The Twin They Erased novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: Blue Ink

The judge in Burlington needed one short hearing to give me back my life.

She was a thin woman in her sixties, with reading glasses on a chain, and she had the file open before we sat down.

My aunt's lawyer was not in the room.

Jonas sat behind me with the pencil sheets.

Tilda sat beside me in the cream cardigan, and the judge looked from one of us to the other and took off her glasses.

"Identical," she said. "That helps."

"Your Honor," I said, "I'd like to be alive, please."

The judge's mouth twitched.

"The state agrees," she said. "Mrs. Astley's statement of death was made under oath, and the oath was false. I vacate the certificate. Miss Astley, you are nineteen years old, and the court regrets your absence."

She struck the gavel once.

I walked out of the courthouse into the sun on Lake Street with a paper in my hand that said my name.

I read it four times on the steps.

Tilda read it over my shoulder.

"You're real," she said.

"On paper."

"On paper is how she killed you."

"Then on paper is how we bring me back."

That afternoon Jonas drove us north to Kettle Falls.

Eamon's mother made soup that night, and the five of us ate it at the long table in her kitchen, with the stove ticking and a lamp in the window.

Jonas told a story about getting lost on a survey in Maine.

Eamon laughed so hard he had to put down his spoon.

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