Mill Valley, California
September 2022
A REVERSE ADDRESS LOOKUP for Bev Kelly turns up no results, nor does a Google search for her name. I don’t have a phone number for her, and I have no idea if she has moved over the past decade. She could be living in a different state, a different country, even.
I try to remember the house Josh took me to when we visited Mill Valley so long ago. We had been so inescapably giddy about our engagement and had taken a road trip to surprise our parents with the news. Mine had been shocked but had welcomed Josh into the family. Bev had been decidedly colder.
Little details of the house in Mill Valley flit into my memory. The white exterior, bordered by bright gardens, a hobby Josh told me his mother got into after her retirement, when they moved away from the Napa area. The inside, all vintage charm and cluttered with family tchotchkes.
Josh had attended Berkeley and told me he had visited home on weekends often, easily able to commute. I rack my brain for the address of the house but can’t even recall the name of the street. I start to panic without any direction to go on. Then I remember Josh had been at the gym early on the morning we visited, and he’d emailed me the address, asking if I could drive. I never delete any of my emails. I open my email on my phone and navigate into the folder labeled Josh. And after taking a few moments to load, there it is. Mom, 10 Summit Avenue.
I plug it into my GPS now and am told I’ll arrive in exactly one hour and twelve minutes.
The drive passes in a blur, the vineyards that pattern both sides of the highway rising into parched foothills and trees. The closer I get to my destination, the more terrified I am about what I need to say to Bev. I know Josh isn’t really dead—when did you find out he wasn’t?
After Josh died, Bev had softened to me, and we’d found solace in our shared mourning. But when I’d started ranting my conspiracy theories at the funeral, I could sense her sympathy morph into frustration and horror. The funeral was the last time we’d ever seen each other. There was nothing linking us together afterward. Until today, my last contact with her was an email six months after Josh died, apologizing for my behavior at the funeral. It was something my therapist encouraged me to do, a phone call I needed to make. I took the easy way out and sent the email instead. I’d been drunk on my grief, and the idea of hearing Bev’s voice was too heavy to bear. Her response had been short. No need to apologize. It’s a hard time for everyone.
My fingers grip the steering wheel so tightly that my knuckles turn bone white. Bev should have been the one apologizing to me. She knew how much I loved Josh, and she never once tried to contact me after learning he was alive.
I arrive in Mill Valley shortly past two o’clock. I park on the street outside the house, somehow relieved that it looks the same as it did in my memories. The landscaping is immaculate, with delicate pink sumac and yellow-eyed asters.
My panic rises as I walk up the flagstone pathway leading to the front door, and my hand is a sweaty fist when I knock. At first, there are no signs that anyone is on the other side, and I wonder if maybe Bev isn’t home, or if she really has moved over the past decade. But then I hear light footfalls. The door swings open, revealing a petite gray-haired woman, her smile falling as soon as she sees my face.
“June,” she says, the one syllable of my name landing like a dull thud between us.
“Hi, Bev,” I say.
My former mother-in-law looks almost exactly like I remember her, except with more lines around her eyes, more white in her hair. She’s thin and elegant, her skin burnished by the California sun, her eyes pale green behind a pair of tortoiseshell glasses. The shock on her face mirrors the fear in mine.
“I’m sorry to just drop in, but I was in Napa, and I need to talk to you. Is it okay if I come in?” My voice is steady, somehow so much more assured than I actually feel, and I have to fight to keep the accusation out of it.
“I—well—I suppose so,” she says, her mouth still slightly agape. “I’m so surprised to see you here. We haven’t talked in … well, in such a long time.” She inches the door open. “I wasn’t expecting company—I was just about to do some gardening.”
The house looks different than it did when Josh and I came here. She has renovated, replacing the older flooring with shiny bleached hardwood, the wall paint now a muted gray. The vibe is beachy and relaxed. Kieran’s video game console is gone; the last time I looked him up, he was in college and doing some backpacking. Bev is an empty nester now, which must be difficult, given the way Josh used to talk about her warmth as a mother.
On the wall is a black-and-white sign that reads Family is everything. Despite the sentiment, or maybe because of it, I shudder.
“We can sit outside,” Bev says as I trail behind her through the sunny home and onto a deck overlooking a backyard resplendent with flowers and plants. She gestures to the plush patio furniture, and I sink onto a chair while she goes to the kitchen to make lemonade. I briefly check my phone. One missed call from Kyle.
She returns with the lemonade, a pitcher and two ice-filled glasses, and perches on the chair across from mine, like she’s afraid to sit down. I suck in a short breath, then force myself to speak. Once, I’d been so eager to impress my soon-to-be mother-in-law; now, it’s taking all my resolve not to lash out at her.
“I know you’re wondering why I’m here. I think there are some things we need to discuss.”
Her smile is tight. “You’re in town for work? Business for the bar?”
I try to conceal my surprise that she even knows about the bar. She must have looked me up after Josh was gone, kept up with my life—the same way Andrew Smith had.
“Yes. Well, sort of. I’m here looking at some wineries. I actually just got engaged last month, and we’re looking at possibly getting married out here.” I watch her face carefully. Her gaze flickers to my ring finger.
“That’s wonderful,” she says. “Congratulations. You deserve to find love again. Josh would have wanted that.”
I purse my lips, not wanting to think about what Josh would have wanted.
“The thing is,” I say, “I know Josh isn’t really dead.”
Her expression sags, her eyes hooded and sad, and she opens her mouth to speak, but I cut her off.
“I’m not actually here on business. I found a website for the Backyard Winery. And I know Josh is alive, and that he’s living there as Andrew Smith. He’s married to a woman named Sadie, and they have a family. But you know that already.”
The truth hangs between us, as thick and impenetrable as steel. Bev’s eyes dart around, like she’s looking for an escape route. Her hands tremble in her lap.
“It’s—it’s not what you think,” she says. “It’s really not. Josh is dead, June. I’m sorry for what you’ve had to go through, thinking he wasn’t. What you think you saw wasn’t Josh.”
“Cut the shit, Bev,” I say, my voice laced with venom. “Your picture is on their mantel at the Backyard. How long have you known?”
“June,” she says. “There is a man at the Backyard who looks identical to Josh, and that’s because he is identical to Josh. Josh has a twin brother.”
The world starts spinning around me. Forming a sentence seems impossible, but I force myself to cobble my words together. “Josh doesn’t have a twin. Come on, Bev.”
Bev gets up and pads back inside the house, and momentarily, I think she doesn’t intend to come back. But when she returns, it’s with a photo of two floppy-haired teenage boys standing side by side without touching, their arms crossed, both of them gangly, their features slightly too big for their faces, but with the promise of handsome to come. One of them is wearing a puka shell necklace. Bev is standing to the side, dwarfed in height by both of them.
“Josh and Andrew,” she says. “I promised Josh I’d never tell you about Andrew, but here we are.”
“I saw Josh in New York,” I say, unable to stop staring at the photo in front of me. “Just last week. He was watching me in Prospect Park, and again in front of my bar. Are you telling me it was Andrew I saw?”
“Andrew hasn’t been watching you,” Bev says. “I’m quite certain he hasn’t traveled to New York. And he and Josh hadn’t spoken for many years by the time you met Josh.”
I finally manage to snap my gaze up. “What do you mean, you promised Josh you wouldn’t tell me about him? Josh and I told each other everything—he never could have left out his twin brother.”
“Josh asked us not to mention Andrew to you. He didn’t want everything being dredged up all over again. When Josh died, the boys hadn’t spoken in over ten years. Even when their father passed—that didn’t bring them together.” Bev looks into her garden, into the beautiful rainbow of flowers, and her shoulders slump, the light breeze blowing her sleeve against her clavicle. “What happened was an accident,” she mutters, as if she’s in a trance. “A tragedy.”
An accident. A tragedy. Words I’ve heard so often that they’ve lost all meaning.
“An accident? What kind of accident?” I probe, unmoving in my seat. “Are you talking about what happened to Josh, or something else?”
Bev’s faraway expression snaps back to me, like she doesn’t realize what she has said. “It’s in the past, and that’s where it belongs.”
I press her, not ready to move on. “But whatever it was … you’re still in contact with Andrew. I saw your picture at his house. What was it that made Josh hide his brother? What did Andrew do?”
When Bev speaks, her voice is sharp. “Who said Andrew did anything? Sometimes bad things happen, and there’s no logical explanation. They just do.”
I sense that extracting any more information from her will be challenging, but I’m here, and I can’t give up. I piece together the details I have so far. There was an accident, and it caused the estrangement between Josh and Andrew, something bad enough for Josh to conceal his brother’s entire existence. The Josh I knew was loyal and loving. He adored his family. It would take an unthinkable betrayal for him to excise his own twin from his life.
And there’s only one type of betrayal I can think of.
“Did something come between them? Or … someone?”
I can tell by Bev’s tense posture that I’ve struck a nerve. I point to the photograph on the table. “They were, what, sixteen here? When did things fall apart between them?”
Bev takes a long sip of lemonade. In those few seconds, I sense her brain whirring, trying to come up with a response that will get me to stop asking. She must be protecting Andrew. Whatever he did, it was bad enough for Josh to turn on him, but not for his mother to cut him off.
“Andrew went away to boarding school for his senior year. We felt like it was the best thing for both of the boys, having some separation.”
I sense from the stiffness in her words that she doesn’t believe what she’s saying.
“Why didn’t Josh want me to know about Andrew?” I ask. “Please, Bev. It’s important for me to know.”
Bev opens her mouth, but my phone’s ringtone cuts off whatever she was about to say. I go to silence it, and see that it’s Kyle again. His texts flash across my lock screen, and I quickly swipe them away.
June, what’s going on?
Phoebe called me.
“Fuck,” I mutter under my breath, panic flaring up. I know I should call Kyle—I need to call him, to explain and reassure him—but more than that, in this moment, I need to focus on what Bev is telling me. I put the phone on vibrate, and choose my past over my future.
“Why, Bev? Why didn’t Josh want me to know?”
“He wanted to tell you on his own terms,” she says, exhaling slowly. “I encouraged him to be honest with you. But none of it is my story to tell. Josh was my son, and I’m not going to betray his memory.”
We lapse into stonewalled silence. She has all the answers, but she’s not giving them away. As frustrating as it is, I can see where Josh got his loyalty, and it’s strangely comforting, that a part of him lives on in his mother.
I ask another question, pulling us closer to the present, unsure of how Bev will react. “Where was Andrew, on the day Josh died?”
“At the vineyard,” Bev says. “He didn’t take it well, hearing about Josh. In spite of everything, he still loved his brother. I think he held out hope for a reconciliation.”
I try a different entry point. “Andrew took over the winery. And he changed its name and, apparently, his last name. Why does he go by Smith?”
“It’s his wife, Sadie’s, maiden name,” Bev says, finally latching on to a question she’s willing to answer. “Before Andrew proposed to Sadie, her father was diagnosed with stage-four colon cancer. They knew he didn’t have much time left. It was important to her to honor him. Andrew understood that. And he was … eager to rebrand. Put his own spin on things.”
My heartbeat is in my ears. There’s so much more Bev isn’t telling me, and so much Josh kept from me on purpose.
My phone vibrates. Another call from Kyle. With each missed call, he slips further away. I can’t let this visit leave me with more questions than answers. “Why would he want to rebrand the winery? Wasn’t it a family-owned business for generations? Was it because of the accident you mentioned? Did it happen at the vineyard?”
Bev scrapes her chair backward, its legs screeching against the stone. I’ve said too much, my rapid-fire questions scaring her away.
“I’m done talking about this, June. I’ve learned that nothing good will come from living in the past, and you should too.” She meets my eyes, her gaze watery but focused. “Josh wouldn’t want you dwelling there.”
It’s almost a threat. I stand up, wanting to shake Bev’s frail shoulders, needing more information to spill out of her. But it’s clear she has locked herself up like a vault.
I follow her to the door. I home in on the anger, a much more productive emotion. In New York is a fiancé who would do anything for me, and an hour and a half away is a woman who knows more than she’s letting on. And somewhere out there is Andrew Smith.
If Andrew is looking for me, he knows where to find me.
“Bev,” I say as we pass through the kitchen. “You never wanted me to marry Josh. What exactly was it about me that you didn’t like?”
She doesn’t answer me, doesn’t stop walking until she’s at the front door. When she turns around, her mouth is pressed in a firm line. “There was never anything about you I didn’t like, June. All I wanted was for everyone to be careful.”
I nod, accepting her lie. And the last thing I see before exiting her home is the mantra displayed in black letters on her sunny living room wall.
Family is everything.