“You didn’t ask.”
“I was trying to protect you.”
“From what?”
Her eyes filled with something I mistook for pity.
“It might be painful.”
The moment she mentioned pain, I stopped pressing.
Grief had made me easy to silence.
People only had to speak Paul’s name gently, and I accepted whatever they wanted me to accept.
The night before the wedding, Diane came to my house with documents for their move.
She was restless.
She checked her phone constantly.
When it rang, she answered immediately.
“Yes, I’m coming.”
She gathered her bag and rushed out.
Ten minutes later, I noticed her passport on my kitchen table.
She needed it for the flight the following afternoon.
I called six times.
No answer.
So I drove to her apartment.
I thought I was saving her wedding.
Instead, I found the face of my dead husband.
Inside the apartment, the man who called himself Evan stood near the kitchen counter.
I could not stop staring at him.
The resemblance was unbearable.
Even the way he rubbed his thumb against his palm was familiar.
Paul had done that whenever he was nervous.
On the counter, beside the wedding invitations, was a framed photograph lying facedown.
I picked it up.
Diane stood beside Evan at a lakeside restaurant.
His face was Paul’s.
But his smile was not.
Paul had smiled as though he were always trying not to laugh.
This man smiled carefully, as if happiness was something that might be taken away.
“My husband never had a brother,” I said.
Evan lowered his eyes.
“He had a twin.”
The apartment door opened behind me.
