The Twin They Erased novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: The Pencil

I read the scrap of paper until the ink swam.

Willa, I have never sent you a card.

Blue ink, slanting right, the W in my name with a little loop at the bottom of the last stroke.

Nobody else in the world made that loop.

"She wrote this," I said. "Tilda wrote it."

"The maid says she wrote it in the bathroom with a pen hidden in a hem," Jonas said.

"She coughed the whole time, so the nurse wouldn't hear the scratching."

"The nurse."

"Aunt Odile hired her five years ago. She gives Tilda drops for her nerves, morning and night."

He put his hand over his mouth and took it away.

"The maid says Tilda sleeps most of the day. She isn't allowed a pen."

Eamon had gone very quiet at the stove.

"Why isn't she allowed one?" he said.

"Because she'd write down what's happening," Jonas said. "And someone would read it."

For seven years I had stood in a tower and hated my sister for those cards.

I had told myself she was the one who got to stay in the house and keep our name.

That hatred was the only thing I owned, and I had held on to it every day.

"She never wrote them," I said.

"The maid saw Aunt Odile at the dining table with a pencil every spring," Jonas said. "She was practicing the W."

The kitchen was very still.

Somewhere outside a rooster started up.

Morning light came through the window onto the table, Jonas's tired face and the scrap of blue ink.

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