99 Percent Mine(85)

He’s going to come back to you. He will.

I watch as Jamie selects a magazine for me. “Golf Digest,” he says, trying to make me laugh, and unfolds it on my thighs to an article. “Come on, Darce. Gotta work on your backswing.”

“Fine. But you need to improve yourself as well.” I choose a magazine for him. “Learn how to bake a glazed ham.” These days, we’re all about self-improvement. We’re determined to make ourselves better versions. We both focus on our assigned reading until Tom’s phone buzzes. Like always, we jump and scrabble for it.

“It’s a message from the real estate agent. Margie’s coming at three. Will we be back in time?”

“Yes, and if not, Colin can take her through.” It’s been two months. It’s hard to believe that we have a fairly well-formed house to show an agent. She wants to prepare a game plan. The demand for properties in our area has gone red-hot.

“Two months,” I say to Jamie, and he knows what I mean.

We sit and stare blankly at the receptionist’s desk for a while. I turn my head with effort to look at my brother. My mirror. He looks as bad as I do.

“Yeah, we look shitty,” he says as he rolls his face to mine. We’re just two blond cadavers. “It’s fucking ridiculous, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“How we can’t live without him.”

“Yeah. That’s what I’m worried they’re going to tell me in this appointment. I’m a goner, Jamie.” I groan tiredly and slip into a half snooze.

As the minutes tick along, I have to accept it. He’s gone. He’s not coming back for me and my stupid heart. I check the phone in my hand again. I want to squeeze a message out of it. Just one word that he’s okay, and I can get myself hooked up and they’ll find a heartbeat.

The name is called that turns both our heads. “Barrett?”

“We just need to wait a minute longer,” Jamie argues politely with the cardiologist’s assistant. “We’re waiting for our friend to come to the appointment, too.”

“I’ll bring them in when they get here,” the receptionist tells us. “We need to keep to the schedule.” Defeated, the Barrett twins skulk down the long white hallway. I’m scared. My heart is a dead apricot kernel. They’ll have to sew me to Jamie to borrow his, and we’ll have to live as Siamese twins.

Jamie’s hand closes on mine, and I’ve never been this scared for myself. “What am I going to do?” I whisper to him as we are seated. “What?”

“I don’t know,” he replies to me, hushed. “But you’ll be okay. I’m here.”

“Darcy Barrett,” Dr. Galdon says to me with a flourish. He’s known me for years. “I have not seen your face in a long, long time.” His smile fades off when the witty rejoinder he’s expecting doesn’t happen. From either twin. “What’s happening?”

“Just a little brokenhearted,” I say listlessly. “It’s not feeling good in there.” I point at my chest.

“Hmm,” Dr. Galdon says, and I try to not read too much into his expression as he checks my blood pressure. I know I look absolutely terrible. I’ve got blade cheekbones and my eyeballs are permanently pink. Tom thought my clothes were falling off before? I look like a mop slid into black fabric.

“Let’s get you hooked up.” I change into a gown behind a screen at the end of the room. Dr. Galdon helps me sit up onto the edge of the examination bench and wheels over the heart monitor. He sticks little pads all over me, connecting the wires to his machines. This used to scare me so much as a kid. I thought I was going to be shocked to life. Maybe that would be a good move for me now.

“She eats nothing, forgets her medication, it’s expired,” Jamie snitches on me in a dull automatic way. “Drinks too much. No exercise whatsoever. Cries all day. Sugar, good Lord, the sugar.”

“Okay, okay,” Dr. Galdon says, sticking the last of the pads to my chest. I swivel and lie down. “Don’t get her all riled up.” He’s been in the vicinity of one of our snippy little jousts plenty of times. Again, he falls silent when I don’t reply.

Little does he know, the Barrett twins have stopped fighting.

It takes too much effort, and besides, we need to cling to each other to stay afloat. Without our perfect-for-us buffer to level us out. I hear the upward inflection of a beep and we all watch as my heart begins to squiggle and bump along on the screen with all the energy of a dying tadpole. I hear a buzzing and for a split second I think it’s the sound of me flatlining.

“Let me just get this,” Dr. Galdon says. “I’ve got an emergency call. Just sit tight.” He leaves the room, and I remain lying down, looking at the lines on the screen.

Bleep-bloop. Bleep-bloop.

“The solicitor sent the paperwork through,” Jamie says to break the silence. “It came by courier. He’s gonna kill us.” He adds that last part on cheerfully, like he can’t wait for the moment that Tom shakes his head at what we’ve done.

“Yeah.” I sigh heavily. “I can hear him now. I don’t need your help—”

Jamie cuts in, mimicking Tom. “I don’t need a third of the sale price.”

“I don’t deserve it,” I continue in Tom’s tone. “I’m not a Barrett. It’s your inheritance, not mine.” I rub my arms and try to not watch the monitor. “But he does. And he’s getting it. Thank you, Jamie. It’s the perfect way to show him that he’s important, and equal, and that we love him forever.”