The Twin They Erased novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: The Gate

We reached the barn at three in the morning, and the yard light was on.

Eamon's mother stood on the porch of the farmhouse across the hayfield, in a man's coat over her nightgown.

She was sixty, with grey braids and strong forearms, and she had been a county nurse for thirty years.

Eamon had called her from the road.

She looked into the truck at Tilda, took her pulse with two fingers and said, "Bring her in."

They put her in the back bedroom, under a quilt, with a glass of water and a bucket.

"She'll sweat and she'll shake for three days," Eamon's mother said. "Whatever that woman gave her, she's been on it a long time. Nobody hands her a drop of it again."

Tilda gripped my hand until the older woman sat down on the bed and took the other one.

"Go," my sister whispered. "I'm not afraid of her."

"I'll be in the next room."

"Go," she said. "You look like you're going to fall down."

Jonas pulled a chair to the door and sat in it with his arms folded.

I went out into the yard in my school coat, and the air smelled of cut hay.

Eamon was standing at the barn gate with the tin from Ansel's desk under his arm, looking at the road.

He did not turn around.

"I said be at the gate," I said.

"I am."

"I said I'd come back."

"You did." His jaw moved. "I didn't believe it."

"I know."

"I heard you in that kitchen say you owed me," he said. "I figured it was a thing you said while you were leaving."

"Eamon."

"I'm not done." He faced me. "You knew who you were. The night you walked in here you knew you were an Astley with a lake house and a family that owned half the shore, and you let me think you were a ward with nothing."

I had not expected that.

"I had nothing."

"You had a name that could have bought Ansel's marker with your pocket change. I spent two years scraping forty percent out of girls' fists, Willa. I stood in front of the ring and read you my rules like I was doing you a favor."

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