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“Do you want to call me something else?”
“Maybe my middle name? Would that be ea...
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“She needed somewhere to go. And I took her in.”
“Of course I would. You’re my daughter. You’re both my daughter.”
“But you, you’re doing okay.”
At that table sat Fern. She looked up at me with a mischievous smile, like she knew she’d behaved badly, but how could I be anything but pleased to see her? The woman sitting across from Fern looked up at me, too, and I was staring into my own face. She was me. She was not me. She was her, my other me.
Like I said, I hadn’t planned any of it, hadn’t planned to run away, hadn’t thought about how it’d look after I did it.
It was a joke at first, a joke with myself, just to see what my sneakers would look like there on the path without my feet inside them.
But then I was sliding my screen out of my pocket, too, and dropping it in the grass.
A woman, a stranger, stopped her auto for me. She stopped because she saw another woman shoeless, screenless, on the side of the road. It could’ve been her, after all.
Also, the truth was, the truth is, I didn’t want to go back. I kept waiting to want to go back. The feeling never came. I didn’t know about you when I did what I did. I want you to know that. I didn’t know that they’d do that. Make you. I didn’t know they’d pretend to find my body. And then they’d make your body instead. Because there was no body. Or rather, my body is here. I’m still inside it. It’s me.
Her hair was still long. The hair Nova had reached for.
Everything that was mine was hers first, hers more.
And then she proceeded to tell me the story of how she’d faked her own murder, without meaning to fake her own murder.
“She’s not you, Louise.”
“You figured it out,” I
“that she was alive.”
“It was the Luminols, actually,”
“When Lacey’s mom said how it was your murder that convinced everyone to bring us back, I thought, That’s murder as marketing.
And if it was a story someone was telling, well, then maybe the murder was just par...
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“What she did, it was like something I might do.”
“But I did tell you,”
“You didn’t. You left.” “But I left the cat.”
“So there were two Lous. Clear as can be!”
“Because you’d judge her.”
“Said she knew who was here. I told her she was mistaken. Then she started shouting over my shoulder into the house.”
“No guesses this time. Just some searching and then some blackmail.”
“First, I spent some time in Early Evening, sitting on the trail where you were murdered.
I thought she might come back there.”
So then I blackmailed Gert.” “Gert knows,”
“She does, doesn’t she?” “You know Gert,”
“terrifying in denim.” “She showed up here the day a...
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“It was quite a week for answerin...
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“She made Louise a deal. Stay away. Have a new life. In return, save four other women.”
“She meant us: Angela, Lacey, Jazz, and me. And you in a way.”
“The Luminols were right about that. Gert could use you, your murder. The women with the lipstick throats. The celebrities. All of that was Gert, behind the scenes, stirring things up. And the replication commission, too.” “They faked my murder so they could bring back the rest of you.”
“They faked my murder to save the replication commission.”
“You’re saying she cloned me, another me, and then—”
“A facsimile. A shell.” “An empty,”
“Silas knows, too,”
“I found all these calls from Gert, before my body was even found. Gert must have told Silas the truth.” “I told Silas the truth,”
The money. Silas had given it to her, her half of their savings, an even split.
I’m glad you’re back, Silas had said to me, then, No, let me amend that. I’m glad you’re here. This whole time, Silas had been hiding a secret, just not the secret I’d thought he’d been hiding.
“Come back. To the day care. To the house. You’ve come back to see Nova. You were in her room.”
She was, after all, the actual murderer, her own and mine.
I just needed to make sure that you wouldn’t—”
“That you wouldn’t leave, like I did.” “I won’t.” “I know,”
“It’s what I want and I’m afraid.”
“You go and I’ll stay here. I’ll make sure she’s okay. I’ll love her for you. I’ll love them both for you. And for me.”
From Silas’s perspective, I had left him. I had left him and, if even for only a day, had let him believe that I’d been murdered.
