Gemini

At one point, Callie, stopped and was pulling me to go across the street.

“No, Callie, this way,” I said.

Callie was pulling me harder toward the street.

“Allison,” she said.

My heart pounded when I heard her say the name and then I realized Callie was pointing to a girl walking across the street with long dark hair. I soon realized it wasn’t Allison, but just the few seconds I thought it might be her, were enough to show me how intense it would be when I laid eyes on her again.

Would she even show up here to work with Callie next week? I don’t know how she could. If she does, at least my mother knows everything now.

She knows more than Allison does, in fact.

Not for long. I needed to get home and start working on that letter. I needed to pour my heart out to her, even if it’s the first and last time.

CHAPTER 32

ALLISON

Mercury, your Ruler, goes retrograde today, Gemini, so you might be quite reflective. This presents a wonderful opportunity for great spiritual growth and deepening peace.

It had been a few days since Cedric’s revelation and I had asked for the week off from both jobs, citing a family emergency. I guess this could qualify as that.

I sat in my apartment alone listening to the sounds of children playing outside. It was Spring vacation week in Boston and the streets were filled with kids. The warm air blew through my window screen and the sounds of birds chirping helped me relax.

Amanda.

I have been sitting on the couch, staring at Amanda’s picture, still in disbelief. In the photo, she’s alone and leaning up against a tree. The sounds outside seem to add to the scene in the picture and I try to imagine her coming to life. In the photo, Amanda is smiling lovingly at the photographer. It was obvious who she was looking at and I still couldn’t wrap my head around it.

She was dead.

I didn’t even know she existed and she was dead. I would never know her.

But Cedric did.

Cedric knew more about my past than I did and that unnerved me.

Cedric was my sister’s boyfriend…my sister’s boyfriend. It still didn’t fully register. There is so much more I need to know. Why was he the one looking for me anyway? Did my sister even know about me before she died? I have so many questions. And why did he try to find me now?

There were so many questions left unanswered, but I wasn’t able to face him the other day a second longer once he told me the truth.

When I had first found the photo, it hadn’t even occurred to me for one second that it wasn’t me, even though I hadn’t remembered taking that picture. The shock I felt upon hearing that this was actually a photo of my twin was indescribable.

A twin.

This was like a bad Lifetime movie come true. It didn’t make sense at first, but the more I thought about it…it was certainly plausible: I never knew anything about my birth mother or the circumstances of my birth.

My mother always said she had no information either. I know that to be the truth, because my mother would have never kept something like this from me. How could the people at the adoption agency have allowed the separation of two sisters?

The ringing of the phone startled me out of my thoughts.

I picked up. “Hello?”

“Al…just checking in,” Sonia said.

Sonia would call me everyday from her nursing rotation to make sure I haven’t

done anything stupid. My mental state the first twenty-four hours after Cedric’s condo encounter was not stable. Sonia had considered taking me to a doctor to get anti-anxiety meds, but I refused.