Page 94 of Memories of the Lost

Tillie followed, caught in a magnetic field that surrounded her sister’s orbit. The light was good here, pouring in through mullioned windows to the back and from overhead lights hanging from a high ceiling. The age of the place was plain, with the bricks and the ancient floors. Without asking if she could, she sank down on a stool before a big butcher-block counter and took it all in. A machine hummed quietly nearby. Rows of white molds were stacked nearly to the ceiling over another pair of machines. Racks held trays of finished chocolates in different shapes and sizes. Sage looked like a fairy from an old children’s book, with her short hair and big eyes. Tillie’s mind offered up a vision of winged fairies, pale colored with iridescent wings.

“How are you?” Sage asked. Her voice was kind. But also, it was resonant, with a kind of depth Tillie never associated with her own voice. “Kind of a lot of information, right?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Only that my entire life is a lie.” She lifted her hands, dropped them to her legs. “How do I—how do we—do this?”

Sage smiled gently. With deft fingers, she arranged a trio of chocolates on a little plate she took from the dish station and set it before Tillie. “Chocolate often helps.”

“Does it?”

“I brought some to Mum’s house, but we didn’t get a chance to sample them. Something told me to bring chili-infused. What do you think?”

“Oh yes,” Tillie said. Sage pointed to a square on the plate. Tillie picked it up and took a nibble. She was indifferent to chocolate for the most part, but this was something more than just chocolate. It melted instantly on her tongue, as if joining the molecules of her mouth—chocolate first, then bright sprays of dark chocolate, then a finish of heat. She closed her eyes, reveling.

A table covered with pastry, a bowl, cups, and spoons. Cooking. Windows fogged with steam. A woman singing, flour puffing up in the air as she flipped it over. Chocolate. Peppermint. Oranges. Christmas.

She opened her eyes. Sage worked small balls of chocolate into a bed of dark-brown powder—cocoa powder—and lined them up on a small pan. There was no hurry about her, no judgment, no pressure at all, just a cloud of calm that made Tillie feel calmer, too. She looked at her sister’s face, finding her own features slightly askew. “We’re twins,” she ascertained.

Sage nodded. “You’re older by ten minutes, but I see now that I look quite a bit older. It’s a little disconcerting.”

“How old were we when I ... disappeared?”

“Four and a half.”

“Do you remember?”

“Remember you? Yes, of course.”

“Remember when I was lost.”

Her expression collapsed. “Yes. It was the worst day of my entire life.”

Tillie bowed her head. “I hate that I don’t remember.”

“Maybe it’s a blessing.”

“I guess.” She nudged the place where the hole lived in her memory, feeling the hollow. She picked up another chocolate, this one shaped like a tiny Bundt cake.

“Let it just melt in your mouth,” Sage said.

Tillie did. It started dry and a little bitter, then softened until it was only the purest taste of chocolate she’d ever known. Again, she closed her eyes, but this time, there was no picture, just the wonder of the taste, filling her, transporting her. “How do you do that? I don’t even like chocolate all that much.”

A Madonna smile touched Sage’s lips. “You won’t remember, but there’s a family story about a cake a neighbor made, a torte with layers of ganache.” She frowned, looking off into the distance. “Maybe it was Arlette who made it! That would be so weird.” She shook her head. “Anyway, I almost drowned in that cake. And I can still remember how deep and wild that chocolate tasted. It was incredible.”

Tillie found herself relaxing, letting go of some tension in her body that had bunched her shoulders up to her ears.

Sage continued. “I had a pretty substantial meth problem.”

“They don’t really come in small, do they?”

Sage laughed. “True enough.” She rolled a chocolate in the powder. “I was gone for about eight years, living in Barnstaple and London. And one day, a woman was kind to me and gave me some chocolate at a shop.” Rolling, tapped lightly, set aside. “I can’t even imagine how I looked, like some skinny girl monster with no teeth. But her shop reminded me that there were other things in the world. I didn’t get clean right then, but it started then.”

“I’m sorry that happened to you.”

She looked away. “I’m okay now.”

“And married to my favorite folk singer,” Tillie said. “I’m not kidding. I adore her.”

“She is wonderful. Truly.” She rolled the last chocolate. “She looked up your art online and showed us. You’re amazing.”