second.

  We raise our girls, as we think of them, as sisters. Hopefully, and with a little luck and care, neither will grow up to hate the other.

  Step, tap, clack.

  Even though the grass behind me muffles the sharp edges from the sounds, it is always what I hear in my mind’s ear when he approaches: my savior. He is simply that.

  I turn to look over my shoulder—in a minute, I will lay down my pen—and think, write that there is only one thing I know for certain, and it has everything to do with “happy.” Indeed, it is the last thing I will say on the subject:

  There is not a story, in the entire history of the world, that cannot be improved upon by the inclusion of a character named Kit.

  Acknowledgments

  A longer-than-usual book spawns a longer-than-usual cast of characters to thank. I offer them now. Thanks to:

  • Pamela Harty, for being my agent and friend, and to everyone else at The Knight Agency

  • Melanie Cecka, for stunningly spot-on edits, and to everyone else at Bloomsbury

  • Mark Bastable, Eliza Graham, A. S. King, Caroline Leavitt, Elizabeth Letts, and Jordan Rosenfeld, for reading, sharing insights, and encouraging

  • The Friday Night Writing Group: Lauren Catherine, Andrea Schicke Hirsch, Greg Logsted, and Rob Mayette, for weekly support during the writing of TTD

  • Lucille Baratz, for being so sparklingly Mom

  • Greg Logsted, for being my husband and writing partner

  • Jackie Logsted, for being my favorite girl in the world

  • Readers everywhere.

  Copyright © 2010 by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  First published in the United States of America in September 2010

  by Bloomsbury Books for Young Readers

  E-book edition published in September 2010

  www.bloomsburyteens.com

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Bloomsbury BFYR, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Baratz-Logsted, Lauren.

  Twin’s daughter / by Lauren Baratz-Logsted.—1st U.S. ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: In Victorian London, thirteen-year-old Lucy’s comfortable world with her loving parents begins slowly to unravel the day that a bedraggled woman who looks exactly like her mother appears at their door.

  ISBN 978-1-59990-513-6

  [1. Twins—Fiction. 2. Aunts—Fiction. 3. Murder—Fiction. 4. London (England)—History—1800–1950—Fiction. 5. Great Britain—History—Victoria, 1837–1901—Fiction. 6. Mystery and detective stories.] I. Title.

  PZ7.B22966Tw 2011 [Fic]—dc22 2010008234

  ISBN 978-1-59990-616-4 (e-book)

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part I

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Part II

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Part III

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Chapter Twenty Six

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty One

  Chapter Thirty Two

  Chapter Thirty Three

  Part IV

  Chapter Thirty Four

  Chapter Thirty Five

  Chapter Thirty Six

  Chapter Thirty Seven

  Chapter Thirty Eight

  Chapter Thirty Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty One

  Chapter Forty Two

  Chapter Forty Three

  Chapter Forty Four

  Acknowledgements