An eerie silence came up around Charlie’s words. It was like Alice had known Charlie was going to say them without knowing how she knew. And for an instant, she felt as if she might waken from a dream, only she knew she wasn’t dreaming. Finally she managed to say, “That’s ridiculous.”

“Well, not exactly like you. A little bit, I said. Kind-of-ish, sort-of-ish.”

Another beat passed, then Alice, trying to pretend she wasn’t unnerved, flapped her hand dismissively. “Oh, what do you know? You can barely stand right now.”

“It’s true,” Charlie admitted. “I barely can.”

At that moment, Cybill returned from the bathroom, lipstick freshly applied. “I had to pee so bad I didn’t use a seat a protector,” she said, as she tugged her tight dress down over her narrow hips. “You don’t think I could’ve caught something, do you?”

“Don’t worry,” Charlie said. “Poverty’s not contagious. Who’s the girl?”

Cybill looked where Charlie was pointing. She blinked a couple times, then said, “This is a joke, right?”

“Do you see us laughing?”

Cybill swung her gaze back and forth between the two sisters, her eyes wide and very grave. Then she said in a whisper that wasn’t even a whisper, more like a breathing with words in it: “That’s Camilla.”

The words that’s Camilla trickled inside Alice’s ear and then filled her head, taking up every inch of space, until she could hear nothing else. For the second time in as many minutes, she had that sense of déjà vu, of already knowing something she couldn’t possibly have known, of waking up from a dream that wasn’t a dream.

Charlie recovered from the shock first, saying, “Camilla? As in Richard’s daughter Camilla?”

“You didn’t recognize her? But aren’t there pictures of her, like, all over the house?”

Charlie and Alice both shook their heads.

“There used to be.”

For a while, nobody said anything. Then Alice cleared her throat. “Charlie thinks Camilla and I look alike.”

“She does?” Cybill said.

Alice waited for a more vigorous expression of contempt to follow—You wish you looked like Camilla, in your dreams!—but instead Cybill said, “Actually, I thought so when I first saw you. But that was from a distance and behind glass, so . . .” She trailed off, shrugged. A second or two later, she picked up again: “But after meeting you, not so much. Your personality is so different from Camilla’s. Anyway, looking like her’s okay, ending up like her’s not.”

“Lucky for my sister, and every motorist on the road, she can’t drive. Not that Richard seems particularly eager to give her a car.”

“I can so drive,” Alice said. “I just choose not to do it very often. And at least I have my license.”

“Who needs a license when you live in the city?”