Dead Ringer

62

It was an old question. I hadn't thought about Maria since I was ten, when I'd found out the hard way that imaginary friends came with lots of teasing.

"Of course." I'd been miserable for weeks, suddenly alone and even more of an outcast with the real children than before.

Tilda laughed. "No, no. I don't mean your invisible friend Maria. Do you remember the real Maria?"

I squinted at her. I'd known a handful of Marias—it was a fairly common name—but none that she would refer to like that.

Tilda sighed. "You never were quite all there," she said, leaning back against the wall. "You always used to try to convince me that I comforted you when we were little, that I'd climb in bed with you in that orphanage—the first one—and hold you. It didn't matter how many times I told you I didn't, you never believed me."

I frowned. "Because you did."

"I didn't."

Her smile confused me. "Why should I trust your version? You're not exactly sane, either." That much was clear from her dull eyes and the way she toyed with the gun in her hand. Then again, I couldn't blame her after everything.

"No. But I remember Maria."

Who the hell is Maria?

Beside me, Ciar let out a tiny breath, and with it one word. "No."

It wasn't the kind of no that meant stop. It was a no that meant she'd said something he didn't want to believe.

Her eyes slid to him, and I hated the way they looked at each other. Even though neither of them spoke, what passed between them was an entire conversation. There was a piece of him that would always belong only to her, a piece that no matter how much I looked like her, or spoke like her, or dressed like her, would always remain hers. It sliced me now like a steak knife to the heart.

"I don't understand," I said, partly out of frustration and partly to shatter their moment.

It didn't work. His eyes stayed on her as he murmured, "You were triplets."

"You were always so much smarter than people gave you credit for," she whispered.

My fingernails dug into my palms as I clenched my fists, surprised at the sudden ferocity in my veins. I craved their connection. I wanted to feel that, feel what they felt. I wanted to know him like that.

And then the word hit me. Triplets.

"Triplets?" I echoed, my voice breaking halfway through.

"Yeah." Tilda let her gaze linger on Ciar's face for a long moment before finally shifting it back to me. "Maria"—she said it with an air of disgust—"was lucky. She got adopted. Us?" She shook her head, then chuckled. "They must've walked into the orphanage and asked for the sanest one of the three."

My head spun. Maria was never just a figment of my imagination? I had another sister? There were three of us?

"She had it all," Tilda continued. "A family. Parents that loved her. That wanted her, that never gave her back. She was so normal."

"Tillie," Ciar croaked, "what did you do?"

She turned to him like a lioness defending her den. "She came here. Looking for me. She wanted to get to know me. Maybe we could have, if she'd come at a different time."

"Tillie...."

"It was her or me," she hissed. "I knew, the second I found out I was pregnant again, that I had to get out. Donovan wouldn't let me go unless he thought I was dead. So I made him believe."