Rule One Said I Was the Only Person Awake After Midnight, but My Mother Never Sleeps novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: The Late Guest

"She went out the lake door," the woman with my face said. "I heard her go, Neil. She went out on the ice after midnight. You know what that card says."

Her voice was calm and tired and kind.

It was exactly the voice I'd used on him at one in the morning for three weeks.

"Neil, I'm right here."

He looked at her, and then through the glass at me.

His hands were flat on the desk, and his knuckles were white.

"The pea soup," he said. "Tell me about the pea soup."

I shouted it through the glass.

"I was twelve! I reached across the stove for the crackers, and you said it was the stupidest scar you'd ever heard of!"

She said it too, at the same time, in the same words, in the same voice.

We finished together.

Neil made a sound.

I stood on the porch in the snow with my split knuckles and my numb feet, and I understood the card.

I was the late guest the card warned about, knocking after midnight with a guest's face on.

I knew which one of us was real.

I was the one freezing, and nobody in the world could have told me I wasn't me.

So the man from 108 had known too, and so had my mother.

"Neil," I said. "Look at our hands. The left hands."

I slapped my left hand flat on the glass, back out, so the old shiny burn was under the porch light.

He turned his head to the woman on the stairs.

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