Here She Lies

the sun vanished again. In seconds, the sky darkened and it started to rain. I took one more picture before running into the house.
    Ten minutes later, that last blurred image, downloaded into the loft computer, piqued something in me. Yearning — to fill Zara’s outline with more than shadow. Curiosity — to see how filled shapes might change, how the lens might alter assumptions. Inside the house, with the rain coming down and no agenda whatsoever, I decided it was a good day for portraits. Lexy was the only one I had ever photographed endlessly and with a sense of fascination. Now I turned my lens on Julie.
    She protested at first, but I insisted she let me; projects, quests, were a great diversion from worry and she knew that photography was my lost love. Like a true big sister (she was three minutes older), she humored me. She hammed it up, posing and voguing, but after a while she stopped noticing the camera and that was when my lens really found her. She sat primly at her office computer without trying to seem relaxed; jumped at Lexy’s cries when she woke from her nap; hunched over the turkey-and-pesto sandwiches I made for our lunch; stared hungrily when I nursed my baby;sprawled on the couch with the newspaper without trying to contain her limbs. And I photographed my sister and daughter together, wondering if they would look like us, like me and Lexy, convincingly, the way Julie and I could pass for one another.
    Before I had a chance to download the newest images, the rain suddenly stopped, the sun reappeared in force, and Julie and I looked at each other.
    “Let’s get out of here.” Julie.
    “Good thinking.” Me.
    “There’s a playground in Stockbridge with baby swings. Want to make it our destination?”
    “Why not?”
    We got dressed for out, swapping clothes as we always had. I wore Julie’s cowboy boots with my swishy velvet skirt, one of her expensive white T-shirts, my old jean jacket and my fake diamond earrings. (As promised, I had sterilized both pairs that morning.) Julie wore loafers with her jeans, my striped blouse, her fake diamonds and a new corduroy blazer I decided to lay claim to in due time. Just for fun, we traded lipsticks: she wore my pale pink, I wore her brick red. Outside, the asphalt driveway had partially dried after the rain. We settled into her car, a new Audi I hadn’t paid much attention to until now, without discussing its obvious luxuries. Before we were halfway down the road to town, our conversation had covered Bobby, Zara and Detective Lazare, specifically his offer to “talk” whenever I felt like it.
    “Sometimes we run focus groups that way,” Julie said, driving carefully along Division Street. We drovewith the windows open and a lovely soft wind filled the car. The spring air was sweet and the surrounding greenery — trees and bushes and fields — was verdant after the nourishing rain. “It’s based on the talk therapy model: just see what comes out and take your cues from that.”
    “Are you saying marketers use the same psychology as the police?” I asked.
    “I guess so. In some ways — yes.”
    “Don’t you think that’s a little creepy?”
    “Not really. I mean, it all boils down to the same thing, right? You’re looking to tap into those quiet pockets of desire just kind of festering in people’s minds.”
    “Desire?” I almost laughed. But she had a point: desire for self-expression, desire for acknowledgment. Didn’t we all suffer from the desire to be understood?
    We entered town on Maple Street, where the police station sat at the intersection of Main, just beyond a traffic light. The one-story brick building, trimmed in white with a small cupola on its roof, was fronted by a blue sign with fat, cartoony lettering: GREAT BARRINGTON POLICE. So this was where Detective Lazare worked, in an innocuous little building that was like a welcome mat for a country town. But there were cops in there, and guns, and criminals. Much like the man himself: easy on the outside, barbed on the inside. Well, I should never have assumed otherwise. Appearances were famously misleading. As an identical twin, I understood that well enough.
    Main Street was busy with shops, boutiques, galleries and restaurants, a town center more polished andinviting than I’d expected. Unlike the strip malls I had grown used to down south, with their utilitarian chain stores, this was the kind of place where you might like to walk and browse. I was an