“Listen to me, please. I do have a twin sister. I’m not the one who was on the Internet with you. I am Kaylee Fitzgerald, and my sister is Haylee Fitzgerald. Our address is Seventeen Wildwood Drive in Ridgeway. It’s about fifteen miles from here. If you go there tomorrow, you’ll see my sister. I’ll make sure either she steps out with me or we look out a window together. Okay? Please! Okay?”
He ignored me and continued preparing two cups of tea and fixing a biscuit with jelly.
“Let’s sit at the table,” he said, nodding toward it. He carried the tea and biscuits there on the tray and sat. “C’mon. It will be the first time we’ve sat and eaten something together. Very special. Everything we do for the first time together will be very special.”
“I want my clothes back!” I cried.
“I have clothes for you, lots of clothes. I kept all my mother’s things, and most of them will fit with some adjustments. My mother taught me how to do all that, too. She said, ‘Junior, these skills will come in handy while you’re still a bachelor.’ I have a sewing machine. ’Course, she thought I was going to marry a woman just like her. You’re far from just like her, from what you’ve told me. C’mon, the tea’s getting cold.”
“I want you to take off this chain,” I said. He was speaking so softly that I thought I could get him to do it if I demanded it. “Now!”
He held the teacup and stared at me. “You’re not behaving at all like we planned, Kaylee. We planned this for a long time. You were the one who wanted to do it sooner, so I don’t know why you’re acting like this. Were you lying to me all that time? That would be very bad. Lying is a kind of rot, my mother would say. The more you lie, the more your brain rots.”
“I’m not the one who was on the Internet with you! That was my sister, Haylee!” I screamed. I stood up and shouted for help at the top of my voice.
He calmly drank his tea. “No one can hear that,” he said. “The closest neighbor is a mile away. We’re on my family farm, not that we did much farming. We had a little vegetable garden and always had chickens for the eggs. When I was much younger, we had a milk cow, but it got to be too much for my father, so he sold it. Once it was a real farm, though. My great-grandfather and my grandfather ran it. We grew corn here. Everybody’s dead. I’m the last of the Cabots. Until, of course, we have children. We’ll keep going until we have a boy, right? You agreed.”
I sat again, covered my face with my hands, and began to sob.
“Hey. Is this one of your performances? You told me how good you are at fooling people. C’mon, stop it now, and have some tea and a biscuit. What do you think about our first breakfast being French toast? I’ll bring down clothes for you in the morning.
“Oh,” he continued, “there’s a brand-new toothbrush in there and toothpaste, lots of soap and shampoo, plenty of clean towels and washcloths, too. You sure you won’t have any tea and biscuits?”
I kept my hands over my face but then stopped sobbing and looked at my wrist. He had taken my watch, so I had no idea how much time had gone by since I’d first met him on the corner, but surely by now Haylee had realized something was wrong. Maybe the movie wasn’t over and Mother and Simon
Adams hadn’t come to pick us up yet. What I feared was that Haylee would believe I wanted to stay with Anthony, that I liked talking to him or something, and she wouldn’t panic about my not returning. She would probably be more angry than afraid for me. And I had no idea if she had gotten sicker and was spending all this time in the bathroom.
She couldn’t have told him she was me. He just had the two names confused. They were too similar. That had happened many times in our lives.
“Well,” Anthony said, “I’ve got to get to bed. I’m getting up especially early just to make you breakfast before I go to work. I don’t always work on Saturdays, but the schedule just fell that way this weekend. I promise, I won’t work next weekend. When I’m home, I’ll spend all my time with you.”
I watched him carry the tea and biscuits back to the counter. He washed his cup and wrapped the biscuits that remained as carefully as if they were precious jewelry. He placed them in the bread box and then, after washing down the counter, turned back to me.
“See how nicely I keep everything, how clean and organized? You have to do the same, Kaylee. Or you might lose some privileges.”
“What privileges?” I screamed. “You have me chained to a wall. You’ve abducted me. Someone surely saw you.”
“No, I was careful about that. They could turn that corner into a cemetery these days. And I really wish you would stop saying words like kidnapped and abducted. We’re not starting out on the right foot, as my father used to say. He said it about everything. It was as if you had a definite wrong foot and should be hopping all the time to avoid using it. Your mother ever say that to you? Now that you’re here, I’m looking forward to hearing lots more about your mother. I understood why you hated her comparing you with her all the time. Parents sometimes won’t let their children be their own person. My father was more like that to me than my mother, but she would often do and say similar things. You know, when you think about all we have to tell each other about ourselves, it will easily take years.”
He smiled.
“But neither of us is going anywhere soon,” he added.
I felt trapped in a nightmare. No matter how hard I shook myself, I couldn’t wake up. When he walked toward me, I cringed.
The cat reappeared and sniffed around the floor beneath the counter.
“Mr. Moccasin will find any crumbs, only I don’t drop any. My mother would have killed me. She was one of those people who believe cleanliness is next to godliness. She’d be down here every night inspecting. I had to change my bedsheets twice a week and do my own laundry. Actually, I was doing it when I was eight. She would say, ‘Junior, good habits die hard, so form them first.’ Wise old lady, my mother. That’s why I want you to form good habits here first.”
“Please,” I said. “Let me go. I won’t tell anyone what you did. I’ll just go home. Please.”
“Just go home? This is your home, Kaylee. That was the plan.”
“I’m not the one you were talking to all the time. You have me mixed up with my sister, Haylee. I swear.”
His face seemed to transform into cold, dark marble, the shadows closing around him. “I didn’t mind this in the beginning,” he said in a firm, hard voice. “I can play games as well as anyone, but you’re carrying it too far and too long. I want you to stop it.”
After a long moment, he smiled again, and his whole body seemed to soften. He stepped out of the shadows.