Free Boar Island by Nevada Barr Page B

was not among the designated Old Ladies.
    “Not me,” Anna said. “A desert isle in the vast Atlantic? Too boring for this child.”
    Elizabeth groaned.

 
    EIGHT
    “Do you want to see where I really live?” Paulette asked. The question should have seemed sudden or peculiar, but it wasn’t. In her core—her soul if the metaphor held—Denise knew her twin, her other self, could not truly live in this tragic wreck of a place with paper peeling from the walls and ancient linoleum curling at the corners and buckling along the seams.
    They stood at the same instant, laughing at themselves and one another simultaneously. Denise felt as if scales, dirt, fragments of rotting lumber, cracking mortar, and broken roof slates were sliding off her. In the dim light of the bedroom’s single shaded lamp, Denise imagined she could see dust rising from the cascade of debris as her old, worn-out, worthless, piece-of-shit life crumbled. When the dust settled, a new, clean, sun-filled life would be built around her and her sister. Denise communicated none of this. Paulette, she was positive, was feeling the same sense of sloughing off a diseased and decrepit skin.
    Wordlessly, Paulette led the way through a dilapidated kitchen—appliances right out of Sears circa 1970—and through the back door of the cottage. As they crossed the small weedy yard, a children’s swing set, one chain broken, a rotted seat dangling like a broken limb, formed the yard’s epitaph.
    Paulette reached out. Hesitantly, Denise took her hand and was led into the black night forest.
    “I don’t go home much, and I always go a different way,” Paulette whispered as they made their way through the darkness beneath the trees. “If Kurt found out, he’d spoil it just to be mean; just because he likes to hurt me by ruining my things. He thinks it’s funny. Hitting isn’t enough. He can’t hurt me bad enough with his fists short of putting me in the hospital, which costs a lot, or killing me.”
    Holding tightly to Paulette’s hand, Denise followed blindly, her story—her sister’s story, their story—surging through her veins and arteries, down the capillaries until each and every cell in her body was caught up. Waves of fury crashed over deep valleys of sorrow; seas of compassion rose and receded. It had been a while since Denise had felt anything for anyone but herself. The hatred she harbored for Peter had hardened into bitterness. Wormwood and gall had been all she could taste, smell, see, touch.
    Dead; she’d been dead to herself in every way that counted. Coming alive in this womb of pine-scented darkness, her hand warm and safe in her twin’s, was so overwhelming she staggered like a drunk and fell to her knees, dragging Paulette with her.
    Denise felt her sister patting her hand. “Shh, shh,” Paulette murmured softly. “It’s okay. We’re together.” Those words were the first and only lullaby Denise had ever heard. She began to cry.
    Usually sick helplessness came on the heels of Denise’s crying jags. This time, when the tears finally stopped, she felt renewed, as if the tears were poisons her body had expelled.
    “We’re almost there.” Paulette’s voice came from the darkness. Denise allowed the gentle tugging to bring her to her feet. “This land belonged to Kurt’s mom,” Paulette whispered as they crept along. “His grandma lived here. When she died we moved in. It’s not like a city lot. It’s only about forty feet wide where the house is, but it runs way way back, getting skinnier and skinnier like the tail of a comet. Kurt doesn’t care anything about it except that it’s his. I wanted him to sell at least part of it because he could get a lot of money for it and we wouldn’t have to live in a shack. ‘Shack’s good enough for the likes of you’ was his big-deal answer. If he ever found this, he’d kill me.
    “We’re here.” Paulette let go of Denise’s hand. The connection broken, for a second Denise felt