Page 5 of My Twin Sister

Seeing your own grave is a weird experience. I imagine most of the town gathered around a hole, much like they are now. My chest gets tight when I imagine Geny alone, no hand to hold, and my parents having to bury their daughter. The grief and the guilt are heavy in my stomach. No parent should have to bury their kid. They didn’t. But they didn’t know that.

I can feel Wyatt’s presence even though I can’t see him in my peripheral. I can smell his cologne. The same one since high school. He’s always been a creature of habit. Is that why he ended up with my twin sister?

I can see their kids. My nephews. Geny’s discomfort is palpable, though I can tell she’s trying very hard to act normal in this most abnormal circumstance. What a messy situation we’ve gotten ourselves into.

Pastor Don stands at the podium next to Dad’s closed casket. His eyes travel to me often but look away quickly. He gives another speech, different from the one at the church. This one is more scripture than personal. When he finishes, Geny steps forward, pulling me with her. We walk to the casket. She takes a rose from a large vase and tosses it onto the lid as it begins to lower. I follow her lead and do the same.

My vision blurs, and I wish I could see his face one last time. Not like I did earlier, but alive. With blood beneath his skin instead of formaldehyde. I wish I could hear his voice. Hear him shout, Go, Grace, go! Like he did at every single one of my races.

Goodbye, Daddy. I promise I’ll get to the truth.

A line forms and everyone tosses a rose into the hole. Some people are tearful. Geny is trembling. I know I should comfort her. I want to. But my own emotions are starting to get the best of me and that isn’t good for anyone.

All my feelings end in rage.

I focus on my breath. Force myself to stop gritting my teeth. To stop gripping Geny’s hand so tight. Relax. Breathe.

Slowly, people begin to come up to my sister and me.

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Tina Gibbs says. She’s Wyatt’s mother and now Geny’s mother-in-law.

She and I used to be close. She was a second mother to me. She’d always take my side in arguments Wyatt and I had, and she’d take me shopping from time to time. She said I was the daughter she always wanted.

Now she can barely meet my eyes.

“I can’t believe you’re here, Grace,” she says in a whisper. “God’s miracle.”

“Something like that,” I say.

She looks like she wants to say more, but she just squeezes my arm and backs away. I wish I would have waited a few days to come back. But I wouldn’t have forgiven myself if I knowingly missed Dad’s funeral.

I missed my mom’s. The guilt that sits with me is a constant companion. It was back when I went longer between checking in on things. A year had passed since I last checked in, and my mother had been dead and in the ground for four months by then. I cried for weeks and visited her grave in secret. I wasn’t going to let the same thing happen with my dad. Not with the article I’d read online the week prior. It was the push I needed to finally come back and do what needs to be done.

Raven High School principal put on administrative leave pending investigation into child abuse material found on his computer.

One by one, people tell us how sorry they are that our dad is dead. Each one stares at me in varying degrees of obviousness. I see two people chatting toward the back of the group, their heads close together but their gaze on me. I’d recognize them anywhere. Tara and Murphy.

They were part of our close friend group. Me, Geny, Wyatt, Tara, and Murphy. We were an odd bunch with golden boy, Wyatt, and town burnout, Murphy. Perfect Christian, Geny, and voted most likely to sleep with your boyfriend, Tara. And then there was me. An athlete. A prankster. Whatever else I was.

Tara bear-hugs me the moment she’s in range. I jump at the sudden touch, but after a second I manage to wrap my arms around her frail shoulders in return.

“Your hair is long,” I say.

She touches it with a smile. “Yeah. I left the pixie cuts in my teens.”

Her dark, wavy hair comes past her shoulders. It’s strange to see her so different. Though I guess she couldn’t stay an angsty teenage rebel forever.

Murphy looks different too. No longer the lanky twenty-one-year-old who bought us beer and whose eyes were permanently half closed on one drug or another.

“If anyone was going to rise from the dead it’d be you, Grace Chandler,” he says with a grin. He doesn’t try to hug me, and I relax a little.

“You don’t look surprised,” I say.

“I was surprised at the wake.”

I nod. “Only ten minutes of processing needed to come to terms with your dead childhood friend actually being alive?”

“Like seven and a half.”