My Twin Sister

Thirty-Three Grace

I lie awake, my head filled with images of lightning and cold water, of half-baked plans and consequences too big for us teenagers to understand. I had no way to contact Wyatt after I left. He didn’t have a cell phone or social media, and anyway, it was too risky.

It turned out we weren’t working with all the information.

That only came later, and then I was left on my own to adjust the plan.

I always wonder what he thought and felt that sixth year.

If he was waiting for me to come back. He would have already been married to Geny with Jack and a whole life, but we planned for me to come back.

What did he think when I didn’t show up? Was part of him relieved?

When I swam away that night, I didn’t see myself as the victim of anything but a future murder plot. I didn’t understand why Frank would want me dead or why he was afraid of me telling anyone. I was nineteen. I wasn’t a kid. I was old enough to make decisions.

It took years to see it all differently. The attention he paid me as freshman. The priming. All the other it’s our little secrets before our secret became what it did. The fact that he kissed me for the first time when I was sixteen. Everything else that came soon after.

My phone buzzes, bringing me back to reality. I grab it off the nightstand, dread filling my veins. Is it another anonymous text? It’s not. It’s a text from Brooke O’Niel.

Are you free this morning?

I check the time. Almost six in the morning.

She’s up early. Maybe she always is. Or maybe she can’t sleep either.

I text her my parents’ address and tell her to come by and that I’ll have coffee.

Then I quickly get dressed and go downstairs to start the coffee pot and throw a bagel into the toaster.

I’ve felt so alone in all of this, and I wish I could talk to Geny about it.

Or my dad. Even my mom. But two out of three are already gone, and I can’t risk something happening to Geny because of me.

Wyatt is the only one who knows and who might be safe, but he can’t talk to me in private without causing other kinds of issues.

So maybe Brooke is the person I’ve been wishing for.

She’s just as suspicious of Raven PD as I am and she doesn’t know what I know.

She could help me. If she’s right about Morgan’s death being fishy, maybe it’s related.

I spent many years thinking I was the only one Frank was abusing.

But what if I wasn’t? People like him don’t usually stick to one victim.

I eat my bagel while I wait for Brooke to show up and go over in my mind just how much I should tell her.

I find it hard to believe that everything isn’t connected somehow — Frank trying to have me killed after an inappropriate relationship, Morgan dying mysteriously with no further investigation, and false accusations against my father.

Not to mention his suspicious suicide that no one else seems to question.

And now the anonymous texts trying to scare me into silence.

All of it points to a corrupt police force.

The cop from the bar admitted they were all crooked when he told me about the drugs and planting them in someone’s car, which I know now was Brooke’s.

The problem is figuring out how the hell to take down a group of crooked cops as just a girl the sheriff didn’t kill.

The doorbell rings, and I practically run to the front of the house. Brooke jumps when I fling the door open.

“Sorry,” I say. “I’m a little jittery this morning. Might need to skip the coffee for now.”

She pushes air through her nose. “Not me. I need your largest cup.”

She walks in and I see she already has a takeaway cup from Carol’s Diner. She tosses it into the trash on her way to the coffee pot.

“Mugs are in the cabinet just above,” I say, and she helps herself. “You’re up and about early this morning.”

“Couldn’t sleep. I’m all kinds of pissed off, and I’m pretty sure I’ve ruined any future chances of making friends with anyone at the police station.” My stomach drops at her words. She turns to look at me and pauses. “Holy shit. Who punched you in the face?”

My hand automatically goes to my nose, and I flinch at the pain. “It’s a long story,” I say. “What do you mean about the police station? Why? What happened?”

She lets the matter of my battered face go. “They won’t let me see the records on Morgan’s death. They’re supposed to be public record.”

I open my mouth to tell her the records aren’t there, but she keeps going.

“I tried to get them years ago, but it’s one thing after another with them.

Paperwork, then the paperwork has been lost, then the files have to be requested online, then the fucking website is down.

They have them there at the station and they’re making me jump through hoops because their stupid files aren’t digitalized. ”

“They don’t have them,” I say quickly in the gap of her rant.

“What? Yes they do.”

I shake my head. “They don’t. At least not in their filing room. They might be keeping them somewhere else, but I doubt it.”

Brooke sets her coffee mug on the counter. “How do you know that?”

I consider lying, but I can’t think of a convincing one quick enough. “I broke in the other night and tried to find them. They’re not there. Neither is my file, but I assume that’s being looked at by someone now that I’m back.”

Her mouth falls open, but nothing comes out. Then she looks away, confusion pinching her face. “How?” she asks.

“It’s a long story. But you really should be careful making enemies with Raven PD.”

She sighs. “Maybe it’s them who should be careful for a change. They’re not invincible.”

No, I think. But pretty close to it.

“We just have to be smart,” I say. “We can’t be reckless about all of this. If they’re going to be taken down, it’s going to be because we outsmarted them.”

Brooke stares straight ahead and her jaw clenches and unclenches.

Maybe she isn’t the person I need after all.

Her rage might make her reckless. I understand the feeling.

I spent years plotting my revenge from states away, planning all the ways I would torture Frank once it was safe for me to come back.

But as the years went on, my rage simmered, almost to the point that I no longer felt the need to come back. I just wanted to move on. Finally.

But then my dad died. And his name was tarnished. And I couldn’t just sit back and let it keep happening. So here I am.

“You know something,” she says. I look up to see her analyzing me. “Tell me.”

“I don’t know anything. That’s the problem.”

“Bullshit. Why are you breaking into the police station and looking for my sister’s file? You know something.”

“Not for sure, but I have some theories.”

“Which are? Stop being vague and mysterious.”

“I’m not trying to be. It’s complicated, and I don’t want to say too much when I’m not sure what’s going on.

But one thing I know for sure, the PD aren’t dumb.

They know what they’re doing. And they’re dangerous, so you need to be careful.

Stop pissing them off,” I say and hope she takes me seriously.

She stares at me, and now I understand why Morgan felt the way she did about her older sister. There’s something about her that’s a little intimidating, but in a way that makes you want to please her instead of telling her to fuck off.

“If you don’t tell me, I’m just going to find out myself. Save me the trouble, Grace.”

I hate that she’s forcing my hand. I have to tell her something. Enough that she’s not going to leave here and start trouble on my half-baked theories.

“Well, I obviously didn’t die that night, and Sherrif Gibbs and the coroner both said I did.

That’s one cover-up. My dad is innocent.

I can’t prove it yet, but he is. And I don’t believe he killed himself either.

Like I said, it’s a lot of assumptions right now.

So let’s not burn the town down just yet. ”

Her eyes drift to the floor, and I can see her mind working. Then she nods slowly.

“Patterns,” she says. “There are patterns of cover-ups and setups.”

“Yes. But a pattern doesn’t prove anything. Not yet.”

Brooke stands up. “Right. I know that.” She takes another sip from her mug. “I’m going to go. Can I take this?”

She indicates to the mug in her hand. I shrug. “Sure.”

People who drive around with open coffee mugs scare me, and it makes total sense that Brooke is one of them. She shows herself out, and I stay sitting at the dining room table for a minute. I hope I didn’t say too much. I hope she’s smart enough to keep her mouth shut and stay out of trouble.

I top off my own coffee and go back upstairs.

I start in my dad’s office. It was supposed to be Geny’s room, but that lasted all of one night when we were ten.

We tried again sophomore year of high school, and it lasted for almost a week because Geny was mad at me for something I can’t even remember.

After that, dad turned it into an office.

I don’t know what I’m looking for. I sort through old bills and tax documents, a lot of junk mail I have no clue why he was holding onto.

My dad was as old school as the rest of Raven, and most of his life was on paper, not digital.

Camera phones weren’t really a thing back then.

I think some people had them, but it was still the age of disposable cameras and then carrying around a separate digital camera and uploading the photos onto your computer.

I think about the pictures found on his work computer.

It’s not that I don’t think my dad could figure out how to get the pictures onto the computer.

He was a high school principal in the twenty-first century.

He may not have been a computer whiz, but he wasn’t an idiot either.

It just feels off. But the whole thing feels off.

I’m not sure where my thoughts are leading me or what point I’m trying to make to myself, but an hour later, I’ve gotten nowhere. I see my phone screen light up across the room and I use it as a welcome distraction. It’s a call from Murphy.

“Hello?” I answer.

“Good afternoon,” he says.

I glance over at the clock. “It’s barely eleven. It’s not afternoon.”

“Eleven is afternoon.”

“It’s literally not. It’s one hour before noon.”

He sighs. “It doesn’t have to be after noon to be afternoon. It’s just a section of the day. Like morning. And evening.”

“It’s in the name, Murphy. Don’t get mad at me.”

“This is not what I called you for,” he says with a smile in his voice.

“No?”

“No. I’m off early today. Thought you might make nice company for a meal.”

I bite back my grin, but no one can see me, so I allow it to grow on my lips. “You have good timing. I’m starving.”

“Good. Meet me at Carol’s?”

I tell him I’ll be there in ten minutes and hang up the phone before sprinting to the bathroom to get cleaned up and changed.

I’d planned on going for a run, but this feels like a better distraction from my recent lack of progress and setbacks with Geny.

I finally catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and wince at the purple bruising around my nose.

It doesn’t feel broken, but I’ve never had a broken nose so I wouldn’t know.

I apply a little more makeup to hide the worst of it before heading out.