A scraggly aloe plant cast long shadows across the tile. A dripping noise sounded from outside the living room window and Emma watched rain fall in slow drops from the drainpipe. In the hallway, moonlight cast an eerie glow across the family photographs. Emma caught her reflection in a scal oped, gold-framed mirror at the end of the hall. Her dark hair hung long and loose, and her oval face looked like a white sheet against the darkness. She rounded the corner into the kitchen and felt the cold tile beneath her bare feet. She was about to open a cabinet when a shadowy figure moved in the corner. She jumped backward, her hip slamming against a chrome dial on the stove.
“Sutton?”
Emma’s eyes focused on Mrs. Mercer, her body hunched forward as she held Drake by the collar. The dog let out a low bark.
“What are you doing up so late?” Mrs. Mercer straightened and let Drake go. He came over and sniffed Emma’s hand before curling into a ball at the foot of the fridge.
Emma tied her messy hair back into a ponytail. “I couldn’t sleep so I came down to get a glass of water.” Mrs. Mercer put her hand on Emma’s forehead.
“Hmmm. Are you feeling okay? Laurel says you came home soaked from the rain.”
Emma forced a weak laugh. “Well, I didn’t have an umbrel a. Last time I checked, we lived in Arizona.” She took in Mrs. Mercer’s rumpled hair and robe. “What are you doing up?”
Mrs. Mercer waved her hand dismissively. “Oh, Drake was whining, so I got up to let him out.” She went to the sink and filled a glass, dropping two ice cubes in it. The cubes cracked loudly in the water. She sat at the counter and pushed it toward Emma, who took a grateful sip.
“So …” Mrs. Mercer propped her chin in her hand.
“Why can’t you sleep? Anything you want to talk about?” Emma put her head down on the counter and sighed.
There was so much she wanted to talk about. She couldn’t talk about Sutton’s murder, but maybe she could get some advice on Ethan. “I hurt a guy I care about and I don’t know how to fix it,” she blurted.
Mrs. Mercer looked sympathetic. “Did you try apologizing?”
There was a soft rumbling noise as the ice machine deposited a new batch in the freezer. “I tried … but he didn’t want to hear it,” Emma said.
“Well, maybe you need to try again. Figure out exactly what you did wrong and exactly how you can fix it, then make it happen.”
“How am I supposed to do that?” Emma asked.
Mrs. Mercer leaned back in her chair and ran her fingers along a pineapple-printed dish towel. “Sometimes, actions speak louder than words. Show him that you’re sorry, and hopefully everything will fall back in place. Just be the best Sutton you can be. He’s got to understand that people make mistakes sometimes. And if he can’t forgive you, he’s not worth keeping around.”
Emma thought about this for a moment. Sutton’s mom was right: She’d just made a mistake, nothing more. And maybe she couldn’t be the best Sutton she could be, but she could definitely be the best Emma. Ethan had said Emma had forgotten who she was—the nice twin. With so much going on, it was hard to maintain her identity—and know what she wanted. Emma’s needs felt so secondary in comparison to what happened to Sutton. Wanting anything beyond staying alive and solving her sister’s murder seemed like such a luxury.
She sat up straighter, a firm sense of resolve settling over her. She just needed to stick to her plan. She was going to prove that Thayer murdered her sister. That way, she could go back to being Emma Paxton. But in the meantime, she was going to behave in a way she could be proud of, even if her actions weren’t one hundred percent Sutton-like.
Emma stood up and hugged Mrs. Mercer. “Thanks, Mom. That was just what I needed to hear.” Mrs. Mercer hugged her for a moment, then leaned back and looked at the girl she thought was her daughter with surprise. “That’s the first time you’ve ever thanked me for giving you advice.”
“Well, maybe I should have thanked you a long time ago.”
As my mom corralled Drake and led him back up the stairs, I felt a guilty pang. Given what my mother had just said, and what I’d already gleaned about my relationship with my parents, I doubted my mom and I had ever had late-night heart-to-hearts when I was alive. I didn’t value my parents’ opinions at all, and maybe that was a mistake—
yet another in a long list of regrets I couldn’t rectify.
I turned my attention back to Emma, who was sitting with her chin cupped in her hand, a distant smile on her face. Even though I knew it was wrong, a bitter edge of resentment flowed through me. Emma was having trouble remembering who she was, but at least she still had a body, an identity. Actually, she had two identities—hers and mine. And now she had to live for the both of us.
22
SEEK AND YE SHALL
FIND
For the next two days, Emma tried to stick with her decision, keep her head up, and do random acts of Emma Kindness, even if they weren’t completely Sutton-esque.
She retweeted the Twitter Twins’ latest posts about the difficulty of finding clothes worthy of their hotness with an LOL. She complimented Charlotte’s backhand during tennis practice. She even told Nisha Banerjee that her hair tie was cute. Nisha had looked astonished—and a little suspicious
—but thanked Emma.
Emma hadn’t had any success with Ethan or Laurel, though. On Wednesday she’d let Laurel have the last pomegranate-flavored yogurt in the fridge compartment in the cafeteria line, knowing it was Laurel’s favorite, but Laurel just grunted and greedily took it. When Emma caught sight of Ethan in the hall, he’d yanked his backpack higher on his shoulder and darted across the hall to avoid her.