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Chapters (15)
  1. TITLE PAGE
  2. DEDICATION
  3. NO. 1
  4. NO. 2
  5. NO. 3
  6. NO. 4
  7. NO. 5
  8. NO. 6
  9. NO. 7
  10. NO. 8
  11. NO. 9
  12. NO. 10
  13. NO. 11
  14. AUTHOR’S NOTE
  15. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This was what thirty-eight looked like, on Dolores at least. She didn’t look as frazzled as the Mem who’d expired in my dormitory what seemed like ages ago. Of course she didn’t. Whatever had upset the real Dolores had been stripped away, reprinted over an already beleaguered shell who’d carried who knew how many unwanted memories beneath. This Dolores was nineteen years older than me, but holding her soft hands in mine, I knew: she was not equipped for this. The damage was done. She could not place me—her father had seen to that. But perhaps she was the remarkable one, because something made her try. I was remarkable because of who she was.

“Dolores, who is Emma?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered penitently, squeezing my hands. Shifting her weight from one foot to the other, she glanced several times at Lyman, just inside the door, who had been arrested by the sight of the crumpled older woman. Whatever I wanted to know had to be spoken now, in this moment.

“You don’t have a sister?”

She shook her head, and I shushed her gently before she could begin to scream again.

“I don’t know. I couldn’t,” and then she drew her lips into her mouth as though this, too, was an apology. “But you look like me.”

The brown skin of her forehead creased like a drape of sweet fondant and her grimace renewed each time it seemed on the verge of dissipating.

“I’m me,” she said. “Why do you look like me?”

And then I just said it, to save her the way she’d saved me. It came out easily, as though it had always been true.

“I’m Elsie. We used to be friends.”

For a moment, it seemed like it wouldn’t be enough. Her hands were still a bit slick from being pressed against mine, her forehead still creased. Only slowly the storm in her eyes calmed. Her posture relaxed and she stood evenly on both feet.

“Elsie.” The heaviness in her breath relaxed. “You’re Elsie then. And I’m Dolores.”

“That’s right,” I agreed, and even in the faint light, hand in hand with my Source, I could see that my skin was darker and now I knew why. “I am Elsie. And you are Dolores.”

NO. 9

  NO. 9  

It seemed each building that went up in the city of Montreal was more splendid than the last and, in 1924, the Rialto was no exception.