“I think.”
Lily looked at the photograph again.
“Is that you?”
“Yes.”
“And the other lady?”
I swallowed.
“My sister.”
Lily’s eyes widened.
“You have a sister?”
That question hurt more than it should have.
I had a sister.
Past tense had never felt completely right.
Present tense felt impossible.
“I did.”
“What happened?”
I looked at Mara’s fifteen-year-old face.
“I don’t know.”
And suddenly I was furious.
Not at Lily.
Not even at Sophie Bennett.
At those three words.
I don’t know.
I had been saying them since 1986.
I was done saying them.
Mara and I were identical twins, but nobody who knew us well ever confused us.
I was cautious.
Mara was motion.
I made lists.
She lost lists.
I followed rules until I understood them well enough to complain.
Mara complained first and asked questions later.
Our father, Harold Mercer, found this charming when we were children.
By sixteen, he considered it dangerous.
Dad believed the world worked best when everyone stayed where they belonged.
Children listened.
Parents decided.
Doors were locked at ten.
Boys did not wait at the end of the driveway.
And daughters did not make plans without permission.
Mara had started seeing a boy named Daniel Price that spring.
Daniel was seventeen.
