“My mother left it to me.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“That belonged to my wife.”
The little girl peeked around her mother.
“Mom?”
“It’s okay, Sophie.”
The woman extended an arm protectively across the child.
Julian stared at her.
“What’s your name?”
“Nora.”
“Nora what?”
“Nora Bell.”
Julian shook his head.
“You’re Amelia Cross.”
“No.”
“You are.”
“I have never heard that name.”
Something in the way she said it made him stop.
There was no recognition.
No guilt.
No performance that he could detect.
Only fear.
And something else.
Curiosity.
Julian slowly took out his phone.
His fingers trembled as he found a photograph.
It had been taken seven years earlier on the coast.
Amelia stood barefoot on wet sand, laughing into the wind.
He held the screen toward Nora.
Nora looked.
The color disappeared from her face.
Sophie came closer.
“Mom, that’s you.”
Nora didn’t answer.
The photograph seemed to pull her forward.
She took Julian’s phone without asking.
She enlarged the image.
Touched the screen.
Looked at Julian.
“Who is she?”
“My wife.”
“When was this taken?”
“Seven years ago.”
Nora swallowed.
“And where is she now?”
Julian looked into a face he had once known better than his own.
“She died five years ago.”
Nora stared at him.
Sophie reached for her mother’s hand.
Julian continued.
“Her name was Amelia. She was thirty-three. She taught art history. She hated olives, loved old houses, couldn’t sleep without opening a window, and sang badly when she cooked.”
Nora’s eyes filled with tears.
Julian noticed.
“Why are you crying?”
“I don’t know.”
He pulled up another photograph.
Their wedding.
Another.
Amelia asleep on a sofa with a book over her face.
Another.
Amelia painting their kitchen cabinets.
Another.
Her thirty-first birthday.
Nora looked at every photograph.
Her hand began shaking.
Finally she returned the phone.
“I have to go.”
Julian stepped forward.
“You can’t just leave.”
“I don’t know you.”
“But you knew her.”
“I told you—”
“Look at yourself!”
Sophie flinched.
Julian immediately lowered his voice.
“I’m sorry.”
Nora held her daughter close.
Julian looked from the frightened child to the woman with his dead wife’s face.
Then he asked the only question that made sense.
“When were you born?”
Nora hesitated.
“October nineteenth.”
Julian felt his stomach drop.
Amelia’s birthday.
Same day.
Same year.
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was adopted.”
Silence settled between them.
Nora looked at Julian.
And Julian watched the moment she understood it too.
They went to a café across the plaza.
Sophie sat between them drinking hot chocolate while Julian and Nora tried not to stare at each other.
It was impossible.
Every tiny movement disturbed him.
The way Nora wrapped both hands around her cup.
Amelia had done that.
The way she pushed loose hair behind her right ear.
Amelia had done that too.
But other details were wrong.
Nora drank coffee black.
Amelia had practically drowned hers in milk.
Nora wrote with her left hand.
Amelia had been right-handed.
Nora had a small scar beneath her chin.
Amelia hadn’t.
They weren’t the same woman.
Julian slowly began to understand that.
Which left an explanation almost as impossible.
“Tell me about the adoption,” he said.
Nora glanced at Sophie.
“My parents never hid it from me. They adopted me when I was three months old.”
“From where?”
“A private agency called St. Catherine Family Services.”
Julian stared at her.
Nora noticed.
“What?”
“Amelia was adopted through St. Catherine.”
The cup stopped halfway to her mouth.
“Are you certain?”
“I helped her look for her biological family.”
Nora set the coffee down.
“When?”
“About six months before she died.”
Sophie looked between them.
“Mom, did you have a sister?”
Nora didn’t answer immediately.
“I don’t know, sweetheart.”
Julian did.
Or at least he suddenly believed he did.
Amelia and Nora had been born on the same day.
Adopted as infants.
Through the same agency.
They had the same face.
There was only one realistic explanation.
“You’re twins.”
Nora whispered, “Don’t.”
“You know that.”
“I don’t know anything.”
“Look at the photographs.”
“People can look alike.”
“Not like this.”
Nora stood so quickly her chair scraped across the floor.
Several customers looked over.
“I can’t do this.”
Julian stood too.
“Then do a DNA test.”
She stared at him.
“You meet me in a plaza and within twenty minutes you want my DNA?”
“I buried someone with your face.”
The words silenced both of them.
Julian immediately regretted their cruelty.
But he couldn’t take them back.
Nora sat down again.