by Teri Terry
Her womb.
And what about Piper’s dad? If we’re twins, we must have the same father. Is he my father too?
The door behind me opens and I spin around, thinking too late that I should have covered myself again with the scarf. But it’s Piper.
She walks toward me, stops close. Her eyes skip over me the way mine do over her, unable to stop myself from checking every detail, every curve, every feature, hunting for difference but finding none. She’s a little taller, but then I glance down—her heels are higher than those on my boots.
“It’s OK,” she says, her voice quiet. “No one will interrupt us. I’ve told them I want some time alone with Mum. And anyhow, Zak is watching the door. He won’t let anyone come in.”
“Zak?”
“My boyfriend. Come on.” She steps toward the coffin. Her shoulders are straighter, like she’s preparing herself for something, and I realize: whatever that woman was to me, she was Mum to her.
“You don’t have to do this. It’s all right.”
She pauses, turns, and raises her left eyebrow: identical to a gesture I use, one that challenges. “Neither do you, if you’d rather not.”
I straighten my shoulders like she did without thinking about it, then deliberately relax them. I take a step forward, and another, until we’re both standing by the coffin.
She died from a dog attack. What is she going to look like?
As if Piper has read my mind, she shakes her head. “There were viewings earlier. The mortician sorted her out pretty well.”
There are two handles on the coffin lid. She grips the one at the foot of the coffin, and glances at the other, near where her head must be. “You may have to help.”
I slip my fingers around the handle. It’s cold, smooth metal. “Ready?” she whispers.
My stomach is twisting, and I want to say, No, not now, not ever, but instead I nod. She nods back. We both pull.
The lid is solid and heavy, but easy enough for both of us to raise. It swings up smoothly, and we lower it down. The coffin is open.
Piper’s eyes are unreadable, fixed on what lies inside it. “I’ll give you a moment,” she says, and turns her head by turning her whole body, almost like she can’t stop looking where I’m not sure I want to. She walks away.
I stare at the floor, at the wall, at my hands—anywhere but in there. I’ve seen dead things before, like on the side of the road, or when Cat brings in mice or birds. Or the time a fox got in to the chickens, years ago—that was carnage. I’d had nightmares for months after I cleaned it up. Will she be like a chicken caught by a fox?
I steel myself to do this, and start to draw in a deep breath, but then choke it back. Will she smell? How many days has it been since she died? But Piper said a mortician sorted her out. Whatever it is they do, they’d make sure she lasted for her funeral.
I force myself to turn, to look. It somehow seems safer to start at her feet. She’s wearing a long, heavy dress. Blue—was that her favorite color? I think back. She often wore blue on her infrequent visits, but I know so little of her, not even that much. Is the dress to hide what the dogs did to her?
My eyes travel upward. Her hands are sort of crossed; one looks normal, the other is hidden in the sleeve. I swallow, force my eyes to trail up and up. The dress has a very high neck. Did a dog rip out her throat? If dogs are like foxes, they’d go for the throat.
And now—it’s time. Her face.
She looks relaxed, peaceful. If you didn’t get too close, you might think she was asleep. High-set cheekbones, long lashes brushing her cheeks. Auburn hair—not as red or as bright as Piper’s and mine—arranged about her shoulders. She was beautiful. I can see that, now that her face isn’t frowning, suspicious, and twisted like it usually was when she looked at me.
Even with her eyes closed, there’s no doubt. It’s her. She really is dead.
Her face is heavily made up. She is—was—naturally pale, like I am, and the rouge on her cheeks is too much. It’s almost clowny. The foundation is thick, and there are barely visible variations, as if it’s been filled in in places. I shiver. Slavering dogs, four of them, isn’t that what it said? They must have knocked her to the ground and attacked. They shouldn’t have done so without a command, that’s what their trainer said before he was charged. He couldn’t understand how it happened, how they even got out. But somehow they did, and they killed her.
This is something I used to dream about when I was angry, which was a lot of the time—her dying. But now that I’m staring at her body, I feel sick with it, with the reality of the absolute, final end to her story.
She’s really dead.
Outside, I’m shaking. Inside, something is choking—something has stopped.
There are footsteps behind me; they come closer. A hand touches my shoulder. “Come on. We’d better go.” Soft words.
We swing the lid over and shut. I watch our mother’s face as it disappears from view, the last time I’ll ever see it. I stand there, my fingers still caught in the handle, unable to move.
Piper’s hands are warm, gentle. She pulls my fingers away from the coffin lid, tucks my hair into my coat, then carefully wraps my scarf back around my head, knotted in front and pulled low over my face to hide who I am. She doesn’t say anything about the traitor tears glistening in my eyes.
Tears I can’t understand.
Why should I care? That woman never cared what happened to me. She was never there when I was scared and alone. She wasn’t there when I fell and broke my arm when I was six. She wasn’t there years later when I was ill and screamed in terror at fevered hallucinations, sure creatures of the night would rip me apart if the fire didn’t kill me first.
She never loved me.
But even worse: now, she never will.
Piper
She is quiet and pliable now, and when I tell her to wait a moment, she doesn’t argue. Does seeing your mother like that make you a child again, even a mother you barely knew?
Despite my resolution not to, I couldn’t stop myself from looking at Mum again. I’d wanted to study her, drink her in, climb inside the coffin and lay my warm body over her cold one. As if warmth could be all she needed to make her come back to me.
I open the door. Zak is there, like I knew he would be. Others are visible through the next set of doors.
He smiles, holds out a hand, and I take it. “Your dad’s waiting for you,” he says. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. But can you do something else for me?”
“Of course. What is it?”
I open the door farther so he can see Quinn standing in the shadows where I left her. “Could you take . . .” I say, then hesitate, not wanting to spring this on him with witnesses so close, not trusting him to hide his reaction. “Could you take my friend to your place to wait for me until after the wake?”
He’s startled to see her. “I thought you were alone in there.”
“I’ll explain later. Will you do it?”
“Of course.” Zak leans forward, slips his arms around me. I lean into him a moment, wishing I could go with them and not have to deal with all the rest. All I want is to be with Quinn: someone else I want to drink in, to study. As if being with her—focusing on her face—could make everything else go away.
I sigh, and look up at Zak. “Just wait until we’re gone before you leave. All right?”
Unasked questions lurk in his eyes, but he nods. “OK. Sure, if that’s what you want me to do,” he says. “I’ll take her to my place, and then meet you at yours afterward.”
I frown. “No. You’d better stay with her. Make sure she waits for me.” Despite how she is now, I don’t trust her not to bolt once the shock wears off.
“What? No way; I’m coming. I have to be there for you, like you were for me.”
I shake my head. “Listen to me, Zak. The best way you can help me right now is do what I ask. Take Quinn, and stay with her.” I gesture tow
ard her, still standing there silently, her head lowered and turned away. “I’ll come as soon as I can. Please?”
His eyes search mine. “I don’t understand, but OK, if that’s how you want it.”
“It is. Exactly how I want it.”
“Your family will wonder why I’m not there.” He rolls his eyes, and I know he doesn’t care what they think, so long as they’re not causing me problems.
“I’ll tell them you’re ill or something. Don’t worry about it.”
Another hug. I look through the doors; Dad is watching, impatient to get going. “I have to go now. I’ll get them outside so you two can slip away.”
Quinn
Their words reach my ears but float around, not understood, in my mind. I try to make myself listen. This is Piper’s boyfriend, Zak: the one I saw kiss her earlier at the door. Is she asking him to take me somewhere?
Piper, my twin. Even said silently, the word is unreal. How could I not know this? What does it mean?
Piper slips away through the outer doors. I hear murmured voices outside that mute again when the doors shut. Zak turns toward me and steps into the doorway.
“Ah, hi,” he says. “I’m Zak.”
I feel frozen, unable to move or look up.
“Hello?” he says again. “Are you Quinn?”
I force out an answer. “Yes. That’s me,” I say, and I know the words are mine, but they sound distant, as if they belong to somebody else. I struggle to turn my eyes, to focus on him, to grab hold of something real.
Tall. He’s tall. Dark, almost black hair, skin like milky chocolate, or coffee with cream. Nineteen or twenty. Wide, brown eyes with more dark lashes than a boy really has need of. Broad shoulders, but slim. He stands easily, like an athlete. If I wasn’t in some sort of coma, I’d think he was gorgeous. He’s looking back at me with a mix of curiosity and concern. He probably thinks he’s had a crazy relative dumped on him—one with a strange scarf-based fashion sense.
A crazy relative? A smile pulls at my lips, and I stifle the hysterical giggle that wants to work its way up. What could be more true?
“Wait a sec,” he says. “I’ll check if they’re gone.” He walks over to the other double doors, peers through the glass, then turns back. “They’re just leaving. Let’s give them a minute.”
When he judges enough time has passed, he gestures, and I follow him outside. It’s still raining; it’s steady, but not the manic downpour it was before. Once I feel the cold, fresh air, the raindrops on my face, and take another step and another, farther and farther away from that place of death, I start to feel more myself.
Not that I’m quite sure who I am now. One half of a set of twins?
He pulls out a key and presses it; a beep-beep sounds, and he holds open the passenger door to a battered blue car for me to get in.
He starts the car, drives slowly out of the car park and down the winding drive, even though no other vehicles are in front of us. As soon as he turns onto the road, he accelerates so hard that I check to make sure my seat belt is fastened.
He glances at me sideways, and I turn my head away. “So. Why are you being snuck out of there like some sort of spy?”
I shrug. “That was Piper. Not my idea.”
He shakes his head. “That girl comes up with some crazy stuff sometimes, true enough, but even she wouldn’t do this without a good reason.”
I don’t answer. I consider taking my scarf off in the car so he can see me properly, but he’s driving fast enough that the shock might be dangerous. Do our voices sound alike—will that be enough to make him wonder? I resolve to say as little as possible, and keep my face turned away. At least, as far away as I can and still watch Zak.
“If you don’t tell me, I’ll just have to make it up. And I’ve got a great imagination.”
“Have you?”
“Oh, yes. Let’s see.” He tilts his head to one side, then nods. “You are a famous actress, deeply in love with Piper’s dad. You can’t bear to be apart, but came to his wife’s funeral in disguise to stop the scandal until a reasonable mourning period has passed.”
“Interesting.”
“Or maybe you work for the life insurance company handling her claim and were just checking she’s really dead.”
I don’t say anything to that one. Cut the insurance company out of it, and isn’t that exactly what I was doing?
“Sorry, was that insensitive? How did you know Piper’s mum?”
“Stop asking questions—you’ll find out soon enough.”
“Or perhaps you’ve escaped from prison and fancied a funeral on your day of freedom?”
A smile tugs at my lips. A prison is close enough to where I came from, and it was an escape of sorts.
“Give up,” I say. “There is a reason Piper had me snuck out of the funeral, and it’s beyond anything you could invent. But can it wait until we get where we’re going?”
“I may die from curiosity. But if you don’t mind having that on your conscience . . .” He shrugs.
“I can live with it.”
“Ouch. We’re nearly there now, so I may just survive.” He pulls in front of a block of terraced houses, expertly reverses into a tiny spot. “Here we are.”
He dashes around to open my door. The rain has miraculously stopped, and the sun is shining. He stares at my face as I get out of the car, and this time I don’t look down or turn away. His eyes widen.
He unlocks the front door to the house and holds it open. As I step through, Zak following behind me, I take the scarf off my head. I pull my wet hair out from under my coat and turn back to face him.
He shakes his head, confused. “Piper?”
“No. Not Piper. You saw her leave, didn’t you?”
“I thought I did. But you . . . and she . . . I don’t understand.”
“Nor do I. I came to my mother’s funeral, and there Piper was.”
“Your mother’s funeral? Are you twins?” he says, eyes wide. “I can’t get my head around this.” He glances at a door across the room, and as he does, I focus on the sound coming from behind it, a sound that started when we came in the front door. I was distracted enough to begin with that it didn’t really register. But now it is louder: a high-pitched whining sort of sound. Then there is a thump-thump of something against the door. Is it . . . could it be . . .
“Arf!” It is. A dog. My skin crawls.
“Give me a sec,” Zak says, and moves to the door, a few short feet away. Before I can unstick my tongue enough from my dry mouth to stop him, he opens it.
Out bounds a blur of black and white fur that starts to leap at Zak, then realizes someone else is in the room and stops in its tracks. It turns toward me and tilts its head to one side.
“It’ll be interesting to see what she makes of—” Zak stops in midsentence when he turns and sees my face and notices that I’ve now moved to put a table between me and the dog. “What’s wrong?”
The dog starts toward me, but Zak grabs its collar and picks it up in his arms. “Are you by any chance afraid of dogs?”
Now that Zak is holding it—her—and the dog isn’t leaping at me, I see that she’s smaller than I thought, and I’m embarrassed. But even as I try to hide the panic, my heart still beats fast.
“I don’t really care for them,” I say, making a massive understatement.
“Well, you needn’t be scared of this one: she’s a puppy, not a full-grown dog. Let me introduce you. This is Ness.” He picks up one of her paws, waves it at me, then puts his head behind hers. “Pleased to meet you!” he says. And Ness barks once as if to agree. He looks around her again. “Can we come a little closer?”
I shake my head.
“Ness is just a playful puppy. She’s a Border collie, very intelligent and friendly, and not the least bit aggressive. She’s only about four months old. She wouldn’t hurt a fly; the only thing she might do is lick your face. Maybe you could walk toward us?”
The puppy and I s
tudy each other. Is Ness confused by me looking like Piper, or does that kind of thing not register with a dog? She’s got black patches of fur over her ears and around her eyes, a white stripe down her forehead and nose, and big brown eyes that seem to be regarding me with eager curiosity. And my brain is saying, Actually, not so scary, really quite cute and friendly-looking, but my feet won’t budge, and her eyes go sad.
“I’m sorry. I’d rather not.”
“All right. Ness, want to play in the garden for a while?” Her tail wags furiously at the word garden; he takes her out the same door she came in through, which I now see leads to a kitchen, and then through another door to a garden on the other side. He goes out with her for a moment, clips her to a long, fixed lead, and she runs around in ecstatic circles. When Zak comes back inside, she flops down on the ground, head on her paws, and watches us sadly through the window.
“I’ll have to keep an eye on her. Sometimes she gets tangled, but the fence has gaps under it. If she’s not on a lead, she’s an escape artist,” he says, and sits on the side of the kitchen table facing the garden, gesturing to the other side for me to sit down. But even with a closed door and a puppy, not a dog, I’m not sure I want to turn my back on her. I sit instead on the side next to Zak, where I can see both Zak and the garden.
“I’m really sorry. I just can’t handle being around dogs.”
“And I thought identical twins were supposed to be the same? Piper loves all animals, but especially dogs. Ness is actually her puppy.”
“Oh? Why’s she here, then?”
He hesitates. “I’m looking after her for a while,” he says, then faces me. “I’m sorry about your mother.” His eyes are full of warm sympathy, and it makes me uncomfortable. To accept it feels like lying.
I shake my head. “Don’t be. I mean, we weren’t close. I barely knew her.”
Ness whines outside, and something clicks. “The news report said that Isobel was walking the family dog when she died. Was Ness with Isobel when she was attacked?”