Mirror Image

He knew!

“My God.”

How could she explain?

“You’ve lost so much weight,” he whispered. Gently, he pressed his hand against the side of her breast. He looked over her body. Avery’s blood flowed toward the contact of his hand. A small, helpless sound issued out of her throat.

“I don’t mean to imply that you look bad—just… different. Stands to reason, I guess, that you would lose several pounds.” Their eyes met and held for a moment, then he withdrew his hand. “I’ll go get Mandy.”

Avery took a deep breath to steady her jangled nerves. Until now she hadn’t realized how unnerving the discovery of the truth was going to be to both of them. Nor had she realized how far her feelings for him had extended. His touch had left her insides as weak as her extremities.

But she didn’t have the luxury of letting her emotions crumble now. She braced herself for what was to come. She even closed her eyes, dreading the horror she would see on the child’s face when she first looked at her disfigured “mother.” She heard them enter and approach the bed. “Carole?”

Slowly, Avery opened her eyes. Tate was carrying Mandy against his chest. She was dressed in a white pinafore with a navy blue and white print dress beneath it. Her legs were encased in white stockings and she had on navy leather shoes. There was a cast on her left arm.

Her hair was dark and glossy. It was very thick and heavy, but not as long as Avery remembered it. As though reading her mind, Tate explained, “We had to cut her hair because some of it was singed.” It was bobbed to chin length. She wore straight bangs above solemn brown eyes as large and round as quarters and as resigned as a doe’s caught in cross hairs.

She was a beautiful child, yet she was unnaturally impassive. Instead of registering repulsion or fear or curiosity, which would have been the expected reactions, she registered nothing.

“Give Mommy the present you brought her,” Tate prompted.

With her right fist she was strangling the stems of a bouquet of daisies. She timidly extended them toward Avery. When Avery’s fingers failed to grasp them, Tate took them from Mandy and gently laid them on Avery’s chest.

“I’m going to set you here on the bed while I find some water to put the flowers in.” Tate eased Mandy down on the edge of the bed, but when he moved away, she whimpered and fearfully clutched the lapels of his sports jacket.

“Okay,” he said, “guess not.” He shot Avery a wry smile and gingerly sat down behind Mandy, barely supporting his hip on the edge of the mattress.

“She colored this for you today,” he said, addressing Avery over Mandy’s head. From the breast pocket of his jacket, he withdrew a folded piece of manila paper and shook it out. “Tell her what it is, Mandy.”

The multicolored scribbles didn’t look like anything, but Mandy whispered, “Horses.”

“Grandpa’s horses,” Tate said. “He took her riding yesterday, so this morning I suggested that she color you a picture of the horses while I was working.”

Avery lifted her hand and signaled for him to hold the picture in front of her. She studied it at length before Tate laid it on her chest, along with the bouquet of daisies.

“I think Mommy likes your picture.” Tate continued looking at Avery with that odd expression.

The child wasn’t much interested in whether or not her artwork was appreciated. She pointed at the splint on Avery’s nose. “What that?”

“That’s part of the bandages Grandma and I told you about, remember?” To Avery he said, “I thought it was coming off today.”

She rolled her hand from a palm down position to palm up.

“Tomorrow?” he asked.

She nodded.

“What’s it doing?” Mandy asked, still intrigued by the splint.

“It’s sort of like your cast. It’s protecting Mommy’s face until it gets well, like the cast is protecting your arm while the bone inside grows back together.”

Mandy listened to the explanation, then turned her solemn stare back onto Avery. “Mommy’s crying.”

“I think it’s because she’s very glad to see you.”

Avery nodded, closed her eyes, held them closed for several seconds, then opened them. In that way she hoped to convey an emphatic yes. She was glad to see the child, who could so easily have died a fiery death. The crash had left emotional scars, but Mandy had survived and she would live to overcome her residual fear and timidity. Avery was also assailed by guilt and sorrow that she wasn’t who they thought she was.

In one of those sudden, unexpected moves that only a child can execute, Mandy thrust out her hand, ready to touch Avery’s bruised cheek. Tate reached around her and caught her hand just before it made contact. Then, thinking better of it, he guided her hand down.