Page 121 of Mirror Image

“If you let go of that, it doesn’t mean you let go of her,” she tells me softly. “She already lives in your heart. She always has.”

She hesitates then, just long enough that I feel another thought gathering behind her eyes.

“And you get to live a life she didn’t,” she adds. “A whole one. With . . . whatever comes. Whoever comes.”

Her gaze flicks—barely—to my left hand.

“You don’t have to shut the door on the parts you two used to dream about. Jess wouldn’t want that for you.”

How she can see so deeply at twenty-three is beyond me—except it isn’t.

Losing a twin. Living under another name. Preparing to raise a child who isn’t hers.

Mary Langston has lived more life in the past few years than most people do in decades.

Of course she understands things people her age normally don’t.

The words land inside me like a pebble dropped down a deep well—soft, small, but echoing long after they fall.

I open my mouth—though I’m not sure what I mean to say—but the conductor gestures her forward.

I see it then, so clearly.

Mary Langston steps off the platform and onto the train. But when she turns around to face me from inside the Lake Shore Limited, it’s Samantha Kinski who lifts a small, uncertain hand.

“Wish me luck!”

The doors slide shut with a hiss.

For a few suspended seconds, we just look at each other through the glass—her on a train bound for Chicago and then Minnesota and a life she’ll have to build from scratch; me rooted to the platform, unable to accompany her to this first stop of that future.

But I’ll be there for her when she needs me.

The long-distance engine shudders, the cars lurch, and the Lake Shore Limited carries her away down the darkened tunnel.

Leaving me alone with the gift she doesn’t know she handed me.

Or maybe she does.

Epilogue

Jenn

One year later

Gabe is holding my hand tightly as we approach the wrought iron gates. Identical twin cherubs rest on either side of the entrance, as if standing guard over the souls within. I rather like that idea, I decide, as our rental car crawls along, passing row after row of headstones, periodically punctuated by a mausoleum.

I spot the mimosa tree right away.

“There,” I tell him, stretching my arm to point. “Over there on the right. Across from the spigot.”

He nods, gliding to a stop at the curb, and then turns to me. “You okay?”

“I think so.”

“Because you don’t have to do this. We can try again later. Or tomorrow. Or another time.”

I smile at him and then lean across the console to give him a kiss. When we separate, he presses a warm palm against my cheek.