Gemini

I picked up my fork and ate again in silence as I thought about that eerie coincidence and seemed to feel her presence in this booth. It might have been my imagination, but I felt like she was here…now…I could sense it. And Ed’s use of the name today and my recollection of the song could be her way of showing me she has been here all along. I kept this realization to myself.

Ed interrupted my thoughts. “Allison, I want you to know, we thought we were doing the right thing all those years. If we had known what would have happened, we would have handled things differently.”

I closed my eyes briefly and nodded. “I know.”

After a bit more silence, Elaine asked, “Can you tell us a little about your childhood?”

I smiled as I recalled my mother. “Sure. I had a great childhood. I guess you could say Amanda and I were both lucky to be placed in good homes. My mother, Margo, was single and always wanted a child of her own. She made a good living and was on a waiting list and one day out of the blue got a call about a baby girl. I was hers ever since that day. She was my everything and provided a great life for me. I never had a father, but she was enough. She worked, but she never missed a dance class, never missed a soccer game. And when I grew up, there was nothing I couldn’t confide in her about. She died from cancer a couple of years ago. So…it’s been hard. She was my best friend.”

As I started to cry, Ed reached across the table and grabbed my hand again and joined me in tears, saying, “So you lost your everything and we lost ours.”

I nodded. “Yeah,” I said sniffling and over the course of the next hour, I reminisced more about my mother. They shared memories of Amanda, who, it turns out, was a cheerleader in high school and won some competitions. She also studied abroad in Spain during the summer before her senior year in high school and was a grade A student. She had been majoring in journalism at Northwestern.

The lunch was emotional but the ride to their house was quiet.

When we pulled up to a beautiful but modest home in a nice suburb of Chicago, I realized my sister must have had the typical suburban upbringing.

Elaine brought Ed inside to his bedroom upstairs and when she returned I followed her down some stairs off of the kitchen into a converted garage that had been made into a bedroom.

“This was Amanda’s room. I thought maybe you would like to sleep here. It’s not exactly how she left it, but some of the things, I didn’t touch, like the bulletin board of photos over there and the items on the chest of drawers. I donated her clothes some years back, so the closet is empty. Feel free to hang all your things. It’s been a guest room for many years now.”

I looked around the pretty pink walls and décor. It was the epitome of a feminine room. There was a pink bedspread with small

white flowers, vintage Pottery Barn and the wallpaper had thick pink and white lines.

There was one window at the front of the room, which let a lot of sun in and a light summer breeze came through it.

“I’ll let you get situated. I am going to run upstairs and get you some towels and things,” she said.

“Thanks so much, Elaine.”

Left alone in Amanda’s room, I sat on the bed, looked around and then closed my eyes relishing the breeze. If I thought I could feel her presence at the restaurant, it was definitely out in full force right here. This room would be the epicenter, actually.

I immediately walked over to the bulletin board that hung on the wall. There were dozens of pictures held up by thumb tacks: Amanda’s high school graduation, cheerleading shots, a prom picture with a blonde boy who looked like Zach from the show Saved By the Bell. Then, I noticed the same picture that I had found of Amanda in Cedric’s binder. I took it off the wall and looked on the back.

To my gorgeous girlfriend, thank you for agreeing to pose for me. Love you, baby. Cedric.

I swallowed hard at seeing Cedric’s handwriting and from seeing the words ‘Love you.’

I stuck that photo back onto the board noticing another one of a young Cedric and Amanda, smiling from ear to ear, wearing St. Patrick’s Day hats and green shirts. It was always hard to see his beautiful face, but it was even harder to see him looking so happy with her, especially when she looked identical to me when I was eighteen. It was all so strange.

I turned that photo around and noticed that the date was March 2002. It was taken a month before she died. I felt tears start to form as I tried to block the accident and how she suffered before she died out of my mind.

She was so young. And she wanted to find me…she wanted me there. I had no idea she even existed and I was probably sitting in a mall food court eating taco bell when she died.

I returned to the bed, clutching the photo in tears. There were so many unknowns…would she and Cedric have gotten married and had the baby? Would she and I have met and become close? I would never know. As I continued to stare at the photo, my confused emotions continued. The photo made me jealous because he clearly cared for her, but it also made me mad because he was possibly going to break up with her a month later. And was she pregnant in the photo?

Just then, Elaine startled me, when she returned with the towels and saw me crying. She sat next to me on the bed and saw the photo in my hand, taking it gently away and looking at it.

“Cedric told me everything, you know,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“Honey, we had put him in a very difficult position, Ed and I, asking him to be the one to find you. We never really considered, his feelings…how he might feel about you, what should now be obvious…that he could fall for you. We just wanted to know you were okay and for you to know about Amanda, because that was her wish. Cedric was already in Boston and with Ed so sick, it made the most sense to ask him to confront you.”

“What exactly did Cedric tell you about us?”

“He called sometime after you found the photo at his mother’s house. He was in tears, Allison. He confessed that he had found you months before, but had kept it from us and that you two had grown very close all those weeks. He was devastated because he knew he’d lost you.”