SPACE

by Penny Reid

  Allyn’s eyebrows pulled together even as she smiled. “A few jacuzzis? Two saunas? Are you sure this isn’t a hotel?”

  I rolled my eyes good-naturedly, but didn’t respond. I didn’t come here for the Jacuzzis and saunas and huge fireplaces and the music room and the sound studio and movie theater. My parents had houses all over the world, and they put money into a travel account for me (and one for each of my siblings) every year, mostly because they never wanted us to have an excuse if they requested our presence at some event. I rarely used the travel account and the mountain house was the only one I ever asked to visit.

  “I’ll go snowshoeing with you if you really want to go.” I breathed on the glass, making a rough oval of condensation, and drew two smiley faces. “But mostly, I’d like to get some reading done.”

  “Work stuff?” Allyn asked, making her own condensation canvas in the glass and drawing a flower. It looked like a thistle. She was a good artist.

  “No, actually. A few novels I’ve been saving.”

  “Really? Which ones?”

  The funicular car began to slow, and I twisted my neck to peer out the window behind me. The house was now fully in view and all lit up. It looked warm and inviting, though I frowned at how many windows were illuminated. I usually stuck to the main floor, eschewing the larger rooms on the upper levels. Why would Lila turn on all the lights in every room? Strange.

  “Uh, Lisa Kleypas. Her most recent two,” I answered distractedly.

  “Oh, you haven’t read her latest book?” Allyn sounded anxious, which brought my attention back to her.

  “No. Not yet. You know me, I’ve been saving them.”

  “When you finish, I need to talk about it. I have feelings!” My friend did jazz hands, wiggling her fingers in the air.

  Laughing, I stood as the car came to a stop in the top-side structure. “Okay. Sounds good. I’ll probably have feelings too. We can compare feelings notes.”

  “Yes!” She jumped up and turned to grab her bag.

  I unfastened the door and slid it to the side, and then I paused because I spotted a dark figure approaching the funicular structure, silhouetted by the lights of the house. The size of the outline made the person too big to be Lila, and the wrong chromosomal arrangement. Meaning, it was a man. And he was carrying what looked like a shovel over his shoulder.

  “Who is . . . ?” I narrowed my eyes, stepping off the car, leaving my bag for the moment, and opened the structure door.

  “Mona!”

  I stood straighter at the sound of my brother’s greeting, ignoring the blast of cold wind. “Leo? What are you doing here?” I had to raise my voice over the gust. It hadn’t been nearly as blustery at the parking structures. I gripped my hat to my head, just in case it decided to fly off.

  Fully materializing, he grinned down at me, his dark eyes moving over my face. “It’s good to see you! Do you need help with bags?” Leo made no move to hug me, not that I expected him to. After putting up with my stiff, detached hugs for several years, he’d stopped trying.

  I shook my head, confused by his presence, and also by the uncomfortable prickling at the back of my neck. “It’s good to see you too. I didn’t know you were coming.”

  “Did you get my voicemail?” he asked, but then glanced over my shoulder, obviously spotting Allyn. “Oh, hey. Alan, right?” He extended his hand automatically, but then chuckled at himself when he seemed to suddenly remember the work gloves covering his fingers.

  “It’s pronounced Al-lean,” I corrected.

  “Oh, sorry.” Leo seemed to be apologizing for both his inability to shake her hand and mispronouncing her name.

  “That’s okay. You can call me Al if you like. And I can wave,” she offered cheerfully, coming to stand fully beside me. “I can also salute, but that might be weird.”

  Her comment made Leo laugh, and he gave her another look, his eyes narrowing slightly as they moved down and then up. “I guess we’re saluting,” he said, smiling, saluting, his eyes still suspiciously squinty.

  I say suspiciously because they were sparkly as well as squinty, and I knew that face: Leo had decided she was worth a second look. Allyn and Leo had met just once, separated by many people and meters, and very briefly, at my graduation from undergrad almost three years ago. It had been so short, I don’t think he even heard her name correctly and had called her “Alan.” Before I could correct his error then, he was pulled elsewhere, and Allyn had disappeared into the crowd.

  Presently, they were still smiling at each other, almost like I wasn’t there, and the exchange was exponential levels of cute. Under normal circumstances, it would’ve initiated my innate scheming proclivities (arranging an accidental half-naked interaction, planning their wedding, sending out save-the-date cards, and prepping for her bachelorette party) because who wouldn’t want a best friend to marry an awesome sibling? But I was still perplexed by his presence and the sense of being suddenly and inexplicably on edge.

  I also saluted and stepped in front of Allyn once again. “Hey, what’s going on? Why are you here?”

  “I called you and left a message. I invited a few—” A gust of wind filled the small structure, pushing Leo forward such that he had to use his free hand to brace himself against the door.

  Just before he righted himself, I noticed movement behind him. Another man—a big one by the looks of him—was walking toward us along the path. My stomach tensed. A shivery—yet hot—spike of awareness shot up my spine to my neck. And my heart . . . my heart.

  I licked my lips, my eyes wide on my brother. “Leo. Is there—is there someone here with you?”

  “Why don’t you come inside? I’ll explain everything.”

  I grabbed his arm. “Explain now.” Why is my heart beating so hard?

  It was like that moment in the sensory deprivation chamber, I was hot and cold and clammy everywhere.

  Leo shook his head, giving me a look of mild exasperation. “Mona, it’s freezing and you’re doing that whispering thing. I can barely hear you. Let’s go.”

  He easily pulled out of my grip, turning for the house and lowering the shovel, and I reached for him again. But before I could grab my brother, the new person emerged from the dark and snow, and entered the little halo spilling from the funicular structure’s overhead lights.

  I stopped.

  I think even my heart stopped.

  I know my forebrain stopped, or was—at the very least—broken.

  It was . . .

  He was . . .

  He looked . . .

  How . . .?

  “Abram.”

  3

  Magnetism

  *Abram*

  “Abram.” Leo stopped upon catching sight of me. Most of his face was in shadow, but what I could see looked relieved. “Good. Hey, so I guess I will need you to take the funicular down to the garage level after all.”

  I nodded, my attention moving beyond him to the two women. The one on the left must’ve been Mona’s friend, Alan. My eyes sought the one on the right.

  Huh.

  She was shorter than I remembered. Memories are tricky that way, always trying to make the past bigger, more important, more interesting and relevant and meaningful. But memories were so seldom reflective of reality.

  And yet, I had to concede that she was just as beautiful as I remembered, even though all the color had leached from her skin. Mona looked like she’d just seen a ghost. This filled me with a perverse kind of satisfaction, because she was staring right at me. I was the ghost.

  Even wan, she was still extraordinary. Those honey colored eyes of hers were wide with surprise and her pretty pink heart-shaped lips were parted slightly. The delicate line of her jaw, the gentle point of her chin, the subtle indent just beneath her cheekbones, it all made me want to hold her face in my palms, push her hat off, thread my fingers into her dark hair, tilt her head back, and—

  “My sister didn’t get the messages I left earlier. Thanks for your help. I
know it’s freezing.” Leo lifted his voice over the howling wind. “I want to get the girls settled, make introductions, you know.”

  “Not a problem.” I shoved my hands into my pockets, lest they get any ideas, and gave Leo another nod. But my attention remained fastened to the genius astrophysicist who continued to gape at me. I didn’t remember her looking at me that way during our week together, nor during any of her interviews, and I wondered if this was a new expression for Ms. Mona DaVinci.

  Had she ever been unpleasantly surprised before? Had she ever come face-to-face with a mistake? Leo had once told me Mona never made mistakes. What did that make me?

  The opposite of a mistake is intentional action.

  I felt my lips curve into a bitter smile at the thought and blinked, moving my carefully bored glare from Mona to her friend. Leo had said the friend’s name was Alan, so I’d been expecting a man. Obviously, this Alan wasn’t a man. For some reason, the discovery relaxed the tension around my ribs somewhat. I wouldn’t think too much about that, if I could help it.

  Alan was also staring at me, her lips also parted, but she wasn’t looking at me like I was a ghost. She was looking at me like she knew who I was, and she was a fan. Great.

  Sighing, I dropped my attention to the pathway and moved toward the ski lift house, or whatever it was called. Despite Leo’s shoveling, the large slate path was quickly refilling with snow. The old guy down at the garage level would definitely need help. That’s what I would think about.

  Eyeballing the doorway blocked by the two women, I hesitated before walking slowly forward. Mona’s friend wasn’t a big person, but I was. Unless she wanted to press herself flat against the wall, there was no way we’d both fit in the tight hallway. Thus, it was no surprise when, at my approach, Alan scrambled out of the way, stepping around Mona and onto the much broader path.

  The friend wore a wide, shy smile as my gaze flickered to her. I gave her a single head nod in acknowledgement. I’d learned the value of keeping an air of detachment. Fans preferred the myth that I was inherently aloof to any version of truly knowing me. Who was it who’d said, “Better to shut your mouth and be thought a fool than open it and remove all doubt”? These days, that was basically my mantra.

  Unlike her friend, Mona’s feet did not move at my approach. Her body still blocked most of the door. But she did lift her chin as I closed the distance between us. Except, I wasn’t closing the distance between us. She was in my way, and I needed to move past her in order to continue forward.

  Given her inconvenient location, I was forced to slow, stop, and then wait. Clearing my throat, I kept my eyes fastened on the ski lift behind her and waited for her to get out of my way.

  “Let me show you the house.” Leo lifted his voice behind me, presumably speaking to Alan. “Abram will help Melvin with the bags. We saved the top floor for you and Mona, so it’ll be quiet, just like she likes. Do you . . .” His voice drifted off, swallowed by the wind and increasing distance.

  I wasn’t close to Mona, allowing her plenty of space to walk past me. If memory served, and in this case I trusted memory, Mona didn’t like people getting too close. Unless, that part was a lie too.

  “Hi—hello,” she said, stepping forward but not out of the way, drawing my attention.

  She was still staring at me, her face still pale, but her eyes had turned searching instead of stunned.

  “I—” She stopped herself, swallowing, her gaze dropping to the front of my coat, a cute little frown furrowing her eyebrows. In the next moment, she was pulling off the glove of her right hand. Abruptly, she shoved the ungloved fingers toward me, returning her eyes to mine. “I’m Mona.”

  I suppressed my disbelief at her small action before it could break my outward mask of calm. I wasn’t calm. Just to be clear, I was the opposite of calm.

  The fact that she was introducing herself to me now meant that she thought I was too stupid to figure out her lies over the last two-and-a-half-fucking years. She was arguably one of the smartest people in the world, after all. To her, people like me must seem like housebroken pets. So it shouldn’t have surprised me. But it did. The tension and tightness around my ribs reappeared, squeezing uncomfortably.

  Dropping my attention to her bare hand, I pressed my lips into a tighter line, dismissing the way my pulse jumped at the sight of her wrist, the olive tone of her skin under the yellow string lights overhead. Glaring at her outstretched offering, I considered telling her to go to hell.

  I considered it, but I wouldn’t.

  I didn’t trust myself to speak, that was reason number one.

  The other reason was harder to explain, or use as a justification, or admit to myself. Staring at her hand, I braced against a sudden flare of hunger. She might consider me a lower life-form, but that didn’t change the fact that I wanted to touch her. I wanted to touch her more than I wanted to tell her to go to hell, and that was fucking pitiful.

  But there it was.

  Acting on the compulsion, I lifted my right hand and tugged off the ski glove, sliding my warm palm against her much colder one. Her hand felt good in my hand, the right weight, the right size, the right texture, and I inhaled freezing air.

  Mona also seemed to suck in a slow but expansive breath as our hands touched, held. This brought my eyes back to hers in time to see her lashes flutter. Pink colored her previously pale cheeks. The sound of the wailing wind, the sting of the air and frost momentarily melted away, leaving just her, her soft skin warming against mine, her beautiful face filling my vision.

  So beautiful.

  She really was. She was stunning. I hated that she was still so beautiful to me.

  She looks just like her sister.

  I blinked, stopping myself before I shook my head at the bitter thought.

  Except, no. She doesn’t. Not at all.

  About two years ago, when I’d begun to suspect the truth, I’d compared countless images of the twins. The pictures were more contemporary than my fuzzy memories of the photos at the house in Chicago, the ones where Mona had looked twelve, and Lisa hadn’t.

  I decided they looked identical, especially in pictures taken this last year. Side by side, they looked like the same person. When the suspicion became growing certainty, their similarity in photos made me feel a little better about the possibility of being so completely fooled.

  But now, looking at Mona now, seeing the physical differences in sharp focus, I felt sick.

  I should have known immediately. God, I should have known.

  The way she’d looked at me then, the way she was looking at me now, so completely different than her sister. The last question I’d struggled with—the final puzzle piece—snapped resoundingly into place. She left after the movie.

  I’d suspected, but now I knew with absolute certainty. It had been Mona during The Blues Brothers, and Lisa in the morning. That’s when they’d switched places.

  Riding the wave of nausea, I pulled my fingers from hers and shifted my attention to the interior of the ski lift, no longer wanting to touch her or look at her or breathe the same air as her.

  “You’re Abram,” she said, moving closer, too close.

  I sidestepped her, brushing past into the small building. My tongue felt thick and dry, and a pulse of heat radiated from my skin outward, but also pushing back at me, just like the sensation when a rollercoaster takes a dive. How could I have been so fucking stupid?

  Behind me, I heard the door close, cutting off the sound of the wind, and she said, “You and Leo are—uh—good friends.”

  Not answering, I closed my eyes against the spike of anger. I took a deep breath. Her boots made noise on the tile floor as she drew near. She was trailing me.

  “I didn’t know anyone would be here. We thought it would be just us. I . . .” She cleared her throat, then continued, “I hope we didn’t interrupt you guys or that us being here is an inconvenience to—to—to—uh, to anything. If you need us to go, we can leave.” Her voice had grow
n quieter as she spoke, sounding like her. Even at a near whisper, I heard every word as I stepped onto the little car.

  Grinding my teeth, I spotted a backpack through the haze of red tinting my vision. I lifted it. I turned. “This yours?”

  She shifted back a half step, her eyes still wide and searching. “Uh. Yes. Mine.”

  I shoved the bag at her chest. Not hard, just enough to force her to retreat another step, clearing the doorway of the car so I could slide it shut, which I did.

  She flinched, blinking at me through the glass, visibly astonished by my closing of the door so abruptly, and she either whispered or mouthed, “Abram.”

  Didn’t matter. I gave her my back and started the car’s descent, though she was still visible in the reflection of the glass in front of me. But I couldn’t hear her with the closed door between us, and soon I wouldn’t be able to see her either.

  So fucking stupid.

  I shook my head at myself, exhaling slowly, lead in my chest, but relieved to have made it through this initial encounter without making an idiot of myself. Biting the inside of my lower lip, I stared at the snow beyond her reflection until she disappeared, feeling and welcoming the cold.

  I’d caught Mona DaVinci’s testimony to Congress a few months ago. She’d been as eloquent as she’d been brutally brilliant, passing off cutting remarks as polite responses. Strangely, after watching her make fools of the most powerful people in the country, I felt like I’d also been torn to shreds. She was magnificent. She’d also been completely without emotion.

  Still, even then, I doubted. I bargained with myself, I reasoned against the likelihood of such a scheme. Who would do that? And how dumb would I have to be to fall for it? Between the two possibilities of crazy or stupid, crazy seemed like the lesser of two evils. In pictures, Lisa looked like my Lisa. Yet, so did Mona.

  But then, during an interview on the news several days after the testimony—I’ll never forget—Mona said, “I disagree. Senator Nevelson’s question was irrelevant and lacked a fundamental understanding of the scientific method, and then the wolves came.”