Shattered Memories (The Mirror Sisters 3)

“Don’t you feel funny being with another family? Doesn’t it make you unhappy remembering our Thanksgivings?” I asked. Maybe it was really rubbing off on me, Dr. Alexander’s direct and incisive questioning. Maybe I was asking him because it still made me angry that he had left us. Maybe I wanted to see how sorry he was about us, too.

“I just want everyone around me happy. I’ll think about myself tomorrow.” He smiled. “Just call me Scarlett O’Hara.”

“You and Troy with your old movie quotes,” I said.

“Oh, yeah? Sounds like a boy I would like.”

We got out of the car. My father got my suitcase, and we walked to the front door. He still had the key.

Mother was waiting eagerly for me in our small foyer. I could see how different she was from the woman I had left the day my father took me to Littlefield. She looked more like the mother I remembered before all this had happened. For one thing, she was back to wearing bright colors and had on an orange Calvin Klein fit-and-flare cable-knit dress I recalled. She looked like she had put weight back on, too. She had always had a figure her girlfriends envied. I saw she’d had her hair recently styled in her familiar textured bob, a little longer than usual and with longer bangs. She was wearing light makeup, and her complexion looked as rosy as it had been.

I had anticipated Irene greeting us at the door, but she was nowhere in sight. My father carried in my suitcase and paused to smile at my mother.

“You look very nice, Keri,” he said.

“Thank you,” she quipped, like someone dismissing a pest. “Kaylee, you look like you’ve grown another inch or something. Maybe I just forgot how tall you are. Come in, come in,” she urged. “I’ve made some changes in the house I want you to see, and then we’ll have some lunch, and you can tell me all about your school. I sent Irene out to get us fresh bagels and that cheese you and Haylee love.”

It was weird now hearing references to the two of us. No one at school but Troy knew yet that I had a twin sister.

My father gave me the look that asked if I was going to be all right.

“I’ll take my suitcase, Daddy. Thank you.”

“If either of you need me for anything, I’m a phone call away,” he said, handing it to me.

My mother’s all-too-familiar look of disdain invaded her revived look of happiness. “Right. A phone call away,” she said dryly. “How lucky we are.”

I hugged my father and watched him leave. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was out on a ledge a thousand feet above the ground and had nothing to grasp but myself. The moment the front door closed behind my father, however, my mother seized my hand.

“Come on,” she said excitedly. “I have so much to show you before Haylee comes.”

I followed behind her, glancing at the dining-room table and seeing how beautifully it was set for tomorrow night. She paused when she saw where my gaze had gone.

“I found all those Thanksgiving decorations we had stored in the pantry,” she said. “Remember how you and Haylee helped me put them up, both of you making sure everything was pinned just right? What a team we three were back then.”

If we were going to remember good times, I thought, were we going to remember the bad ones? Should I even suggest why Haylee wasn’t here?

“Wait until you see what I’ve done to Haylee’s room,” she said. She started up the stairs.

Why, I wondered, if she was going to change a room or improve it, would she choose to do Haylee’s and not mine? Wasn’t that like rewarding Haylee?

Not a thing had been changed in my room. Every single thing was exactly where I had left it. I put my suitcase down. She was waiting impatiently in the doorway. Stay calm, I told myself. Don’t be too quick to judge. I followed her to Haylee’s room.

Daddy hadn’t mentioned how much brighter Mother had made it. With pink polka-dot curtains, pink floral bedding, and a light pink rug, all new, it smelled like a room in a newly constructed home. Three of our rag dolls looked like they had been washed, or maybe they were even new, duplicated. All three were dressed in multicolored outfits. She had them on the oversize pillows, looking at us. There was a vase with a rainbow of artificial flowers on Haylee’s desk, too. I stared at it. It was on the computer desk where Haylee had arranged for my abduction. At least there was no computer there, new or otherwise.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Mother asked. “I had a decorator, you know.”

“Yes,” I said, but I really had doubts that Haylee was going to like this. It seemed to explode with c

olor. If a room could be exaggerated, this was it. Mother was trying too hard to wash away the past. It was a room for a much younger girl.

My subdued reaction annoyed her. She stepped forward to straighten one of the framed rock-star posters hanging on the right wall. I hadn’t noticed it.

“I think this singer was one of your favorites, right?”

“More Haylee’s,” I said. If I had said that a year ago, she would have ripped it off the wall.

“Well, it will be more of a homecoming for her, then, won’t it?”