Thirty

We’d been on the road for a little more than half an hour without speaking. I was thinking through what I’d say when we got there. Zach mostly watched the road, but every few minutes he would turn and glare at me. Finally, he pulled off the highway into a truck stop parking lot. He killed the engine and turned to face me.

“I’m going to run in and use the facilities, and then, when I get back in the car, we’re going to turn around and drive home.”

“Do you really consider Shallow Pond home?” I asked. “You don’t even know why you’re living there.”

“I’m okay with not knowing who my benefactor is,” Zach said. “Obviously, he or she doesn’t want me to know, and that’s fine with me. I’m not going to drive through the night just to find someone who doesn’t even want to be found.”

He got out of the car and slammed the door after him. I weighed my options. I could tell him what I knew, but I suspected that would make him want to hightail it back to Shallow Pond even faster.

My phone rang. I assumed it was Annie calling. I realized I’d never left her a note. I felt only slightly bad; it wasn’t exactly like she’d done such a good job of sharing information with me over the years. But when I looked at the number, I realized I didn’t recognize it. In an instant, I knew it had to be Gracie.

“Hello?” I said into the phone.

“Barbara? Where are you?”

“Officer Hantz?” I couldn’t imagine why he was calling. With everything that had happened, I’d forgotten that he was out on a date with my sister. Wait, if he was on a date with Annie, what was he doing calling me?

“I had to take Annie to the hospital. She collapsed.” For an officer of the law, he sounded panicked and nervous. “Barbara, you need to come here immediately. Do you have someone who can give you a ride?”

Zach unlocked his door and got in. He saw I was on the phone and silently mouthed the words, “Who is it?” I waved him away.

“What seems to be wrong with her?” I hoped Officer Hantz was overreacting. He probably wasn’t used to his date collapsing on him. It was unfair of me to get him to take her out without telling him she was sick.

“She had some sort of seizure,” Officer Hantz said. “She’s in a coma.”

I felt like I had just plunged into a tub of ice water. For a moment I forgot how to speak.

“Barbara?”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” I said.

I felt numb and drained. I clicked off my phone and stared out at the truck stop’s glowing sign.

“What’s going on?” Zach asked.

“It’s Annie,” I said. “She’s at the hospital. She’s in a coma.”

“What? Was she in an accident?”

“No, it’s the disease. She collapsed.”

“Which hospital?” Zach asked as he started the car. “I’ll drive you there.”

I looked down at the papers still clutched in my hand. The overhead lights at the truck stop shone down into the car like a spotlight, illuminating the scrawled handwriting on the front of the envelope.

“We need to go to Dunmore first,” I told Zach.

“Your sister’s in the hospital.”

“And he’s the one who put her there.” I waved the envelope in his face.

Zach grabbed me by the wrist, his hand tight around me. His face was inches from mine. I stared into his eyes and could feel my heart speed up, but this time I felt something else as well, a sickening sense of revulsion.

“How did my benefactor put Annie in the hospital?”

“Because your benefactor and the man I used to think was my father are one and the same person.”

“I thought your father was dead.”

“Until an hour or so ago, so did I. Zach, we’re alike.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Zach released my wrist. He popped the car into gear and stepped too hard on the gas, but he bypassed the entrance to the highway that would take us back toward Shallow Pond and instead turned onto the ramp toward Dunmore. “Who is Donald Haley?”

“He made me,” I said, “and he made you.”

“How do you know?”

“Because you’re his clone.”

“And you know this because … ?”

“Because you look like him. That’s why my sister freaked out when she saw you before.”

“This is a bit much to believe,” Zach said.

“Yeah, I know. I’ve been there before, believe me.”

“Just give me a moment to think about this.” Zach held up his hand to silence me. He didn’t take his eyes off the road, but I saw his brow furrow as he considered what I’d told him. A few minutes later he said, “Why would he do something like that?”

“That’s one of the things I plan on asking him.”

“We’re the same age, which means he must have created us at the same time, right? He leaves me on the steps of a convent until he has me move to Shallow Pond.”

“We’re like puppets,” I said. I rested my head on the window. The cool of the glass helped to chase away the new wave of nausea that washed over me.

“I don’t like this,” Zach said. “I don’t like any of this.”