The Other Sister

by Dianne Dixon

  Most of the students and faculty were gone for the summer, and as Matt crossed the campus, his footsteps echoed off the brick walls of empty buildings.

  When he entered his office, out of habit, Matt switched on his computer. He was only vaguely aware of his surroundings. He was thinking about Ali, about the black dress she’d been wearing at the party, how it exposed the entire length of her back and how, when he’d touched the skin at the base of her spine, it had been like warm velvet.

  The computer signaled the arrival of a new email. Matt clicked on it absentmindedly, with a dreamy smile.

  When the email revealed itself, Matt’s eyes went wide. He shuddered as if he’d just tripped over a corpse.

  The message on his computer screen was:

  You’re not going to get away with this.

  It was signed:

  AKA

  A monogram Matt knew well.

  It put a taste in his mouth that was sour, acid, as if he’d swallowed poison. There was a pressure in his chest that had his ribs aching. It took a long time before he was able to function again. And then he wrote:

  How did you find me?

  After he sent the message, he sat rigid and apprehensive. For over an hour.

  Finally, the computer screen lit up again.

  You don’t have the right to ask questions.

  Matt’s hands shook as they moved over the keyboard, asking:

  What do you want?

  He had to wait almost four hours for a response.

  Matt spent those hours pacing. Worrying.

  When the computer screen lit up again, the message was blunt and chilling:

  I want to make you pay.

  Matt’s first and only thought was of Ali, of protecting her. In less than the space of a breath, he typed:

  Tell me where you are. I’ll come. Tonight.

  He received a reply that was blindingly fast. Within a few seconds, he was in his car, heading toward I-95.

  Morgan

  “I’m twenty-seven and living at home with my mother.” Morgan took a jittery breath. “Sometimes I honestly think about killing myself.”

  Sam, the smoky voice at the other end of the call, was thoughtful, concerned. “How are things with your money problems?”

  “Not good. But if this new job I’m applying for comes through, it’ll be better.”

  “And you think you did well in the interview?” Sam waited, Beethoven playing softly in the background.

  “Having somebody to talk to…somebody who listens, who hears me. It helps,” Morgan said.

  A slow breath, what could have been a murmur of agreement, then no other sound from Sam.

  “I took your advice. When I was talking to the interviewer, I pretended I was talking to you, and I was much calmer than normal.” Morgan cleared her throat. Usually she’d be uncomfortable making such a self-confident statement, but with Sam, she could say anything. “I’m pretty sure I did great in the interview.”

  The reply was an approving chuckle. “Later, I’ll have a brandy in your honor. I’m happy for you. But not surprised.”

  Morgan had an unfamiliar sense of excitement and possibility. “Thank you,” she said.

  No response. Just silence.

  In the space of that silence, Morgan had the impulse to say I love you—and immediately decided against it. Saying it would make her want more, would make her want to know a name, see a face. And putting a face, or a name, to this miracle of complete acceptance might destroy it. A risk Morgan didn’t want to take.

  “Do you think you can sleep now?” Sam asked.

  To her surprise, Morgan let out a startled whimper. Out of the blue, she’d been hit with a wave of fear.

  “What is it, my friend? What’s happened to you?”

  What was happening was the thing Morgan had tried to describe to the guest room maid at the Newport wedding—the unique connection of twinness Morgan and Ali shared, the erratic, unpredictable ability to sense each other’s pain.

  Morgan’s mouth had gone dry and cottony. She suddenly had a pounding headache. “Nothing’s wrong with me. I’m fine,” she told Sam. “It’s my sister. Something’s happened to Ali.”

  Ali

  Ali’s mouth was cottony dry. She had a sudden, pounding headache and was paralyzed with fear.

  The fear had started only a couple of minutes ago.

  When this situation began, shortly after she got home from Aidan Blake’s book signing, not being able to reach Matt hadn’t seemed like anything too far out of the ordinary.

  She had called Matt as soon as she’d changed out of her work clothes. When he didn’t call back, Ali simply called again. Then she starting watching a movie she’d recorded, a fast-paced thriller that had caught her attention. Two hours later—when Ali looked at her phone and the screen was still blank—she experienced the first prickle of worry.

  Letting hours go by without returning a call was out of character for Matt. He was never out of touch with her, always in constant communication.

  She made a sandwich, ate it, and wiped down the kitchen counter. She read a couple of magazines, took off her nail polish, and put on two fresh coats—all the while calling Matt and texting him.

  When it was almost three in the morning and there was still no word from Matt, Ali knew something was wrong.

  She got in touch with every friend she could think of, everyone Matt might have gone to or been with. “Have you seen Matt? Has Matt called you? Have you heard from him?” From person after person, the answer was no. Ali had tried to find Aidan but didn’t know where he was staying, and when she couldn’t come up with a phone number for the glamorous woman who had hosted the book signing, she had driven to the woman’s house. It was locked and dark, no one home.

  That’s when Ali called the police. And the hospitals. Nothing.

  With her heart hammering, she drove to Matt’s apartment and then to his office at the college. Both places were empty. It was a little after three in the morning, and there was no sign of him anywhere.

  An hour and a half later, when Ali got back to her studio apartment, she had trouble holding on to the key while she unlocked the door. Matt had vanished without a trace, and Ali was paralyzed with fear. The interior of her small living space was clean and simple. As soon as she managed to get the door open, she went to the antique coatrack. In winter, this was where she hung scarves and sweaters. But it was summer, and the only thing hanging there now was a baseball cap—the one Matt had tossed there when he came into the apartment, kissing her hello, a week ago.

  Ali grabbed the cap, pressing it to her face and letting out a moan. For several slow, ticking minutes, she didn’t move. Then, finally, she walked to her bed and took off her clothes. She pulled on an old T-shirt and a pair of cotton shorts and lay down. She rolled onto her side, her body in a straight line from head to toe, her eyes wide and blank. Where was Matt? What had happened to him?

  In a kind of disconnected slow motion, Ali bent her knees and brought her heels up, bringing them to rest just below the backs of her thighs. Her moaning came in a steady unbroken rhythm, like an accident victim in terrible pain.

  It was then that she heard the sound of salvation. The sound of a key in the lock.

  Ali saw that the door had quickly opened, and Morgan was in the room, just inside the doorway, peering into the predawn darkness, searching for her.

  Morgan’s expression was filled with love and concern.

  As soon as she spotted Ali, Morgan took off her shoes, crossed the room, and got into bed beside her. They were lying facing away from each other, spine to spine.

  Morgan pressed her back against Ali’s, connecting every inch, from their shoulders to their hips. Morgan then placed the warm soles of her own feet against the cold of her sister’s.

  Sole to sole, back to b
ack—this was the position Morgan and Ali had shared in the womb and had returned to throughout their years together. This was their place of strength and consolation.

  Ali was crying tears of relief. Morgan was there. Her sister and her soul mate. Her thorn and comfort.

  “How did you know to come?” Ali asked.

  “I had a feeling that you weren’t okay…that you needed me.”

  “Something bad has happened to Matt,” Ali murmured. “He’s disappeared. He’s missing.”

  “Are you sure? Did you call the police? What did they say?”

  “They asked if I’d contacted his friends, and when I said yes, they asked if I’d checked with his family. I explained that Matt’s parents were dead and he was an only child… He doesn’t have any family. He only has me.”

  “What are they planning to do?”

  “They told me they’d file a report, but that people take off for all kinds of reasons, and he’d probably be back home on his own in a couple of days.”

  Morgan waited for a bit. “What do you think?”

  “I think Matt’s in trouble…and whatever it is, it’s bad.” Ali was trembling. For a minute, she couldn’t talk. Then she whispered, “Thanks for coming.”

  Morgan’s answer was “I’ll always come.”

  For the rest of the night, Ali stayed in that benevolent, peculiar, joined-together position with Morgan—opposite and perfectly matched.

  And while she was lying in the darkness, waiting for the light, Ali remembered the odd warning she’d overheard—the hush in her mother’s voice and her grandfather’s, as they’d talked about Matt:

  “I suspect there’re things about himself that Matt doesn’t want anybody to know.”

  “What kind of things, honey? Good? Or bad?”

  “That’s the problem. It could go either way.”

  Matt

  “I suspect there’re things about himself that Matt doesn’t want anybody to know.”

  “What kind of things, honey? Good? Or bad?”

  “That’s the problem. It could go either way.”

  While Ali had been remembering that disturbing snippet of conversation, Matt was sprinting through the lobby doors of a seedy Manhattan hotel. The kind of grimy place where rooms are rented for an hour, or a day, or a month. A place for transients—with bad lighting in the corridors, and carpets funky with the smell of bug spray and cheap air freshener.

  At the end of one of those dim corridors, Matt had searched out a room number: the location his emailer had given him.

  He understood that what was about to happen, the things that would be done to him by the people in that room, would be dreadful.

  Matt only had to knock once. Before he could say a word, the person who answered the door hit him. As if they wanted to murder him.

  Morgan

  “Morgan, honey, I have a nice neutral eye shadow that might be just what you need.” Morgan’s mother was in the doorway, peering into the bathroom.

  Matt had been missing for almost forty-eight hours. Morgan was anxious about the toll it was taking on Ali, and she was having a hard time concentrating. She had to get ready for work. Her mother’s look of concern was only ratcheting up Morgan’s anxiety.

  This was the first day of her new job; she’d been hired as an assistant curator at a local art museum. The job came with an income that would let her move out of her mother’s house and reclaim her independence. An opportunity that meant the world to Morgan. The last thing she wanted was to show up looking like a freak.

  The mirror above the old pedestal sink was giving her bad news. Instead of subtly drawing attention away from the cuts on her face, the shimmery bronze eye shadow was making her look like a bug-eyed drag queen. While her mother, in the morning light, without a drop of makeup, looked absolutely lovely.

  Morgan’s mother was an older, more exotic version of Ali. Their coloring was different, but their essences were identical, glowing and lush.

  For a brief moment, Morgan was a little girl again, reliving a ritual that had been in all the mornings of her early childhood. Her mother, in a bathrobe, hair loose and wild, fixing breakfast. And Morgan’s father, coming into the kitchen, stopping in the middle of the room to admire his wife, telling little Morgan and little Ali, “Want to know what’s beautiful in a woman, what’s desirable? All you need to do is look at your mother.” Little Morgan, who adored her father, took in his every word, believing it as indisputable truth.

  Then as she and Ali got older, Morgan heard her father, and everyone else, say with such excitement, “Ali and her mother…mirror images of each other!” When Morgan was mentioned, it was only as “Ali’s sister” or “the quiet one.” By the time she was in middle school, Morgan had done the math. She knew what beautiful was, what desirable was, what popular was. She had been told.

  She saw that her body was long and lean, and that her mother and her sister were full and ripe. Morgan understood that she was shy, hesitant, an introverted bookworm. Her mother and sister were witty and outgoing. People gravitated to them like moths to a light show. Which is why, before her twelfth birthday, Morgan had given up and gone to live in Ali’s shadow. A jail sentence that Morgan didn’t understand was self-imposed. With her preadolescent logic, Morgan believed she had no choice other than being a beggar in her sister’s world. Because Morgan had never been the Pretty One, the Invited One, the One Who Was Desired.

  And now her effortlessly pretty, effortlessly desirable mother was asking if Morgan wanted help in patching up her bungled attempt to look beautiful, saying, “Let me run and get my makeup bag. It’ll only take a minute.”

  “Thanks anyway, Mom. I need to get going.” Morgan quickly wiped away the bronze shadow and escaped into the bedroom. The space hadn’t changed since Morgan had shared it with Ali when they were growing up. Ali’s cheerleading trophies and homecoming queen crown, along with Morgan’s worn-out collection of fairy tales and romance novels, still crowded the shelves above matching pink-and-white twin beds.

  Her mother, who had followed her into the room, stood watching as Morgan opened the closet door. When Morgan took out a silk shirt with a price tag dangling from the sleeve, she saw her mother’s fleeting frown. Morgan gave the price tag a nervous yank, slipped into the shirt, and took a deep breath, knowing what was coming, hoping not to let it make her crazy.

  “Honey, how can you even think about spending money on new clothes when you’re so deep in debt?”

  “Please, Mom… Let’s not talk about this right now. It’s my first day of work, and I don’t want to go there stressed out, okay?” Morgan’s hands were shaking as she buttoned the shirt—a gorgeous new item she’d bought with a credit card and planned to pay off with money from her new job.

  As Morgan reached into the closet for a skirt and shoes, her mother sighed. “Baby, sometimes you plow through life like somebody speeding down a freeway, backward.”

  Needing some distance, Morgan took the skirt and shoes to the other side of the bedroom, while her mother said, “You’re drowning in interest on thousands of dollars you borrowed from credit cards. Money you just gave away.”

  “I didn’t give that money away.” Embarrassment pushed Morgan’s voice into a whisper. “I invested it.”

  “No, sweetie, that’s not what you did. Don’t lie to yourself.”

  Her mother reached for Morgan. Morgan sidestepped her, despising her for bringing up this subject. “I have to get to work.”

  But her mother wouldn’t let it go. “You need to look at this. Learn from it. See how foolish it was, chasing after a man who barely showed an interest in you, trying to make him fall in love with you by rushing to his rescue, trying to buy his attention with money you didn’t even have. Morgan, that was—”

  “My personal decision! And none of your business.” Morgan was angry and ashamed at how stupid she’d be
en. “Go away, Mom. What you’re doing right now is making me hate you.”

  Her mother, looking wounded, not seeming to know how to respond, waited for a minute, then walked out of the room. While she watched her go, Morgan wondered what her mother had left unsaid, wondered if it might have included the word pathetic.

  The facts her mother was talking about were pathetic, completely and without question.

  But the way Morgan saw it, underneath the facts, there was also the truth of what had happened. She’d been torn apart in those weeks after Matt stepped around her in the Williams-Sonoma store to choose Ali. It had left Morgan crushed. Then everything changed. There was that extraordinary dinner, and suddenly the world had been full of possibility again.

  It was magical… Walking into that restaurant and discovering her blind date was gorgeous—a stockbroker—a man with golden skin that looked as if he washed it in liquid sunshine. He told her he’d been born in Spain, and every word he said carried the lilt and music of the Catalan. She was in love the minute she saw him. This was definitely a man who could erase the hurt of losing Matt to Ali. And Morgan understood she was so far out of his league that it was a joke. She wasn’t Ali. She wasn’t her mother. She needed some kind of advantage.

  That’s why she did all those outrageous things…treating him to expensive dinners…showing up at places she knew he’d be, like those softball games and charity runs. It’s why she dreamed up a million different ways to bump into him when he was coming and going from his office. And it was the reason that when she heard he was having trouble making his quotas, even though everybody said the market was crashing, she took out advances on her credit cards, borrowed all that money, and invested it in any stock he’d sell her.

  She believed with all her heart that if she could stay in his line of sight long enough, he’d eventually see that she’d be kinder to him, more loyal, than any fabulous, beautiful woman he’d ever known. She would’ve been so grateful. Would’ve loved him without limits. If he’d wanted her to, she would’ve dropped to the ground and worshipped him like a god.