“Sure,” Caitlin said, and settled back into the molded plastic chair. They were at a small conference table toward the back of the station, in a glass-encased room. There was a whiteboard that had been erased clean of all but a few random, smudged words: names, cell, separate. The detective had brought her here to show her photographs of Grace’s lifeless face for purposes of identification. Caitlin had received a frantic call from her mother early that morning, telling her that she’d just heard from the Kennewick Police Department, looking for identification of a body carrying a Michigan driver’s license in the name of Grace Ellen McGowan. Caitlin volunteered to drive up to Maine. During the hour-and-a-half drive, in a state of unreal shock, she’d alternated between bewildered grief and a desperate hope that it was all a misunderstanding. When the detective put the first photograph down in front of Caitlin, she had had a moment of pure relief wash over her. It wasn’t Grace. The face they were showing her was a young woman, but with fuller cheeks than Grace had, with puffier eyes.

Caitlin shook her head. “I don’t . . . I don’t think . . .”

The detective placed a second photograph next to the first one. It was of a tattoo, cursive script across a rib cage: Do you realize we’re floating in space? As quickly as the wave of relief had swept through Caitlin, a wave of icy recognition replaced it. Caitlin looked back at the face, photographed on a neutral background. Yes, it was her twin, her features reduced to their basic nature, a nose, two eyes, a mouth. She hadn’t recognized the face because there was nothing left of Grace in it. But the tattoo, that silly, impulsive tattoo, some line from a song Grace had loved in high school, meant that it was really her sister.

She nodded at the detective, and he produced a piece of paper, proof of identification, for her to sign. She quickly glanced over the sheet, not trusting herself to speak, then signed on the line. The detective put the sheet of paper in a manila folder, and thanked her, then asked if she wanted to be alone for a moment before they talked further. She nodded, and he left, shutting the door behind him. She cried, a hand across her eyes, for several minutes. She’d cried earlier, when she first got the call from her mother that Grace was dead, but this was different. She’d seen the pictures. Grace, unimaginably, was truly gone.

“She was your twin?” the detective asked, after he’d come back, after she’d shown him the e-mail, after she’d asked him repeatedly what had happened, and why.

“Yes.”

“Identical twins?”

“No. Fraternal. But some people thought we were identical because we looked alike. But really, we just looked alike because we were sisters.”

“Were you alike in other ways?”