I Copied My Twin Sister Until She Screamed "I QUIT!" novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Pueblo Speech

Gwendolyn faces the board with nothing of her own to say and recites her sister's four-year-old speech word for word, pauses included, winning a deadline of Friday at noon; Ambrose shows a photo of Cordelia leaving for Lisbon, and Tiernan says it is flipped and fake.

The board of Harcastle Gems met at ten, on the fourteenth floor, around a table built from a single walnut tree.

There were nine chairs.

Eight were filled, and the ninth was Cordelia's, and nobody had moved it.

I sat in the chair beside it.

Ambrose stood at the head, with the folder open in front of him.

"Gwendolyn has no experience running anything," he said. "She was a junior buyer's assistant on Monday."

"Tuesday," I said. "I got a promotion on Tuesday."

"To what?"

"Junior buyer. Cordelia made it official. It's in my log."

I did not explain the log.

A board member in a bow tie cleared his throat.

"No one doubts your heart, my dear. But the company needs a plan, and a plan needs someone who can speak to it."

I stood up.

My plan was to say something of my own.

I had thought about it all night, and in the end I had nothing.

So I reached for the last thing I knew by heart.

"Gentlemen," I said, and put both hands flat on the walnut. "Members of the board."

I tapped the table twice, the way Cordelia does.

"Four years ago, a chain offered to buy our Pueblo workshop for six million dollars."

Ambrose frowned.

"We make rings," I said. "We do not make margins."

The man in the bow tie sat up.

I had Cordelia's pause ready, the long one, where she takes a sip of water.

I took the sip.

"Some of you are thinking about the number," I said. "I am thinking about the thirty-one people in that workshop, and the eleven who have been there longer than I have been alive."

"Gwendolyn," said Ambrose.

"Please hold your questions until the end."

That is what Cordelia said, and I said it in her voice, a little flatter than my own.

Nobody in the room moved.

I went on for four more minutes.

I did the part where she holds up a ring and puts it down again.

I did the part where she looks at the oldest board member and lowers her eyes.

I did the pause at the end, the one that makes grown men reach for their pens.

When I finished, the man in the bow tie was holding his glasses in his hand.

"That's the Pueblo speech," he said.

"Yes."

"Word for word."

"Plus the pauses," I said.

"Your sister gave that speech four years ago, in this room, in that chair."

"I know. I was in the back row. I wrote it down."

"It worked," he said, quietly. "I voted against the sale because of it."

"Then I'd like you to vote against this one for the same reasons."

Ambrose slapped the folder shut.

"It is not the same sale."

"It's the same workshop," said the man in the bow tie, "and the same family."

He looked around the table.

"I move that we give Gwendolyn until Friday."

"Seconded," said a woman near the window, without looking up from her notes.

"All in favor?"

Five hands went up.

Ambrose looked at the five hands and did not count them twice.

"Friday," he said. "At noon. And if your sister isn't in that chair by then, Gwendolyn, the board will vote on Thorsby Resources, and your signature won't matter."

He opened the folder again and took out a photograph.

He laid it on the table and slid it to me with one finger.

It showed a woman in a camel coat at an airport gate, with a leather duffel on her shoulder and her face turned half away.

"That's Cordelia," Ambrose said. "Lisbon, 6:40 this morning. She has already left the country. Do you still think you can wait for her?"

My throat closed.

I looked at the coat, and the hair, and the shoulders.

It was the right height and the right color.

It could have been me.

A hand touched my elbow.

Tiernan had come in at the back of the room, and now he was standing behind my chair and looking down at the photograph.

"That isn't Cordelia," he said.

"Mr. O'Malley," said Ambrose, "you are not on this board."

"She wears her watch on her left wrist," said Tiernan. "Always. Look."

I looked.

The woman in the photograph had a watch, a thin gold one, on her right wrist.

I looked at my own left wrist, where I had worn the same thin gold watch since I was sixteen.

Cordelia and I had bought them on the same day.

"It's a flipped photo," Tiernan said. "Somebody turned it around."

Nobody at the table said anything.

Ambrose took the photograph back and put it in the folder.

His smile was very small and very steady.

"A mistake," he said. "An honest one."

"Then who is on that plane?" I asked.

Tiernan bent down until his mouth was near my ear.

"Not her," he said. "Which means somebody wants you to think she's gone."

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