Page 89 of Memories of the Lost
“You’re American?” Sage said.
“Yes.” She had the strangest urge to lift a hand to the other woman’s face, as if to affirm it really was so similar. They stared and stared, and Tillie felt a roar starting up far away, the echo of the feeling she’d had this morning, and yet the migraine aura didn’t come back. The cat wound around her feet.
“I’m Clare,” said the third woman. “I’m Sage’s mum.” She was tall and lean, her hair going silver in single strands. Tillie had a sense of a mountain lion, powerful and sharpened by years of hardship. Her eyes were clear and all-knowing, and Tillie felt a strange, deep pang somewhere in her intestines.
Sheknewthis face. Those eyes. A pain slid between her ribs, burst in her chest.
“Where were you born, love?” Clare asked gently.
Tillie started to answer, and then realized nothing she knew about herself had thus far proved true. “Los Angeles. I think.” She was trembling, very finely, all over her body, as if she’d liquefy. The only thing anchoring her was Liam’s hand. “She died, my mother, a few months ago, and ... and ... I don’t know, honestly. Maybe New Hampshire?”
Clare said, “Sage, say something.”
“Los Angeles, I think,” Sage repeated.
The accent was different, and it didn’t really sound the same to Tillie, but the room went completely silent. Tillie felt a sucking sensation, the rolling back of the waters of the ocean as it was sucked into itself, revealing the base of the sea and stranded animals and wrecks never seen before at such a depth.
But just now, it was pulling back and back and back. Clare’s eyes filled with unshed tears. Sage stared at Tillie as if she’d burn a hole through her. Tillie shrank back into the wall of Liam.
Abruptly, Sage reached for Tillie’s arm, and turned it over to reveal the delicate inner flesh. She pressed her index finger into the deep divot in the hidden place midway between wrist and elbow. “How did you get this scar?” she asked, raising her eyes, and up so close, they were exactly the same eyes Tillie saw when she leaned in to put on her mascara. Thesame color of iris, the same layered bits of yellow and green amid the blue, the same slight dip on the inner corner.
“I don’t remember,” she whispered.
“It was a rock,” Sage said. “You slipped down the hill and landed on it.”
Clare made a soft sound. “Impossible,” she whispered, and took Tillie’s other hand. “After all this time,” she said, nearly airless. “Rosemary.”
Tillie backed away, pulling out of their grasp. “I don’t understand.”
“You don’t remember?” Clare said, and her eyes filled with tears.
“Remember what?” Tillie asked, the ocean sucking back and back and back.
“I remember,” Sage said. “I remember everything. You’re my sister. My twin. We thought you were dead.” She whispered, “All this time, we thought you were dead.”
And even though she’d been searching for the answer to questions that made no sense, Tillie couldn’t take this in. Not this.
She stared at the two of them, unable to think of what to say.
A sense of panic rose in her chest, and she suddenly turned on her heel, broke away from the group, and ran outside, her breath far away, vision prickling at the edges. She tried to haul in air, but her heart was beating too fast, too fast. She couldn’t breathe. She was going to die.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
In the garden, Tillie bent over, bracing herself on her knees. She felt Liam approach and wanted to push him away, but she didn’t have the strength. He placed a hand on the top of her back.
“You’re not dying,” he said. “Remember? Let’s breathe in. One . . . two . . . three . . . That’s right. Out one . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . five . . . six.”
She coughed, stood up. Pushed away. He was part of the insanity. She strode through the grass, paced back. “Why did you do this?”
“I didn’t. I swear.”
“It’s impossible. It’s all impossible.”
He waited.
Tillie covered her eyes, howling. “I don’t know how to think about this. I don’t remember anything. Wouldn’t you think I’d remember when I saw them?”
“You don’t have to make sense of it all at once.”
