shaking.
Ten years earlier, Lily and I had been twenty.
Same birthday.
Same dark hair.
Same irritating habit of finishing each other’s sentences.
But we had never been identical in the way strangers expected twins to be.
Lily was quieter.
She noticed things.
I filled silence.
She preferred the edge of the room.
I liked the center.
People constantly compared us.
Who got better grades.
Who ran faster.
Who looked more confident.
Who had the “better smile.”
I hated it.
Or I thought I did.
Lily apparently hated it more.
The night she disappeared, she had been driving home alone along Blackwood Highway.
Rain.
Poor visibility.
A curve near the edge of Bellmere.
According to investigators, her car left the road, went down a steep embankment and caught fire before emergency crews could reach it.
There was very little recoverable evidence inside.
Her purse was found.
Part of her jacket.
Personal belongings.
Authorities eventually declared that she had died in the fire.
We buried a closed casket.
My mother collapsed at the graveside.
My father stopped driving Blackwood Highway for nearly five years.
I spent the first year walking around like somebody had removed half the architecture inside my body.
Therapy helped.
Time helped differently.
I bought a small house.
Found stable work.
Built routines.
Made friends who had never known Lily.
Eventually I could say:
“My sister died.”
Without losing the rest of the day.
But grief leaves strange habits.
I still bought two blueberry pastries sometimes.
Still owned two matching blue coffee mugs because throwing Lily’s away felt like killing her twice.
For almost ten years I had been constructing a life around an absence I believed was
