Page 55 of Mirror Image

“That’s not unusual for siblings, especially when you’ve lived such different lives. You’re making up for years you didn’t get to have together.”

“God, we were so different,” she says, more animated now. “Not just the money—the way we thought, what we wanted.”

“How so?”

She squints at me. “I don’t know you.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Why should I tell you any of this?”

“You don’t have to,” I say evenly. “But maybe it’ll help that I get a little of it. I’m a twin too.”

Her head tilts, skeptical curiosity overtaking suspicion. “Yeah? What’s her name?”

“Jessica. We called her Jess.”

“Called,” she echoes. “She died?”

“She did. Accident, when we were fifteen.”

“Did you get along?”

“Not always. We were close, but we were opposites. She was the easy one—the rule follower. I was . . . the other one.”

Mary smiles faintly. “That’s exactly how it was with us. Sam would’ve been the rebel. I was the good girl.”

“Golden child,” I admit, grinning. “She hated that nickname.”

Her expression darkens. “Yeah, well, Sam wasn’t anybody’s golden anything.”

“Why do you think that was?”

“She was rough. Blunt. Didn’t know how to soften things. My parents couldn’t handle that.”

“So she didn’t make it easy for people to like her,” I say.

“Nope.”

I nod, thoughtful. “You know, a lot of kids who grow up in foster care learn that softness is a liability. You can’t survive if you don’t fight for everything. Sometimes it takes a long time to learn what safety even feels like.”

There’s a long beat. When she finally speaks, her voice is so low I almost miss it.

“I do,” she says. “I know what she went through.”

The air between us goes still.

I study her face, but she doesn’t look at me—just traces the IV line along her hand like she’s following an old scar.

“I know exactly what she went through.”

And something in me knows she isn’t talking about the Everglades.

Chapter Twenty

Mary

Four and a half years ago