“My baby.”
Clara stiffened before collapsing into her arms.
Dad stayed back, wiping his eyes.
“Hey, kiddo.”
I looked away.
I loved Clara.
I was also furious with her.
Both things were true.
Mom began talking too quickly.
“I still make that cherry pie you loved. Your room isn’t blue anymore, but we could repaint it. Do you remember that song you girls always sang?”
Clara’s hand slipped.
The mug she was holding rolled across the counter.
“Stop.”
Mom froze.
“Clara?”
“Please. Just stop.”
Then Clara exploded.
“This is exactly why I didn’t want to come back!”
Mom looked devastated.
“Because I mentioned pie?”
“No. Because five minutes after seeing me, you’re already rebuilding the girl I used to be.”
“I thought familiar things might help.”
“I don’t even like cherry pie anymore.”
Mom stared at her.
“But Sarah always loved it too. You girls liked the same things.”
Clara laughed sharply.
“There. That.”
I felt something cold move through me.
“What are you saying?”
She turned toward me.
“Growing up, it was always Sarah and Clara. You got the better grade, made a team, won something, and people looked at me like I was the version that didn’t.”
“I never asked anyone to do that.”
“I know.”
“Then don’t blame me.”
“I’m not saying you caused it. I’m saying you never had to think about it.”
Her voice cracked.
“You got to walk into a room and simply be Sarah. I walked in and became the other twin.”
Mom started crying.
“I never knew.”
“Neither did I completely,” Clara admitted. “Not until after the accident.”
She explained that losing her memory had initially been terrifying.
But once pieces started returning, something unexpected happened.
“For the first time, nobody compared me to you.”
I stared at her.
“So when you remembered us, you stayed away.”
“At first because I was afraid.”
“And later?”
She swallowed.
“Because I chose myself.”
I stepped back.
“You chose yourself by letting us bury you?”
“I know how awful that sounds.”
“It sounds awful because it was.”
She nodded.
“I know.”
Then she admitted she had searched for me online four years earlier.
She knew where I lived.
She knew I had a job.
She had seen photographs of the life I had rebuilt.
“And that made staying away easier?” I asked.
Her face crumpled.
“Yes.”
