Single births always wonder at us, the multiple births. News outlets feature stories about one twin getting into a car accident and the other twin feeling a jolt of pain and fear on the other side of the city. I didn’t feel anything three weeks ago. No terrible ache, no spasm of fright. When Seb emailed me, I wondered if my lack of premonition was somehow because I had stopped being a good twin, if I had forsaken our supposed ethereal bonds and now we were like any other siblings. If I was to blame because I didn’t feel and share in her pain, left her to shoulder the suffering of her death alone.

Angela is alive.

My head falls forward, and hot tears spill down my cheeks and onto the mess of discarded papers beneath her desk. Key words pop from the titles of the books piled at my feet. History. Paris. Ancient. Twelfth century. Famine. War. An encyclopedia in French rests on top of a small inkjet printer. As much as she enjoyed a good story, Angela never read the fluff that decorated supermarket checkout stands. We’re alike in that way.

The note could have been there then. Seb’s words rebound in my head as I stare at the whiteboard message. Half of the final symbol is missing, partially erased. What if this message was written a month ago in a bout of nostalgia? What if this is a cruel inside joke or a note to self? Dates occupy the lower-left-hand corner of the whiteboard, also partially erased—4/7, 4/1, 4/. Ghosts of other notes that were wiped away to make space remain—hrough, and ave bewitched me—and a list of words in French I don’t have the context to guess. I press my cheek against the wall beside the whiteboard and squint. Is the marker residue uneven? If our language was written more recently, the marker might be fresher somehow. Thicker. But is that marker residue or dust? I push back from the wall with a grunt and look around the studio.

In adolescence, Angela always went off the deep end in decorating, emphasizing color and decor over utility—adding a fuzzy rug on top of the carpet to provide stylistic layers. But this space is spartan. There’s no television, no electronic gadgets aside from her laptop and printer. No books for pleasure, and nothing decorating the walls apart from the whiteboard and a corkboard hanging opposite that holds random leaflets, coupons, and a medal from the Paris half marathon. I wonder how long Angela’s lived here. The only framed photo in the room, near buried behind a tin cylinder of pens on the desk, is of our grandparents before they left China and immigrated to San Francisco on a steamer ship. A large beer stein from Berlin has the place of honor on the kitchen counter. Our aunt Judy, a loud, assertive craft brewer in Idaho, would be proud.