Constance (Constance #1)(87)

Up on the porch, the two Abigails were locked in intense discussion—a pair of witches in the doorway of this gingerbread house deep in the woods.

“I beg you to reconsider,” Abigail was saying. “This next phase is so delicate, and you’ve changed so much.”

The other Constance D’Arcy, who wasn’t Constance D’Arcy at all, answered, “Of course I’ve changed. You don’t know what it was like. To you, he’s just a name. I lived with him. Knowing what was coming. But I got the job done.”

“Him?” Con repeated, her voice a thin, cold razor. There was only one man that could be. She climbed back to her feet. However angry she had been before was nothing compared to now. “It was you living with Levi?”

The women were too engrossed in their argument to hear or acknowledge her question.

“Was it you?” Con screamed, this time getting their attention. The two Abigails stopped and stared at her. Side by side, their mannerisms, even in completely different bodies, were eerily similar.

“See?” Abigail said with clinical detachment. “You’ve upset her.”

“Was what me?” the other Constance D’Arcy asked, although it was messing with Con’s head to think of her that way anymore. Instead, she spontaneously christened her Cabigail. A dreadful hybrid, like those celebrity couples the media would fuse into a single name once they stopped being individuals. That’s how Con saw Cabigail now, as a thief and God only knew what else. Con’s feet were moving now, carrying her up the stairs straight toward Cabigail. Her hands gathered in pressed fists.

“That’s far enough,” Cabigail said, raising her gun.

Con brushed the gun aside like it was nothing and drove Cabigail back against the house. “It was you living with Levi Greer?”

“Get your hands off me,” Cabigail said, although it sounded more like a question than a demand.

“Please stop. Both of you,” Abigail pleaded.

“Was it you?” Con repeated.

“Yes. It was me.”

“For how long? Was it always you?”

“Six months,” Cabigail said. “I took her place six months ago.”

Six months. That was when Stephie said Con had told her she couldn’t come around anymore. Except it had been Cabigail. Con could see it now. All that bullshit about having trouble at home had been a cover story. There was no trouble at home and never had been. Then she’d kept making regular trips to Charlottesville to keep up the suggestion of an affair. That’s why Con hadn’t recognized Dahlia that day on Water Street. Because it hadn’t been Con at all.

“Why?” she asked.

“It’s easier to frame someone from the inside,” Cabigail said as if it were the most natural decision in the world.

“No, I mean, why frame him?”

“There couldn’t be any loose ends,” Abigail said simply. “Con D’Arcy couldn’t simply disappear. There had to be someone to blame.”

“You’re monsters, both of you,” Con said. “And where was the real Con all this time?”

“Right here. She stayed here with me,” Abigail said as though Con’s original had driven up here for a nice, cozy visit. Niece and aunt catching up after some years, sitting on the cottage porch trading stories. But all Con could see was her original’s mutilated body in that moldering farmhouse. Stepping in close, she put her forehead to Cabigail’s, trying to drive her back like a crooked nail.

“Did you kill her?”

“Yes,” Abigail said. “We did. But with her consent.”

Con’s head jerked toward Abigail. “You lie.”

“It’s true,” Cabigail said.

“Why don’t we go inside?” Abigail said, opening the door and smiling hospitably. “Let us explain.”

Con looked from one woman to the other. “What’s the point? I’m never going to give you what’s in my head. Not ever.”

“You will,” Cabigail said.

“After we explain,” Abigail finished.

“Never going to happen,” Con spat.

“Your original said something similar,” Abigail said.

“Please. Let us explain,” Cabigail said.

Con let go of Cabigail. “Yeah, okay. This I have to hear.”

The three women went into the cottage and closed the door on the outside world. This was why she was here, wasn’t it? To hear the end of the story, even if it wasn’t the story she wished she’d lived.

The door led into a dark, cluttered living room with ceilings low enough that even Con could almost touch them. Bookcases overflowed with old paperback mysteries, games, and about a hundred jigsaw puzzles. A stone fireplace that looked as if it had been carved out of the side of the mountain dominated the back wall. Its mantel was covered in knickknacks and what, to the naked eye, looked like junk. An ancient plasma television older than Con was mounted on one wall opposite a threadbare couch covered with a patchwork quilt. Off to the left was a narrow galley kitchen, and through the only other door, Con saw a cramped bedroom.

It reminded her of one of those rustic cabin getaways that city people rented to escape the bustle for a long weekend. Hard to imagine anyone living here year-round, much less one of the most brilliant minds of the twenty-first century. Abigail—the one who actually looked like Abigail Stickling—had said she’d been here for years. Con looked around the cottage. If there were two Abigails, then her aunt had made a clone. Where, though? Because it hadn’t been in that kitchen.