Chapter 2 Pane
Pane
“When are you coming hoooooome?” my little sister whines through the SUV’s Bluetooth. “Greta made me practice piano for half an hour yesterday, and it was tooooorrrturrrre!”
I chuckle, envisioning ten-year-old Natalie throwing herself on her bed and burying her face in the pillows.
“She tortured you?” I feign shock at the horror of piano lessons. “Did your hands fall off? No, let me guess—your fingers dropped onto the keys and you couldn’t reattach them no matter how much superglue you used.”
She cracks up into a fit of giggles. “Paaane! Don’t be silly! Nothing fell off. My hands still hurt, and I think they’re going to hurt foreverrrr.”
I tsk. “It’s no good having hurt hands. Maybe you should stop using them. Don’t eat—no more ice cream cones, lollipops, tacos.”
Beside me in the passenger seat, my brother, Stone, plays up a huge sigh. “It’s not that bad, Nat. You should’ve been around when Pane and I were little.”
“That’s right.” I tap the steering wheel for emphasis. “Nanny Edith was worse than Greta by miles.”
There’s a pause that suggests she’s sitting up now, curious. “How?”
“Well, first,” I explain, “she was at least a thousand years old.”
“Nuh-uh.”
“Oh yeah.” Stone grins. “And she was so wrinkled that we were convinced she was a mummy come back to life.”
She laughs. “Stop it.”
My sister’s giggle makes me smile. “Stone’s telling the truth. You don’t know how good you’ve got it with Greta. Just play the piano when she asks, and everything will be fine.”
My little sister falls silent for a moment as she considers this. “When are you coming back?”
I exchange a glance with Stone. We don’t actually know, so this is a best guess. “Today, maybe? Probably later. I’ll have to catch a flight.”
“Can we have ice cream?” she asks, her voice lifting in excitement. “When you get home?”
“Absolutely. All the ice cream you want. But remember, you’ve got to mind Greta.”
“Okaaaaay.” I can tell she doesn’t want to, but I know she will. “I promise.”
“Pinkie swear?”
“Pinkie swear.”
“Love you, Natalie.”
“Love you.”
“Hey.” Stone slaps a hand to his heart. “What am I, chopped liver?”
“No, you’re hot dogs,” she teases, knowing full well that my twin hates them.
“Yeah, yeah, I know you love me,” he grumbles playfully. “See you soon.”
“Bye!”
“Bye,” I tell her before hanging up the call and settling back into the driver’s seat. Green hills roll past as I maneuver us down the two-lane road. “So, we’re in Georgia,” I murmur.
“We sure are,” my brother confirms. “You know, I can’t remember the last time I was this deep in the South.”
“I can,” I reply tensely, squeezing the steering wheel so hard my knuckles become pale peaks.
“When was that?” he asks absently, before realizing the answer and exhaling sharply. “Right. Sorry. I forgot. Should have remembered.”
“You’re a terrible twin,” I joke, because Stone is great and he knows it.
But still, my brother grimaces. “Guess I dropped the ball on that one. But to be fair, last time you were here, we were seniors in college, and that was over ten years ago.”
“It has been a long time.”
An uneasy silence ignites in the cabin until Stone nods toward my wrist. “Is that a new Rolex?”
He’s trying to change the subject, to get me to stop thinking about what happened back then. It works.
“Yes. A gift.”
“Oh? From whom?”
“Han Joon-Seok,” I say very slowly, pronouncing each syllable.
Georgia is sweltering, especially in late summer.
Even though the sun isn’t up yet, the outside temperature is still high, and the sticky humidity only makes it worse.
I punch up the air and exhale as a cool blast hits me in the face. “The Korean businessman.”
“It’s a very nice watch,” Stone murmurs. “Why did he give it to you, exactly?”
I shift in my seat, settling back. “The hotel hosted his daughter’s wedding last month. Everything was smooth sailing until the groom’s ex-girlfriend showed up trying to crash the ceremony. We were able to get her out of the hotel before she could make a scene.”
Stone makes a sound of mock disapproval. “And all you got was a Rolex?”
He’s joking. It’s a big gift, obviously. But I can’t let this opportunity pass by. I drag my gaze away from the road to give him a pointed look. “The watch was his second offer. His first was one of his Ferraris.”
Stone gulps. “And you didn’t take it?”
“Didn’t seem appropriate. I told him the Rolex was enough thanks.”
My brother tugs at his collar. “It does pay to be a Maddox.”
“That, it does.”
My brother settles back into the passenger seat and scrolls on his phone. After a few moments he comes out with, “Sylvia’s giving it to me, you know.”
Like hell she is. “Why would she give it to you, when you’ve been on the West Coast doing nothing? We both know that the East books more rooms, fills more restaurant seats. I’m the golden child here, the prodigal son.”
“You realize the prodigal son abandoned his family so that he could party his life away.”
“Only you would bring that up.” I glance over and we both laugh. If there’s one thing my twin and I are good at, it’s friendly ribbing—no harm intended and none taken. “The point is, when we see Mom, she’ll announce that she’s giving it to me.”
He throws his head back and chuckles. “Oh, how naive my twin can be.” Even I bark out a laugh at that. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you, little brother.”
I roll my eyes. “Five minutes does not a little brother make.”
“To me, it does,” he says in a chipper voice.
“Keep dreaming.” The laughter rumbling in my chest dies down, and I say, “How much farther is this airport?”
He checks his phone and, a moment later, comes back with, “Fifteen minutes out.”
“Good.”
“What? Too many cow pastures for you?”
“If I never see another one, I’ll be grateful.”
Not only does the countryside resurrect memories I’m not interested in reliving, but it also offers something else—allergies.
Unluckily for me, plants grow like jungle weeds everywhere. There are more trees than I can count, meadows the size of the Mediterranean, and fields filled with small bushy plants that look as if they may be some sort of food.
“Why is Mom here again?” I ask.
“Sylvia”—Stone always calls her by name—“wanted to visit a small town in the area. Mystic Meadows. There are ley lines here, or something like that. Supposed to be unicorns.” Before I can ask my brother what “ley lines” are—and did he say unicorns?
—his phone pings with a text. “There she is. She needs to be in the air in twenty. I’m telling her that we’ll arrive in ten. ”
“Neutral territory,” I murmur.
“What’s that?”
“That’s why she brought us here. We’re on neutral territory, where neither of us has the upper hand.”
“Yes, because she’s picking me.”
“She’s not picking you,” I snap.
He rakes his ash-blond hair away from his face. We’re twins, but not identical. Stone’s got lighter hair and a golden complexion. I’ve got dark hair. He tans at the beach. I burn.
If being twins isn’t already enough to almost hate him for, just that fact is enough.
“Wait.” Stone does a double take out the window. “What is that?”
He points to a faded-gray sign attached to a scraggly-looking steel-colored fence. I squint. “It says—”
“Look out!”
I whip my head back toward the road, and in that instant my mind races to catch up with my eyes. Because between the moment I looked away and when I now glance back at the road, a herd of small pigs has stopped directly in front of me.
And I’m going seventy miles per hour.
My heart flies into my throat as I hit the brakes. The SUV lurches, tires screaming violently. My automatic seat belt snaps tight, slapping me backward.
As the tires squeal, a woman wearing a T-shirt and ripped jeans jumps in front of the pigs, throws out her arms, and yells, “Don’t hit my piggycorns!”
The SUV screeches to a shuddering halt just inches from crashing into all of them.
My stomach fills with acid, and the taste of metal bleeds over my tongue. I curl my hands into fists as anger fills me.
I’m not in the mood for inconveniences today.
My gaze lands on the woman, whose eyes are brimming with thanks and something else. Anger? Can’t be. She should be grateful that I didn’t run over her and the small creatures that look like pigs but, at the same time, don’t.
I turn to my brother. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m good.”
“What are those?” I growl, furious that I was inches away from plowing them down.
Stone drops a hand from his chest and exhales. He limply points to the faded-gray sign sagging from the weathered fence that reads Wadley Farms: Home of the Piggycorn. “Piggycorns.”
That was the word the woman had screamed, a word I’m not familiar with. “What is a piggycorn?”
“Pigs that have a horn like a unicorn,” my brother expertly points out.
I spot it then. Every pig that is now sniffing the front of the SUV, instead of moving across the road, has a golden horn protruding from a small tuft of pink fur atop its head.
Never in my life have I heard of such a creature. “Are those real?”
“Oh yeah,” my brother confirms, like horned swine are an everyday occurrence.
“They appeared after the first unicorns showed up—something to do with the ley lines in this town, I think.” There’s that phrase again.
“But I haven’t heard of them in years. Not after all the supposed ‘magic’”—he makes quotation marks with his fingers—“dried up. I didn’t know people still sold the creatures. ”
I shake my head. “I didn’t follow any of that. Unicorns aren’t real.”
“They’re real here, just without magic.” He shoots me a hard look. “Do you live under a rock?”
“No. It’s just that I don’t have time for fairy tales and fantasy.” I cock a brow in disbelief. “I’m sure the unicorns that appeared are nothing more than horses with horns sewn on.”
“Your heart is truly black.”
I smirk. “No. It’s truly black and white. I see things for what they are. But those swine—they need to go.”