She doesn’t look at me, but that’s nothing new. She hasn’t looked at me in six months. “I’m tired, Theo.”
“I know.” I keep my voice gentle. Low. “I just wanted to check in. Can I get you anything?”
She only burrows down into the covers, ignoring me. Sighing, I tug them up and smooth them over her. “I’ll bring you up some lunch.”
I’m almost to the door when she speaks. “I saw that girl today.”
My hand clenches on the door handle. “What girl?”
“He was so handsome,” my mother whispers, so quietly that I have to strain to hear her. “My sweet boy. She ruined him, you know.”
“Who did you see, mom?”
She keeps mumbling. “I see him, too. I see him everywhere.”
I feel my mother’s eyes skate across my face before they skitter away. “You’re not like him.”
My gut churns. “I know.”
Parents aren’t supposed to have a favorite child. If they ever do, it’s something unspoken. Something almost taboo. “Get some rest.”
That's all she does, now. Rest, and cry, and scream, and talk about the shadows on the walls as if they’re real.
I don’t know which is worse.
As I pull the door shut behind me, my eyes catch on the bedroom door opposite. It’s closed, as it has been for six months.
But it looks the same. Nothing has moved since the last day he was here. I step inside with a guilty glance over my shoulder, carefully pushing the door closed before moving further in. The bed is still messy, haphazardly arranged covers tossed in a careless attempt at making it up. Brett’s washing is still sitting in the basket in the corner. His wardrobe door is ajar, the desk immaculate as always. And the suitcases still sit at the end of the bed, waiting for an owner that will never arrive.
Even his scent is still here, layers of familiarity. It’s one that I could find in any room, pick from a thousand options. Mango and mint, fresh and clean in comparison to my own musky scent.
The bed squeaks as I sit on the end, bracing my elbows on my knees. Across from me, pictures line the walls, some stuck to battered posters of bands we used to follow. Familiar faces, each and every one. Family photos of holidays, our faces squishedtogether with a smaller grinning Nia pinned in between us. Jake, Max and Oscar, all of us from gap-toothed kids to gangly preteens, all the way through to the end of last year.
It’s a timeline of Brett’s life. But the only photos from last year are ones of an omega with deep red hair.
Standing, I cross and tug one off the wall. Kennedy perches on Brett’s lap, her hand buried in his hair and a smile on her lips as he holds the phone to snap the picture.
Another, the two of them at our high school graduation ball. We teamed up with three other schools in neighboring towns so we’d have enough people to make up the numbers. She’s wearing white carnations on her wrist and a brittle smile that reminds me of the hissed whispers in the limo we all shared. Brett’s arm is tight around her waist, his grin wide.
In every single one, my twin is angled aroundher.
Brett thought Kennedy Traylor was the sun, the moon and the fucking stars. And she destroyed him for it.
My lips press together, and I glance down at the tearing sound. The photo splits into two between my fingers, and I open them up, letting the pieces fall to the floor.
My wrist buzzes with an incoming message, and I glance down.
I have to read it several times before it sinks in.
I found her.
It takes seconds for the call to connect. Oscar doesn’t waste time. “Come to the house. We need to talk.”
“Where?” I’m already leaving, pulling the door closed behind me and jogging down the stairs. My words are short. “Where is she?”
He pauses. “I saw her in town. She never left.”
She’s been here the whole fucking time. “But… we went to the trailer. More than once. Rick told us she’d gone.”
