CHAPTER ONE

Madison Smith would not get out of bed today. She wouldn’t. She wanted to stay cocooned within her comforter, allowing the darkness to swallow her up. She lay in a fetal position, her hands over her head, gripping the comforter. Tears dripped over the bridge of her nose, across her left eye, cheek, onto the sheets. She knew that if she moved that blanket and allowed any part of the day to wash over her, she would never be the same.

The door to her bedroom creaked, and Madison held her breath. She counted the steps as Connor made it to the bed. A second later, Connor snatched the comforter from Madison’s hands, and Madison stared up at her twin.

Connor planted her hands on her full hips. “Get up,” she said.

“I’m tired,” Madison responded. She pressed her face against her mattress.

Her body rolled a bit as Connor sat beside her. She felt Connor’s fingers smooth her hair from her face.

“Sis,” Connor began, “I know it’s rough, but you need to get up. Laying here won’t help you face the day any better.”

Madison sat up and looked at Connor’s face, her face. As twins, the women were exact replicas, even down to their lifestyles. Even so, what drew people to the twins were their silver eyes that were as bright as newly minted quarters and full of knowing. Connor’s eyes, though edged with concern, were bright, eager. Happy.

Madison’s were that way, too. Once.

Happy for her children, her husband, her steady job, their nice house, their happy family. Just like Connor. Now, the happiness that used to mirror itself in their eyes only belonged to Connor.

As much as she loved her sister, Madison never thought she could be angry with someone so strongly at the same time. She was a good person like Connor. She went to church at least three times a week. Well, at least she used to. She had dinner made every night, washed and cleaned a mean house, and worked a full-time job. She tried to be the type of person she knew God and everyone else wanted her to be. Like Connor. So why was her family gone, and Connor got to keep hers?

Madison spun herself around, her feet landing with a thud on the carpet. She jostled Connor, sprung up, and stamped to her closet, removing her uniform and sneakers.

“Are you catching ‘tude with me?” Connor asked.

Madison piddled in a drawer before pulling out undergarments. She fumbled in her sock drawer when she noticed one of the pictures stuck on the dresser’s mirror by masking tape. A picture of her, Kevin, Al, and Evan ‘bout a year and half ago at Six Flags in Houston. Right about the time ten-year-old Allison and Evangelina proclaimed their names were too girly and demanded to be called Al and Evan.

“Maddie, don’t ignore me.”

“No,” Madison answered. She closed her eyes. “I’m not catching an attitude. I’m just tired of everybody trying to tell me how to live my life.”

“What life are you living, Maddie? Mom tells me you hardly ever call her, and when you do, you’re sullen and indifferent. Why do you think she asked me to come down here? She thinks…”

Maddie peered at Connor through the mirror.

“Well, you know what?” she said. “Mom still has her husband, and the last I checked, all her kids were alive, too, so I don’t care what she thinks. Or what you think with your perfect little family and happy life.”

“Oh.”

Madison watched Connor stand and straighten the bedding. Her fingers itched to reach out to touch Connor, to apologize for being so cold, but she stood there, cradling her undergarments and socks.

Done, Connor turned on her heel and marched toward the door. She paused long enough to say, “I came down here to make sure my sister was okay. I know you’re mad. I know you’re hurting. I won’t argue with you, or throw you on this bed and beat you for lashing out like that.”

Madison flinched when the door slammed behind Connor, the sound taking a hold of the walls and shaking them.

After showering, Madison dressed in her size-12, City of Whispering Pines Transit uniform: black skirt, white shirt with the transit logo on the breast pocket, her white anklets, and her black sneakers. The skirt hung loosely around her waist. She smoothed it down over her hips and then raised her face to the mirror and stared until everything blurred in the glass, only coming into focus when she began rubbing cocoa butter into her dusty brown face, behind her ears, down her neck. She pulled her hair into a ponytail and slipped her wedding rings on her finger, her silver-hooped earrings into her ears, and her watch around her wrist.

Madison sprinted to the front door in an attempt to avoid Connor. Outside, she sighed. It was just about eight, and the late-May sun beat on her face. She was already tired and had been for a year now —tired of being tired.

Madison could smell summer in the thick, humid air. Everything looked bright and vibrant: the blue of sky, the brown and green of trees and leaves, the white and purple of blooms she always vowed to the learn the names of but never took the time, the lawn, which was cut and sprawled out like a sheen green carpet:  except near the swings. The wooden swings she and Kevin had built with their own hands for their daughters.

Long blades of grass, weeds, dandelions, buttercups grew upward, kissing the swings’ seats, tangling around the wooden beams that stood, covered like a forgotten piece of yesterday, but Madison didn’t forget.

She had refused to take the swing set down. She eyed the two child swings she and Kevin used to push Al and Evan in as infants. Her focus moved to the “grown-up” seats Kevin pushed the girls in when they argued they were too old to sit in baby seats. The same grown-up seats she and Kevin would sit on, late at night, as they sipped iced tea, counted the stars, and caught fireflies.  Those swings were a life. Madison wasn’t ready to give that away or have it taken away.

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