Broken Glass (The Mirror Sisters 2)

I sat and opened a catalogue. Just looking at all this reinforced my sense of dread. It strengthened my fear that I would be here for a very long time, so long, in fact, that after a while, even people who loved me would have trouble worrying about me or even thinking about me. Their lives would demand that they put me aside for most of their day, and eventually, I’d be gone so long that I would be as good as dead to them.

What else could happen? They couldn’t spend their lives waiting by the phone, waiting for the police to bring them good news, or any news, for that matter. Maybe every week they’d go on a search party themselves, until they decided that it did no good. Maybe Mother would make Daddy put my picture on billboards or take out ads in newspapers, even pay for radio and television pleas, but eventually, even the news people would go on to other stories. Everyone had to continue with their lives, didn’t they? The hardest things to hold back were the hands of a clock.

Of course, I wondered how fast Haylee would get used to my not being at her side. I wanted to think it would take her much longer than she had hoped. I wanted to hate her and wish great pain and suffering on her, but I couldn’t do it. I could imagine her sitting in a dark pool of regret, and as hard as it would be for anyone to believe, I felt sorrier for her than I did for myself. In the end, no matter what she did, I always felt sorrier for her. She hated that. Maybe deep down, that was why I did it.

“Don’t you dare pity me,” she would say. “I’m not a bit weaker than you are, Kaylee. If anything, it’s the other way around.”

I saw her even now, my proud, self-centered identical twin sister, pouting at the living-room window, gazing out at the world she dreamed was hers, a world far different from the one we were in.

“You know what, Kaylee?” she had once said to me when I’d asked her why she was staring so hard out the window. “I prefer looking through windows rather than looking into mirrors. That way, I don’t have to see you, too.”

It was so shocking a thing to hear that it sent not only a chill down my spine but a sharp pain into my heart. Brothers and sisters could love each other more than anyone else could ever love them, but they could hate each other more, too. The rupture in family ties was more painful because it went so much deeper. It went right through your blood and ripped apart your heritage. Nothing left you more alone. It was the very definition of homelessness. You could see it clearly in the faces of those discarded and left on some unfriendly street to slowly drift into invisibility. Even the memories of them cast off shattered like glass stars and fell into the gutter to be swept into some sewer of the forgotten.

The sewer of the forgotten was where I could end up, too. It was only a matter of time, time that pressed against my face and pushed me further and further away from those who knew and loved me, even Mother. She was sure to drift into some fog where, confused and defeated, she would wither years before her time and become as silent and useless as a bell that was never rung. I was crying inside for everyone but myself. How could I change it? How could someone who had never been very selfish suddenly become ruthlessly so?

I flipped through some more pages and then looked at Anthony working so diligently on my sandwich. He was measuring out the ingredients as though a tenth of an inch mattered. He cut the sandwich into four perfectly equal pieces and then framed some lettuce and tomato around them with great care. When he was finished, he gazed at it for a moment, like someone who had just made a beautiful work of art for someone he loved. He turned to me, smiled, put a napkin over his arm, and brought me the sandwich just the way a waiter in a very expensive restaurant would.

“Madam.” He put it before me and stepped back. “How’s that? See? I’m really an artist. Oh, I got your favorite soda, too, root beer,” he said, and returned to the refrigerator to take out a bottle, open it, and pour the soda into a glass.

That was Haylee’s favorite soda, not mine. Had he taken notes about everything she had mentioned? What hadn’t she told him about herself and the things she preferred? Actually, it didn’t surprise me. She was always eager to tell everyone else what was the best this or that. I wasn’t very fond of root beer, but I never refused it when she asked Mother for it. Drinking and eating things she liked and I didn’t particularly care for was so much a part of my life that doing this now seemed perfectly normal.

On the other hand, if I liked something and she didn’t, she would eat it when I asked for it the first time, but later she would warn me never to ask for it again, or she would find things I really didn’t like and deliberately ask for them. I could have argued and stamped my foot like she often did, but it was easier simply to do what she wanted. Now, ironically, it was easier to do what Anthony wanted. In some ways, if I closed my eyes, I was home again.

“Go on,” he said. “Start eating. Don’t wait for me. I know you’re hungry.”

He returned to make his own sandwich, and I did begin eating. I hadn’t been here that long, although every passing minute was more like an hour to me, and the passing of a day, despite how hard I tried to fight it, was like the pounding of another nail into my coffin. Any hope I had was changing from merely dripping away to leaking heavily out of my heart. I wanted to resist, even hate, every kindness he directed toward me, but my body continued to defy my will.

I was hungry. I was thirsty. I could tell myself I needed to eat in order to have the strength to fight, but I knew I would accept the food and drink no matter what, and I was u

pset with myself for it. The more I consented to whatever he offered, the more discouraged I felt. I was surrendering in little ways, especially by keeping myself as clean as I could and as healthy as I could. I knew he was pleased, and I did think that now, seeing how he simply would refuse to believe my resistance, it was futile to continue to defy him openly. I really despised myself for my next thought, because it was as if I was finding ways to justify my compliance by forgiving him, but I considered him emotionally desperate, someone to pity.

From what he had told me, he had no family, and from what I could see, he had no friends. Yes, he had abducted me and chained me to the wall, but he was capable of being merciful and even considerate. How could I really fight such a person? Would I have the will and the strength to stab him with the bread knife and, if not kill him, wound him seriously enough to enable me to escape, especially when he was asleep beside me? I’d have the opportunity, but could I do it?

He returned to the table and sat. “How’s the sandwich?” He needed compliments, but it wasn’t difficult to sound honest about this one.

“It’s very good,” I said.

“Fresh stuff. Can’t beat it,” he said, and began to eat. He had poured himself a beer. “When I moved down here, mostly to get out of my father’s hair, if you want to know, Ma would bring me dinner. One day, my father got so mad about her doing that, probably one drunken day, that he made her give me leftovers from the night before, even two nights before. ’Course, I didn’t realize it at first. She still dressed it up good, but I eventually found out. ‘You can always come upstairs to eat with us, Anthony,’ she told me when I complained.

“I knew what my father wanted. He wanted me to give in, tell him I was sorry or something, and beg him to forgive me and let me move back upstairs, see, but I didn’t do it. I ate the leftovers. Except for holidays and stuff. He thought that was okay.”

“Why did your father dislike you so much?” I asked.

He paused. I could see he was debating whether to tell me. “Truth is, he never believed I was really his son,” he said.

“Why not?”

“I didn’t look that much like him. Different hair color, different eyes. I was better-looking. You know what he believed?”

Of course, I thought that his father believed his mother had an affair with someone, but I didn’t want to suggest anything bad about his mother, so I shook my head.

“He thought I was switched in the maternity ward and my mother didn’t notice. He said I was the child of some teenage girl who got pregnant and was going to give me away anyway. He claimed he knew one was there at the time.”

“But who would make the switch, and why?”

“He said there was a nurse who didn’t like him. Stupid, I know . . . like where was the real me, then, right?”

“Right,” I said. I couldn’t imagine having someone like that for a father, someone who despised your very existence.