Dead Ringers (11 page)

They passed a gourmet cupcake shop, empty though its lights were still on. Nobody wanted a cupcake badly enough to deal with the rain. Not tonight.

Just beyond the shop was a narrow alley between buildings, rain pouring off the roofs. If it hadn't turned so cold—if it had been a different night—Tess might have found it almost beautiful. Instead she hurried on, wanting to get this over with, needing to know without question that Lili believed her. What had happened in that gloomy restaurant in the back of the Nepenthe—what she had seen in the apparition box—had been like stepping across the threshold from one world and into another. Like crashing her house down on a witch and opening the door into a world of bright and frightening colors she had never known existed. She couldn't stand the idea of being in that world alone.

Clutching the collar of her jacket closed, she approached the steps that led up to the gallery's entrance. A couple hurried along the sidewalk from the other direction, huddled under a single huge umbrella of the sort that infuriated people on a crowded sidewalk. Tess caught a glimpse of them as they turned to go up the steps, a leggy blonde in a scarlet dress and an artfully disheveled young guy in a 1980s-inspired suit.

Lili mounted the first step to follow them in, but Tess halted.

“What are you doing?” Lili asked.

A tight little ball of nausea burned in Tess's gut. The voice inside the psychomanteum echoed in her head, the warning still fresh as a slap in the face. Nick's voice. She remembered the words he had spoken prior to that as well, just before he had stepped into the mirrored room.
This needn't concern you
. Not the kind of phrasing her ex-husband would have chosen.

Lili took the edge of her umbrella and tipped it back so they could look eye to eye. “What are we doing, babe?”

Tess stepped up beside her, moving under Lili's umbrella as she closed her own. “Listen to me, Lil. I can only imagine what your brain is doing right now.”

“I've kind of shut it off for the moment.”

“Exactly. Trying not to analyze any of this, because it's crazy. I know all that. I want you to see your clone or whatever, but I think maybe it's not a great idea for her to see us.”

Lili nodded slowly. “Let's just look inside.”

Under that single umbrella, they went up the last couple of steps and peered through the glass panel in the door. Tess had only been to a couple of gallery shows in her life—both during her college years—but both of them had been thinly attended affairs, a handful of friends and curious art lovers, wine and cheese and pompous talk. It surprised her to see that First Light had drawn a crowd. People milled about in clusters, admiring the work hung on the walls and installations. A closer look revealed glasses of wine and small plates of cheese and grapes, so maybe First Light wasn't that much different from those art school shows after all.

Tess scanned the crowd. “I don't see her.”

“I do.”

Lili had leaned to the left, looking through the shop window instead of the door. The artwork hanging there must have blocked most of the view—Tess certainly couldn't see more than the tops of a few heads and an arm or two—but Lili stood positioned to see between two of the displayed paintings. Her face had gone slack and she let out a loud breath that seemed to deflate her.

“Is this real?” she said quietly.

Tess held tightly to her arm, aches and pains forgotten. “It is.”

“I don't … Oh, my God, Tessa. To be told is one thing, but to see … to see her…”

Lili pulled away from the window and reached for the door.

Heart lurching, Tess held her back. “No, no. Honey, I think that's a very bad idea.”

Lili hung her head and breathed in and out, steadying herself, then looked up at Tess. “It's like
A Christmas Carol
. Like the Ghost of Christmas Past is showing me myself.”

“But it's not you. Her name is Devani Kanda and she's an artist.”

Lili leaned over to stare back through the window, peering between those two paintings behind the glass. “I saw the guy. Theo. I saw how much he looked like Nick, but this is different.”

“We should go,” Tess said.

Lili didn't argue. They turned together and descended the steps, staying under the one umbrella. Tess held on to her own umbrella as they reached the sidewalk, knowing that she and Lili needed to talk, to make sense of things that made absolutely zero sense, but she didn't have the words yet. Didn't know how to begin.

“Tessa,” Lili said, yanking her to a stop.

Tess glanced up and saw the homeless man standing in the rain. She jerked back in surprise. The man turned toward them, perhaps as startled as they were, and she saw the dirty rag he had tied like a blindfold over his eyes. The white lights of the gallery cast him in a dim glow. His gray hair was slick with rain, beads of it running down his stubbled face. He wore a ratty, full-length, black coat over clothes that looked baggy and torn and stained with colors she did not want to think about.

The blind man stood too close.

“Excuse me, sir,” Lili said, edging Tess sideways to go around him.

A dank, animal smell wafted off him, an unpleasant musk even the rain could not wash away. Tess held her breath as she moved past him, but then the man put his head back, lips curling, and his nostrils flared as he sniffed the air.

Lili muttered something and nudged Tess, who kept going but could not take her eyes off the blind man as he sniffed again, like a hunting dog trying to pick up a scent. His head swiveled, tracking them as if he could see perfectly well through that filthy blindfold, and then he smiled. The grin became more of a leer, showing broken, crooked teeth.

He shot out a hand and grabbed a fistful of Lili's hair. She swore, grabbing his wrist, and smashed the open umbrella against his head. Even over Lili's furious shouting and the rain and the noise of the umbrella, Tess could hear him sniffing again … breathing them in. The sound broke something inside her.

“Off me, you crazy fucker!” Lili screamed, then she cried out in pain as the blind man dragged her forward by the hair, batting the umbrella away and pulling her closer. His mouth opened as if he meant to bite or lick her.

Tess struck him in the temple with her closed umbrella. He reeled back, still holding on to Lili's hair. She swore again as she tried to force his fingers free. Tess went after him, hit him in the skull twice more, then turned the umbrella around so she could hit him with the handle, and smashed it across his throat.

He let go, wheezing as he grabbed his throat with both hands.

With a snarl, his smile returned. He lunged for Tess, arms waving, hands searching blindly. She swung the umbrella again but somehow he caught it and ripped it from her grip.

“Oh, darling girl,” he said, and stalked toward her, hands raised, ready to lunge.

Tess saw the frown form on his face, saw his brows knit. He paused in confusion and sniffed the air again … and then again.

“No, no,” he said, turning in a circle as if he had forgotten them entirely. “What happened? I had the scent. I know I did.”

Muttering and cursing, he dropped his arms and slumped into a sulk. Sighing, he bent his head back and began to sniff at the air again, wandering along the sidewalk until, hands in front of him now and searching the rainy night, he turned into the narrow alley beside the cupcake shop and vanished into the shadows.

Lili stared after him. “Could you please tell me what the hell that was about?”

Tess could not erase the image of the filthy blindfold from her mind.

“I think I'm glad I don't know,” she said. “I just want to go home, have a mug of tea, and climb into bed.”

They were standing in the rain, Lili's umbrella ruined and Tess's still closed.

“Can I come?” Lili asked.

Tess did not need to answer. She put up her umbrella and they sought out the nearest hotel, knowing they would never find an empty taxi on such an ugly night. If Lili hadn't asked if she could come over, Tess would have invited her. Maddie was at home with the babysitter, so Tess wouldn't have been by herself, but she did not want Lili to have to go home alone.

Not on a night like this.

The thought brought a rueful chuckle to her lips.
A night like this
.

As if there had ever been a night like this.

 

EIGHT

Tess lived with six-year-old Maddie in a Victorian house in Cambridge, an easy trip on the red line from downtown. Mother and daughter shared the spacious first floor of the house, which consisted of a kitchen, a home office that had once been the front parlor, a gorgeous living room that had once been a dining room, and two small bedrooms. The hardwood gleamed and the high windows washed the apartment in sunlight when there was sunlight to be had.

It wasn't cheap. On her salary alone, Tess could never have made the rent every month, but Nick shared the cost with her. On her angry days, she told people that the divorce settlement required it, which was true. But she knew that he would have paid his share even if the court had told him he didn't need to kick in a dime. Despite how often he found himself in a bubble of self-interest, Nick loved his daughter and he wanted the best for her. And, after all, he hadn't been solely responsible for the dissolution of their marriage. Post-accident, Tess had needed attention and found herself married to a man uniquely unsuited to give it to her.

There had been some discussion of moving to the suburbs, raising Maddie in a town where she could have a house all her own and wouldn't have to live with the sound of neighbors walking over their heads. They would all have moved, Nick getting an apartment nearby so Maddie could still feel that he was close. But over the years they had become city people, and the suburbs seemed too much like a foreign country. Living on the first floor of the Victorian, Maddie had a backyard and access to Cambridge public schools, which were excellent, and her father was just a short drive away in Somerville.

“You like living here?” Lili asked as the two women approached the house by foot.

Tess took in the street ahead. There were trees growing from squares cut out of the sidewalk and streetlights made to resemble some nineteenth-century gaslight district. At the end of the block she could see the Victorian, its red paint almost black now that night had fallen.

“It's not the life I imagined for us,” she said, shifting the brown paper bag in her arms, “but we're okay.”

“Well, it's
mostly
the life you imagined,” Lili chided her. “You have Maddie and a job that's ideal for you, living in a nice house in Cambridge with pretty much anything you could ask for either a short walk or a few subway stops away. It's a good life.”

Tess smiled. Lili had conveniently left out her divorce and her chronic pain and the fact that this life was supposed to be the one she and Maddie shared with Nick. But she couldn't argue.

“Tell that to Maddie,” she said.

Lili moved the plastic bag she carried from one hand to the other. “What's wrong with Maddie?”

“She's very unhappy with me right now,” Tess said gravely. “She wants to live in the turret room. Reminds her of Rapunzel in
Tangled,
I think.”

Lili laughed. “Hell, I'd like to live in the turret room.”

“Shame we live on the first floor instead of the third.”

“Maybe the third-floor tenant would let her move in.”

Tess rolled her eyes. “There are days I might let her, but I don't think Mr. Mariano would go for it.”

They stepped around the empty garbage barrels one of the neighbors hadn't taken in after trash pickup that morning and then started up the Victorian's front stairs. Tess inhaled the delicious, spicy aromas rising from the bag in her arms and then set it down to dig out her keys. As she unlocked the door and pushed it open, picking up the bag, she heard voices coming from inside.

“Hello?” the babysitter called.

Maddie piped up with an echo. “Hello?”

“It's Mom!” Tess called. “And I have two surprises!”

“Surprises!”

A thump came from the living room, followed by the sound of running feet. Maddie came bombing down the corridor dressed in flowery pajamas and a pair of dirty socks.

“Mommy!” she said happily. Then she turned her run into a slide, gliding along the hardwood floor in her dirty socks like she was on a surfboard, arms out to steady herself.

Tess caught her in a one-armed hug, joyful in a way that could always make her feel better. If her spine and shoulder cried out in protest, she pretended she couldn't hear them.

“Is Aunt Lili one of the surprises?” Maddie asked, still hugging Tess.

“I am,” Lili admitted.

“The other is Chinese food!” Maddie said, poking the bag. “I can smell it.”

The babysitter, Erika, appeared in the hallway. “Did you think I wouldn't feed her?”

“I knew you would,” Tess said, mussing Maddie's hair. “But no matter how full my girl is, I knew that if I brought home Chinese food and didn't get her some fried dumplings, she'd be heartbroken.”

“True! Very true!” Maddie said, trying to tug the bag from her mother's arms.

“You're home early,” Erika said.

“Change of plans,” Tess replied. “If you want to take off, you can. I'll still pay you for the night.”

Erika shook her head. “I wouldn't take it, but I can't leave yet.”

Before Tess could ask why, dramatic Maddie let go of the Chinese food bag to hold up both hands as if to block Erika's potential departure.

“You bet you can't, young lady!” Maddie piped. “We had a deal. I watched your movie, and now you've gotta watch
Frozen
with me again.”

Erika crossed her arms. “I wouldn't miss it, madwoman. But you can't complain if I sing along.”