The Good Twin(49)

Mallory sat back down in her chair. “Your college friend, Matt Findly. He came into the restaurant I worked in and thought I was you. He told me about your gallery.”

“Did you go there?”

“Not inside. But I glimpsed you through the window. I saw how much you looked like me.”

“But why didn’t you come inside? Why are we meeting here?”

“That was a few months ago. Something happened in between. Something I’m ashamed to tell you.”

“What?”

Mallory dropped her head to her chest and shook her head. “I can’t tell you in here. When we leave.” She looked back up at me. “Are you hungry? Do you want to order lunch? I’m famished.”

I couldn’t believe she was thinking about food. I felt like a cataclysmic bomb had exploded right in front of me, completely changing the landscape of my world. I sat there mute and watched as Mallory motioned for a waiter. When he came over, she said, “I’ll have the Cobb salad, hold the onions.”

I began to laugh. She looked at me quizzically. “That’s exactly what I’m having. I hold the onions, too.”

“Anything to drink?” the waiter asked. As if on cue, we both said at the exact same moment, “Iced tea, with a slice of lemon.”

I sat back in my seat. “I guess it’s true what they say about twins. Genetics rule.” I hesitated. “But I never had a feeling that someone was missing, that part of me was gone.”

“I never did, either.”

I couldn’t keep myself from staring at her—at my sister. Of course, there were superficial differences: her hair was longer, without any real shape to it, and darker. That’s because I lightened mine, and she obviously didn’t. Her nails were short and unpolished, and I weighed a few pounds less, but not by much. I was clothed in a designer dress, and she wore jeans and a sweater. I suspected my adoption had been to parents wealthier than hers.

“There’s so much I want to know about you,” I said. “What are your parents like?”

“I didn’t have a father.”

I’d wondered why my parents hadn’t adopted us both. They’d certainly had enough money to raise two children comfortably. Maybe this was the answer. “I suppose you were adopted first, and because she was single, your mother could only afford to take one of us.”

“I’m not adopted. Our mother gave you away and kept me.”

My mouth dropped open, and I began rubbing my arm, unthinkingly repeating the motion my adopted mother made when she tried to calm me. Mallory knew my birth mother, the woman I’d thought about so many times over the years, always pushing away the possibility of searching for her. This woman sitting across from me—my sister—held the answers to my questions. My heart raced, and I began to feel light-headed. “Tell me,” I said. “Tell me about her.”

“She raised me alone. Our father died in the Gulf War when she was pregnant with us. She was just seventeen at the time, and her own mother insisted she give the baby up for adoption. When Mom refused—”

“Wait. What’s her name?”

“Sasha. Sasha Holcolm. Mom wouldn’t hear of it, so her mother threw her out. She thought that would bring her to her senses, but it didn’t. She moved away and got a job. She didn’t know she was having twins until she gave birth. She knew it would be difficult raising a child on her own, at her age, with no skills. Raising two would be impossible.”

I kept taking deep breaths, trying to collect myself. All around us, people sat at tables, eating their food, glancing down at their smartphones, oblivious to the earthquake that was occurring at my table. Because that’s what it felt like—a wide opening in the ground, shaking my body. Yet, I knew that when the rumbling stopped, I could look inside the dark hole and uncover the mystery of my life.

“We were always poor,” Mallory continued. “Mom cleaned houses six days a week. She didn’t have very much time for me.”

I reached over and took my sister’s hand. “I’m sorry. It was very different for me.”

“I know.”

I pulled my hand back. “How?”

“I know everything about you, but I don’t want to talk about that here. When we go outside.”

It was maddening, her dangling this mystery, the one that started with her phone call to the gallery. “Then let’s get the check and go,” I said, even though our salads were only half-finished.

“Not yet. I’m still eating.”

I sighed deeply. Mallory clearly had a schedule, and I was just going to have to go along with it. “So, who’s older? You or me?”

“I am, by two minutes.”

“I suppose that’s why you’re being so bossy,” I said, smiling.

“It’s why our mother chose me to keep. Because I was first.”

“Does our mother know you’ve found me?”

She shook her head. “Mom died three years ago.”

I began to cry again. I didn’t know why. I’d never met my birth mother, had never tried to find her. Yet, for a moment, she had become real. And just as quickly, she was gone.

Mallory reached into her purse and handed me a tissue. “She would have liked to find you, I think. There were times she looked at me with a strange expression on her face, and I suspect she was wondering about you then. I think she always regretted giving you up.”