Identical Death

by Alexa Padgett

  “All right. Cee?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I don’t understand any of this. How can she be gone?”

  Cici clicked off, staring at her phone for a long moment.

  Why did you leave me, Aci?

  That question, like the myriad others building her Cici’s head, remained unanswered.

  4

  Cici

  Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs. —Shakespeare

  Anna Carmen’s best friend, Sam Chastain, met Cici at baggage claim. She saw his dark head above most of the other people in the airport.

  Thanks to his text and a voice mail, Cici knew he’d be there, waiting for her. She’d never been happier to see him. And that included his impromptu visit in Manhattan years before.

  But that was a different heartbreak, one no longer of significance—not now that Cici understood true tragedy.

  As she got closer, Cici remembered how tall and broad Sam was. With a last few stuttering steps, she collapsed into his strong arms. When he embraced her, holding her up, Cici squeezed her eyes shut. For the first time in hours, she took a full breath.

  “How did you get here so fast?” Cici mumbled against his shoulder.

  “I got the call from Allison Werth.” Sam’s voice was raspy with emotion. “Surprised me. I might not have picked up, but I had this weird sensation when I saw the 505 area code.” Sam shuddered.

  They’d gone to school with Allison. She was one of the nurses at Christus St. Vincent Hospital in Santa Fe.

  “She called me as soon as . . . as soon as you . . .” Sam sighed. His breath was warm, reassuring against her cheek and neck. He smelled of the green tea mints he liked to crunch.

  “You were in Denver?” Cici asked. She pulled back to meet his eyes. Sam raised his thumb and brushed it softly against the puffy red of her upper eyelid.

  “Yeah. Drove with the sirens on the whole way down here.”

  Cici frowned. “You can do that?”

  Sam’s lips curled up in the briefest flash of humor. It disappeared as he continued to study her face. “Let’s get you home,” he said.

  Cici balked. Her gaze darted around. “I don’t . . . I don’t know where to go.” She hadn’t felt tethered to a place in years—since before her mother died. She missed Sandra nearly as much as she missed Anna Carmen.

  “For now,” Sam said, his voice soothing. “I’ll take you to Anna Carmen’s. I’ll stay with you there. You won’t be alone.”

  Cici nodded once. Sam grabbed the handle of her suitcase and wrapped his other arm around Cici’s shoulders. She leaned against him, thankful for his presence.

  “Have you talked to Evan?” Cici asked as they neared his car.

  Sam shook his head. “I came straight to the Sunport to get you. Making sure you had a ride, that you were okay, seemed most important.”

  Cici turned to face him, fresh tears building in her eyes. “Thank you.”

  He pulled her into another hug and mumbled something Cici couldn’t quite make out against the top of her head.

  * * *

  The ride back to Santa Fe remained quiet. Cici didn’t feel like talking. As they pulled off I-25 and headed up Cerrillos and into the Rancho Viejo neighborhood where Anna Carmen had purchased a house a couple of years before, Sam turned toward Cici.

  “I got a text while I was waiting to pick you up,” he said. “About Anna Carmen.”

  “All right,” Cici said.

  “Allison said Evan already talked to the funeral home and was planning the funeral arrangements.”

  Cici bit her lip. She stared out at the small patio homes that lined the narrow street. Sam stopped at a stop sign and turned to look at her.

  “Sure,” Cici said. “I mean, if that’s what he wants to do . . .”

  “I’m sure he’ll listen to your input, Cici. And . . . and it’s better than your father getting involved.”

  Cici made a sound of distress. In all the emotion and traveling of these last few hours, she’d completely forgotten about her father. “I have to call him,” Cici said.

  Sam reached over and patted her hand. “Eventually, yeah. But my guess is he already knows.”

  “He hasn’t called me,” Cici murmured.

  “Considering how you and Anna Carmen left the last conversation with him at Christmas, that’s understandable, really.”

  Cici scowled but chose not to say anything. She was tired and emotional. Talking about and to her father was difficult for her at the best of times. Ever since he’d left her mother, Sandra, for an older, wealthier version, both Cici and Anna Carmen struggled to maintain any kind of communication. Part of the reason they did was for their mother, who’d asked them to.

  But her father remained ambitious, self-absorbed, too busy protecting rich clients to take time off to spend with his children. As time passed, the strain in the relationship turned to rips, shredding under the residual frustration and grief Cici and her sister had toward the man who’d had movers pulling into the driveway of their large, airy adobe, within minutes of explaining his departure.

  “I’ll call him now.” Cici pulled out her phone and searched her contacts for Frank Gurule’s number. Her heart pounded louder and harder as she pressed “Talk.”

  “Cecilia,” Frank said in lieu of greeting. The phone had barely rung once.

  “I . . .” Cici blew out a breath. Sam turned onto Anna Carmen’s street. Her house came into view. Cici bit her lower lip.

  “You’re calling to tell me your sister was murdered,” Frank said, his voice kindly.

  “Y-yes,” Cici managed to push out past her trembling lip. “Anna Carmen . . . she’s dead.”

  The words seemed to ping through the interior of the SUV, sucking out all the air from the space.

  “I’ll be in town tomorrow morning,” Frank said on a sigh. He sounded tired. Old. Most of the time, Frank Gurule was larger than life—a big shot lawyer with an even larger ego. “We’ll need to make arrangements.”

  “Evan wants to do that,” Cici mumbled.

  “Really?” Frank sounded surprised.

  “I haven’t spoken to him since I landed, but that’s what I heard,” Cici said, puzzling over her father’s reaction. Frank had met Anna Carmen’s boyfriend a few times. They were both attorneys who liked to discuss how best to litigate specific torts. Cici found their conversations dull at best—more often stodgy and disappointing. Suing people never held much appeal to her.

  “I’ll deal with Evan and the arrangements.”

  “That’s not what I want, Dad,” Cici said.

  “Look. I need to call Evan. I’ll call you when I’m in town,” Frank said, clearly signaling his desire to get off the phone.

  “I’m staying at Aci’s.”

  “Of course. I’m at the airport and KaraLynn doesn’t wish to circle around again. Let me get inside and on my flight. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  Cici hung up the phone and dropped her head to her knees. “Talking to him is always so hard,” she muttered.

  “Let’s get you inside,” Sam said. He opened his car door and grabbed her bag from the trunk.

  Cici followed him, trailing a couple of feet behind because she did not want to enter her sister’s house.

  A dog whined from inside, followed by a sharp bark.

  “Gidget?” Cici said, hurrying past Sam to open the door. Anna Carmen’s large, mostly white Great Pyrenees pranced around them, whining. Cici dropped to her knees and hugged the dog’s neck.

  “Cee?” Sam said.

  “What?”

  “Gidget needs to pee. I swear, she’s crossing her legs.”

  “Oh. Right. Okay.”

  Cici stood and walked Gidget to the back door. Her sister’s house didn’t have a large outdoor space, but Gidget only used the backyard for potty stops. Anna Carmen was an avid runner—six miles a day, usually. The dog got more than her fair share of exercise.

  Sam clicked on the lights, moving through the hou
se. Cici watched Gidget from the door as the dog took care of business. The longer Cici stood there, the greater a feeling of unease built within her.

  “Sam?” Cici called.

  Sam strode back into the kitchen and toward the small utility room where Cici stood.

  “Why didn’t Evan come and let Gidget outside? It appears she’s been in all day.” Cici nodded to the empty water bowl near the washing machine. A full one stood just outside the back door.

  Sam shrugged but he didn’t meet her eyes.

  Cici dialed Evan’s number on her phone. After a moment, she frowned. “He didn’t answer. I told him I’d call him when I landed. The call went to voice mail.”

  Sam snagged his phone from his pocket. After pressing a few buttons, he also scowled. “I got voice mail, too.”

  “My dad said he was going to call Evan,” Cici said, a strange feeling bubbling up in her guts.

  Sam gazed out into the deep black of the night. His eyes grew distant as he considered something. “I didn’t know they were close.”

  5

  Cici

  My soul is in the sky. –Shakespeare

  Her father showed up at Anna Carmen’s just after lunch the next day. Cici hadn’t realized there were any red-eyes from the Phoenix area to Albuquerque. Frank explained he’d gotten on a late-night flight that was delayed by weather so he didn’t arrive in Albuquerque until after two in the morning. After a few hours’ sleep, he’d made the hour-long drive up to Santa Fe.

  He’d looked more haggard and unkempt than Cici had ever seen him even though his khaki pants and golf shirt were freshly pressed. Her father had always been fastidious—the neatness a side effect of his need to control both people and situations.

  “Have you spoken to Evan?” were the first words out of Frank’s mouth. Distress etched into his face, deepening the wrinkles around his mouth.

  “He hasn’t called me back,” Cici said, her concern over Evan’s lack of response growing more tangible with each passing hour. “I’m worried about it. Aci never mentioned any problems.”

  Cici bit the inside of her cheek, annoyed she’d mentioned this to her father. Anna Carmen and her father were not close.

  Frank ran a hand through his thinning white hair, which was already in disarray, no doubt from the constancy of the motion.

  “I’ll take care of it. He and I . . . we need to talk.”

  Cici didn’t ask anything further, relieved to let her father deal with Anna Carmen’s suddenly taciturn boyfriend.

  “I’ll call you later,” Frank said, dropping a kiss on Cici’s cheek. Once again, Cici stood alone in her sister’s small house. The wood floors gleamed from Cici’s recent mopping. All her sister’s bookshelves were freshly dusted.

  Sam was still at the police station. He’d left right after breakfast, a couple of hours earlier.

  Cici checked the kitchen, but it was clean. Both the table and white quartz countertops wiped. Gidget’s toenails clicked across the wood, and the dog stopped in front of Cici, panting.

  “Want to walk?” Cici asked, unsure what else to do with herself.

  Gidget stood and barked once before running toward the back door, her long tail a thick pompom trailing behind. Cici tried to reach Lyndon, but his phone was off. She looked at the time. Right. He was teaching a course now.

  She pocketed her phone and inhaled the soft spring air. The ground around them was dry, the plant material still brown from the minimal winter snow. But the sidewalk was clear and dry, so Cici and Gidget roamed deep into the neighborhood as the strong, satiny feel of a northern New Mexican spring afternoon slid across her skin.

  By the time she returned to Anna Carmen’s house, a horde of people had arrived with casseroles and bags of food. She sat with them as they took turns telling her funny anecdotes about Anna Carmen. Cici tried to remember them all.

  Frank arrived back at Anna Carmen’s a few hours after Anna Carmen’s friends and colleagues petered out.

  “I squared everything away with Evan,” Frank said.

  Gidget came up to him, sitting politely for him to pet her. He patted her head twice before walking to the kitchen to wash his hands.

  “Oh?” Cici asked. “Why hasn’t he called me back?”

  Frank kept his back to Cici, but even with the distance, she could see the stiffening of his shoulders.

  “It’s nothing for you to take personally,” Frank said, resituating the towel on the rack.

  “But—”

  “Let me guess,” Frank said. “Lots of people showed up with food.”

  “They always do,” Cici said, remembering her mother’s funeral. Since then, she’d been to too many others in an official capacity. And in each case, the attendees brought food—nourishment meant to ease a soul-deep ache by showing affection and care for the living.

  “I’ll get plates,” Frank said.

  Clearly, he wasn’t going to answer her questions about Evan. Frank opened a few cabinets before finding the one with plates. Cici went to the silverware drawer, saving him the trouble of looking for forks and knives too.

  “I don’t understand why Evan won’t talk to me,” Cici began again.

  “I took care of the issue, Cecilia,” Frank said in that voice he’d used when she’d been a small child, probably whining, and he was out of patience with her demands.

  Cici’s phone rang. “My boyfriend,” she said, thankful for an excuse to get away.

  “Hey,” Cici said, hurrying down the hall to the guest room. She sat on the deep, rich pink-almost-red tufted silk comforter and leaned back against the matching pillows. Cici had always liked this room—probably because she helped her sister design it. The walls were a soft beige, a few shades lighter than a latte, picking up tones from the hardwood floors. The fluffy white rug didn’t show Gidget’s fur—and essential with a dog of her size and shedding capability.

  “Hey, babe. How are you holding up?” Lyndon asked.

  “Okay. I guess.”

  “I need to apologize,” Lyndon said, sounding contrite. “I guess I never really understood the whole twin thing.”

  He hadn’t. In fact, there were times he seemed jealous of the bond Cici had shared with Anna Carmen, but that might have more to do with Lyndon being an only child.

  “Will you be able to fly out?” Cici asked. “The funeral’s the day after tomorrow. Sam said he’d get a hotel room so we can have the house to ourselves.”

  “Sam’s staying there?” Lyndon asked.

  “Yeah, of course. He and Aci were so close.”

  “I don’t get that relationship,” Lyndon muttered. Before Cici could respond, he said, “I can’t, babe.”

  “Can’t what?” No way he was talking about missing Aci’s funeral. This was . . . this was a big damn deal.

  Lyndon groaned. “I can’t get out there, Cee. My students turn in their midterm reports tomorrow and I have to work on getting more investors now that the grant money’s a no-go.”

  “My sister died,” Cici said, her voice stiff.

  “I know. And if it were any other week, I’d be there in a heartbeat, but Lawrence Chambers opened a spot on his calendar for us tomorrow, Cici.”

  Lyndon had been trying to get in to see the world-renown archaeologist for months. If Lawrence gave approval, not only did he have a personal fortune to draw from, he had the clout to make or break Lyndon’s expedition.

  “And that’s more important,” Cici said, her voice devoid of any emotion.

  “Thank God you understand,” Lyndon sighed.

  Cici gritted her teeth.

  “I need to go. My dad’s here and I expect Sam back soon, too.”

  “Oh. Well. Tell them hello for me. I mean, give them my condolences. Shit.” Lyndon sighed. “I don’t know what to say.”

  Cici softened a little. For people who had never lost a close family member, awkwardness usually reared its ugly head, causing anxiety and other concerns. If Lyndon was worried about what to say, Cici could unde
rstand his lack of desire to fly out here and experience it firsthand.

  Sort of.

  “Good luck with your meeting tomorrow,” Cici said.

  “Thanks, babe. I wish I knew how to comfort you right now.”

  Cici said goodbye, the unease and unhappiness swirling through her muscles.

  Once she ended the call with Lyndon, Sam had arrived at the house and Frank had taken his leave.

  * * *

  Two days later, the sun shone bright and hot despite the late March date. Surprisingly, Cici hadn’t seen Evan until the mass—and not much more of Sam who’d announced within hours of arriving in Santa Fe that he planned to go to the police headquarters to find out more about the investigation.

  Sam remained tightlipped about the police’s efforts, which did nothing to allay Cici’s concerns. Though, she too, had been busy, fielding her sister’s myriad friends, students and their families. The only plus side was she was never alone with her father again.

  After that awkward exchange in her sister’s kitchen, she’d worried about it.

  This afternoon Cici would arrive at the funeral home for Anna Carmen’s service.

  Lyndon’s refusal to travel to Santa Fe ate at Cici. She hadn’t spoken with him yesterday about his meeting, just read the text that said he’d call her today.

  Her phone rang just as she shut the guest room door, her body wrapped in a large white towel. Her hair dripped down her back. She let the phone ring while she put on her underwear and wrapped her hair in the towel. She dressed in a ratty pair of jeans and an old Columbia T-shirt.

  After settling on the edge of the bed, Cici pressed the “Call Back” icon.

  “Lyndon,” Cici said.

  “How are you?”

  “Tired.”

  “Hmm. I guess that’s to be expected. I mean, I read people don’t sleep well when grieving. Shit,” he mumbled.

  “That’s part of it,” Cici said. “I don’t like staying here, in Aci’s house, without her.”