The air around Karen solidified, pressing hard on her chest like a ten-ton weight. She tried to breathe in, blow air out, but nothing moved. Like a rusty saw being dragged through her chest, excruciating pain followed, bringing with it the horrors of the past.

Alice was floating, adrift from everything that had ever anchored her. She was Alice Hunter of Pelican House, only Libby had just said she wasn’t a Hunter. Wasn’t her twin. No! That was impossible. Utterly untrue. Sure, they weren’t identical and they had different personalities, but growing up, they’d looked enough alike for people to confuse them. And they had twin radar.

It doesn’t always work.

It works enough!

Alice looked to her father, seeking reassurance. He’d tell her Libby was wrong. He’d explain. He always explained things to her in exacting detail whether she was interested or not.

“Dad?”

But Peter’s attention was focused on Karen. “Take slow deep breaths, darling. Come on, breathe in … and … out.”

“I’ll get a paper bag,” Libby said.

Don’t leave me, Alice silently yelled to Libby, but she was already on her feet and racing to the kitchen.

Everything around Alice—the art on the walls, the throw rugs on the knotted red gum floorboards and the view over the expansive green lawn down to the sea—all of it was as familiar to her as her own thumb. For the first eighteen years of her life, Pelican House was the only home she’d known. It had been her bolt-hole whenever things in the big, scary world battered her. It was a place she came to vacation. To draw. To live. It represented love, security and safety. Family.

Now as she looked at Libby and her father fussing over Karen, all that security mocked her.

They were a family of three.

Who the hell was she?

Without knowing how she got there, Alice was standing with her hand on the door handle. She opened the door and walked into the yard, along the path, out between the lacework iron gates and into the twilight.

“Pick up, pick up! Please!” But Alice knew that, despite throwing the plea into the universe, Dan played basketball on Tuesday nights. His phone would be buried in his gym bag and he wouldn’t be home for hours. She turned off her phone and walked with no other intention than the overwhelming need to put one foot in front of the other and to keep moving.