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Chapter Thirty

Baxter

I hadn’t expected this visit to be pleasant. There was a reason I’d put it off for so long. But so far, it was surpassing even my expectations for awkwardness. The atmosphere changed the moment I said the name Owen. A snowstorm passing through couldn’t have turned the air any more frigid.

They exchanged a look. I knew them well enough to recognize it for what it was: a warning not to talk. I tightened my grip on Lake’s hand. He didn’t complain or pull away, even though my fingernails must have been digging into his skin. “A neighbor thought I was him,” I said. “So I know he’s been here. And I know he looks like me. I just don’t understand how that’s possible.”

My father cast another quick glance at my mother. “He’s going to find out eventually,” he said. “We may as well be the ones to tell him.”

“Tell me what?” I’d tried to read their thoughts a few times since arriving, but each attempt had been blocked. Given this wasn’t an ability they’d ever possessed before, it begged the question of why they’d gotten better at it. Who had they been trying to block out? Owen? Or someone else?

My mother shifted in her seat. “Owen is your brother. Your… twin brother.”

The words hit like a punch to the gut. All the evidence had been pointing toward Owen being a brother, unlikely as that had seemed, but a twin brother was a whole extra layer of fucked up.

“How?” Lake asked before I could find my voice. “How can Baxter have a twin brother and never have known about it?”

“Yeah,” I managed hoarsely. “That.”

“Remember how you were six weeks premature?” my father asked.

I nodded. “I don’t remember, obviously. But you told me growing up about the respiratory distress. About how I needed an incubator for the first week of my life.”

“You both did,” my mother said softly, fondness in her tone as her gaze turned unfocused, as if she were picturing the scene. “You lay there so tiny, the both of you. You held hands in the incubator. You wouldn’t let go of each other. You hated being separated. My little Baxter and Owen.”

My heart hammered in my chest, and I felt like I might throw up. The coffee didn’t help, but I couldn’t pretend it was the only reason. Lake’s hand became my anchor, the only thing stopping me from floating up to the ceiling. Or bolting for the door so I didn’t have to hear the rest of the story I’d come here for.

“What happened?” Lake prompted.

My father’s brow furrowed. “Someone took Owen. We believe the intention was to take both of you, but a nurse disturbed him. She challenged him, but he barged past her and knocked her out cold. By the time someone raised the alarm, he’d already escaped the hospital and taken Owen with him.

My mother picked up the thread. “It’s not like baby snatching wasn’t treated seriously even back then. It was. But it was as if he walked out of the hospital and vanished into thin air.”

I fought through a mouth gone painfully dry. “And you never thought to tell me I had a twin?” The word felt alien on my tongue.

“We thought Owen was dead,” my father said. “They took him from an incubator. You weren’t strong enough to be removed from yours for another four days. What chance did he have when he couldn’t even breathe on his own?”

“But he survived,” Lake said.

My mother nodded. “He turned up on our doorstep a few days before the funeral… before your funeral.” My nausea doubled, and I briefly wondered how they’d react if I decorated their rug with this morning’s breakfast. I focused on breathing, but all that did was draw more coffee into my lungs. Coffee. Blood. Pain. Lake let go of my hand to rub slow, soothing circles on my back.

“Somehow,” my father said, “he tracked us down. At first, we thought it was you. That there’d been some terrible mix-up. That someone else had been killed instead.”

“He killed me,” I said. I needed the words out there. “Owen was the one who did it.”

Frozen stillness followed. Then my mother laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous. They caught the man who murdered you. Not straight away, but years later. He’s in prison.”

I looked her straight in the eye. “I know. I met him. And I’m telling you, it wasn’t him.”

“Maybe tell us what happened next,” Lake suggested. “Give us a clearer picture. Then we can discuss everything else.”

My father continued. “He was devastated that he’d never gotten to meet you.” He had. He’d just done it with a blade in a car park. “He wanted to attend the funeral, but we were worried it would upset people. Burying one man while someone who looked exactly like him stood there…” He trailed off. “If people had known about him, maybe. But they didn’t.”

“And after?” I asked. “You just… what? Swapped me for him?”

“It wasn’t like that,” my mother said defensively. “But we weren’t about to turn him away. He had a pregnant girlfriend. They needed somewhere to stay.”

I laughed, sharp and humorless. “Oh, it gets better. My replacement was straight. You must have thought all your Christmases had come at once.”