Anna reached for her hand. Her palm was warm while Amelia’s was ice-cold. “Please, sit. I have fresh-squeezed lemonade and homemade chocolate chip cookies.”
Of course, you do.
Interlacing her fingers with Amelia’s, her twin led her to the living room. Amelia let her, even as her inner voice screamed, Withdraw, retreat!
In her mind, she heard Dr. Ellard contradict her. You have to stop distancing yourself from people, Amelia. It served you in the past, but now it’s the source of your greatest pain.
Yes, well, easy for him to say, he hadn’t grown up the way she had.
And here was Anna, all encompassing, and smiling relentlessly. Gung ho and cheerful in the face of adversity. Everything Amelia was not. Amelia owned her traits, both positive and negative sides. She was cautious and reserved and independent, and she was good with that. Until she was in the presence of a bubbly people person like Anna, and then she wished for a personality transplant.
Her sister settled on the couch, still holding Amelia’s hand so that she had to either sit down with her or make things even more uncomfortable by pulling away.
The living room was clean in the way of people with children, dusted and vacuumed, but cluttered with toys and items of daily living. Awkwardly, Amelia perched on the cushion beside her sister, pressed her knees tightly together, stared at Anna’s hand clasped with hers, and willed her sister to let go.
Kevin leaned his shoulder against the wall leading from the hall into the living room, watching them. That felt weird too.
“It was so kind of you to save Cujo,” Anna said. “And I apologize for the way Allie lit into you. She’s got strong opinions and she loves animals so much.”
Amelia bobbed her head, wished she’d been that self-possessed as a child. “It’s okay. It’s good to know who you are when you’re that young.”
“We’re all taken aback.” Anna exhaled a wobbly laugh.
“Bowled over,” Kevin mumbled.
“Understandable.”
“I don’t know where to start.” Anna tightened her fingers around Amelia’s.
“Start?”
“Getting to know you. I feel like I did on my thirtieth birthday when my best friend, Darla, dared me to go skydiving with her. As that single-engine plane climbed into the clouds over the drop zone, we held hands in solidarity.”
“She scared the stuffing out of me,” Kevin grumbled.
Anna held up their joined hands and offered Amelia another bright smile. “We leapt in tandem jumps with the instructors, Darla and me. One after the other. We just let go, trusting everything would turn out all right.”
“Meanwhile . . .” Kevin snorted. “I was on the ground practically having a heart attack that the mother of my children was jumping out of a perfectly good plane. I’m in the insurance business. No one ever thinks that something bad will ever happen to them, but it does.”
“Logan wasn’t even born then,” Anna tossed over her shoulder as an aside to her husband. To Amelia, she said, “Darla and I landed softly, safely, ran into each other’s arms and did a jubilant dance, surprised and delighted to find the world was exactly the same, but deep inside, we’d changed forever.”
“That must have been a life-affirming experience,” Amelia said.
“Yes.” Anna fixed her gaze on Amelia’s. “Now, I feel like I’m leaping all over again.”
Amelia’s stomach flipped, and she felt her palm grow sweaty against Anna’s. Her right eye ticked, a nervous twitch that her perfect posture couldn’t contain.
“I’m just floored,” Anna said. “Utterly.”
“I didn’t know how to warn you that I was coming. I tried writing a letter. I couldn’t imagine calling you out of the blue. I thought about contacting you through 23andMe.”
“Oh gosh,” Anna said. “That’s how you found me. I haven’t even been on the website since I had the genealogy test done last year. I’m sorry. I’m so busy I never even thought to go back and check to see if I had new matches, and I must not have signed up for the alerts. When I went on before, the only DNA matches I had were with fourth and fifth cousins I’d never heard of.”
“Why are you apologizing to me?” Amelia asked.
“Huh?” Anna blinked.
“You don’t owe me an apology.”
“If I’d checked the website regularly, we could have met sooner. I’m assuming you recently had your test done?”
Amelia nodded and eased her hand from Anna’s grasp. “Yes, three days ago I got the report back, but you see, I already knew about you.”
“Really?” Anna put a palm to her chest. “You knew about me? How?”
“I believed you were dead.”
“Dead?” Anna blinked.
“Because that’s what my parents told me.”
“I’m not dead.” Anna raised both palms.
“Clearly.”
“How did your parents react when they found out about me? Did they come with you?” Anna glanced around as if expecting Sarah and Frank Brandt to walk through the door.
“My parents passed away two years ago in a car accident.”
“Oh no.” Anna’s concern seemed genuine, and she pressed a hand to her heart. “That’s terrible. I’m so sorry that happened to you.”
“Everyone has sorrow.” The last thing she wanted was sympathy. Amelia pushed up the sleeve of her lightweight summer jacket. That’s when the bracelet that had been tucked underneath her sleeve dropped down to her wrist.
Anna’s eyes fixed on the bracelet and widened. Her entire body tensed visibly.
“Where did you get that?” she croaked.
A cold, chalky taste filled her mouth and a hard shiver ran up Amelia’s spine. She’d worn the bracelet on purpose, wondering if Anna had an identical one. It seemed, from the look on her sister’s face, that she did.
“From my mother. She bought one for my sister, too, but it went missing the night we were born during a hurricane . . .” Amelia took a deep breath. “The night, I’d been taught, that my sister died.”
Anna’s gaze snapped closed around Amelia’s like a steel trap. “I have an identical baby keepsake bracelet, except with my name instead of yours.”
“What does this mean?” Amelia asked.
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
They stared at each other.
“How did we get separated?” Anna whispered.
“Your mother?” Amelia had pondered this question for three days and kept returning to the most obvious explanation.
Anna leaned away from Amelia for the first time. “My mother what?”
Tread lightly. Amelia pondered a response that didn’t cast Anna’s mother in an unfavorable light.
“No.” Anna shook her head vigorously. “No. Not my mother. She didn’t do that. You’re wrong.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t have to. It’s written all over your face. My mother did not switch her dead baby in exchange for me.” Anna hopped to her feet. “She didn’t do that!”
“It’s just one possibility.” Swamped with more cortisol and adrenaline than she could tolerate, Amelia leaped up, too. She hated conflict and avoided it at all costs.