Chapter Two: A Rather Unlikely Twist

As the hour ticks by, I find myself repetitively glancing down the hall in the direction of my mother’s bedroom. So many things surge through my mind, but one reoccurring thought grabs my attention the most.

            “She’s hiding something, isn’t she?” I ask stupidly. I didn’t mean to say it out loud, but it kind of just slipped out.

            “Who?” Payton says, looking up from a fashion magazine.

            “Mom,” I say.

            “Well, obviously,” says Seth.

            “What do you think it is?” I question.

            Payton shrugs as if it’s no big deal. Somehow, I don’t find it convincing.

            Seth begins to say something, but he stops as we hear a doorknob twisting open.

At first, I think it is the biker guy, making his way into our home. Then, I realize that this wouldn’t be the case, because the front door is downstairs, and the sound is coming from only feet away.

Shock, disbelief, fear even.

That’s the atmosphere in the room when our mother steps out from the hallway into the living room.

“Mom?” Payton of course, is the first one to speak up.

My mother smiles. I must be dreaming, because clearly, Mom smiling on a day like today would never happen in real life. Without warning, she turns and bounds down the stairs, like a child might do on Christmas morning. It’s strange to see her act like this, when she’s always so strict, especially on Dad’s birthday.

Payton, Seth and I all look at each other in astonishment.

“What… just happened?” Seth stammers.

Downstairs, I hear my mother give out a squeal. “He’s here!” she shouts.

Curious, my siblings and I rise up from the couches to find her.

“Mom?” Payton calls.

“In here, darling!” Mom chimes from the kitchen.

We cautiously enter, to find her packing random food into a cooler.

“Why don’t you kids go pack up? We’re leaving for a while. Consider it… a vacation!”

“Where are we going? And why so suddenly?” Seth asks her.

“Just go pack! I’ll explain later.” She flashes another smile at us.

Walking away, I develop a deep concern for my mother’s mental health. Has thirteen years without her husband driven her mad?

Chapter One: Dad's Birthday

I guess I should have seen it coming. The wave of pain that comes only a few times a year catches up to me. It drags me under its harsh current, threatening to suffocate me. I can’t help but to cry.

Today is my father’s birthday. And it’s another year we get to celebrate it without him. Mom’s been locked in her room all morning, as she usually is on this day. Of course, when Daddy was still alive, we would have been together, having a wonderful time. However, our dad has been dead for exactly thirteen years now. Some people say the pain eases as life goes on, but that’s definitely not the case for our family.

“Pax?” My sister calls out up the staircase.

“Hm?” I respond.

“Um, can you please come here?”

I sigh. I figure Payton will want to discuss the same thing we do every year. I’m not sure when she’ll realize that no one wants to talk about it, but I rise up off my bed and follow her voice.

When I reach the bottom, Payton grabs my arm and rushes me to the front of our apartment.

“What is it?” I ask.

“I’ll show you, hold on!” I can see the panic in her chocolate brown eyes, which are so different my own blazing, blue ones. People hardly ever believe us when we tell them we are sisters, let alone twins.

She draws back the curtain covering the window looking out on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and I see him: a tough, burly looking man with narrow eyes and biker clothes. Normally, I wouldn’t think anything of it. I mean, it’s New York, there are millions of people here and plenty like this guy. However, he was looking straight up at us, and when he locks eyes with me, I get the chills and step away quickly.

“Do you know him?” Payton asks me.

“No,” I tell her.

“What’s the matter?” Our little brother Seth appears behind us.

“You see that man?” Payton points out the window. “He’s looking right at us. Creepy, huh? I’m going to get Mom.”

“Payton!” I yell, a little louder than I intended to. “You can’t bother Mom. You know how she is…”

“But this is an emergency,” she presses on.

“I’m with Paxton,” Seth butts in. “Sorry Pay, but emergency or not, remember what happened last time we bothered Mom on… this day?”

I shudder. Four years ago, Seth was stung by a wasp while out on the terrace. It was the first time he had been stung, and we had no idea he was as allergic as he was. Immediately, he began to swell up. Payton brought him inside to see if there was anything she could give him, while I gathered up my courage and stepped into my mother’s bedroom seeking help. Once I entered, I heard her talking to herself in a hysterical voice. I squeaked out just one word, her name, and she went ballistic. She screamed, grabbed a lamp and tossed it at my head, barely missing me. Terrified, I scrambled out of the room, closing the door safely behind me as I heard another object hit the wall.

Thankfully, Seth was all right. Payton found an EpiPen hidden in our medicine cabinet and saved him. I had told my siblings about my mother’s fit, but she seemed to be perfectly fine the next day, as if nothing had happened. I never looked at her the same way again.

“Fine,” Payton says, bringing me back to reality. “But what do you want to do about it? Call the police?”

Seth nods, but I quickly object. “Do we really need the police here? It will cause so much unwanted commotion. I doubt this guy is even a threat. He’s probably just one of those crazy drug addicts.”

“And that’s not a threat?” Payton questions incredulously.

“Look, he doesn’t appear to be armed or anything, so he can’t be dangerous. We can simply lock the doors and windows, and I bet he’ll get tired or forget what he’s doing and leave.”

“I don’t know…”

“Okay, how’s this? We’ll do all that, Paxton, but if he is still there within an hour, we call the cops.” Seth says. He was always great at bargaining.

“I suppose that will work,” I say.

Payton nods, and then begins bolting the locks.