The Girl in the Mirror(4)

Adam comes on the line. “What’s your date of birth? Oh, stupid me, of course I know that. What’s your middle name? Same as Summer’s?”

“No middle name.”

“Really, just Iris? Okay, that’s easy. Short and sweet. Hang on a second, hon—Iris—the website’s confirming the booking.”

Did he almost call me “honey”? The thought has a deep effect on me. I feel it in my body. I flush with shame; I really should get out of Summer’s underwear.

But now Adam’s saying goodbye. In the background, Summer is asking about Tarquin’s vaccinations, but Adam doesn’t know the answers to her questions. He’s always so vague, it makes me wonder how the hell he manages to run a travel agency. Summer has to handle all their life admin. He hands the phone back to her, and she asks me to email Tarquin’s vaccination records to her. Then she hangs up.

Finding the records is easy. Summer has filed them all in the closet. I’m struck by her extreme organization. Her life is laid out here in writing; there’s even a folder labeled adam’s favorite meals. When I pull it off the shelf, a sex manual falls out. The Millennial Kama Sutra. It looks well worn.

I could browse all day, but I have to get moving. I have to dress, eat something, tell Annabeth the plan. My mother’s barely gotten her head around my sudden appearance, and now I’m disappearing again. She’ll freak out about Tarquin, too. She treats the kid like he’s her blood grandson.

First, I dart into the en suite bathroom for one glimpse of Summer in her good-girl gingham. And that’s when I see it. The one thing that Summer has changed about this house.

The two panes of glass must have cost a fortune, and it must have been quite an operation to hoist them up here. They seem larger than the door. They’ve been installed with great care. The angle is exact, the seam almost invisible. Even better than the one on the yacht.

It wouldn’t bother me, it wouldn’t gnaw at my insides, if Summer had genuinely wanted a double mirror. We are twins; I can’t blame her for wanting the same things as I do. But Summer has never minded who she sees in the mirror. She’s never been interested in the “mirror twins” thing. I can see she has installed this mirror because it looks good. It fits into the space beautifully, and with the door to the bedroom open, it reflects the bay window and the ocean beyond.

Even the things Summer doesn’t care about she gets first.

I stare diagonally into the double mirror. The girl in the mirror stares back. She’s wearing Summer’s yellow underwear, but she isn’t Summer. It’s her left cheek that’s fuller, her left cheekbone that’s higher.

The girl in the mirror is me.





2

The Will




There was a moment when Summer was an only child. Annabeth’s got a bohemian streak, so she refused to have an ultrasound during her pregnancy, even though Dad was desperate to know the baby’s sex. And her belly wasn’t very big. There was no clue that there were two babies.

So it was a girl. My mother held the rosy blond infant in her arms and gave her the name she’d been saving up all her life: Summer Rose.

Then they realized I was coming. Dad doubtless felt his dashed hopes rise again—a second chance for a son. Annabeth just hoped that we would not be identical twins.

They were both disappointed. My father, ever logical, suggested Summer and Rose as names, but Annabeth couldn’t take away the name with which she’d already blessed my sister.

Later that day, someone brought my mother a bunch of irises, and something about the spiky, unscented flowers must have appealed, because that’s what my parents named me. Annabeth always told this story as if it meant something special, but I couldn’t get past the idea that she had looked around the hospital room and named me after the first thing she laid eyes on, because she still wanted Summer to be Summer Rose.

Suitcase in hand, I hurry out of Summer and Adam’s bedroom and down the floating staircase. I’ve organized for my uncle Colton to drive me to the airport since Annabeth’s eyesight is too poor these days. I won’t let her come with me. After Summer’s phone call, I’ve managed to fudge the truth, so she now has the impression that the reason I turned up in Australia was to go and help with Bathsheba. All the same, she’s already asked me too many questions about Noah.

Uncle Colton is easier company, although as he gets older, his resemblance to Dad is becoming almost spooky. When I reach the bottom of the stairs, Colton is standing close by my mother’s side in the spacious white living room, where everything is drenched in sunshine from the skylights that Adam has installed. The two of them are gazing at the larger-than-life framed photo of the newborn Tarquin on the living room wall. In the photo, Tarquin is skinny and sickly, with breathing tubes in his nose, and is held not by his dying mother but by a young neonatal nurse.

Standing together, my uncle and my mother both look as blond and well preserved as each other, and the ugly thought hits me that Annabeth might be attracted to this uncanny reincarnation of her husband. Then again, she probably can’t see well enough to appreciate the similarity. She has macular degeneration, so everything in her world is low-res.

“So this is all Helen’s stuff, the furniture, and the piano, of course?” Uncle Colton asks. Helen was a concert pianist, and her Steinway grand still has pride of place in Summer and Adam’s living room. It’s out of keeping with the decor, black and heavy where everything else is light.