“I need to meet Dolly.”
Sophie swallowed.
“I figured you were going to say that.”
The next afternoon, I went to Sophie’s school.
My hands shook the entire drive.
I had imagined finding Laura thousands of times.
In some versions, she was alive and happy.
In others, she had been injured and couldn’t come home.
Sometimes I imagined discovering that she had spent years trying to find us too.
But I had never imagined meeting a stranger wearing a janitor’s badge who somehow possessed the sweater my sister wore the night she disappeared.
Sophie led me toward a hallway near the gym.
A woman was pushing a cleaning cart.
She looked to be in her late thirties.Twin related products
Dark hair.
Brown eyes.
Something about her face made me stop.
Not because she looked exactly like Laura.
She didn’t.
But there was something in the shape of her mouth.
The way she tilted her head.
A familiarity I couldn’t place.
Sophie called out.
“Dolly?”
The woman turned.
She saw me.
And froze.
Then she whispered my name.
“Margaret.”
I stopped breathing.
I had never met this woman.
I had never told Sophie to mention my name to her.
Yet she knew it.
“How do you know who I am?”
Dolly looked toward Sophie.
Then back at me.
Her eyes filled.
“Because my mother told me about you my whole life.”
I gripped the edge of a nearby table.
“Your mother?”
Dolly nodded.
“My mother is Laura.”
For several seconds, I genuinely couldn’t understand the words.
I heard them.
But my mind rejected them.
“Laura?”
“Yes.”Knitwear
“My Laura?”
Dolly started crying.
“She’s my mom.”
I sat down because my legs would no longer hold me.
Alive.
Laura was alive.
After nearly forty years of wondering whether my twin sister was buried somewhere unknown, she was alive.
I should have felt only relief.
Instead, the first thing I felt was anger.
“Where is she?”
Dolly wiped her face.
“She doesn’t live here.”
“Where?”
“I can tell you.”
“Why didn’t she come herself?”
Dolly looked down.
“Because she’s afraid you hate her.”
I laughed bitterly.
“Hate her?”
“She thought you did.”
“She disappeared!”
“I know.”
“No. You don’t know.”
My voice cracked.
“I spent my entire life wondering whether she was dead.”
Dolly flinched.
I immediately regretted my tone.
None of this was her fault.
