Page 6 of Mirror Image

She shook her head. “No. I grew up in the system.”

“The system?” I echoed, uncomprehending.

“The foster system. My parents gave me up, but I was never adopted.” She considered me, tilting her head slightly. “Unlike you, apparently.”

The statement felt a little like an accusation, and I shifted from one foot to the other uncomfortably.

“Where did you grow up?” I asked finally.

She shrugged. “Here and there. Mainly Homestead. Mainly institutions. The occasional trailer park. What about you?”

Suddenly I regretted asking the question. “South Florida,” I said. “Not that far from Homestead.”

Samantha’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. She didn’t miss a thing. “How ‘not far’ from there? Exactly?”

“Coral Gables.”

Even her snort sounded just like mine.

“So let me get this straight . . . You and I—we’re identical twins, right? Are you thinking that? ’Cause I am.”

“Sure looks like it,” I responded softly.

“Right. So eighteen years ago, some knocked-up teenager was either too dim, too religious, or too broke to have an abortion, so she gave birth to twins. You and me.” She gestured between us as she said this. “Somehow I end up in one shithole after another, and you . . . you’re like the cute little puppy at the pound that gets picked out by the rich kid. The one whose parents are bleeding-heart liberals—all opposed to puppy mills and shit. That’s you, right? And your parents? Except they didn’t want your littermate.”

Somehow she’d twisted this entire bizarro situation into a judgment against my parents—birth and adoptive.

“How do you know she was a teenager? Or that she was dim?” I countered. “Maybe she was raped . . .”

“Yeah, because that’s better—bio dad is a rapist. Or hey, maybe he was her father, right? Then it could be incest—”

“Stop it!” The two words came out loud enough to startle us both. “I don’t know who you are or how this happened. But I don’t have to stand here and listen to this BS.”

I spun around to leave, my hand on the doorknob, when she jumped up.

“No, no, wait. Mary . . . please, wait.” When I turned to face her again, she looked totally different. She was softer, more vulnerable. “I’m sorry. I just . . . Yeah, you know, it’s a shock. And it’s not like anything good has ever just come knocking on my door. So you have to give me a minute.”

My hand dropped back down to my side, and I sighed. “I don’t know what happened or why. But I know one thing for certain—my parents wouldn’t have taken one sibling without the other, let alone a single identical twin. I don’t think they knew you even existed.”

She looked down at the floor. “If you say so.”

I straightened up. “I do. But, God, they’re gonna be thrilled to meet you!”

Samantha looked up tentatively. “Yeah? You think so?”

“I know so,” I told her confidently, picturing an extra place at the Thanksgiving table and another face on the family Christmas card.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Chapter Three

Jenn

Wednesday evening

“So how did you leave it?” my husband asks, just before plowing the pointy end of a slice of pizza into his mouth.

“I said I’d think about it.”