Before
BEFORE
It’s just another afternoon. Just another grocery run, sandwiched between clothing donation drop-offs and pickup of this week’s dry cleaning.
The grocery store’s fluorescent lights fizz overhead. I inch forward in the checkout line as my mind plods along, calculating the time it will take to get the groceries and dry cleaning home. I still need to get my car to the auto shop before it closes.
Not that my Genesis has issues, but Michael trailed me out to the garage this morning, asking whether Sven had checked over the car recently. My husband insists on regular visits to the most overpriced garage in Seagrove, apparently because Sven does a twenty-four-point “vehicle safety inspection” the other places don’t offer.
Which I don’t exactly love. The visits always leave me carless for an entire day. But there are worse things Michael could obsess about besides my safety, so I humor him, though I do wish he hadn’t chosen today to ask. I have an article due this week about a new eye irrigation lens that will provide an alternative to the standard Morgan. I can always push it until tomorrow, though, provided I can hold my enthusiasm at bay for that long.
The woman in front of me pays, and I push my cart forward. As always, I strike a deal with myself: if I don’t glance at the magazine rack, I can have a bowl of kettle corn after dinner.
I make the same bargain every time. I’ve never confessed to Michael, but it takes concerted effort to keep myself from devouring the color-soaked covers with headlines like “Best Caribbean Islands to Get Lost On” or “Where to Go, Month by Month.”
Today proves more difficult than usual. I wedge my cart into the lane and stack groceries onto the conveyor belt while the magazines stare a heated hole in my back.
I set down a gallon of milk and try to decide on tonight’s dinner. Instead, I end up wondering who exactly pens those headlines. My mind conjures an image of a woman in a French hotel room, emerging onto her balcony with a coffee in hand while birds twitter all around.
Which is stupid. Travel writing can’t possibly be that glamorous. In reality, those people probably have lives filled with misplaced baggage and delayed flights, with whole-body sunburns and precious keepsakes lost on buses.
I transfer a container of organic strawberries. I should count myself lucky that I never went to Greece. I hate sunburns. Better that I ended up with the Medical Devices Monthly gig, which I can do from the comfort of my living room.
Soon, I run out of groceries, and my attention settles on the conveyor belt. Whirr and stop. Whirr and stop. The cashier scans each item with marked disinterest.
Oh, for god’s sake. Who am I kidding? I turn to the magazine rack.
Heat slams into my chest, like someone has punched me in the lungs with a molten fist. It takes at least five seconds to figure out why. I stare at the displayed issue of National Geographic , my mouth agape.
What is my husband doing on the cover, coated in snow and with a fake scar on his eyebrow? And why does he look so...so...
A high-pitched sound invades the quiet. It takes a moment to realize it’s coming from me. I clamp my mouth shut and snatch the magazine. Crisp yellow words run along the bottom.
“Grayson Drake Defies Death at Everest.”
My trembling hands rattle the pages. What? What?
No matter how long I stare, the headline doesn’t change. And I finally realize this isn’t my husband at all, but his brother.
His identical twin , apparently.
Blood bellows in my ears as I roll up the magazine and shove past my cart. My shirt catches on the candy rack, making a box of bubble gum smack onto the tile, but I don’t stop. The cashier hollers. I turn just long enough to fish a twenty from my purse and push it across the counter, leaving my groceries behind.
In the car, I toss the magazine onto the passenger seat. The engine’s roar adds to the hurricane inside my skull. Every time I glance over, the familiar face of a stranger stares back. And every time, it absolutely guts me.
I stomp the gas pedal harder. I don’t understand the violence of my reaction. But it is. Violent. That aqua stare turns me inside out, pulling each nerve ending up to the surface.
The tachometer tips into the red. Rain lashes against the windshield. God, I never once pictured the man who upended our lives this way. I imagined Michael’s stoicism pasted onto different features. Instead, Grayson’s features are the same, but the open pain in his eyes? His beseeching expression?
Utterly different.
At home, I barrel up the stairs and into Michael’s office. He jerks up from his desk, surprise splashed across his features. “Mina, what’re you—”
“What the hell is this?” I brandish the magazine.
He freezes. His gaze travels from National Geographic to me and back again. In the silence, raindrops scrabble against the windowpanes.
I shove the magazine closer, as if he doesn’t understand what he’s seeing. “You never once thought to tell me that your brother’s your identical twin?”
His eyes flick to mine, unreadable. Meanwhile, my heart tries to climb out of my body using my throat as a ladder.
“No,” he finally says. “It doesn’t matter.”
I give the magazine a shake. Of course it matters. It matters so much I can hardly breathe. I just...can’t find the words to explain why. “Why on earth would you have lied about this?”
“I didn’t ,” he says. “I just didn’t bring it up. Why would I have?”
I stand unmoving, locked in a mute battle with the fury scalding my throat.
Michael sighs and sets down his pencil. “What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know,” I shrill. “How about the truth?”
“You know the truth. I didn’t volunteer that he’s my twin because it doesn’t matter. What my brother looks like has no impact on our lives whatsoever.”
My whole body trembles. I try to find a flaw in that logic and fail spectacularly.
“Mina.” Michael watches me with steady eyes. He’s utterly in control of himself. Always so unbelievably controlled . “Why are you so upset?”
“Because.” My voice cracks. “This whole time, there’s been another you, walking around out in the world somewhere? That’s so... wrong . I should’ve known.”
“He’s not another me. At all. He’s nothing like me.”
There’s a catch in his voice, a hint of some vastness buried beneath the measured words, and I latch on. “Oh, no? And what’s so unbelievably different? What’s made him not even worth talking about?”
Heavy seconds tick by. I hold my breath, knowing I’m skirting dangerously close to lines I agreed not to cross a decade ago. But I can’t seem to let this go.
“I don’t want to talk about this,” he says softly.
“You never do,” I snap. “You never want to talk about anything. Nothing real, anyway.”
His lashes flicker. Barely. “Angel. Why don’t you come here?”
“No,” I bite out, already knowing exactly what will happen if I cross this room. If he thinks he can just fuck me into submission, he...might actually be right. So I command my feet to meld with the floor. “Don’t do that. Don’t distract me that way.”
Michael waits, but when I don’t move, he heaves a breath and scrubs his palms on his slacks. “Okay, you really want to know what Grayson’s like? He’s...selfish. Impetuous. Violent. Not the kind of person you’d want around. There.”
“But he can’t be all bad. You cared about him, once.”
Michael makes an indecipherable sound. “Yeah, when I was a kid. Because I didn’t know any better.”
I hope for more, but my husband never elaborates if he doesn’t have to. He just turns impenetrable like this, locks me out of whatever inner turmoil he’s trying to hide. And yet, when I squint, I glimpse a sliver of that same depth I saw that day in Seattle—a world of pain piled up behind his eyes.
Not for the first time, or even the hundredth, I curse Grayson Drake to hell and back. If only Michael would let me in .
“I know I agreed not to talk about him,” I say, quieter this time. “But I think I need to understand what happened between you two.”
Another long pause. He props his hands on his knees. “Fine. I’ll tell you, this once . Never again. And promise me, Mina, you won’t go looking for him. He has no place in our lives. All he ever does is take, and he’s taken more than enough from me already.”
“Okay,” I say slowly.
“Promise me,” he repeats. “You won’t contact him, all right?”
I frown. That would never have crossed my mind. “I promise.”
Michael lets go of an exhale and scrubs at his forehead. “Okay. The thing is, my brother’s a bastard. He always has been. It just took me a long time to figure that out.”
I lower the magazine. Now that he’s agreed to talk, I almost want to stop him, because the effort involved alarms me. Sweat beads at his hairline while the apple of his throat scrapes up and down.
“When we were kids,” he forces out, “Grayson...took everything for himself. All the attention. All our parents’ time. Which was incredibly insulting, because he was always getting in trouble. Always breaking the rules. Meanwhile, I did exactly what I was supposed to and got ignored for it. Even in school, everyone liked him better. He was always the popular one, even though he spent half his time in detention.”
I swallow. The sound carries over the drumming rain.
“He was always hogging the spotlight.” Michael’s voice roughens. “Asking out the girls he knew I liked. Using up all the oxygen in the room. Taking my share of everything . But I loved him anyway. He was my brother. So I forgave him. Over and over.”
“That sounds hard,” I murmur.
“It was. And after that last time...” Michael stops, glances around. His tone hardens, businesslike. “Well, look what I have now. Money, success. Stability. You. In the end, I won.”
I frown. It’s not a competition, but he continues before I can say so.
“Seattle was just the day I’d had enough. I finally told him he couldn’t take from me anymore, that I was putting myself first. Which he couldn’t stand. And...” Michael glances away again as if searching the room for an escape route. “Well. That’s all there is.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
I waver. This vague attempt at an explanation does nothing to explain why Michael changed so drastically that day. It is, however, much more than I usually get, and judging by the way his chest heaves beneath his shirt, it’s cost him dearly to give it to me.
Still, the magazine drags at my hand like a hundred-pound-weight. I glance at the cover, from which imploring eyes plead with me in silence. Then at my husband. His brow smooths. He’s already locked himself back up, thrown away the key.
I inspect the magazine again. Then my husband.
The primordial mess of emotion within me burbles, and a half-formed suspicion heaves free of the muck. It’s so misshapen and horrific I can scarcely find the words to acknowledge it, and yet...
“You would tell me, right?” For once, I achieve the same deliberate calmness he wields so adeptly. Not that I’m calm inside. There, I’m anything but. “If there was a...mix-up with you two, right? If things had gotten crossed somehow?”
He frowns. “Angel? What’re you asking me?”
My molars lock together. What the hell am I asking? Am I so tragically desperate to unlock the secret of that week in Hawaii that I’m conjuring up conspiracies out of thin air?
Michael watches me with concern. When I say nothing, he abandons his desk and crosses the room, coming close enough to tip my face up.
“Are you feeling all right?” He presses a palm to my forehead. “You’re not getting sick, are you? Is that what this is all about?”
“I...” I lift my gaze and stare into the same eyes I looked into on our wedding day. My husband gazes back with all the flat, unruffled calm of a windless sea.
All at once, my internal turmoil collapses into a low red pulse of shame. What the hell is wrong with me? He’s never lied. Never betrayed me, never once come home smelling like perfume or with lipstick on his collar. No, he’s built me this palace and would build me another if I asked. He’s wined and dined me and kept me from wanting for anything. In Hawaii, he made my dreams come true, and someday, he’ll do it again.
I shove my inchoate accusations into a strongbox, padlock the lid, and shove the whole thing down, down, down where it belongs.
“Sorry,” I stammer out. “I—I don’t know what got into me. I shouldn’t have freaked out like that.”
“It’s okay.” He drops a kiss on my forehead, then wraps me in a hug. “Seeing someone who looked like me but wasn’t shocked you. It would’ve shocked anyone. Why don’t we take your mind off it by going to dinner? Valenti’s, maybe? It’ll give you an excuse to wear that little red thing I got you last week, and we can order the lobster bisque you love so much.”
I hesitate. “You hate the lobster bisque.”
“Yes. But I love you.”
The last remnants of my inner fire fizzle out. I burrow against his shoulder, already picturing us at our usual linen-draped table in the corner, gazing out at the sea as the sunset tints the water pink.
“We’ll leave around seven?” Michael says. “That’ll give you time for a run.”
“Okay.” I clear my throat and disentangle myself, leaving him to finish his work.
Downstairs, in the kitchen, I brave a glance at the magazine still clutched in my hand. Michael is right—what his brother looks like has nothing to do with us.
Yet as I stare, an ache as wide as the ocean opens inside my chest. Those eyes. And that expression. It’s like Grayson’s on the verge of saying something. Like he’s the kind of person who wants to talk.
The internal strongbox rattles and thumps. I shove it deeper. There goes my overactive imagination, assigning meaning where there is none, connecting dots in such a grotesque manner that I’m ashamed I could even consider something like that.
With a sound of disgust, I pop the trash can lid and stuff the magazine to the bottom, then go to the front hall to pull on my running shoes. I sprint out into the rain.
This will all be okay. Ten miles from now, I will have forgotten all about this.
And not a moment too soon.