Page 75 of My Twin Sister

I move around to the front of the house and decide to stop trying to be sneaky and just go through the front door with my key. I let myself in and slowly walk into the living room. It feels alive in here again. My dad wasn’t gone long before Grace came back but it was as though the soul of the home left with my dad. It felt lifeless in here without him. I could feel his absence. And now, the house has come back to life, just like my sister.

Only, I don’t think my sister is here. It’s too quiet. She could be sleeping, but she usually doesn’t fall asleep until the early hours of the morning. And she left lights on. I continue farther into the house. There are dishes in the sink. The coffee pot has about an inch of old coffee sitting in the bottom.

I want to check upstairs, but the thought instantly makes my legs feel like they’re going to give out. It’s hard to climb, though I manage. The door to Dad’s office is open. I peek inside, but it seems more or less the same as I remember it. Except, as I start to turn back into the hallway, I clock an empty space on the desk. The printer. I’ve used it many times over the years because I don’t have one of my own at home. Why is the printer missing?

I look ahead to my parents’ bedroom. The door is closed but the light is on. Is she in there? My hand trembles on the handle, and I feel like I can smell the rot of my father’s body. My chest feels too tight. I try to ground myself before the panic attack can take root in me. I’m okay. My dad is already gone. I’m not going to see anything horrible when I open the door.

I push the door open before I can crumble into a sobbing lunatic. My eyes go to the closet first, as though my mind needs to prove to itself that my dad isn’t hanging inside of it. He’s not. Of course he isn’t. He’s in a casket at the cemetery.

But then, I thought Grace was too.

My mind continues to argue with itself over what is real as my eyes scan the room. Grace isn’t here. But she’s been busy.

I’ve found the printer. It’s plugged in and sitting on the floor by the window. On the wall are dozens of pieces of paper taped in different groupings. I force myself farther into the room, though my entire body rejects being here. I can’t get the smell of death out of my nostrils. I press my sweater sleeve over my nose and mouth to block it out, though I know it’s in my mind, not the room.

There are pictures of different people. Dad. Morgan O’Neil. Brooke O’Neil. Frank Gibbs. Grace. A man in a Raven PD uniform. I think his name is Officer Wilson. Garrett Wilson. There are other papers with stuff written on them. Coroner. Funeral director. Raven PD. Wyatt.

I try to decipher what Grace is saying with her wall of information, but it’s near impossible to get my mind to settle down enough to process it. Everything keeps spinning and rearranging in my brain. I can’t make sense of anything.

I pull my sleeve up to expose my forearm and pinch my skin as hard as I can. Pain explodes like a camera flash. Everything slows down. I look at the wall again. It’s then that I see that Frank’s picture is in the center of everything else. Beneath his picture is a bulleted list.

Tried to have me killed

Lied about finding my body and identifying it (coroner)

Buried bags of sand (funeral director)

Rushed Morgan’s death investigation

Brooke dead after asking too many questions

Nothing at PD done without his say so (drugs, Garrett)

My heart picks up speed again. I try to pinch myself again, but it’s not working anymore. Stumbling over my feet, I run out of the room and slam the door shut. My legs give out and I drop to my knees on the hardwood in the hallway. I focus on the veining in the wood, the knots in the pine that I can draw by memory, the scuffs from so many years of wear.

For a split second, I forget why I’m on the floor outside my dead parents’ bedroom. It comes back to me though. One horrible memory at a time. I get back to my feet and step down the hallway, trying to figure out what I’m supposed to do. On some level, I know my mind is sick. I’ve had enough episodes to know I’m in the depths of one.

But it doesn’t make what’s happening any less real.

The door to my and Grace’s old bedroom is open, and it interrupts my thoughts, drawing me in. I switch the light on and step inside. I wasn’t here very long after Grace was gone. About a year. Wyatt and I had a shotgun wedding when I was eight months pregnant. He bought the house we live in now, and we moved in together when Jack was born.

It was a hard adjustment. My life didn’t remotely resemble what it had looked like a year prior. My twin sister was gone, I was married to and living with her boyfriend, and I was a mother. My mind couldn’t handle it. It broke a little bit, and I don’t think, even after the therapy and the medications, that it ever really repaired.

I shut the light off and step backward into the hallway. I’d give anything to rewind time and make different choices.

As soon as I think it, I think I’m lying to myself. If I made different choices, I wouldn’t have Wyatt, Jack, or Carter. And so maybe I’d do everything the same. Only this time, maybe I’d make sure Grace was really dead.

Forty-Four: Grace

My dad was a firm believer in the second amendment. He always carried a gun and always had one in the house. We grew up with a healthy respect and knowledge of guns. He made sure both Geny and I knew how dangerous they could be. He made sure we knew how to shoot. Knew the different parts of the guns we owned. Knew the number one rule: Always assume a gun is loaded and never point it at anyone or anything you don’t intend to shoot.

I never took any of it too seriously. Not until I was young, pregnant, and alone in the world. It seemed a lot more useful knowledge then. I send a silent thank-you up to him now as I load his nine-millimeter in Frank and Tina’s backyard.

I spent a long time planning out how I’d do this one day. They were carefully laid plans that turned into more of fanfic writing I hid under my bed as the years went on. Then Greer turned eighteen and went away to college. And my dad died. That old anger that had mellowed out was reignited and I knew it was time to go home.

My backpack has everything I need tucked inside. The chloroform, which was far too easy to get. Rope. Tape. Taser. The most important part is the gun in my hand, which I tuck into my waistband as I start the same climb I did earlier tonight. It’s infinitely easier this time, having done it before and being better dressed.

I move quietly, and in a few short minutes, I’m standing on their balcony. I take a minute to get what I need from my bag and then I’m sliding their door open.