“I mean, I know we haven’t been as close lately—” she started, turning back to the suitcase again, but I couldn’t listen to another condescending word from her.
“Do you know what it was like to grow up with you?” I asked, steadying myself against the wall. It felt dangerous to get this close to it. The packed-in, pent-up years of my rage, as hot and dense as coals. “You never even considered what it must have been like for me.” Day after day, waving goodbye to her from behind the window as she skipped off to school. Spending her days laughing with friends and learning from real teachers. Running home on her perfectly strong legs. “It was hard enough to grow up as an isolated cripple, without you parading your life in my face at every turn.”
She gaped at me. “I . . .” She sat down heavily on the bed. “Where is this coming from?”
“But that wasn’t enough, was it?” I continued. “You took my thistle for the Variants.” The shock just kept deepening across her face. As if she hadn’t even remembered where that thistle had come from. “That thistle could have been the thing that finally made people see me. But you needed that all for yourself, too.”
“Stefen—”
“And then, Matilda.” I moved a step closer to her. Balled my fists so hard that the next day they’d been bruised.
She shook her head, playing dumb. Juliet was a lot of things, but dumb wasn’t one of them. “What could this possibly have to do with Matilda?” she asked.
Matilda, sweet Matilda, the girl who had come home with Juliet so often that she’d practically grown up in our house. The only person outside my own family who had ever really spoken to me. The only person, including my family, who ever really listened to what I said.
I would have loved her. Treated her so well.
But Juliet had taken it upon herself to push Matilda right into Malcolm’s arms. “Tell me, then, my dear Viola.” I practically spat at her. “Why does Matilda think I’m your foster brother?”
Juliet had frozen. The brief flash of guilt on her face confirmed everything I had already known. She’d hidden who I was to her. Because even since we were very little, she’d been ashamed of me.
“It wasn’t about—?you—” she stammered, as if she were reading my thoughts. “I didn’t want people to know about him. Locked up. For being a grave robber.” She twisted her mouth in disgust. “So I said I was an orphan, and I took Eleanor’s name. But you kept the name Shaw.” I’d taken the slightest satisfaction at how flushed her face was growing with her own misery as she tried to explain herself. “Everyone just assumed we weren’t related. You weren’t in school; it didn’t seem like it would matter when I didn’t correct them. But—?I should have. At least with Matilda. She would have understood.” Her eyes pleaded with me. “Can you please understand?”
“I don’t ever want to see you again,” I said, and though I didn’t know it was about to come true, I meant it. “So maybe it isn’t everyone else in Sterling who is wrong,” I said, trembling. “Maybe we’re all exactly right to hate you.”
“Stefen.” Her face was ashen. “I’m so sorry. I was never trying to hurt you.”
But she didn’t mean it enough. Because once she packed her bags, she took off and never looked back. My very own twin. She’d cut me with the little nicks of a thousand different betrayals over the years, but that one went the deepest of them all.
“You coming?” Larkin says, turning back to me at the fork and interrupting my thoughts.
I hadn’t realized how much my steps had slowed.
“I’ve lost track of where we are,” I say. I reach to feel the steadying shape of the bird in my pocket. Run my fingers over the smooth grain of its back. “I don’t even know where the Clifftons live.”
Larkin places a pouch of Hypnosis Variants in my hand and smiles. “I do.”
Chapter Fifty-Three
The Tempests I took from George wear off after barely a mile. As the sunset swells across the sky, I return to a regular pace, which now feels akin to running through water.
I wish someone would drive down the road, someone who could get me back to the Clifftons’ sooner. I want to be safely inside the house with the doors locked and a fire going. To tell Dr. and Mrs. Cliffton what I’ve found out about Stefen. To reassure myself that this strange, choking fear is just my nerves overreacting after a long day.
And then I see that someone is there, just beyond the bend, her long blond hair streaming from underneath a hat, her aggravation apparent even from a distance. She leans against the curves of a black car, examining her nails, while someone—?a driver?—?crouches next to a loosened wheel.
“Eliza,” I call out. My voice sounds hoarse, and I wave maniacally until Eliza stops examining her nails and looks at me with a mixture of suspicion and amusement.
“What are you doing?” she says, taking in my mud-streaked legs and raising her eyebrows.
“Do you have any Tempests?” I ask, ignoring the question. A stain of cold fear is still seeping across my body. “Please,” I say urgently. “I need them. It’s really important.”
“No,” Eliza says, now looking at me strangely. “If I did, I’d be using them to greet my mother when she gets off the train. Instead of standing here.” She adjusts her hat and shakes her hair into a blond wave. “Obviously.”
My stomach drops a knot further. I had forgotten all about the telegram. Eliza still believes her mother is returning home today.
You don’t have to tell her, a strangled voice says inside my head. No one would ever know. Don’t waste time with her. Get home and make sure everything is okay.
I obey the voice and turn toward the direction of the Clifftons’ house without another word.
