So that’s that, then.  We’re going to see Penny.

I have no idea how.  I have no idea if Bayan has talked to Sloan since the time I overheard them.  I have no idea how Bayan met Sloan and found Penny in the first place.  I don’t know anything.  All I know is that Bayan has promised us that he is going to get us out of here, and that is, along with being the only piece of news Nua and I have had in the past few weeks, the best news I think I’ve ever heard.  

All day after he tells us, though, I’m wracked by nerves.  I can’t stop thinking about Ava and Keol and Penny even though I’ve never seen Penny and I don’t know what he looks like, but I assume he looks like Ava.  And I think about Abigala.  The whole time I’ve been here I’ve wanted to get back to Abigala, my twin, and now I’m running away to join my wife’s twin, somewhere, I don’t know where.  

After breakfast, Nua decides he’s going to check the library again to see if Miss Lilly’s unlocked it for some reason.  I want to brush my teeth, so I go into the bathroom.  Of course we’re out of toothpaste, so I go into a drawer, and then another one, but it doesn’t open all the way.  Something is blocking it, and I furrow my eyebrows, kneeling down beside it.  I reach in and feel a box, wedged between the back of the drawer and the shelf above it, and I manage to pull it out.  My heart drops, and I stare at it for a moment, and then flip it open.  On the inside of the top flap is a set of tally marks, eighteen in total scratched in pen, and Nua says from the doorway, “What’s that?”

I turn it upside down, and about a dozen pregnancy tests clatter into the drawer in front of me.  Nua furrows his eyebrows and comes to look, and then takes a deep breath.  He takes the box from me, turning it over in his hands, and then says softly, “99.9% accuracy guaranteed.”

“Was it her?” I ask in barely more than a whisper, looking up at him.  “Or Keol?”

“I don’t know,” answers Nua after a moment, looking at the tally marks.  “But with eighteen negatives…it was at least one of them.”

“Yeah,” I mutter, rising to my feet.  Nua says, “Aber,” but I go past him into our room, and then into Keol’s little bedroom off of it and close the door.

I sit there for a little while, staring down at the beach.  It’s cloudy, and the waves are choppy and harsh.  After a few minutes there’s a scratching sound at the door, and I jump, and then look back at it.  I reach over and open it, and Shiv the cat jumps onto the bed, and then freezes, looking at me.  

“Yeah,” I say softly.  “You’re not looking for me, are you.”

Shiv just meows at me, and I turn back to the window.  After a moment she comes up next to me, rubbing her head against my hand, and sits down next to me.

I scratch her behind her ears.  “You lost your two favorite people, didn’t you.”

She seems to sigh, and I do too, and lie down.  She curls up against my stomach, putting her head on her paws, and closes her eyes.  I haven’t thought about that night in a while, the night that I spent with Ava, mostly because I just don’t want to.  It was early on, earlier than I’d like to admit, and I always wondered for a little while afterwards what Keol thought, the whole night that he had to sleep alone.  Most nights he slept in Ava’s bed with her, only occasionally he came back here to this little room off of mine and Nua’s.  The night that I spent with her was one of those times.  And the day after, he told me that I wasn’t fooling him, and I wasn’t fooling Ava, and all that mattered was who she chose, not what we wanted.  And every night after that, she chose him, until they both died.  But I wasn’t trying to fool anyone of anything.  I never got a chance to sleep next to Ava like he did every night, crawl into bed with her and just fall asleep like Nua and I do now.  I would have liked that.  I would have liked it with Keol, too.  I wonder if Ava and Keol and I ever would have all shared a bed, the way Ava and Nua and I did after Keol died.

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He kissed me once, down by the fountain in the backyard.  I’ve thought about that kiss a lot.  It was the first time Ava kissed me, too.  It was the first time I’ve ever been kissed.  She kissed me, and then he did, and then they kissed each other, and then they had sex on the ground in front of me, until I got up and left.  But that night, I went to Ava’s bedroom, and I spent the night with her, leaving Keol alone, here, in the room I’m lying in right now.  Did they do that on purpose?  Did they talk about it beforehand, did they decide to do it?  Or did it just happen?  Did Ava tell Keol, her prominent, her favorite husband, that she wanted to sleep with me, and they made it happen?  Did Keol want to kiss me?  Did he ever want to do it again, but he never got the chance?

The clouds are rolling by in the sky, outside over the sand.  I’m so lost in thought that the moon rises over the water and I hardly even notice it, until Shiv rolls over onto her back, away from me, her paws in the air, and stretches.

My stomach rumbles.  I haven’t eaten all day.  I squeeze my eyes shut, feeling tears trickle out onto my temple and over my nose, and I wipe them away, and reach over for Keol’s pillow.  Shiv stands up, and walks around me.  I roll over to watch, to see if she wants to leave, but then she steps on my stomach and crawls over me.  “Ouch.”

She just sits down next to me again, and I lie on my back, running my hand over her.  “Do you miss her?”

She purrs.  I’m talking to a cat.  We just lie there for a moment, and then there’s a knock at the door.  It’s not Bayan, I know because Bayan’s knock is always the same, and after a moment Nua opens the door and looks down at me.  “Come to bed.”

“I’m in bed,” I say quietly, running my hand over the cat, and Nua scoffs.  “Fine.”  

He turns and leaves, letting the door shut behind him, and I feel bad.  Shiv picks her head up and makes a mrow at me, and I sigh.  “Yeah, I know.”

But my stomach rumbles again as I sit up, and I say, “Have you eaten today?”

Her ears prick up, and I smile a little.  The house is quiet, and as we go down the stairs I see the light from Miss Lilly’s office shine under the door.  I sneak past and we go down to the kitchen.  I wonder where Bayan is as I open a can of cat food and put it on the ground.  Shiv begins to eat happily, and I open the fridge.

I’m hungry, but I don’t want to eat anything.  Finally I just grab a pear, and I can hear Shiv eating still as I run it under the sink for a moment.   Then I crouch next to her as I take a bite, and she pauses, looking up at me to gauge if she needs to defend her treasure.  When she decides I’m not a threat she continues to eat, and I take a few more bites.  Shiv is done, but she just sits on the ground, her tail waving lazily behind her, and I finish the pear.  

I throw the core in the trash, and then I reach down and pick up the cat.  She struggles a little, but not much, and I put my arm under her belly.  She fidgets as I carry her up the stairs and into our room, and then I change my mind and go to Ava’s.  Nua’s already in bed, but he always takes the side of the bed that’s closer to the bathroom door, and opens his eyes as I come in.  As I dump the cat on the bed he says, “You’re losing weight.”

I don’t answer, just going around to the other side of the bed, and he rolls over to see me again.  “You’re starting to look like her.”

I smile a little.  Ava was always skinny, but it wasn’t ever a good kind of skinny.  You could tell she was sick just by looking at her, by how pale her skin was, how frail her body was when she moved.  “I had a pear.”

“Oh, good,” murmurs Nua, sounding sarcastic, and I pull some of the blankets away from him.  He opens his eyes again, and says softly, “You know you made her happy, right?”

I put my arm under my head and look at him.  Shiv is walking in a circle at the end of the bed, and then she lies down and is still.

“Before you came she never took us into town,” he says.  “Or out to swim in the middle of the night.  I never watched TV with her, I hardly even talked to her.”

The curtains behind me are open slightly, and a shaft of moonlight falls over us.  It reflects in his eyes even with his blond hair falling in front of them; I never noticed how blue they are.  

“She loved Keol, and was happy with him, but she had given up on Penny, and on herself.  She didn’t want to get married again, but I think she loved you.”

I exhale, feeling tears in my eyes yet again, and roll onto my back.  Nua moves a little too, and says, “I’m sorry.”

“No,” I say softly, taking a deep breath.  He reaches out for me, his fingers stroking across my cheek gently, and then he pulls his hand away.  “She was a little bit more alive, because of you.”

I smile, feeling a tear trickle down my temple, and ask, “Do you miss her?”

“Yes,” answers Nua easily, and I look over at him.  He wraps the blankets around him a little more and shrugs.  “I do.”

“I do, too,” I murmur, and he smiles a little.  “At least we still got each other.”

“You sound like a bad book,” I say, and he laughs.  I can’t help but smile too, and he whispers, “And we’ll be out of here, soon.”

“Yeah,” I say quietly.  “That’s good.”

“That’s good.”