Chapter Five
Ilay in the middle of the bed, trying not to look left, right, or forward as the doctor checked me out.
“Hmm.” She flashed that annoying light in my eyes. “Any numbness or dizziness?”
“No.”
“Nausea or vomiting?”
“No.”
“You said before you fainted that you had a pounding headache.” She drew back, which gave my newly acquired niece room to move in and snuggle under my arm. “How’s your head feeling now?”
“Fine. The headache’s gone,” I replied. “The impromptu nap helped.”
“But she should still go to the hospital, shouldn’t she?” Rhodes spoke up from his position on the left side of the bed.
Micah was posted up on the right. Alex had the foot of the bed covered. And even worse, Davis was posted up against the bedroom door.
There was no escape.
“I... I am a little confused,” I confessed. “And my memory...” I swallowed hard. “There are blank spots.”
Doctor Martin was short, bespectacled, and freckled. Her glasses popped up when she scrunched her dotted nose. “Blank spots? Meaning what?”
“Meaning...” I lifted my head, peering at the guys through my lashes. “What... what exactly is our... relationship?”
Rhodes frowned. “Our relationship?”
“Yeah, I mean... What...?” My mouth was paper dry. “What are the four of us... to each other?”
Micah’s brows blew up his forehead. “That’s it.” He advanced on me. “We’re taking you to the hospital.”
“Wait, please,” I cried. I threw my arm around the little girl protectively—as if Micah was about to snatch her from the crazy lady. “Just answer me first.”
“Answer you fir— Sue, you know who we are? And if you don’t know who we are, something is very, very wrong.”
“Micah, Alex, and Rhodes,” I blurted, cutting off whatever he was going to say next. “I know who you are. Of course, I do. There are just some blank spots,” I said again. “Help me fill them in.”
“Some confusion and memory loss can happen following a concussion,” Doctor Martin put in. “It’s called a traumatic brain injury for a reason.”
Micah looked from her to me, then he glanced at Alex and Rhodes.
Alex shrugged, clearly not knowing what to do in this situation any more than he did.
That makes three of us.
Micah sighed. “We’re your husbands, Sue. We’ve been married for seven years.”
I bit my lip hard, penning in the tears that sprung to my eyes. I knew it had to be something like that, but still, hearing it crushed my heart to pulp.
“Uh, excuse me?” Davis came alive. “Did you say husbands? Plural?”
“Relax,” Alex shot back. “She’s only legally married to one of us. No bigamy here.”
“And I’m sure when I look into the matter, the truth will bear that out.”
Alex’s eyes flashed. “Are you kidding me? You’re standing by my wife’s bedside after she was nearly killed, and you’ve summoned so much pity in your heart it amounts to threatening her with an investigation?
” Alex scoffed. “What happened to you, man? Is this the person you wanted to be when you signed up for this job?”
Davis looked truly offended. “The person I wanted to be when I accepted this badge is a person who lets no one escape the—!”
I tuned him out, taking a chance to take a proper look around the bedroom.
I already knew I was in Sue’s room. It was the same room she grew up in. But if that accident had conked the memory out of my head and I needed a reminder, I would’ve gotten the hint from the many... many... many photos of Sue plastered up literally everywhere.
Photos of Sue frolicking through the Tuscan fields.
A photo of her posing in front of the Colosseum.
A photo of her eating gelato on a gondola in Venice.
Parasailing in Interlaken. Riding elephants in Chiang Mai.
Hiking Uluru. Beaching it up in New Zealand.
Dancing in Rio. And a few adult photos of her in Seoul and Daegu—replacing the childhood photos of her in Seoul and Daegu, standing next to me.
The photos taken in Korea I knew with a single glance.
But the reason I knew where the other photos were taken was because Sue helpfully pinned them to the corresponding places on the massive painted world map taking up the entire east wall.
An addition that definitely wasn’t there when we were kids.
Truthfully, the map was stunningly beautiful. So beautiful it dwarfed her expensive furniture, antique wardrobe, four-poster king-sized bed, plush cream carpets, and large vanity weighed down with makeup, perfumes, and accessories that cost more than my life.
The map artist made their work come alive with rolling ocean waves, undulating green fields in the rural parts of the world, and stretching skyscrapers in the cities.
All of the countries with famous landmarks had them proudly displayed with the Eiffel Tower for France, and the penis building for England.
There to make the creation more beautiful were all the smiling, happy, gorgeous photos of a woman who crisscrossed the earth.
I could just imagine Sue’s face if she’d gotten the chance to give me a tour of her new room. She’d have smirked her ass off while forcing me to see that she’d gotten to travel the world, searching for adventure. While I traveled the backroads of the States, searching for a home.
Shoving that mental smirk away, I flicked down to the little girl smiling up at me. Lowering my voice, I whispered, “And what’s your name, beautiful?”
She giggled. “Mommy, you’re silly. You know my name.”
My chest tightened. Of course it was wrong to trick a child.
Let her believe I was her mother, when her actual mother was trawling the ocean floor.
But if Sue had been able to take a break from being an evil, manipulative bitch for five minutes, I wouldn’t have walked in here with the wrong name on my lips, and the wrong wallet in my purse.
What was I supposed to do when Alex, Rhodes, and Micah came at me, calling me their wife and showering me in relief and concern? Was I supposed to say, oh, sorry, I’m not actually your wife. I’m her twin sister who is currently impersonating her to get back the life she stole from me?
What? You want to know where the real Sue is? Well, funny thing is, I threw her broken body off a cliff.
There was no ending to that conversation that went well. Davis would’ve turned me right around and marched me to the nearest jail cell.
On top of that, this little girl believed her mother was sitting right next to her. How could I be the one to tell her she was dead, and she’d never see her again?
I gazed into her eyes, my broken head wrecked for reasons that had nothing to do with its meeting with the steering wheel.
I just have to go along with it for now until I figure out the best way to handle this without ending up in prison. I’m not after anything that isn’t already mine. When it’s all said and done, I’ll make them understand why it all got so screwy.
Sighing, I smiled at her. “Yeah, Omma’s silly sometimes, but I like to be silly every now and then. Do you like to be silly?” I asked as the argument between the guys and Davis got louder.
She nodded.
“Then, let’s be silly and ask each other lots of silly questions.” I winked. “I’ll go first: what is the name of the prettiest girl in the world?”
She giggled again. “Nari!”
“Nari,” I whispered. “That is a beautiful Korean name. So, let me guess, your other name is Lily.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And how old are you, Lily?”
“This many.” She held up six fingers.
“I see, and...” I lowered my head, speaking softly in her ear. “Which one is your daddy?”
Lily cocked her head, brows crumpling.
I tried another way. “What’s your last name?”
“Nari Kim!”
Chewing my lip, I let it go. They probably hadn’t gotten too far into the discussion of biology and one-sperm/one-egg discussions with a six-year-old, and that was okay. It was only a teenage girl’s obsessive curiosity that made me ask.
I spent an entire year of high school doodling Sarah Newbury, Sarah Spencer, and Sarah Montgomery in my notebook, and that was only when I was taking a break from imagining what versions of our children would look like.
My little cherub face with their everything else?
The only result of that union would be completely, off-the-wall adorable—
—and she is, I thought, stroking Nari’s hair.
A small part of me wanted to know which version of my fantasy came true—
—with the wrong sister.
I let out a rough breath, feeling the question I truly needed to ask coming up my throat. “Do you have any brothers or sisters, baby girl?”
She tossed her head. “No. I want a sister, but you won’t let me have one.”
I barked a startled laugh at her directness. Oh yes, I loved this girl.
“And does... Omma have a brother or sister?”
She cocked her head the other way. “Grandma?”
“No, me,” I corrected. “Do I have a brother or sister?”
“Nuh-uh.” Her denial crashed on my head like a ton of bricks.
“Just Mommy. Grandma wanted one perfect child, just like Mommy wanted one perfect child.” Nari said it in a tone like she was repeating something she’d been told many times before.
“So I can’t have a sister because you don’t have one, but that’s not fair, Mommy. I still want one.”
I didn’t lose my smile. “Of course you do, baby. I always wanted a brother too.”
Leaning back, I tipped my head to the ceiling so Nari wouldn’t see me seethe.
The worst part was that I wasn’t even surprised, and I didn’t even blame Sue.
Sue couldn’t erase me from my childhood home and my hometown... unless my mother did it for her.
How could you live in the same home as your grandmother and believe she only had one child, unless she let you believe it?
It’s also the only explanation for why her husbands don’t know they’re not talking to their wife.
When a carbon copy of your wife walks through the door, your brain takes a shortcut to the simplest explanation: This is your wife.
It doesn’t think this is your wife’s secret twin sister that she brought home to surprise us so she could also get off on crushing her sister’s feelings one last time.