Replica (Replica #1)(106)

There had been another one, a sister, a baby Gemma had never known about. Kristina had lost a baby. And somewhere deep in Gemma’s mind an idea was growing, thoughts like storm clouds knitting together before they burst.

“When Brandy-Nicole was ten months old, I got picked up for holding and was sent to Johnston for eighteen months. That’s a state prison near Smithfield. Reduced to twelve for good behavior. The day I was out I started using again.” He touched his neck once, briefly, as if amazed to find a pulse still there, to find himself alive. “Your dad was decent. He knew I’d been sent away but he gave me the job back. I told him I was cleaned up. He believed me.”

Life doesn’t hand out second chances. Wasn’t that what her father was always saying? But at some point he’d thought differently.

There was another baby. . . .

“Well, Aimee was still going over sometimes to clean. You were home by then, and only six months younger than our Brandy-Nicole. But your mom didn’t like you two to play together. She hardly let anyone near you. We thought it was because she was worried you’d get sick like the first one.”

The first one. The first daughter. The original. And she, Gemma: a shade.

“Funny, though, Aimee said to me. They look just the same. Could have been twins, she said, except for Emma had a birthmark on her arm. I didn’t think much of it at the time. Only later, when I started figuring what Haven was for and what your dad had paid them for, I put two and two together.”

Emma. She had a name, this phantom sister who was so much more than that. Gemma closed her eyes and thought of her mother, sweaty and exhausted and triumphant, a baby nestled in her arms. Not Gemma. Emma.

All these years, Kristina had lived with a reminder of that first, lost daughter. Emma. What a pretty name; much prettier than Gemma. She was the original. Gemma was the copy. And everyone knew copies were never as good. Was that why her mom had started taking so many pills? Oxycontin and Pristiq and Klonopin and Zoloft? An A–Z array of pharmaceuticals, all so that she could forget and deny.

All because Gemma was a monster.

“The Frankenstein mask.” She opened her eyes. “You threw the Halloween mask.” She remembered what her father had said about Frankenstein: In the original story, in the real version, he’s the one who made the monster. She’d thought he meant it because she was awkward, and sick, and fat. But he’d meant it literally. Truthfully.

Harliss tugged at his shirt collar, and she saw a small cross tattooed on the left side of his neck. “I was mad,” he said. “I tried to talk to your dad. Went to his office. He said he’d call the cops on me if I came around again. Said I was harassing him. But you’ve got to understand. I just want answers. I need to know.”

Pete stood up, cursing. “This is crazy,” he said. He moved toward the door, and Harliss didn’t try and stop him. Gemma thought he might try to leave, but instead he just stood there. “This is crazy, you know that?”

Gemma didn’t bother responding. It wasn’t crazy. In fact, for the first time, everything made sense. The fact that her father could hardly stand to look at her. The strange tension between her parents, as if they existed on either side of a chasm, a secret that had fissured their world in two. Gemma’s memory of the statue and all those early hospital visits—she was probably fragile because she’d been engineered. She wondered if this was God’s way of getting vengeance on the people who’d been made so unnaturally. He was always trying to unmake them.

“What happened to your daughter?” she said. Her voice didn’t sound like her own. “What happened to Brandy-Nicole?”

Harliss clasped his hands. He might have been praying, except for the whiteness of his knuckles. Gemma knew he must be squeezing so hard it hurt. “It was pretty bad in those days,” he said quietly. “Me and Aimee was always at each other’s throats. Money, mostly. We never had any. We burned through it. We were both getting high every night. Poor Brandy-Nicole wasn’t even three yet. . . .” His voice broke. “One time I woke up and she’d wet herself, made a mess all over in the middle of the night. Had to lie in it for hours. I was passed out cold all night, and Aimee hadn’t even bothered coming home. That’s when we split up for good.”

Shockingly, Gemma had the urge to comfort him, to tell him it was all right. But of course it wasn’t.

“I needed money bad.” His voice was barely a whisper. She wondered whether he had ever told this story before. At the door, Pete was still standing there. Frozen. Horrified. “I was still doing work for your dad. All that money everywhere . . .” His eyes slid away from Gemma’s. Guilty. “At first I just pocketed a few things. Stuff no one would notice. Pawned it off direct. I know it was wrong, but you got to understand. I wasn’t thinking straight—”

Gemma shook her head to say, It doesn’t matter.

Harliss licked his lips. “But then I started thinking about a bigger payday. You know, something hefty. I thought your dad must have something he didn’t want other people to know—there’s always dirt, especially for guys like him—” Again his eyes skated nervously to Gemma’s, but she didn’t correct him. She wouldn’t defend her father ever again.

“You’re talking blackmail,” Pete said. His voice sounded very loud.

Harliss nodded. “That was the idea, yeah.” He looked like he was about to apologize again. Gemma cut him off.