He was retired as it was, gave sunset sail tours off the coast of North Carolina. When he was invited to a wedding in the city, he called Tara back, agreed to meet her. He could never shake that call, he’d said. Not that he knew a whole helluva lot, but he was drawn to her because of me.
He said he nearly fell over when he met her at a diner, she looked so much like me he thought she was me. He told her what little he knew about me. My name was likely Zoe—I’d told him that before I left. I was headed east, as far away from San Francisco as possible. He still had my note. Bright lights, big city. He suspected New York, but didn’t have a lot to go on to back it up. As much as I can figure, shortly after that, the feature in New York magazine ran with that silly group shot at La Fleur d’Elise. It would have been a lot of luck, I suppose, but a sister might recognize a sister, no matter how small the face.
The idea that Joan was there that day looking for me wakes me up at night, panicked and profoundly sad. I brought all of this to her. Me. All of this was my fault.
Likely, Jared had been watching me for a while, waiting for the right time to make his move. By sheer chance, he’d followed through on the wrong sister. She was killed only a half dozen blocks up from the flower shop where I was working that day. She was alone, contrary to Henry’s story. He hadn’t been with his wife, going out to dinner, married one minute, the next not. It was all a ruse, a ploy, specifically tailored for me. It’s all a theory, and mine alone, so Yates tells me.
It all seems so serendipitous, except whatever the exact horrible opposite of serendipity is. I actually went so far as to look it up once: zemblanity. That’s the word. Coined by William Boyd, it means “unpleasant unsurprise,” which doesn’t seem quite terrible enough. I caused my sister’s death, and the whole resulting chain reaction led to Henry’s almost two-year-long psychotic break and his eventual death. There were buckets and tracks and pulley systems in place, but I was the moving piece that set it all off.
Sometimes I imagine an alternate universe. The idea that I could have stumbled on her by chance, fetching Elisa a ribbon the exact color cornflower blue as the latest batch of hydrangeas. No not that one, try again, that shop uptown? Maybe we’d order the same thing at the coffee shop. Extra whipped cream, extra caramel. She’d be so happy she finally found me, I’d be shocked she existed at all. I imagine showing her Elisa’s and my apartment with Lydia. I imagine a friendship with her, someone I can be myself with, whoever that may be. I imagine I’d never married Henry at all. It’s a nice little fantasy and I allow myself the indulgence.
Then sometimes, very late at night, I have to nip the bud of happiness that threatens to bloom at the idea that anyone was looking for me at all. I realize it makes no sense. In the daytime, I’m gutted by the whole thing. My fault, I wail to therapists and doctors. I’m not acting. I feel these things. But at night, alone, sometimes my mind wanders. My sister, wanting to meet me, scouring the city, her anxiety-ridden heart hammering at all the noise and the traffic and the subway. She braved that for me. For a second, if I let it, my heart swells a bit at this. This whole time, I’d had a tether, some invisible thread linking me to someone else.
I just never knew it.
? ? ?
“Zoe.”
I blink my eyes open, startled awake. I’d been dreaming, but it flits away faster than I can catch it. Penny stands at the foot of my bed, her purse hugged tightly across her middle. Her eyes twitch from the window to the door and back to my bed. I struggle to sit up.
“Penny.” My mouth is dry and cottony. She moves to my bedside and refills my water cup. The pitcher wobbles in her hand. “Thank you.”
The chair scrapes the tile floor as she pulls it closer to the bedside. “Will you be all right?” she half whispers. “I’m sorry.”
“You saved my life.” I stare at her face, willing her gaze to settle, just for a moment. She fidgets, her hands smoothing her pants, rifling through her purse. I reach out, touch her hand, and for a second, she stills. “Did you know I was there? At that house?”
She shakes her head, vehement. “No. No, Zoe, I didn’t. He fired me. It’s . . . all my fault he got away with all of this.” She takes a gulp of air, like a half-sob.
“You’ve known.” Of course she has. I hadn’t thought of it until this very moment, but Penny knew Tara. Joanie. The shock of seeing me, for the first time, then. A flood of half-overheard conversations rush back. Henry, but it isn’t right. It doesn’t look proper. The way she couldn’t look at me, never said my name. “How much did you know? That we were twins?”