Free Double by Jenny Valentine Page B

likely I was to slip up and get caught out.
    It was a mistake to have come into town with her. It was stupid, showing off like that. It was careless. I’d just wanted to be with Edie. And being with Edie was making me incautious, was going to get me noticed.
    I didn’t want to get caught out. I didn’t want to leave like she did. I didn’t hate it at all.
    I looked at Edie. I watched her and she didn’t know it. Maybe now that I was here she’d do something more than just waiting. Maybe she would go to college. Now that I was back, she could go.
    Maybe she’d leave me, just when I’d found her.
    I wanted to know how long I could be her brother. I wanted to know if I could do it forever.
    “The freak show is leaving town,” she said, and I waved with her, even though I didn’t know who any of them were, just to do the same thing she did.

T W E L V E
    W hen we got back to the house, Frank’s car was there. I didn’t need anyone to tell me it was his. The license plate said fr4nk. I felt the ball of tension grow in my chest, rise up in my throat, pull and tighten all the muscles in my body.
    “Stuck-up jerk,” Edie said, grinning at me, bringing her grubby silver Peugeot to a stop next to his gleaming, monstrous 4x4, a little too close for him to open his own door.
    “Accident,” she said, shrugging. “What can I say? Woman driver.”
    The front door of the house was locked. She banged on it three times, hard. “He locks everything,” she said. “He’s obsessive.”
    I didn’t say anything. I shut my eyes. I swallowed. I could hear my heart beating in my ears. I could feel it shake me.
    What if he knew I was me? What if he looked at me and just said, “No”?
    Edie opened the letterbox, put her mouth to the gap. “Frank!”
    “There’s no hurry, is there?” I said.
    “It’s freezing out here,” she said. “I don’t like being locked out of my own house.”
    I heard him coming down the stairs. I pictured him coming through the kitchen to the door. I felt him just on the other side, taking up all the space, ready to condemn me.
    “Let’s get a look at him,” he said, turning the lock, switching the bolt. “Is he there? Cass! Are you there?”
    “Yes.” My voice sounded lost and far away.
    The door opened and he stood there, dark like Cassiel and sharper, more handsome, his hair short and neat, his face healthy and tanned. I saw money when I looked at Frank. I saw wealth and comfort and things I’d never dared to start wanting. He put one hand up in a still wave and stared. I did the same.
    There was a strange lull while nothing happened. I counted to three in my head as he looked at me and I looked back, and I tried to be ready for whatever happened next. At first, Frank’s eyes seemed dark and unsmiling. I got the sensation of something lurking there, of something leaving, but not before I’d glimpsed it out of the corner of my eye.
    I felt it in my bones, the fear that he could see I wasn’t Cassiel.
    Edie hung back.
    I waited.
    The strong lines of Frank’s face lifted into a smile, the smile cracked into a laugh. His teeth were white and straight and even. His mouth danced. He held his hands out to me. I was in.
    “Cass,” he said. “Little brother.”
    Relief coursed through me, a sudden warmth in my veins. I smiled back, my own cracked and crooked smile meeting his perfect one.
    “Hello, Frank,” I said.
    He shook my hand, clapped me on the back, hugged me. “Let me look at you,” he said. “Not so little anymore. God.”
    He was taller than me. He held me by the shoulders and studied my face, every inch of it. He took my chin in his right hand and moved my face from side to side. For a moment I felt like a painting of Cassiel, a sculpture, like I was a thing and Frank was buying me.
    He put his arms around me and held on tight, his voice rich and warm in my ear. “Very good,” was all I heard. I didn’t hear him right.
    “What?”
    “Have you any idea how good it is to