CHAPTER 10
“Already?” I opened the front door, and Mimi followed me in. “You were in Boston for one day and you’re back?”
She curled up on my sofa like a cat pouncing on a favored spot. She tucked her feet underneath her hips and relaxed. “I should have called. But then I realized I didn’t have your number. How’d we let that happen?”
I thought about her departure the morning before. I’d been so focused on my upcoming date with John, I hadn’t taken the time to give her a proper send-off. “So you flew back? Just to get my phone number?”
Mimi laughed like someone with a secret that gave her a leg up on everyone. I wondered if that kind of confidence came from having a mother around to help you believe the fantasy that everything would turn out fine. “No, silly. I’m back for another round of interviews.”
“At the university? So soon?”
Mimi shrugged in that why-shouldn’t-good-things-happen-to-me kind of way. “Maybe I wowed ’em. Maybe they’re desperate. Who knows? And who cares? I got on that plane yesterday afternoon hoping to get a call back from any place I mailed an application. Didn’t matter where. I need a job. By the time I was walking out of Logan my cell phone rang. It was the department secretary here. She wanted to know how soon I could get back to Madison for another day of meet and greets. I told her my time was her time. She asked, ‘How’s Monday work?’ I told her it works great. She told me I’ll be meeting with two faculty members I’ve not met before and again with the guy whose position I’ll be taking while he’s on sabbatical. And to top it off”—she paused for dramatic effect—“I’ve been invited to join the department dean and her husband for dinner. The dean of the History Department from the University of By-God Wisconsin and her husband have invited me to dinner. How’s that sound?”
I set my purse on the kitchen counter. “Sounds like you got the job. Your interviews are on Monday? This is Saturday. Why’d they want you back two days early?”
Her face lost its enthusiastic smile. “Is this bad that I’m here?” She stood and looked toward the door. “I’m sorry, Tess. I guess I got too excited. I spent the entire plane ride back to Boston thinking about us. I mean, this whole thing blows me away. I drew columns and diagrams in my journal, trying to make sense of everything. I found myself wishing we had more time to explore whatever this is that’s going on. When the secretary asked if I had a preference for flight times, I asked her if it would be okay if I came right back. Sorry, Tess. Sometimes I’m too impulsive for my own good. I should have asked you first if it was okay. I got so amped up about the possibility of spending more time with you. And like I said, we hadn’t exchanged numbers. So I couldn’t call you, could I? The secretary said it made no difference to her when I came, as long as I was at the department, ready to interview, Monday morning at nine. But I’m intruding, right?” She shook her head. “Mom’s always telling me not to get ahead of myself. That I have to make sure the rest of the world’s prepared before Hurricane Mimi gets ready to blow. Don’t worry. I’ll get out of your hair.” She winked and gave me that glittering smile she uses so effectively. “I know my way back to the hotel. But, hey, maybe we could grab brunch or something this weekend.”
A couple of days earlier I was as curious as she was to figure out what the universe had in store by letting the paths of two look-alikes cross. But truth be told, I hadn’t given Mimi and our situation much thought since she left, other than using our eerie encounter as first date amusement with John. I know it sounds odd, but between my date and the whole mother’s birthday thing with my dad, I kind of shoved Mimi to the back of my mind. Then there she was, energized and excited to continue solving our mystery. And seeing her again, what can I say? Maybe I realized I still wanted to see where this whole thing would lead.
“No,” I said. “Don’t even think of going back to that hotel. You’ll stay here.”
“Really?” she asked. “I don’t want you to feel pressured to take me in like some stray puppy who turned up on your porch.”
“But isn’t that what you did?” I teased. “Show up on my porch?”
She smiled that secret-keeping smile again. “I guess so.”
I pointed to the stove. “You want some tea?”
Mimi crossed the room and sat at my breakfast nook table. “I’d love some. Then I want to hear all about your date with the handsome book borrower. Tell me every detail.”
* * *
It was an hour before our conversation made its way back to the mystery of the carbon-copy women. It had been fun sharing my date with her. She sighed like a twelve year old when I told her about John saving the table for us with his RESERVED sign and later handing it to me to use as a place marker.
“Oh, my god,” she said. “A true romantic. And he listened! He actually held in his memory for longer than it takes to order a beer that you read books about time. How cool is that?”
I blushed and told her I thought it was pretty damned cool. She told me to go on. Thinking back on it now, Mimi seemed especially curious when I mentioned I’d told John about how I’d met my look-alike and all the coincidences linking the two of us.
“Did he say anything about me?” she asked.
“He doesn’t know you. What could he say?”
Mimi waved her question away. “Good point.” She wanted to know when I planned to see him again. I told her I didn’t know.
“You haven’t called him, have you?”
I hadn’t. She said that was a good tactical move. That I should go about my life and not give him any cause to think I was sitting around waiting for him to crook his finger so I could come running.
“And it wouldn’t hurt to not be available next time he asks you out,” Mimi said. “Men like the chase. Honor his inner Neanderthal. Make him work before he drags you back to his cave.”
“Our date ended less than twenty-four hours ago,” I said. “John said he wanted to get together soon, and I told him I felt the same.”
“You think that was wise? Maybe it would be good for him to wonder if you have any interest in him at all.”
Her advice irritated me. “Listen, Mimi, I like this guy. I haven’t had a date in way longer than I care to admit. I don’t see any harm in letting him know I’m interested in him. Besides, aren’t you the one who all but pushed me into his arms?”
Mimi wiggled in place—a little chair dance of pride. “I did, didn’t I? See how well this is turning out? Remember that next time I suggest you do something.”
I took my last sip of tea and asked if she would like another cup. There weren’t any more details about my date with John to discuss, and we both knew there was another topic she was itching to give some attention. She passed on the tea.
“Tell me about the columns and diagrams,” I said. “The ones you outlined on the flight back to Boston. Have you come up with any working ideas for what’s going on here?”
“Have you ever heard the expression, ‘If you hear hoofbeats, think horses’? It’s one of the first things my research design professor taught me.”
I hadn’t, but it seemed like something even a college dropout such as myself could decipher. “Things are probably what they seem? Is that it? Don’t go looking for exotic justifications when a straightforward explanation is bound to be correct more times than not?”
“Exactly. See, Tess? You’ve got the mind of a scientist. You really ought to think about going back to school.”
Mimi’s opinions on what I ought to be doing stoked my irritation. Especially given they were so in tune with what my own inner voice had been yammering at me for years. But that nag always got drowned out by the self-damning screams of my more vocal interior critic.
“Tell me what you came up with, Mimi.”
She took a long deep breath, as if she was preparing for a big announcement. “I think we were ignoring the horses when we first met. You tried to push all this stuff away as nothing more than a coincidence. I, on the other hand, couldn’t wait to springboard into some wild adventure. I blame my mother for that. She’s always up for the next exotic escapade. I think I come by it honestly. I got myself convinced that this was going to be a twisted mystery. Remember that dramatic story I spun out about hush money and family secrets?”
“How could I forget?” I asked. “I still have whiplash from all the let’s-say things you threw my way.”
“See? We were hearing hoofbeats and thinking butterflies. At least I was. But I’ve had two plane rides to calm down. I think what’s going on is nothing more than precisely what it looks like. I think the hoofbeats we’re hearing really are horses.”
“Meaning?” I had a good idea where she was headed, but I didn’t want to be the one to say it. I didn’t even want to be the one to hear it.
“There’s a word for what we are,” she said. “One that describes two people who are mirror images of one another, share the same birthday, and whose mothers have the same last name.” Mimi swallowed hard, as though the word required the strength of Hercules to spit out.
“Twins,” she said. “Identical twins.”
A humming buzzed deep in my inner ear. I remember shaking my head. At first it was slow, like I couldn’t believe what she was saying could possibly hold any merit. But the words identical twins hung there in the air, and when Mimi didn’t take them back, chalk this off as some sort of misguided joke, or offer any alternate options, my head shaking picked up speed. Faster and faster. I thought if I could only wave my head hard enough and fast enough it would erase the dreaded words from the very ether into which they’d been spoken.
Mimi stood and brought the pad and pen I keep on my kitchen counter over to the table. She wrote something on it. I couldn’t see what. I was too busy shivering.
“My mother’s last name is Winslow.” She held her hand over the pad. “Your mother’s maiden name is Winslow. Tell me your mother’s first name.”
My head shaking stopped. So did my shivering. I stared into Mimi’s eyes. What I saw there compelled me to answer even though I had no desire to take one more step down this twisting road. The consequences of verifying Mimi’s assumptions were too overwhelming. Still, her eyes urged me to speak. It wasn’t a dare I saw in the blue of her irises. It wasn’t even a command. What I saw was an assurance that I could do it. I could say the words I had to in order to resolve this.
“Audra,” I whispered. “My mother’s name is Audra Winslow Kincaid.”
Mimi slid the pad across to me.
My eyes flared as I read what she’d written. I thought of that time in chemistry class my sophomore year at West High. Kevin Richter was at the lab station next to mine. He was too busy flirting with Cindy Norstlin to pay attention to the steps our teacher had listed on the blackboard. He picked up the wrong bottle and mixed something into his beaker of ammonia, and a wicked cloud of light blue gas streamed straight toward my face. I remembered the yelp I let out and Mr. Tencil grabbing me by the shoulders. He pulled me to the corner and held me under a special shower that flooded water directly into my eyes.
My eyes felt that same acidic burn as I read Mimi’s note.
Happy Birthday to Audra Winslow.
My dear mother turns 56 today.
I read the note again. Then I read it a third time. I remember thinking how Mimi’s handwriting was so similar to mine. It didn’t surprise me. In that moment I thought there was nothing in the world that would surprise, shock, or stun me ever again.
I was wrong, of course.
“Now what?” I asked.
Mimi got up and returned to the kitchen. She pulled a bag out from behind my purse. “I brought this,” she said. “From Boston. We’re going to need absolute proof.”
She set the bag in front of me. My hands didn’t shake when I pulled out two boxes. Like I said, I was beyond all that.
“They’re DNA kits,” Mimi explained. “A simple swipe of our cheeks, drop them into a mailbox, and we’ll have our genetic proof. One way or another.”
One way or another, I thought. Mimi will have her answer as to who this doppelganger is, and I’ll have my proof as to why my mother left me.
“We both know how this is going to turn out,” I said. My mother left me to raise another child. My twin. The better me. The one she really could love.
“We need proof,” Mimi insisted.
But didn’t we already have it? We’d been buried by the hoofbeats. We’d found our horses. What more would this little piece of commercial science bring us?
I fumbled with the package, pulled out the instructions, and read them aloud.