CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

They weren't expected for another couple of hours, and Liam wanted to have a nap. Tillie curled up with him, glad for the company, but she only dozed. Something restless kept chasing itself around her mind, showing blips of a dark wood and then a cat, a chocolate bar layered with oranges, a child opening her hand to show a perfect chocolate with the stem of a cherry sticking out of the top.

When she sat up an hour later, all the noise that had been swirling around—an almost whisper, the snippets of pictures—was gone.

It was, she realized, the first time her brain had been silent since she'd seen the painting that first night.

To give herself some space to enjoy it, she took a shower and washed her hair, wanting to look good for her meeting with Liam's family. She let it dry naturally in soft waves, and left it loose.

Looking at herself in the mirror, she peered into the background behind her, seeking some answer she hadn't turned over, as if she were a being in one of her paintings. It wasn't a particularly appealing mirror, a plain, modern bathroom style, but she remembered the oval in the other room and, wrapped in a towel, went to stand in front of it.

The mirror had a baroque frame, imitation gold leaf, and it was old enough to be a little discolored in places. With her wet hair and towel, she stood in front of it with a sheet of plain paper, just the room instructions turned over to the blank side, and a pencil she took out of her purse. Looking beyond her reflection in the mirror, she held her hand over the paper and waited. What could be there? What would be there if she painted this mirror, this face, this place?

She saw a forest. A cat wandered out, that very big cat she'd seen so many times now. He moved without hurry, and sat to lift his nose to the air. A woman slid between the shadows, the witch from her fugue painting, skinny and sharp. She glanced over her shoulder and saw Tillie, watching. For a long time, she only looked at her, then slipped into the forest. The cat licked a paw.

Without rushing, Tillie sketched the scene, waiting to see if anything else appeared. An orange rolled out of the shadows, and she heard laughter.

And that was all.

She looked at the sketch. Soon, it seemed to say. Soon.

They walked to Liam's aunt's house. It was no more than a mile down a country road that had houses on one side, meadows and undergrowth on the other. Tillie could see through the row of trees lining the road that sheep grazed in a series of rolling hills. Cars came by every so often, but not many, and they made room for the walkers.

The house was down a smaller lane. A hedge provided a fence, but over the top, the roof and windows of the highest floor were visible. "That's not what I was expecting," Tillie said.

"It looks better on the outside than on the inside," he said.

As they came up the lane, a dog howled. "I forgot to tell you there's a motley crew of misfit creatures," Liam said. "Levi is a vet, and they have all kinds of critters."

Tillie laughed. "How wonderful!" The dog, a shiny black Labrador with a big head who was clearly blind, waited for them. He nuzzled Tillie's hand and whined in sweet greeting. She got down low and spoke to him in a soft voice. "Thank you for that, sweetheart," she said, rubbing her hands over that giant head. He groaned and licked her face.

"He is never like that with anyone," a man said, coming out of the house. "You must have the touch."

Tillie stood to greet a tall man with reddish-brown skin and a thick beard. "I don't know about that," she said.

"You must be Levi," Liam said. "I'm Liam."

"I know who you are, lad. They've been all atwitter waiting for ye." He shook Liam's hand, clapped him hard on the shoulder.

"And this is Tillie," Liam said.

He enclosed her hand in both of his, peering intently at her. "Tillie, is it?" he said as if it wasn't the name he'd expected. He looked over his shoulder at Liam, then back. "Remarkable. Come in, come in."

Tillie didn't quite know how to respond to that, so she simply followed them up the rest of the walk. Flowers grew on either side, just now putting out green shoots.

A gray cat with half an ear wandered out to see what was going on, and Tillie greeted her. Right behind her came another cat. Tillie froze. She grabbed Liam's hand. Pointed.

"Who is this?" Liam asked, leaning down to scratch the cat's ear.

But Tillie felt a wildness as she bent down to pick up the big solid animal, white and light brown with a tiger-striped Siamese mask. He happily melted into her, bending his head to press his nose to hers. She closed her eyes. She knew this cat. How was that possible? Tears rose in her eyes, and she kept her head down to hide them, the cat purring low against her hands.

"This is River, one of the local breed," Levi said. "They're unique to the area, maybe a mix between somebody's pet Maine coon and a local Siamese or Ragdoll that spawned a new breed. There are dozens of them, and they're good pets, good mousers." He scratched the cat's back. "Aren't you, love?"

The cat meowed, and Tillie let him down, feeling off-kilter but also intrigued. The cat followed them into the house.

They went in through a back door, Levi leading. "Look who I found!" he called out.

A trio of women were gathered around a big, freestanding butcher-block counter, backlit by a large window that looked out to the fields. Tillie had to blink to see anyone at all. The one closest to her had long blonde hair and red cheeks, and Tillie recognized her instantly as Paula Davies. A little flush of pleasure ran up her neck. "Hi."

Liam said, "That's Paula, which you already know—she's a fan." He stretched out a hand. "Me, too. I'm Liam."

"Oh, that one American fan," she said with a laugh. "I've wondered who that was, buying my records over there."

Tillie laughed. "You're too modest. I love the music. I paint to it all the time."

An older woman, very thin and long-limbed, said, "Wow, your voice," and Paula said at the same time, "You sound exactly like Sage."

"Sage?"

"Me." The woman was haloed by the light, so Tillie could only see the nimbus of light around her hair and the curve of a belly. "Is that how I sound?"

"Bro," Liam said, and Tillie picked up the slightest disturbance from him, an alert or concerned note that made her look up at him. He stared at Sage, then looked to Tillie, and shook his head.

"What?" she asked.

He put a hand on either shoulder, warm and heavy, and walked her to the other woman's side.

Tillie looked at Sage. Sage looked back at her.

And here was the mirror she'd been staring into earlier, a woman a few years older than she, with sharper cheekbones and more lines around her eyes, but the same face otherwise. The same dark hair, though Sage wore hers shorter. The bodies were different, because Sage was pregnant and Tillie was not.

"You're American?" Sage said.

"Yes." She had the strangest urge to lift a hand to the other woman's face, as if to affirm it really was so similar. They stared and stared, and Tillie felt a roar starting up far away, the echo of the feeling she'd had this morning, and yet the migraine aura didn't come back. The cat wound around her feet.

"I'm Clare," said the third woman. "I'm Sage's mum." She was tall and lean, her hair going silver in single strands. Tillie had a sense of a mountain lion, powerful and sharpened by years of hardship. Her eyes were clear and all-knowing, and Tillie felt a strange, deep pang somewhere in her intestines.

She knew this face. Those eyes. A pain slid between her ribs, burst in her chest.

"Where were you born, love?" Clare asked gently.

Tillie started to answer, and then realized nothing she knew about herself had thus far proved true. "Los Angeles. I think." She was trembling, very finely, all over her body, as if she'd liquefy. The only thing anchoring her was Liam's hand. "She died, my mother, a few months ago, and ... and ... I don't know, honestly. Maybe New Hampshire?"

Clare said, "Sage, say something."

"Los Angeles, I think," Sage repeated.

The accent was different, and it didn't really sound the same to Tillie, but the room went completely silent. Tillie felt a sucking sensation, the rolling back of the waters of the ocean as it was sucked into itself, revealing the base of the sea and stranded animals and wrecks never seen before at such a depth.

But just now, it was pulling back and back and back. Clare's eyes filled with unshed tears. Sage stared at Tillie as if she'd burn a hole through her. Tillie shrank back into the wall of Liam.

Abruptly, Sage reached for Tillie's arm, and turned it over to reveal the delicate inner flesh. She pressed her index finger into the deep divot in the hidden place midway between wrist and elbow. "How did you get this scar?" she asked, raising her eyes, and up so close, they were exactly the same eyes Tillie saw when she leaned in to put on her mascara. The same color of iris, the same layered bits of yellow and green amid the blue, the same slight dip on the inner corner.

"I don't remember," she whispered.

"It was a rock," Sage said. "You slipped down the hill and landed on it."

Clare made a soft sound. "Impossible," she whispered, and took Tillie's other hand. "After all this time," she said, nearly airless. "Rosemary."

Tillie backed away, pulling out of their grasp. "I don't understand."

"You don't remember?" Clare said, and her eyes filled with tears.

"Remember what?" Tillie asked, the ocean sucking back and back and back.

"I remember," Sage said. "I remember everything. You're my sister. My twin. We thought you were dead." She whispered, "All this time, we thought you were dead."

And even though she'd been searching for the answer to questions that made no sense, Tillie couldn't take this in. Not this.

She stared at the two of them, unable to think of what to say.

A sense of panic rose in her chest, and she suddenly turned on her heel, broke away from the group, and ran outside, her breath far away, vision prickling at the edges. She tried to haul in air, but her heart was beating too fast, too fast. She couldn't breathe. She was going to die.