With the gun in her hand, she passed through the living room, and then into the kitchen. Once again, she glanced over at Annabelle’s purse and its contents strewn on the kitchen table. She wondered if she’d missed anything, perhaps some jewelry belonging to her mother or Ina.
All at once, she started to feel faint again. She couldn’t get a decent breath, and she was deathly cold. The only thing keeping her going was her anger. Amelia tried to ignore the signals, the strange feeling that her sister was already slipping away.
She didn’t notice anything familiar amid the debris from Annabelle’s purse. She opened up the wallet, and saw some fake ID’s and credit cards that were obviously not hers. Amelia didn’t recognize any of the names on the cards.
She found a photograph in the wallet, creased and worn as if it had been carried around for a long, long time. It was a picture of two identical, dark-haired little girls in overalls, holding hands and smiling at the camera. The color was so faded, and the images nearly washed out. But Amelia remembered those overalls were a very pretty shade of green.
She remembered, and she started to cry again.
Karen ran as fast as she could.
Somewhere along the way, she’d stumbled over a tree root and hit the ground hard. She’d banged her knee, but dragged herself up and relentlessly pressed on toward the sound of that gunshot. Her throat had gone dry, and it hurt every time she tried to breathe. Still, she didn’t slow down.
She kept hoping to hear the police sirens. But there was nothing except Helene’s dog barking in the distance. She couldn’t even see the Faradays’ house yet.
Karen kept wondering who had fired the gun. At this point, it could have been either Amelia or Annabelle. And at this point, she was probably already too late.
All of a sudden, she stumbled again and hit the damp sand. It knocked the wind out of her. Pulling herself up once more, her hand brushed against a piece of weathered driftwood. It was almost the size of a baseball ball-with a few rounded-off knobs where branches had once been. Karen picked it up off the ground, and then caught her breath for a moment. She wondered if this piece of wood was anything like the plank Annabelle had used to bash in Collin Faraday’s skull.
Clutching the makeshift club tightly in her fist, Karen hurried toward the Faradays’ house. She could see it in the distance now. The lights were on in the living room and the front hall. As she came closer, Karen could see the open front door and the silhouette of someone sitting on the front step. “Amelia?” she called.
Shivering and pale, she’d thrown a blanket over her shoulders. Even closer, Karen recognized the flannel pajama bottoms. She noticed the bloodstained dishtowel wrapped around her hand.
But Karen abruptly stopped when she saw the revolver in her other hand. “Amelia, did you-did you fire the gun?”
Tears in her eyes, she nodded.
“Did Annabelle attack you?” Karen asked.
“No. I didn’t fire it at anybody,” she replied with a tremor in her voice. “Annabelle-she’s dead. I left her alone for a few minutes, and when I went back down there, she was dead.” She let out a little cry. “I never had a chance to talk with her-to understand….”
Karen sat down beside her on the front stoop. She didn’t know what to say. She just gently patted her back and let her cry.
Hearing a noise behind them, Karen glanced over her shoulder. She didn’t see anyone in the doorway, but she noticed some drops of blood on the floor. There was a trail leading out to the front stoop, and it wasn’t old, dried blood, either. It was fresh.
Earlier, they’d managed to suppress the bleeding from the cut across Amelia’s palm. Mystified, Karen glanced at the dishtowel around her hand. Then she glanced down toward the stoop at the small puddle of blood. Another drop hit the puddle. And it wasn’t coming from Amelia’s hand.
It wasn’t coming from Amelia at all.
Karen gasped. She noticed that nearly all the color had drained from the 19-year-old’s face, and sweat beaded on her forehead. But she was smirking. And she had the gun aimed at Karen. Even with a bullet in her gut, and sitting in a puddle of her own blood, Annabelle was still smiling.
At that moment, Karen figured she was as good as dead.
A shadow suddenly passed over them both. Karen glanced back in time to see Amelia in the doorway. Amelia raised the square-edged, short-handled shovel, and brought the flat end of it crashing down on her sister’s head. It made a hollow ping as it cracked against her skull. Annabelle let out a cry, and the gun went off. A spray of dirt exploded from the ground near Karen’s feet.
Annabelle lurched forward and toppled onto the ground. The revolver flew out of her grasp. Stunned, she rolled over on her back. The blanket fell aside, exposing the gaping wound in her stomach, and two blood-soaked dishtowels.
Amelia warily stood over Annabelle, as if her sister were a wounded rabid dog. She kept the shovel in her hands, ready to strike her again if necessary. She was shivering in just her oversized T-shirt and nothing else.
Karen gaped up at her. In the distance, she heard the police sirens.
“I left her alone for a few minutes,” Amelia said, catching her breath. “I thought about killing her, and then suddenly, I started to remember everything. I felt sorry for her. So I went down there again, bringing her a blanket, and she clubbed me in the head with her shoe.”
Sprawled out on the ground in front of them, Annabelle laughed. But then she started to cough, and blood sprayed out of her mouth. She coughed again, and more blood spewed out. Suddenly, she couldn’t seem to get a breath. A look of panic swept over her ashen face. She seemed to be choking on her own blood.
Karen started to get to her feet. But Amelia moved more quickly. She tossed aside the shovel, and hurried to her sister’s side. She held Annabelle’s head in her lap.
Annabelle reached up and touched Amelia’s cheek. Her every gasp was a death rattle.
Amelia gently smoothed back her sister’s hair. “It’s okay, Annie,” she whispered.
Karen watched, and didn’t say a word as Annabelle Schlessinger struggled for her last few breaths. Amelia’s twin listlessly stared up at the starry sky. Then her jaw slowly dropped and one last breath escaped from her mouth.
Amelia kept stroking her hair for another minute. “There now, Annie,” she whispered. “There now….”
The wail of the sirens became louder and louder. The headlights and red strobes illuminated the forest behind the lake house.
Amelia didn’t have any tears in her eyes when she covered her twin sister’s face with the blanket. She finally stood up, and then wandered over to Karen. She wrapped her arms around her and dropped her head on Karen’s shoulder.
“I don’t feel the pain anymore,” she whispered.
Epilogue
Karen opened her eyes as the squad car turned down her street. To her amazement, there were no TV news vans or police cars parked in front of her house, no reporters or onlookers. All was quiet on her block at 6:40 that morning.
Both she and Amelia had nodded off intermittently in the back seat of the patrol car for the last forty-five minutes. This was their fourth ride in the back of a police car since leaving the Lake Wenatchee house so many hours ago.
It had been during that first trip-to the Wenatchee Police Station-that Karen told Amelia about her biological father and mother, and about something Amelia had wanted to know for a long, long time. The cops and the ambulance only used their sirens when other vehicles or pedestrians were around, but their red flashers remained on for the whole trip. “Back when we had our very first session, you mentioned something to me,” Karen said during one of those quiet periods. Amelia clutched her hand. The ambulance, carrying Amelia’s dead twin was in front of
