The Midnight Twins (2 page)

But they weren’t copies.

When they looked at each other, they saw what other people see when they look into a mirror.

It would be years before anyone except their mother noticed that Meredith was right-handed, while Mallory held her spoon with her left hand. Merry’s straight, silky hair parted on the right, Mally’s on the left. The family also assumed that as they grew, they would have similar personalities but spend more time apart.

Instead, they had dissimilar personalities but refused to spend more time apart: Merry even came home from sleepovers before breakfast. That was only one of many things people assumed about them—and which, like the others, was wrong.

When they were three, Grandfather Arness, their mother’s father, built them matching youth beds. On one headboard they pasted all their cartoon and holiday stickers and made their first attempts to write their names in crayon. After they fell asleep each night, Campbell tried moving one of them back into the unused bed. Though she didn’t scream as though she were being dissected, the way she had when she was born, Merry couldn’t be at rest until she was with Mallory, or at least knew that Mallory was nearby and okay. Outgoing Merry, happiest surrounded by all kinds of people, dancing when she could have walked and jabbering before she thought about what to say, seemed to be the natural “leader.” In fact, Meredith always waited, especially on important matters, to see what Mallory would do or say. It was she who was the clingy one, who crept every night into Mally’s bed—until they grew so big that they literally had no room to turn over without kicking the other onto the floor.

But that took years, because neither of them got very big, ever.

Their mother listened to their language and tried to learn what the words meant.

“Soso,” they told each other—and Campbell translated this to mean “
Everything is fine. Don’t cry
.”

“Laybite,” they told each other when one twin needed the other to stop talking—right that very minute.

But even as closely as she studied them, their mother couldn’t quite believe how often they didn’t need words at all.

She never knew that when one looked at the sky, or sprained her ankle, the other saw the star or winced at the pain. When they grew older, if one wanted to kiss a boy, the other felt the longing, even if she didn’t like the boy.

As the years passed, and Campbell felt sure that the girls talked to each other with their minds, she didn’t tell anyone, not even Tim. Of course Tim knew, too, or thought he did, but he didn’t tell Campbell. Campbell didn’t want to upset Tim. Tim didn’t want Campbell to worry. He was used to twin ways. Both his mother and his grandmother were twins.

The night Mallory and Merry were born, Grandma Gwenny couldn’t even wait until morning to see them. Their grandfather assumed that Gwen had to go running out into the snow (wouldn’t catch
him
doing that!) because she was finally a grandmother. But the reason was bigger than that. Gwenny crept into the room and kissed her son, Tim, who was asleep in a big chair with a hat that read “Super Male” over his eyes. Then she tiptoed over to Campbell’s side, hoping not to wake her or the babies, hoping just for a glimpse.

But Campbell had just finished feeding the girls. She felt shriveled as a raisin but happy to see Gwenny’s eager face.

“Don’t you know how to celebrate New Year’s Eve!” said Gwenny, shaking her finger at Campbell.

“They’re pretty cute. And I’m pretty overwhelmed already,” Campbell said with a sigh. “Well, at least we’ve got our whole family, all in one night.”

“No, I think . . . well, I know that you’ll have a little boy,” Gwenny said.

Campbell wrinkled her nose. There went Gwenny with her visions again.

“And you’ll be glad because identical twins are . . . they’re one person. You remember what I said that time. They’ll be closer to each other than anyone else, even closer than they are to you.”

How awful,
Campbell thought.

She tried to smile, but had to bite her lip to stop it from trembling. Exhausted, and having just met two people she already loved more than her own life, she didn’t want to hear that she would never be as dear to them as other mothers were to
their
daughters. But she listened—and took a moment to reflect on just why—because something about Gwenny seemed so sad and yearning underneath the happiness. Gwenny sat down on the windowsill and gazed out at the veil of snow. “Isn’t snow beautiful? But so treacherous, especially on a night like this with people swerving around like fools. We’re probably the safest people in Ridgeline right here. But you can’t deny that there’s something magical about snow.”

A scattering of little thoughts coalesced into a tiny whirlwind in Campbell’s mind. Her mother-in-law wasn’t thinking only of snow, or of her new grandchildren. Gwenny, she remembered, had been an identical twin, whose sister had died as a child. No one talked about the accident. After that night, for the rest of her life, Campbell would be able to picture the grief on Gwenny’s beautiful unlined face in profile, by the light from the window. How painful it still was for Gwenny, after fifty years, to be without her . . . other.
Other?
Campbell thought. What did that mean?

The babies, nearly asleep, heard Campbell thinking and were happy that their mother was smart.

But there was more to Gwenny’s stew of emotions than even Campbell knew.

She had to confess that she nearly hoped that these little girls would be regular kids, unusual only because they were twins—not in the strange, painful, potent, almost unbearable way Gwenny knew so well. But she sensed that they were, and confirmed that for herself the first time she looked into their round, curious, river-colored eyes. As proud as she was of her heritage, as much as she knew that the gift was important—to her, and if God gave it, she supposed, important altogether—it was a two-hearted bequest, a blessing with a sharp bite. If only she could explain to them what life held for them, in a way that would spare them fear or pain. But she couldn’t. She didn’t know, for certain, what the nature of their gift would be. She could not have guessed its supremacy over all the twins in previous generations of the Brynn family. But she did know that the little girls would never put faith in what they needed to know unless they learned the old and cruel way—on their own.

 
Four and a half years later, Campbell sat on a bench next to the cold ashes of the fire pit, her arms wrapped tightly around her two-year-old son, Adam.

Police swarmed the woods and clearings surrounding the Brynn family’s cabin camp, some restraining great wolf like dogs on leather leashes.

She had not watched Meredith closely enough. Meredith was dreamy and creative and liked to wander. So long as she held hands mentally with Mallory, she thought she was safe. Someone said that Merry had followed a deer and twin fawns down the hiking path two hours earlier. The sun hadn’t quite set then, and now darkness was closing in. She was such a little girl, and these woods and hills so vast, the cliffs above the river so steep.

Campbell thought she would like to die that instant. She blamed herself.

Mallory sat nearby on the grass with her back to her mother, playing with a shell necklace. Tim’s aunt had given the girls the necklaces, identical except for the colors, earlier in the spring. Mallory’s lips were moving as she twirled the shells, but she made no sound that Campbell could hear. Unless she spoke to Mallory, Mallory wouldn’t say a thing, Campbell knew. Not for the second or third or fiftieth time, Campbell thought of Gwenny’s words on the night her daughters were born, about twins being one person. After a while, Campbell asked, softly, “Are you . . . talking to Merry?”

Mallory, absorbed, didn’t answer. Campbell asked again.

“Laybite,” she said softly. Campbell knew this meant, in twin code, something about the need to be quiet.

“Mallory?” Campbell asked again. “Are you talking to Merry?”

Briefly, but with an effort, Mallory answered, “Yes, Mommy.”

“Did you tell her to stand still and not be afraid of the big doggies?”

“Yes, Mommy.”

“Mally, do you know where she is? Is she afraid?”

“No, she’s not afraid,” Mally said. “I’m talking her, so she knows the doggies will come.” When Mally was upset, she slipped back into the kind of sentences she’d used when she was three. “By the water drops. Soso. Soso.”

“So what?” Campbell asked, forgetting a twin word she
did
know. “Are you sure you don’t mean down by the pond in the middle of the river?” Campbell asked, as she had half a dozen times before, her skin tightening with the fear she felt of the slippery, sucking mud on the riverbank. Meredith and Mallory could swim, but just, like puppies. “Is Merry at the river?”

“
No
, Mommy,” Mallory said sharply, dragging her eyes up to meet Campbell’s. “I told you. The water drops. Not the swimming hole.”

“Rain?”

“Mommy!” Mallory snapped, suddenly angry. She had always been the more volatile, Merry the more . . . well, merry. Campbell felt a total fool, gingerly trying to avoid riling up a kindergarten child.

“Just stop you!” Mally cried out.

Campbell glanced around to see if Tim or his sisters and any of the cousins and their spouses, or his ancient aunties, had noticed Mallory’s outburst. Tim and his father and brothers, compelled by some ancient law of being men, were out following the police, probably messing up the dogs’ scent trails, Campbell thought in a moment of spite. The women remained behind, helplessly making and drinking gallons of coffee.

Campbell thought that the theory of relativity had never been better illustrated. Every minute was only sixty seconds long, but it stretched out like bubble gum until it sagged and tore and then it stretched again. Besides Campbell, only her mother-in-law, seated lightly on the arm of one of the big swings, never moved. She watched Campbell with an unwavering gaze of pity—though she did not venture closer. Campbell supposed that she was thinking about her own twin as well as her granddaughter.

Campbell didn’t want to know what her mother-in-law was thinking.

A half hour passed.

When Campbell glanced at her watch again, another three minutes had expired.

Suddenly then, Campbell heard the shouts from the woods: “We found her!” and “She’s fine! We’ve got her!”

She noticed, with a helpless sadness—how could poor Adam ever understand this?—she had actually gripped her little boy’s wrists so tightly, she had left red finger marks on his skin. Then she let herself take a full breath and began to cry for the first time since Meredith had disappeared.

A burly older officer carried Merry out of the woods and set her down. She ran toward Campbell’s open arms . . . and straight to Mally.

“Did you watch water?” Mally asked, reaching out to pull a burr from Meredith’s thick, shining, black bobbed hair that swung just above her shoulders. Mallory’s hair was short, swept back in a feathery cap.

“Beester!” Meredith said. “I watched so long!” Merry then reached up and patted Mallory’s face, as though she, Merry, were blind. To Campbell’s astonishment, Mallory began touching her sister’s elbows and wrists, then her knees, watching Merry’s face for a reaction. She was feeling for broken bones . . . she was making sure that Meredith was not hurt.

Out of breath from having jogged half a mile back on the pebbled trail down the ridge with his little bundle, the police officer finally caught up and said, “She was sitting still as a mouse, ma’am. Did you teach her to always sit still if she ever got lost? That was wise. She was watching a crack in a rock with the tiniest little—”

“Waterfall,” Campbell said, pulling Merry back into her lap, holding her close, inhaling the heavy scent of pine that rose from her daughter’s sweet head. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

“Exactly,” the heavyset officer continued. “You know the place, then.”

“Her sister knows,” Campbell told him. She smiled across the yard at her mother-in-law as the relatives swept forward. The older woman nodded, the fingers of both her hands lifted, the fingertips meeting at her lips in a kiss.

THE LAST BEST NIGHT

Two nights before New Year’s Day, which would be her thirteenth birthday, Mallory Brynn was certain that she died before she could wake.

The burning golden panel of cloth fell on her like a great web, sealing her in a searing cocoon. When she tried to breathe, the filaments and sizzling threads of the fabric scorched her throat. Her lungs collapsed into charred, useless flaps. Her last thoughts were of Adam, so little, and her younger cousins. She was sure that Meredith had gotten out with them in time. . . .

“Sit up!” Meredith shouted. Mallory mumbled, her hands flailing, still fighting the dream. “Mally!” Meredith said again. “I’ve tried to wake you up three times! Could you
be
more limp? Do you really want to sleep through your own birthday party?” “Oh my God!” Mally whispered, sitting up and pinching her forearms to verify that she was still flesh and bone and not ash. “I forgot all about it. I had the most horrible dream! I dreamed I died in a fire, Merry. I dreamed I was dead.”

“You were out of it like you were dead, Mallory! I hate when you go random like this. You just don’t care.”

“I’m tired from practice,” Mallory, who played indoor soccer in the off-season, said. She pulled off her socks and added, “Plus, I hate parties.”

She did not, but she was so deeply shy that being introduced was, for her, like being scraped with the tines of a fork.

“You hate parties? How can we be related?”

“I just . . . don’t know what to say. I can’t say, ‘Oh, Alli’s wearing white and so is Crystal. How totally dorky, hanging with the trendies,’ ” Mally simpered in what she considered a good imitation of her sister’s friends.

“My friends don’t talk like that.”