I smiled back. “If you’re my mirror, what are you reflecting to me?”
He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “That’s a little harder. As your doting grandfather, I’d normally reflect back how incredibly special you are, but I can’t quite, can I?” he said. “You aren’t my Althea, but I can’t tell who you are yet, either.”
He’d nailed the uneasiness between us, as far as I was concerned. I supposed that made him a true mirror.
“I’m Rosie,” I said dryly. “Heard of her?”
“Your father told me. If that’s who you are, she’ll show through in time,” he said.
His words reminded me of something Dr. Fallon had said when she was first guiding me to feel my facial muscles. “Dr. Fallon at Chimera said mirrors lie. She said some women are ruled by their mirrors. She meant glass, but I suppose it could apply to people, too.”
“Me gusta,” he said musingly. “The rule of mirrors. So many possibilities. We seek until we find a true reflection of ourselves, like I had with your grandmother.”
“I don’t think that’s quite what the doctor meant.”
His laugh came gently, and he focused again on his work. “No, probably not. I never met her, but she doesn’t strike me as a romantic.”
I slid the mirror back on the desk.
It was true that my glass reflection didn’t match who I was inside, and neither did my reflections from people. Romance aside, what Grampa said clicked with me. Everyone at Chimera had treated me like Althea, expecting me to be her, but that hadn’t matched me. Now that I was here at the Flores home, the Althea reflection was even stronger, but it still didn’t match me, and the effect was jarring. Maybe that was why I felt so unsettled. So lonely.
I needed to find the Rosie I’d left behind.
Wistful, I gazed past him out the other window to the valley. A second, smaller house was visible in a stand of trees, but no animals. I felt as far away from Doli as ever.
“Did you grow up here?” I asked.
“On the ranch? No. This was your grandmother Valeria’s place. Been in the family for generations. It’ll belong to your daughter someday, provided she wants it.”
“She might be a boy.”
“You’re carrying high. She’s a girl,” he said. “You look exactly like Madeline did before you were born. I mean your figure, not your face.”
“You think so?”
“Girl. No doubt about it.”
I smiled.
Grampa kept at his work, and after a bit, he suggested I take a tour of the rest of the house. “Get to know your home,” he said. “Explore while you can before your mother takes you off to doctors’ appointments and P.T. See if anything is familiar. You never know.”
“What I need is a computer,” I said.
“There should be one in your room. Did you look in the desk? Our housekeeper might know where it is. She’ll be in tomorrow.”
I said I would take a look.
Out back, a swimming pool beckoned with bright blue water. Upstairs, half a dozen bedrooms were followed by a laundry room, a sewing room, and an exercise room with gleaming weights.
A narrow staircase led to the third floor, where I found six more bedrooms under the eaves, all with white paneling and tall, narrow windows. Two were filled with orderly bins, but the others were simply furnished, with polished floors and a rag rug next to each bed. A walk-in cedar closet, redolent and cool, was full of vintage overcoats and furs. A quaint little bathroom had a pull chain on an old-fashioned toilet and a claw-footed tub.
“Nice,” I whispered.
I made up my mind. I might have to live in Althea’s body, but I didn’t have to live in her bedroom surrounded by her things. Until I could leave to find Rosie, I would start my new life up here.
*
Madeline and Diego weren’t thrilled about my choice to take an attic bedroom, but they didn’t object. After my doctor appointments and a round with a physical therapist, Madeline helped me bring up some maternity clothes she’d ordered and a few things from Althea’s room: a dozen books, her soaps and shampoos, the silver earrings, and her computer. My new room on the third floor felt deliciously fresh and simple. When I looked out my window, I had a view of the stables and the western end of the valley. Below, I could see the balcony that jutted off Althea’s French doors, and I realized I’d chosen the room directly above hers, like I was building on her roots. I liked that.
Bunching a couple of pillows against the headboard, I settled onto my new bed that evening. It took some jockeying to position the laptop against my knees and belly where it didn’t jab too awkwardly, but then I cleared all of Althea’s files into one folder and went to work. Finally.
Orson had told me of the Onar Clinic in Colorado, so I started with that and came up with a private research center. Hardly any info was available besides an address. I located it on a map and discovered it would take about twelve hours to drive there.
Twelve hours. Totally doable, assuming Rosie was still there.
I searched to see if there was anything new about her online, but there wasn’t.
I checked my old email again out of habit and found, for the first time, that I could log in again. Maybe it helped to be back in the States. I had a zillion emails, but two were marked as read: one from Linus and one from Burnham. Both of their emails were months old, but I was still psyched. Then an eeriness set in. Only I knew my password. And Rosie. She must have read these messages before me, but when and how? Did it mean she’d escaped from Berg?
I had to be walking in her cyber footsteps. I checked my sent box, but there were no outgoing messages. I considered sending an email to myself on the chance she’d see it, but then I realized an administrator like Berg could oversee my email, too. It wasn’t safe. Rosie must have realized that, too.
I blinked at the screen, wondering if Linus had had any luck finding her. I hadn’t talked to him since our one dismal conversation, weeks earlier, but maybe she’d called him since then. Things couldn’t get much worse between us. I tried him again with the number from the email, feeling nervous.
“Linus here,” he said.
I let out a pent-up breath. “Hi. It’s Althea again.”
“I remember. The liar.”
My heart constricted. “I only lied a little bit so you’d talk to me. Everything I said that mattered was true.”
“Rosie tells me you’re not her friend, so the only question is, how did you know all that stuff about us?” Linus said.
“You’ve talked to Rosie?” I asked. I shoved my computer off my lap and tucked my feet under me. “Where is she? Is she okay?”
“Why is that any of your business?”
“Because she’s me,” I said. “I’m Rosie. They mined me out of her and planted me as a seed in another body. That’s why I have the wrong voice, and that’s how I know all that stuff about you and her. We have the same memories.” I was afraid he’d hang up. “I just want to find her and help her. When did you talk to her? How is she?”
“She’s almost as screwed up as you are. You get points for your seed theory. That’s new.”