“Here,” Thayer said, following her gaze. He took a blue bandana from his pocket and knelt by her feet, carefully dabbing at the wound. “Don’t worry, it’s clean. I keep it on hand just so I can offer it to hot girls in distress,” he added with a grin.
As the faded piece of cloth turned dark with my twin’s blood, a memory flashed before me. I saw Thayer, his eyebrows furrowed, handing me that same bandana to wipe the tears from my eyes. I couldn’t remember what I’d been crying about, but I remembered hiding my face in the fabric’s soft folds, breathing in the warm sweet scent of Thayer’s body that lingered on it.
“Who did you say that was?” Thayer asked, tying the bandana snugly around Emma’s ankle to cover the wound.
Emma scrambled for an explanation, for yet another lie. But then she looked at the boy who’d loved her sister, his hazel eyes soft and concerned, and all that came out was the truth: “My birth mom.”
Thayer blinked hard. “Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“How did you know it was her? I thought you’d never met.”
“She left me a picture,” Emma said, thinking of the note Becky had left in the Horseshoe Diner.
For a few horrible days, Emma had thought that Mr. Mercer killed Sutton, in order to keep her from revealing his affair. Knowing that Sutton had seen Mr. Mercer with a woman in the canyon, Emma had searched his office and discovered he was secretly paying a woman named Raven. She’d arranged to meet with Raven at her hotel, but the mysterious woman had sent her on a scavenger hunt that ended with a note at a diner. Raven had left behind a letter and a photo of herself—only, it had been Becky’s face staring back. Raven/Becky had vanished, but Mr. Mercer had explained everything.
It was actually why Emma had asked Thayer to meet her for coffee. She’d wanted to tell him that Mr. Mercer hadn’t been the one who’d run Thayer down in Sabino Canyon the night I’d died—and that the woman Thayer had seen Mr. Mercer with was actually her biological mother.
“It was her, Thayer. I know it was,” Emma protested.
“I believe you,” he said in a low voice.
Behind them a garage door rattled open, and they stepped aside so that a freshly waxed Lexus could back out past them onto the street. They stood in silence for a moment, saying nothing.
“Are you going to be okay?” Thayer asked finally.
Emma felt her jaw tremble. “She looked … sick, didn’t she?”
“She’d have to be sick not to want to talk to you.” Thayer reached out and squeezed her arm, then pulled away cautiously, as though afraid he’d been too intimate. He nodded awkwardly back in the direction of the café. “I should probably get home. But Sutton—” He hesitated again. “If you want to talk about any of this, I’m here for you. You know that, right?”
Emma nodded, still lost in her thoughts. He was three blocks away before she realized that she still had his bandana knotted around her ankle.
I watched him go. Maybe he and Emma were right. Maybe the reason that Becky was acting strange was that she was ill. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d encountered her face before—while I was alive, before I became Emma’s silent shadow.
I wondered if it had been the last face I’d ever seen.
2
THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE SEXY
Later that day, Emma parked Sutton’s vintage Volvo outside the Old Tucson Movie Studios. A rickety, old-style western saloon stood in front of her, complete with swinging wooden doors and an overpowering stench of booze. Next to that was a bank building with bullet holes in the wall, a hitching post, and even a house that must have been a brothel, judging by the overly made-up women fanning themselves on the porch. In the fifties and sixties the studio had been a real movie set for westerns, but now it was an amusement park, a Wild West Disneyland full of tourists. Ethan Landry—Emma’s boyfriend and the only person who knew her true identity—had suggested they come here instead of the municipal tennis courts, their usual meeting spot.
“Howdy, ma’am.” A man in cow-print chaps and spurs nodded his Stetson to her. Emma waved halfheartedly, not really feeling in the Wild West spirit. She wished she could—it would be reassuring to swagger confidently down the street, a gun at her hip, finally in charge of her destiny after feeling helpless for so long.
The studio sparked something in me, too. I was pretty sure I’d been here on a class trip and had laughed at the fakey-fakeness of it all with Char and Mads. We’d ditched the tour to sneak into the saloon through the outhouse in the back. Even half remembering how much fun I used to have with them filled me with longing.
After wandering for a few minutes without seeing Ethan, Emma plopped down on one of the benches facing Tucson Mountain Park and pulled out her copy of Jane Eyre, which they were reading for English. She had opened to the middle of the book when suddenly she heard gravel crunching behind her.
Ethan was passing by the general store, squinting into the afternoon sun. Her knees weakened slightly as she took in his broad shoulders, muscular legs, and dark, piercing blue eyes. He wore a pair of camouflage cargo shorts and a black sweatshirt, and his dark hair had a cute tousled look that made her want to run her fingers through it. His shadow stretched out toward her in the sunset as he approached.
“Reach for the sky, partner!” she said, jumping up and aiming her fingers at him like twin pistols.
Eyes round with mock terror, Ethan lifted his hands, then quick-drew an imaginary gun from inside an imaginary coat. “Bang!” he said.