by Teri Terry
“Yes. Somehow Ness legged it and got away. She went home, trailing her lead. Piper found her barking in the front garden in quite a state. She didn’t think anything of it, just thought Ness had got away, that her mum would be home soon. But she never came. Later the police went looking for her, and, well . . . I’m guessing from your question that you know the rest. They found her. She was still alive, just. Paramedics got her to hospital, but she died soon after. And that’s why I’ve got Ness: they didn’t want her in the house just now.”
The whole time he is talking, he is staring at me, his eyes running over my face, hair, every bit of me in an intense way that makes me squirm and look away, a flush climbing in my cheeks.
“Sorry. Was I staring? You’re just so like Piper. How come I didn’t know about you?”
“I didn’t even know Piper existed until today.”
“But where have you been? Why weren’t you together?”
“No idea. I was raised by my grandmother. Isobel only visited now and then. She never hinted that I had a sister somewhere else.”
“I can’t believe Piper had a twin she didn’t know about.” He looks shaken, much how I feel.
But then I realize something that should have struck me before. Piper did know, didn’t she? She wasn’t shocked that I exist, even though she couldn’t stop looking at me any more than I could stop looking at her. She must have known. Did our mother tell Piper she had another daughter stashed away somewhere? She never told me, but she told Piper. Piper, the one she kept.
All the missing clues and connections I’ve been trying not to think about since I first saw Piper’s face tumble into place. The way Isobel was with me. Things she said—that I needed to be kept away, the darkness contained, so I couldn’t hurt anyone. And it didn’t sound like Isobel was doing all this as a service to humanity; it was more personal than that. She never filled in the blank about who I might hurt, but it was my twin she kept me away from, wasn’t it?
Isobel was making sure I was kept away from Piper. That’s why I didn’t know about her, and that’s why Piper did know about me.
No wonder Isobel never needed me. She had Piper. A carbon copy, but one who smiles more. One who is nice, whom people like, whom her parents and someone interesting like Zak maybe even love.
Something that the day stirred and softened inside me shifts back and hardens. I was always right about my mother, wasn’t I? Who cares if she’s dead? Not me. I’m glad.
And no matter how Isobel wanted things, she’s failed. I’m in Winchester, with her precious Piper, and there’s not a thing she can do about it. In fact, she’s the one who brought us together. Her death did this.
I cross my arms, holding myself in. “You haven’t got that quite right. Piper knew. I didn’t.”
Zak doesn’t answer, but I can tell he doesn’t believe me. He doesn’t think Piper could keep such a big secret from him. He doesn’t know that I never lie. Except to myself, and I’m finished with that.
Piper
My phone vibrates with a text; I pull it out of my pocket. It’s Zak, with a single word, in caps: WOW. I’m guessing Quinn took off her scarf.
I slip my phone back in my pocket, and Dad raises an eyebrow, caught between my head teacher and his law partner. He extricates himself and comes over. “Was that Zak?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t believe he’s not here, after everything you went through together last year. He seemed all right earlier. But maybe the funeral was too much for him?”
I sigh, struggling to focus on now, on hiding the wonder that moves through my veins: My twin is close by. “It’s not that. He’s ill, and you wouldn’t want him throwing up all over the place, would you? Must be something he ate. He’d be here if he could.” Dad squeezes my shoulder, and I droop against him. “Is it all right if I go check on Zak later?”
He starts to give me a dad look.
“You know he hasn’t got anybody else. What if he’s really ill? Besides, I need to get out of here.” The bodies all around are too warm, the hands pressed into mine too insistent. The sense of unreality is back, even stronger than before. Mum should be standing there, next to Dad, but instead my mind is full of my last images of her—stiff and silent in her coffin.
He kisses my forehead, the empty space stark next to him. “I haven’t got anybody besides you now, either, Petal. But I understand. Go if you need to.”
“I’ll wait awhile and pretend to go to bed. Since, you know.”
He nods. The terrible duo are in residence tonight. His two aunts have a definite sense of what one should and shouldn’t do at all times.
Dad goes to the door to greet a latecomer; I go to my friends.
They’re bunched together in a corner, a bit quiet and uncertain. Erin sees me coming and nudges Jasmine, who turns and slips an arm in mine.
“How are you? I mean, how are you holding up, Pip?” Jasmine says. “Is there anything I can do?”
I lean my head against her shoulder, and her arms close around me. “Just being here is enough.”
Tim comes closer and smiles. “Pip and J in a clinch: it’s like one of my dreams.”
“Tim, honestly!” Jasmine says, and shakes her head, but he’s broken the uneasy mask on their faces. They start talking more naturally, and I pull Jasmine away with me while the others continue to tell Tim off.
“There is something you can do for me,” I say to her, voice low.
“Of course. Anything.”
“I’m all in. Can you hint to get everyone to head out soon? I’m sure they’ll be happy to go, anyhow.”
“That’s not true. They’re just—we’re just—a little unsure what to do, what to say. But if you want them gone, I will make it so.”
“Thanks, J.”
The clock ticks slowly down. One by one, my friends and the rest of the crowd trickle out our front door, until it finally happens: the whiskey comes out of the cupboard. Dad is pouring, sitting between his brother and cousin, while both aunts look on disapprovingly.
“Should I start clearing up?” I ask Aunt No. 1, rubbing my eyes and stifling a yawn.
“No, no; of course not, duck. Get yourself to bed. It’s been a long and hard day for you.”
“Are you sure?”
“We’re sure,” says Aunt No. 2. “We’ll take care of it.” They both give me a hug and a kiss on the cheek, and I head up the stairs.
In my room, I swap my dark dress and heels—funeral look for family reunion—for jeans and trainers. I focus on Quinn, holding her face in my mind to stop seeing Mum made up and laid out in her coffin.
I head down the other stairs at the back of the house and step out into the night.
Quinn
I sip cautiously: my first-ever taste of red wine. “It’s nice!”
“Go slow if you’re not used to it,” Zak says, but I have another sip, and then another. Warmth starts to slide through me, to replace the shivering that even a hot bath and dry clothes borrowed from Zak haven’t dispelled. I’m curled up on a chair in his miles-too-big tracksuit bottoms, T-shirt, and fleece, while he clatters about in the kitchen. Something smells good, and reminds me that I haven’t eaten today. Suddenly I’m ravenous. When he hands me a bowl of rice and vegetables with a lovely spicy sauce, I don’t look up again until it’s gone.
“Either you were very hungry, or I’m one hell of a cook.” He grins, still finishing his on the sofa.
“Both. That was good. What is it?”
“Vegetarian curry—my mother’s recipe.” He looks at me oddly. “Haven’t you had curry before?”
I shake my head. “It wasn’t on my gran’s list of approved dinners.”
“Strange woman.”
I nod seriously. Very true. And what she will or won’t eat isn’t the half of it.
He pours more wine into his glass, lifts the bottle with a question on his face. I hold out my glass, and he half fills it. “Last call for you,” he says.
“That doesn’t seem fair.” I raise an eyebrow at his full glass.
“I’m old enough, and as I’m guessing that you and Piper must share the same birthday to have the same face, you’ve got almost a year to go until your eighteenth. Your glass and a half tonight were purely medicinal.”
“And how about yours?”
“Well earned. Not an easy day. Not an easy few weeks.”
“Sorry to disrupt things for you tonight.”
“Don’t apologize. It’s fine. And while I should be there for Piper, I was kind of relieved to miss the wake.”
“Why?” I’m surprised I ask. But with the warmth of a full belly and the soft buzz of wine running through my veins, I’m relaxed, more than I usually am.
He hesitates. “I don’t like big parties. Especially those associated with funerals.”
“I can’t imagine most people enjoy them. That was my first funeral, and I wouldn’t exactly call it a good time.” Is Zak a loner? I look around the room. Few personal things are in evidence, and what is—a cricket magazine on the table, a pair of trainers and a bike under the stairs—is probably Zak’s. Books on shelves are neat, tidy. There’s no hint of anyone else. “Do you live here on your own?”
“Yes.”
“How old are you?”
“Nineteen. Do you always ask this many questions?”
“No. Where are your parents?”
A shadow crosses his face. “My parents split when I was little, and I lost contact with my dad years ago. My mum died last year.”
“Oh. Sorry. Is that why—”
“I don’t like funerals? Yes. Pretty much.”
“How did she die?” I say, then wish I could bite it back. “I’m sorry. Don’t answer if you’d rather not talk about it.”
“Stop apologizing. And I don’t, generally. But it’s OK. We’ve got losing our mothers in common, haven’t we?”
The warmth of the wine and food is fading. I pull my knees up and wrap my arms close around them. Can I lose something I never really had? “Losing sounds like we misplaced them, and if we look hard enough, we can find them again.”
“One day, maybe we can. But for now, I know my mum is around me still. Watching over me.” He says the words calmly, with quiet conviction. For me, any thought that Isobel might be here now, watching, is not soothing. Goose bumps rise on my arms.
“And to answer your question from before, it was a riding accident. Mum fell from her horse. Severe spinal and internal injuries. I rushed home from university just in time to hold her hand as she died.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, then start to say sorry for apologizing again, realize what I’m doing, and stop.
He leans back on the sofa, eyes half closed. “I felt like I shouldn’t have gone away, shouldn’t have left her alone. Not that me being here would have changed anything, but I haven’t been able to make myself go back to university.” He shakes his head, looks at me. “Not sure why I’m telling you all this. I don’t usually talk about it much. Maybe it’s because when I look at you, I see Piper.”
“What university did you go to?”
“Cambridge. I was reading human, social, and political science. They’re losing patience on extending my leave. I’ll have to go back soon or give up my place.”
“What would your mother want you to do?”
“She’d want me to go back, of course.”
“So go.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Sure it is. Why not?”
“What about Piper? I can’t leave her alone. Not now.”
As if mentioning her name again conjures her, the front door rattles, then opens. “Hello?” Piper calls out, in a voice that is eerily my voice.
Zak gets up, goes to the entrance hall. There are murmured voices, then silence. They come into the front room, their arms linked. When Zak looks at Piper, his face has a warmth it didn’t have before. But Piper looks tired, drawn. He starts to lead her toward the sofa, but she lets go of his hand and turns toward me.
“I’m so glad you’re here, Quinn,” she says, and bends awkwardly, trying to hug me in my chair. She sits on the sofa with Zak, then looks around. “Where’s Ness?”
“Asleep in the kitchen,” Zak says, but as if either Piper’s voice or the sound of her name summoned Ness from puppy dreams, there is instant barking on the other side of the door. Piper jumps up and heads toward it.
“Wait,” Zak says. “Don’t let Ness out of the kitchen. Quinn doesn’t like dogs.”
“What?” Her face is incredulous.
But I’m feeling braver now. Is it the wine? “Let her in if you promise to keep her from jumping at me.”
“OK, fine. I promise.” Piper pulls the door open, and I tuck my feet farther up under me on the chair, but I needn’t have worried. Ness is so full of joy at the sight of Piper, it’s like I’m invisible. She runs around her in circles, and then when Piper gets on the sofa next to Zak, jumps up between them. She sits with her head on Piper’s lap, gazing at her adoringly, and the feeling looks to be mutual. The more Ness wags her tail, the more the strain on Piper’s face melts and fades.
“How’d you get away?” Zak asks Piper.
“No bother. Dad said it was OK to check on poor ill you. You’ve been throwing up, by the way, if anybody asks.”
“What about your aunts?”
“I pretended to be sleepy, went up to bed, and snuck out the back way.”
Zak shakes his head, in a what-are-you-like kind of way, but I’m shocked. “You lied to your father? And your aunts?”
She shrugs. “It avoided a lot of fuss. Besides, why worry them more when they’re already stressed out? I was sparing them. And Dad knows where I am.”
I stare back at her, not quite able to take this in. Lying was not allowed around Gran—not any sort, not even little ones designed to spare feelings. Exaggeration was enough to make me miss dinner. Anything resembling an actual untruth got me locked in a cold room in the dark for the night, or longer. And she always knew—she had a special lie-detecting sense. It’s been years since I even tried; I have a built-in aversion to it now.
Piper raises an eyebrow. “Don’t you ever lie?”
“No.”
Zak tweaks her nose. “Maybe your sister will be a good influence on you.”
She scowls, and I laugh. “Now, that’s something I’ve never been accused of before.”
Piper sits forward, head in hands. Her eyes stare at mine, mirrors of my own. “I’m intrigued. Have you got a dark side, Quinn?”
Uneasy, I shrug and don’t answer her question. Isobel thought I did—why else keep me hidden away? And Gran did, too. She was constantly at me to guard against it, forever using charms to keep it at bay.
Now it is Piper’s turn to laugh. “Just one of many questions I have for you. To start with, where do you live? Who with? Did you used to see Mum? How did you know she died? How did you get here?” The more questions she asks, the less I want to answer them.
“I have a question first,” I say, facing Piper. “Why did you know about me when I didn’t know about you?”
Piper looks me straight in the eye. “I didn’t.”
I stare back at her. Do I have the same lie-detecting sense as my gran? “Yet when you saw me sitting there with your face at your mother’s funeral, you didn’t seem shocked or surprised at all. You seemed happy. Straightaway you arranged things so I could see Isobel and got Zak to bring me here. Then you told lies to your family to rush here and ask me questions. And you didn’t know I existed before today? I don’t think so.”
Her face starts to crumple. “I didn’t know! I just . . .” She shakes her head, and Zak wraps his arms around her, making soothing noises. She pulls free moments later, tears shining in her eyes. “You don’t understand. I was in this horrible, dark place. I felt so alone. And when I saw you, it was like some of it lifted. It took me away from where I was, what was happening. I might have lost my mother, but une
xpectedly, there you were: a beautiful sister I didn’t even know I had.”
She holds out a hand to me, and I want to believe her. My hand reaches across to hers, without plan or thought. She grips it hard.
“I’m sorry I upset you,” I say. “It’s just all so strange, and you didn’t seem to react to the strangeness. But I’m not some sort of replacement part for your family. I don’t belong here.”
“Then where do you belong?” Piper asks. “Where did you come from?”
Nowhere I want to be. But I’m not saying that, not out loud. I cross my arms.
Zak looks between us, at Piper’s increasingly frustrated face, my closed one. “Look, it’s late. How about we stick to the really big question: what happens next?”
That is the one I’ve most been trying to avoid, but it has crept into my thoughts again and again without permission. I left without packing any clothes, with not much more money than I needed to get here, without anywhere else to go. My only destination was Isobel’s funeral. I hadn’t thought past that. I don’t want to go back; I can’t stay here.
I look at Piper, with her curiosity and endless questions, and suddenly just want to get away from her. “I should go.”
“What about your dad?” Zak asks. “Don’t you want to meet him? He’s not a bad old guy.”
“My . . . dad?”
“That’s how the twins thing usually works,” Piper says. “He’s my dad, so he must be yours, too.”
“I . . . I don’t know,” I say. There is part of me that wants to meet him, but Gran’s reaction whenever I asked about my father makes me scared. She seemed to think he was a cross between a lowlife criminal and the devil. Yet Zak knows him; not a bad old guy, he said. But my father is still a stranger. “How would you feel if your dad suddenly appeared after all these years?” I ask Zak.
Piper raises an eyebrow, looks between Zak and me. Is she surprised that I know about his father?
He shrugs. “I’d probably thump him one for running out on us. But it’s not the same story.”
“Isn’t it? How do you know my father doesn’t know about me? Maybe he was in on separating us. Maybe it was his idea.”
