I Google her more, obsessed at the similarity in looks and life. I find a picture of her outside of a restaurant with several people. She looks uncomfortable. I know that face. I make it when people take my picture too.
I can’t help but wonder if we are related, regardless of knowing my history. My parents died a year apart when I was eighteen and nineteen, hence the no college. Sam’s parents must have been dead when her accident took place or they would have been interviewed or at least spoken of in the article. It’s weird we were both alone. It’s even weirder that we both had car accidents, though mine was only tragic to my brain. The rest of me has healed nicely. The name of the cat is creeping me out the most. I can’t deny the odds are stacked way against us both picking a name as unusual as Binx. It’s completely unlikely.
It’s strange. Coincidental is the word I want to use, because I don’t believe I ever had a long-lost sister. But the name of the cat is too much to be coincidence. It doesn’t add up.
I open our pictures on the computer, scrolling through them, looking for one that might be the right angle to match her picture. When I get one, I just sit and stare. It’s uncanny.
Eventually, I have to turn the computer off, as my eyes feel like they have crossed from staring too long at the same pictures of her and me. The pictures prove her face and my face not only match, but blend—seamlessly. Even the slight lift of the right side of our mouths when we half smile is the same. Our eyebrows arch in the exact same spot. The puffy lips have the same creases in them, and our eyes have the same laugh lines.
Completely confused and incapable of comprehending any of it, I curl up in the warm and fluffy bed that feels too big without the large man who’s normally there. I need him to come home and tell me that I’m hallucinating.
It’s no wonder the weird man on the street was so convinced. She and I are identical.
I don’t know how long I have been asleep or how long Derek has been home, but when I wake it’s still dark and he’s kissing me softly along my neck. I moan and curl into him, smelling the soap and deodorant that makes up the scent of a doctor.
He wraps himself around me, pulling me into him like he never plans on letting me go.
It’s a wonderful way to sleep, cocooned in a man who makes you feel like nothing matters beyond the two of you.
Not even an exact replica of you!
2. LOVE IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES
In the morning, not wanting to wake him as I sneak off to work, I write in my pale-pink lipstick on a napkin:
Missed you last night! See you later, xoxoxo!
It’s something I do. It’s my sad attempt at affection.
The morning flies by, and when it’s time for lunch I hurry off to get a sandwich to eat in the back room. I like eating back here, I don’t know why. The concrete room is uninviting, and yet I am completely at ease here.
The minute I come out from the back room, my Scottish boss, Angie, gives me a wink. “Ya had a visitor while ya was out!”
I stop, giving her a puzzled look. “What? Did Derek come here?”
“No, no. It weren’t him. Like I’d tell ya if the doctor himself were here. I’d keep that one to meself. But there was a man asking for ya, but by a different name. Very strange.”
My stomach drops a little. “By a different name?”
“Aye, he came right into the shop and demanded to see ya. Was up to no good, I could tell.”
“To the store?” I shake my head, lost in the possibility that anyone would come to see me. “Here? To see me? Me specifically?”
“Well, ya, but he had a different name for ya. Quite the funny story, though.” She laughs as she passes me the cleaning supplies so we can redress the mannequins in the front window and clean it. She wipes and natters on, regardless of the look I am certain is on my face. “He was tall, bloody tall, and he had an accent—Irish, he was. Never trust the Irish, if ya can even understand what the bloody hell they’re saying to ya.”
She’s a fine one to talk—her accent is hilarious. She is Scottish and sort of prejudiced against everyone in Europe. She hasn’t lived in Seattle long. Not long enough to decide if she likes the city or hates it. Apparently, she still hates the Irish, though. And the English. And Germans. And Polish people. She hates everyone, including us “bloody Yanks” who are always “bloody rude” to her and ripping her off. She kills me with all the things she hates and then loves in a bipolar sort of fashion.
She wrinkles her nose. “I mean, if he was even looking for ya at all. He seemed a touch confused.” Her comment confuses me, but I have to assume it’s friggin’ Roland or Ronald or whatever the hell that guy’s name was who was looking for Samantha. “He was Irish? You sure? Not a skinny American with an overbite?” I ask casually, making my fingers the teeth in the overbite, which actually makes no sense at all. I look like an idiot, with my fingers hanging over my lip.