Here She Lies

learned that nothing was permanent or real except what you felt in your heart. You had to create your own reality, believe in it and it would make you strong. The old maxim time is too precious to waste became a vivid reminder to always take action when I was sure of something.
    Until Bobby could tell me the truth, there was no going back.
    Driving, I thought of something Julie had once said to me, about how she and I were as close as any two people could possibly be. Closer. How even marriage could not compare. It was my wedding day, a cool May afternoon in Kentucky, and I was two months pregnant. (Almost exactly one year ago — Bobby and I had not even made it to our first anniversary.) The night before, she had tried on my wedding dress and it was loose on her; I was already plumping up but not showing yet. For the first time ever, we were not exactly the same size. Standing there in my dress, waiting for my music cue to walk the aisle, she put her hand on my belly and repeated, “Closer.”
    My wedding day. Our first. Julie’s engagement had broken up two years ago, dropping her back into a dating scene that felt more ruthlessly competitive the older you got. When I became pregnant and Bobby and I decided to marry, Julie shared our happiness. She knew, in the deep unspoken way of twins, how in love with Bobby I was. In the end, only motherhood could compare to the absolute connection Julie and I shared. Romantic love was intoxicating. Toxic. I felt sorry for people who didn’t have a twin with whom to entwine when life weakened you, on whose fibers of love and shared memory you could always strengthen yourself. I decided I was not eligible for self-pity, not even today, because I had a daughter and a twin sister. Julie and I had clung together through every twist and turn of our lives, ultimately raising each other — at the shoddy Long Island boarding school where our misguided guardian, Aunt Pru, had placed us immediately after our father’s funeral, in the sleepaway campswhere she had sent us for two months every summer, and during the single dull week we spent with her annually in California. We had survived all that. I would survive this.
    When we finally crossed the border between New York and Massachusetts, we had been on the road for over two hours, not the fifty-seven minutes predicted by the global positioning system suction-cupped to the windshield. Somehow, despite the GPS, I had managed to get lost twice. And a detour to nurse Lexy and change her diaper had inflated into a dinner stop when I realized how hungry I was. By the time we turned the car onto Division Street, Julie’s street, a gentle country twilight had eased into the deep purple that comes just before the sky goes black. It was almost eight p.m. My body was screaming for sleep — and Lexy was just screaming.
    Julie had explained to me that the barn she had bought last year and renovated through the winter was at the crossroads of Division Street and Alford Road. She said it was painted red and would be impossible to miss. Division Street was long and winding and dark, just what you would expect of a country road at night. But then gradually the darkness began to fade. It was like someone had spilled light all over the street, light that spread toward me. Washed over me like a wave, even filled the car. Like the car’s starting jolt back at the airport, the brightness of this light quieted Lexy. Her wailing voice simply stopped as we pulled into the flashing arcs of white and blue and red lights.
    Police lights.
    I felt a sinking inside me, a terrible dread, as I pulled up behind the last of three squad cars parked in front of a big red barn. There was an ambulance. A series of disembodied camera flashes. A stout man wearing a Red Sox baseball cap and wrapping yellow police tape around the trunk of a tree, trailing it in search of another anchor. This close, the rotating police lights blinded us each time they swept over our car.

Chapter 2
    Sweet country air seemed to pour into the car when I opened the door — air and the weird low chatter of people talking and crickets cricketing and my mind whirring like a broken disk drive. What was happening here?
    Lexy twisted to the side and squeezed her eyes shut against the brightness. I had one foot on the ground and one hand on the steering wheel. I didn’t want to leave my baby alone in the car, nor did I want to carry her into an unknown situation that looked very bad. There was a