CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Tillie was only slightly steadier when she went back into the kitchen through the back door. All three women looked up. Tillie paused to look at Sage and Clare, taking her time, looking with her eyes and her artistic eye to see that yes, she resembled them, and Sage looked older but wore her same face. Undeniable.

And so undeniable that Sage knew about her scar.

Clare easily could be her blood mother. Physically they looked alike, too, enough that her artistic brain offered her a visual of two kittens with a mama cat, all the same fur and eyes.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I just don't know ... I feel so ..." She gave up and flung up her hands.

"Why don't you come sit down," Clare said quietly. "I've put the kettle on. We can have supper, just as we'd planned."

Tillie sat down. Sage was next to her, and her hands were on the table. Tillie's hands, long and slender, with short nails. Tillie settled hers beside Sage's. "They look the same." She touched her thumb. "The nails are exactly alike."

Sage nodded. "You have a dimple on the opposite side." She smiled to show hers, on the left. Tillie's was on the right. "Like parentheses."

They looked at each other. Tillie assumed Sage was seeing the same things she was, the ways they were the same—eyebrows the same shape, the width of their shoulders, the terrain of their mouths, a fuller upper lip than lower. Tillie looked at the baby bump.

It was a safe-enough topic. "When is your baby due?"

"June 15." She rested her hand on the swell. "Do you have children?"

"No."

"Tillie is an artist," Liam said. He'd settled across the table, next to Paula. "Quite well known, actually."

"Really?" Clare brought mugs and spoons to the table. "What kind of art?"

"Painting. Realism mixed with fantasy elements, like people who are part animal."

"A lot of Green Man stuff," Liam said. And to Tillie: "It's a big thing around here."

"I'm going to look them up right now," Paula said. "If that's okay."

Tillie nodded. She kept looking at Sage, her nose and the exact line of her ears. "I don't remember you , exactly," she said by way of apology, "but I've been drawing you ever since I was very small. You were my imaginary friend, Sunny."

Sage closed her eyes, and she clutched Tillie's hand. "Imaginary."

"I'm sorry."

Paula, on her phone, said, "What's your last name?"

"Morrisey."

Paula typed it into her phone. "Oh, here you are. These are great! They could illustrate my songs, couldn't they?"

Tillie felt that part of her was a hundred million miles away, but she wanted to be at least polite. She nodded.

They all fell silent for a long moment. The air felt heavy. So many things to take in.

Clare said, "So, what do you remember, dear?"

Tillie took a breath. "Nothing, really. I didn't remember anything before—" She paused, and it seemed like a lot to explain. "Let me start at the end. My mother died five months ago, and I started getting these headaches. And then, a week ago, I saw a painting that must have triggered memories. It's a house with a porch and two girls and a big cat. Giant." She pointed to the cat sitting by the Aga, cleaning his face. "Like that cat."

Levi, who had been quiet, said, "I told her he's from the local clan."

Clare smiled, a little sadly. "We had one when you were little. He was called Joey, and you were very attached."

Tillie closed her eyes. A whisper came alive, and she thought of the dream she'd had of him. "Joey. I remember him stretching from my chin to my knees, with a very soft purr. He was so big."

"He was a normal cat," Clare said gently. "You were just small."

"Ah. Of course." She realized that Liam, too, was very quiet.

"When you started remembering, what happened?" Clare's voice was soft, so it didn't feel like she was being pushy. "How did it all lead you here ?"

"I tracked down the painter, and she told me she painted around here. Would that porch be around here somewhere? I wanted to find it."

"It might have been the Beach Lane house," Clare said. "That's where we were living when ..." Her throat closed. "You went missing."

"But what happened?" Tillie asked. "When? How old was I?"

"You don't know any of this?"

"No. My mother—" She hesitated, but how could she change that? What could she say? "She said I had a head injury." She drew her fingers through the white streak, illustrating. "I don't remember that at all. Or anything before it. I did have a broken rib, which I only know about because I had an X-ray once for something else, and they saw the scar."

Sage said, "We were playing in the woods, and I lost you. We all started looking, but—" She swallowed. "We didn't find you, only a sock by the river. They thought you might have fallen into the river and been swept out to sea, or maybe eaten by animals."

Tillie stared, trying to imagine how that was for them. "What a horrible story," she said, but it was awful in the way that hearing a story on the news was. She wanted to feel more of a connection—to the history, to the people looking at her with such longing—but she didn't.

Not even to Sage. She should have felt some connection to her actual twin, shouldn't she? "But how did my mother find me? Take me to America? I just don't get it."

"We have no idea," Sage said.

"Who is your mother?" Clare asked. "What's her name?"

"Arlette Morrisey."

Clare covered her mouth, the other arm bent over her belly. "Arlette," she echoed. "Oh my God."

"You knew my mother?"

"She was not your mother!" Clare cried with agony. "She stole you from me. She was my friend, and she moved after you were lost, but I never put the two things together."

A hollow ache filled Tillie's chest. Her throat was tight with all the words she didn't know how to say.

"Arlette was looking, too," Clare said. "And then she had a big family emergency and had to go back to America. We never saw her again." She deflated, her shoulders rounding forward. "I can't believe she just took you."

Tillie bowed her head, as if she'd had something to do with it.

"One of the things that started this quest was that I found a death certificate in my name that was for a little girl who died in the Valencia firestorm."

"The little girl. Tillie. Yes." Clare seemed winded, and her husband took over the task of making tea.

He poured strong dark brown tea into her cup, and then pushed the sugar toward her. "Drink, love."

She obeyed, stirring sugar into the tea. Sipped. Steadied herself.

It was something Tillie had done every day of her life, squaring herself with reality. Something about that stung, that she'd never seen it.

And all of it rushed in—that she'd had a big family and a sister, a twin, and could have grown up here, instead of alone with her mother out in the middle of nowhere. She could have had this family. Siblings and a father and—

Her breath caught at the intensity of longing.

"She was a mess," Clare said. "Just—" She shook her head, looking over to the middle of the table for the rest of the story. "Not okay. Not all there. I don't think her baby had been gone very long, maybe a year or two, and I felt pity for her, as any mother would have. She loved to spend time with you, both of you, and I let her babysit many times."

"I remember Arlette!" Sage cried. "She had the most wonderful songs!"

Tillie said, "That's her. She loved to sing."

Another long silence fell. Liam said, "Maybe let's take a little time, absorb all this, and come back together tonight or something, huh? What do you think?"

Tillie looked at him gratefully. Pressed a hand over her diaphragm. Nodded.

Sage reached for Tillie's hand. "Don't disappear, okay?"

And for some reason, it was easier to look at her than Clare. "I promise."

"Clare?" Levi said in his kind voice. "Are you all right?"

She nodded, looking at him. "I'm sorry," she said. "I have to ... process all of this."