My Sister, Myself

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “Bruce…” Tory tried again.

  But Phyllis didn’t need to hear. Tory’s sobs were so filled with anguish Phyllis was choking, too.

  “He found you,” she said, trying to keep her own panic at bay. “He’s got Christine.”

  Tory’s ex-husband was the reason Christine had accepted the job at Montford—to get Tory as far away from the man as she could.

  Tory shook her head. “He…killed her…” The last word trailed off into a tormented whisper.

  Numb with shock, Phyllis sat with Tory, held her, comforted her, but she had no idea what she was saying. Had a feeling it didn’t much matter, that Tory had no idea what she was saying, either. A solitary tear stole down Phyllis’s cheek.

  Damn.

  She’d known something was wrong. She’d known it.

  “How did it happen?” she asked softly, more because the only part of her mind currently working, the analytical part, knew Tory needed to get everything out.

  Christine’s life was over. Her struggle was over. Phyllis just couldn’t believe it.

  “Somehow he discovered that we were heading out here,” Tory said, her voice weak from crying. Her slim, perfectly sculpted frame and beautiful face were sagging with strain. Watching her, Phyllis was taken aback at how much she resembled her sister. She’d thought so when she’d first met Tory earlier in the summer.

  Not many months ago, Christine had sat on this same couch back in Boston, her body bent in defeat, her big blue eyes—exact replicas of Tory’s—dark with shadows as she recounted for Phyllis the horrors of her childhood.

  As Phyllis had then, she sat quietly now, allowing the other sister to do her telling in her own time.

  “He caught up with us at the New Mexico border.”

  Oh, God. The landscape was so barren there. Hot. Unyielding.

  “He kept motioning for us to pull over, but Christine wouldn’t.”

  Tory’s eyes filled with helpless tears again as she looked at Phyllis. “I told her to stop,” she said. “He wanted me, not her.”

  “Unless he was angry with her for taking you away from him,” Phyllis offered, already seeing the blame and guilt Tory was heaping on herself.

  Tory shook her head, her short blond hair bouncing with the vigorous movement. “He only ever wanted me,” she said, her voice bitter. “Other people don’t matter enough to make him angry.” She paused, her eyes dead-looking. “In his mind, there’s no one alive who can beat him. People are merely ants he occasionally has to step on.”

  Though she’d heard such things before—in clinical settings—Phyllis was sickened by the description. And by young Tory’s far-too-mature account of the man who’d made her life a living hell.

  “So what happened when Christine finally stopped?” Phyllis coaxed softly when it appeared she’d lost Tory to places Phyllis had never been—places she probably couldn’t even imagine.

  Tory shook her head, hands trembling. “She didn’t stop,” Tory whispered, her eyes wide with horror.

  “She told me I was the only good thing in her life, the only thing worth living for, and she wouldn’t stop.”

  “You sound like that surprises you,” Phyllis said.

  “If it hadn’t been for me, Christine’s life would have been perfect once she left home,” she said sincerely. “I let her down so many times. I didn’t go to college. I married Bruce. I ran from everything.”

  Remembering that she knew things Tory didn’t, Phyllis chose her words carefully. “Christine chose Bruce for you, Tory,” she said, revealing the part she could.

  “What?” the young woman asked, shocked.

  “How? She couldn’t have. I met him at a party.”

  “And when you brought him home, when she met him, knew that he came from a good family, a wealthy family, she did everything she could to throw the two of you together.” Phyllis repeated what Christine herself had confessed all those months ago. “She thought he was your ticket out.”

  Silently Tory listened, her gaze turned inward, as though she was remembering back to the unreal days of her courtship.

  “She did, didn’t she?” Phyllis finally asked.

  “I don’t know,” Tory said, her brow furrowed.

  “I guess. Yeah, she was kind of always there, encouraging me, helping me get ready for dates, choosing just the right clothes for me to wear. But then, she was my older sister. She was supposed to do that.”

  Feeling the other woman’s confusion, her pain, Phyllis smoothed the bangs from Tory’s eyes—and saw, for the first time, the ugly red scar marring Tory’s forehead just beneath her hairline.

  “What happened?” she gasped.

  Tory rearranged her bangs self-consciously.

  “When Christine wouldn’t pull over, Bruce got more and more reckless, bumping into the side of the car, trying to force us to stop.” Head down, she played with her fingers. “I don’t remember much else,” she confessed. Tears dropped onto her hand.

  “When I came to in the hospital, they told me there’d been a one-car accident—no one’s fault. We’d lost control on a curve and driven over a cliff—and that my s-s-sister was dead.”

  Phyllis drew the young woman into her arms. “Oh, Tory, honey, I’m so sorry,” she whispered, over and over again, as her own tears fell on Tory’s hair.

  Oh, Christine. Dear, sweet, tortured Christine. Have you finally found your peace?

  TORY COULDN’T BELIEVE she’d slept. Coming slowly awake Saturday morning in the comfortable bed, the comfortable room, feeling almost rested, she wondered at first if she was still dreaming. A dream she didn’t ever want to wake from.

  She glanced sleepily around the room and saw the luggage she and Phyllis had carried in the night before, the new dresser—and the empty twin bed across from her own.

  For Christine.

  That split second was all it took for everything to come tumbling back. The dread. The fear. The soul-crushing despair.

  “You awake?” Phyllis’s voice followed a brief knock on the door.

  “Yeah, come in.” Tory quickly pulled her bangs down over her forehead. After years of hiding bruises, the action was purely instinctive.

  “Good morning.” Phyllis smiled, carrying a cup of coffee, which she set on Tory’s bedside table.

  Being waited on in bed warmed Tory even more than the coffee Phyllis had brought.

  They discussed trivial things for a while—the unbelievably hot Arizona weather, the pretty house Phyllis had found in August when she’d preceded Christine out to Shelter Valley. Also some of the people she’d met. People Tory would likely meet.

  Trying to listen, to absorb, Tory settled for concentrating on Phyllis’s smile, instead, the steady cadence of her voice, the calm strength she emanated as she sat in the middle of Christine’s bed. Her nerves bouncing on the edge of her skin, Tory somehow made herself stay put, made her thoughts stay put. Forced down the panic inside her.

  Phyllis was being so darn nice. Other than Christine, no one had ever been so nice to her before. And for no reason that she could fathom.

  “We’re going to have to call Dr. Parsons and let him know Christine isn’t coming,” Phyllis finally said gently.

  Here it comes, Tory thought, taking a deep breath.

  She’d rehearsed the speech. A hundred times on her trek across the barren New Mexico and northern Arizona landscape.

  Another deep breath, and still nothing happened.

  She couldn’t do it.

  “Life insurance was part of her benefits package,” Phyllis said, her eyes full of compassion. “I know Christine’s was already in effect because it was done at the same time as mine. We can give Dr. Parsons a copy of her death certificate, and at least you won’t have any financial worries.”

  Tory stared at her.

  “I’m counting on you to stay right here with me, just like we planned,” Phyllis continued. “Until you have time to decide what you want to do, anyway. It’s kind of lonely having an enti
re house to myself after living in an apartment for so long,” she said, obviously giving Tory whatever time she needed to enter the conversation. “I guess I need to hear life on the other side of my walls.”

  “There isn’t one,” Tory stated bluntly.

  Phyllis frowned. “Isn’t one what?”

  “Death certificate.”

  “But—”

  “At least, not for Christine.”

  “I don’t understand.” Phyllis was still frowning. “The hospital told you your sister was dead, but no one signed a death certificate?” Her face cleared. “If they haven’t seen her body, she may still be alive.” She looked at Tory. “Maybe Bruce has her, after all.”

  Watching the expressions chase themselves across Phyllis’s face, Tory shook her head.

  “The hospital authorities saw her.” She paused, swallowed. “I…saw…her.” Arms wrapped around her drawn-up knees, Tory stared down at the bed. “I had her cremated like she always said she wanted.”

  Maybe most sisters didn’t talk to each other about their burials while still so young, but she and Christine had. With the lives they’d lived, the home they’d grown up in, death had been a constant possibility.

  “You can’t do that without a death certificate.”

  “I had one,” Tory admitted, biting her lip. “Just not Christine’s.” Her head hurt and her face was numb as she silently spun in the unending loop of terror inside her mind.

  “Christine and I look so much alike….”

  Chin resting on her knees, Tory studied the bed through blurry eyes. Tears dripped off her face, rolling slowly down the sides of her knees, but her voice was almost steady as she related what she’d been told so compassionately by the clergywoman who’d visited her in the hospital.

  Tory’s bed sank on one side with Phyllis’s weight. She tried to concentrate on the comfort of the other woman’s hands rubbing slowly back and forth along her back.

  “My driver’s license was brand-new. Christine’s was six years old….”

  The hand on her back slowed, stopped moving, hung there suspended.

  “We were both pretty messed up in the crash….”

  “Tory—”

  “She’d gotten cold, my monogrammed sweater was the only thing within reach for her to put on without stopping and—”

  “Oh, my God.”

  “When word got out that the woman who died in the crash was presumed to be Tory Evans, Bruce, who was apparently beside himself, sent one of the family staff to identify me. Her.”

  “And the guy did?”

  Tory nodded, turned to meet Phyllis’s incredulous eyes. “Christine went through the windshield,” Tory said, trying not to remember the one brief glimpse she’d had of her sister in the morgue. “Her face was barely recognizable, even to me. She’d just had her hair cut short like mine, said she was embarking on a new life and wanted a new look.”

  Tory’s sigh was ragged. “Apparently when I first came to and they asked me if I knew who I was, I said Christine.” She looked at Phyllis again. “I can’t remember that at all, but knowing me, knowing how I get when I’m hurting, I would’ve been calling for Christine….”

  Her sister had been her balm her entire life, as far back as Tory could remember. Which was pretty damn far. She’d been only three the first time her stepfather had thrown her against a wall. She could still remember the stars she’d seen. The confusion that had kept her immobile long enough for him to do it again.

  “This is incredible,” Phyllis said. She took hold of Tory’s shoulders, turning Tory to face her.

  “They think you’re dead, that you’ve been cremated.”

  Tory nodded wearily, her eyes overflowing with tears. “The death certificate I have is my own.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  BEN LASTED until midway through Saturday morning. His ground-floor apartment was clean and quiet and comfortably furnished, but now he was at loose ends, and it was only ten o’clock. That was how long it had taken him to get his few pots and pans and dishes and glasses moved in and put away in the appropriate cupboards. And get his computer set up. He’d have done better if he hadn’t already put his clothes away and hooked up his stereo the night before.

  He’d called Alex last night, too, thankful that she’d answered on his first try. The week before, he’d had to claim a wrong number three times before his daughter had been the one to answer his call. His daughter—not his daughter but the little girl he’d raised and loved as his own. Now that he had a number of his own, the subterfuge wouldn’t be necessary. He’d had Alex write down the number, complete with step-by-step instructions on how to call collect, and then made her repeat everything back to him several times. He’d given her his address, too, but didn’t expect her to be able to use it. At seven, Alex was bright enough to write him a letter and address the envelope, but she’d have to go to her mother for a stamp, and Mary would certainly deny the request. Ben wasn’t Alex’s real father—her birth father—though Mary had neglected to tell him so until recently. Now she wanted Ben out of their lives. Out of Alex’s life.

  Damn her for putting Alex and him in this situation. Besides, the courts had said he and Alex should remain in contact, despite the fact that he was divorced from her mother and had no biological claim on her.

  He headed out and spent an hour and a half at the local grocery store, stocking up not only on food but on every single household item he thought he might need at some point in his life.

  Cleansers, a mop and bucket, sponges, a couple kinds of dishwashing cloths, several kitchen-towel sets, shoe inserts, extra laces and polish, bandages and antiseptic. Aspirin, cold tablets, cough syrup, paper towels. Toilet paper, tissues and a sewing kit, too.

  Anything and everything that seemed to belong in a home, he bought.

  The girl at the checkout made eyes at him as he went through.

  “You new in town?” she asked with an appreciative smile.

  “I am.” Ben glanced around for the name of the store, scribbling it on a check.

  “Looks like you’re planning to be here a while.”

  “Yes.” He signed the bottom of the check and waited for the total.

  After a few more failed attempts to snare his attention, she finished ringing him up.

  He was glad to collect his bags and be gone. The girl had been cute. Friendly. Twenty or twenty-one. If he’d met her in another life, he might even have smiled back at her.

  But not in this life. At least not until he had his college degree and a career that satisfied him. He’d wasted eight years already. There were no more to waste.

  After a brief detour to visit his great-grandfather, Ben was home again, slowly and methodically unloading his purchases. The first-aid stuff had to go in the bathroom medicine cabinet. Everyone knew that. And the kitchen towels in a drawer by the sink. One he draped over the oven door handle. He’d seen that on television once.

  Down to just the sewing kit, he wasn’t sure where to put it. He finally settled on a drawer in the bathroom. Chances were, if he ever needed it, it would be when he was getting dressed and pulled off a button. Wouldn’t be much call for it otherwise. Sewing on buttons was about the only thing Ben could do with a needle and thread.

  Not even noon yet, and he had a day and a half to kill before school started. Ben rearranged some things in the kitchen—and then moved them back to their original places, deciding he’d made the best choice the first time around.

  George Winston’s Autumn piano music drifted through the apartment, but as he made one more trek from room to room to make sure there wasn’t anything more he could do, Ben felt the quiet—the absence of life—a weight pressing down on him.

  He was used to noise—childish laughter and shrieks, blocks tumbling, play dishes being washed. And a woman’s whines trailing behind him with every step he took.

  Ben got his keys again, and went back out to his truck. He had a home now. His own home. One where he’d be spending the next fe
w years. Where he could call the shots.

  It was time to get a dog.

  “WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL the authorities they’d made a mistake? That Christine was the one who died in the accident?” Phyllis asked Tory later that morning.

  She’d had a phone call earlier, and then Tory had asked if she could shower off the grime of the drive. She’d been too exhausted, mentally and physically, to do so the night before. When she’d come out of the shower, Phyllis had placed Tory’s suitcases on her bed and was standing by with an empty hanger, ready to help her unpack.

  Now they were sitting at Phyllis’s kitchen table, the remains of a late breakfast neither of them had really wanted, or eaten much of, in front of them.

  Why hadn’t she told the authorities? Tory had known the question was coming.

  “I started to,” she said, sweating in spite of the air-conditioned kitchen. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, regardless of Phyllis’s warning about the Arizona heat, but it wasn’t the clothes that were making her uncomfortable. It was the task ahead of her.

  She was about to find out just how insane she was. And what little chance her half-born hope of freedom really had.

  “I fully intended to tell them, but when I opened my mouth, nothing came out. At first, everyone just figured I was too distraught to speak. Whenever I tried to tell them the truth, they’d tell me to get some rest, or they’d pat my arm and say they understood.”

  Phyllis’s hand covered Tory’s. Tory gently pulled her hand away.

  “Then it hit me,” Tory said, her gaze pleading as it met Phyllis’s. “As soon as I told them and word got out, Bruce would be right back on my tail. I only wanted a couple of days to rest, to think, to plan. So I let them think I was Christine. But as one day turned into the next, I couldn’t make myself become Tory again and…and take on all that fear.”

  “I don’t know how you lived with it as long as you did.”

  Tory smiled bitterly. “What other choice did I have?”