The Day I Died Twice Chapter 08

The Day I Died Twice Chapter 08

The same face.

The phone slipped out of my hand. It cracked against the tile, screen up, those four words still glowing into the dark kitchen.

I bolted to the window and dragged the curtains shut. Bolted to Mabel’s room and gathered her, half-asleep, against my chest. Bolted to the front door to check that the deadbolt was thrown.

Beyond the frosted glass, a figure waited on my porch.

Tall. Slim. My height. My build.

A woman.

“Mommy?” Mabel mumbled. “Why’s it dark?”

“Shh, baby. We’re playing the quiet game.” Somehow my voice held steady. I don’t know how. “Stay right behind me.”

I thumbed 911 with one hand, my daughter clamped in the crook of my other arm, and cracked the door six inches on the chain.

The woman on my porch turned.

And I found myself staring at my own face.

Not similar. Not a passing resemblance.

Identical. My eyes. My mouth. The little scar above my left brow, the one I’d earned falling off a bike at nine.

The phone dropped from my fingers, the 911 operator’s voice

—

gone tinny and distant.

“Hello, Celeste,” she said, and even the voice was mine. “I’ve waited a very long time to meet you.”

“Who—” My throat sealed shut. “Who are you?”

She smiled, and it was my smile, except cold—like a reflection that had taught itself to move alone.

“Our mother had two daughters,” she said. “But our family could only afford to keep one of them. They chose you. The healthy one. The lucky one.” Her head tipped to the side. “I was the one they gave away. Sold, if we’re being honest. To people who… weren’t kind.”

The kitchen tilted around me.

In my last life, I’d never known. I’d died without ever learning I had a sister at all.

“You’re lying,” I whispered.

“Am I?” She lifted a finger and traced the scar above her brow—the exact twin of mine. “We were two years old when they cut us apart, Celeste. You don’t remember. I didn’t either, until the people who bought me made sure I understood it. They wanted me to know I was the spare. The one nobody wanted.”

Behind me, Mabel whimpered. The woman’s eyes—my eyes—fell to her, and something rippled across that mirror-face. Hunger. Longing. Grief.

—

“She looks like us,” my sister said softly. “She has our chin.”

“Don’t look at her.” I shifted Mabel fully behind my body.
“What do you want?”

“I wanted what you had.” Her gaze climbed back to mine, and now something molten moved beneath the calm.
“The mother who kept you. The father who tucked you in. The husband, the house, the perfect life. I found Nathaniel two years ago. I gave him Marissa. I planted the seed. I whispered the plan into his greedy little ear and let him believe it was his own idea.”

The room spun faster.

“You arranged my murder.” The words landed flat with horror.
“You used my husband to kill me.”

“I wanted you to lose everything,” she said. “The way I lost everything before I could even speak.”

Sirens climbed in the distance, drawing closer.

My sister glanced toward the sound, unhurried, almost serene.

“But then,” she said, “I watched you fight tonight. I watched you protect that little girl with everything in you. And I understood something.” Her voice dropped, raw and unsteady. “You’re not the lucky one, Celeste. You just refused to drown.”

She stepped back off the porch, into the dark.

—

“This isn’t over,” she said. “I still don’t know whether I want to save you—or finish what I started.”

Then the police lights swept across the yard, and she was gone.