What Is Broken

Laura entered the cottage first. There was no threshold to speak of, just a patch of warm light crossing the floor from a south-facing window and a change in the density of air that felt almost aquatic after the hush outside. The room was simple—worn rug, two armchairs, a long table ringed by low stools. In the sun-slant near the window, a woman sat in a rocking chair, her body folded tight in the frame, her hands knit into the arms so completely that for a second Andy mistook them for part of the wood. She was rocking, slow and even, her gaze not on the world but angled through it, as if searching a distance that only she could see.

Her hair was longer than Laura’s but the same heavy black, loose and unkempt, as if she’d let it grow untended for years. She looked only one or two years older than Laura: much like Marie, perhaps The HH hadn’t provided wealth to Greg and his harem, but it had certainly extended their lifespans. She wore a dress the faded color of a memory, somewhere between pink and red, with a cardigan draped unevenly over her shoulders, clearly by someone else’s hand. Her blue eyes were open but vacant, reflecting the window glass, and her lips worked in the smallest of movements, just enough to make visible the repetition: “my baby girl, my baby girl, I’m sorry, sweet girl.” Each phrase was a bead, the same three, cycling with the helplessness of old machinery. Each word a stab wound.

Laura stopped dead in the center of the room. She didn’t say a word; didn’t even breathe, as far as Andy could tell. He came up behind her, stopping close but not close enough to touch, and for a few seconds he let himself take in the scene, imprinting it. Marie followed Arabella and entered last, closing the door with a whisper of noise that seemed to ripple right through Sarah, but her head didn’t turn.

Andy felt Laura shake. Not a tremble—an actual full-body vibration, like a wire stretched too tight—but she didn’t move. He placed a hand gently on her shoulder, expecting resistance, but instead she leaned into the pressure, her own hand coming up and covering his. He felt the bond pulse, not as a river but as a sudden ocean, the salt and **** of it almost knocking him from his stance.

Sarah kept rocking, and the cadence of her lips never altered. Laura stood in the middle of the room and shook.

Andy tried to help. He tried to send a steadying thought through the bond: you’re here, she’s here, you can do this. He’d never tried to use it this way, but his experience with Claire had made him wonder. Instead, the wave came back tenfold, Laura’s fear and longing and love so raw and intertwined with grief that he had to clamp his jaw shut to avoid making a sound. He saw it all—her need to be seen, to be heard, to matter; the way every moment of her life had been shaped by the ghost of the woman rocking in the window as much as the man who had started it all. He felt the terrible longing for something broken to be fixed, just once. And the love for a mother that, now Laura knew, had loved her with every fiber of her being.

He squeezed her shoulder, a little harder. She straightened, just a bit. “My Mom,” she whispered. Then she moved.

She crossed the space in four long, decisive strides, then dropped to her knees in front of her mother’s chair, hands reaching up, not tentative, not apologetic, just pure intention. She took Sarah’s hands in hers, and held on.

“Mom,” Laura said. Just once, soft, but it cut the air with surgical precision.

Sarah didn’t blink. She didn’t stop rocking. But Andy saw the tiniest flicker—a hesitation, a glitch in the loop—as if the code had stuttered and then overwritten itself with the original routine.

“Mom, it’s me. It’s Laura. I’m here. I’m alive.”

The rocking continued, but Andy heard the next cycle, just for a second, skip: “my baby girl, I’m sorry, my baby girl, I’m sorry.” The words were different, but only by a sliver, and then the old pattern reasserted itself.

Laura pressed harder, her voice gathering weight. “Mom, look at me. I’m real. I made it. I came back.”

Nothing. The eyes didn’t move, and the hands in Laura’s grip stayed slack.

The room went so quiet that Andy could hear the scrape of the chair on the wood with every rock.

“Mom, I love you. I never stopped. I never blamed you for anything.” Laura’s voice cracked on the last word, and Andy felt it through his chest, a blade that slipped sideways into all the places he thought he’d cauterized years ago.

“I missed you every single day. I wanted to come home, I wanted you to hold me again. I never wanted to leave.”

Sarah rocked. The lips moved. “Sweet girl. I’m sorry.”

Laura kept going, her voice a machine that wouldn’t shut off even when the parts ran out. “It wasn’t your fault. You did everything you could. You were the best Mom anyone ever had.” She pressed her forehead against Sarah’s hand, tears glittering on her cheeks. “Please come back to me, Mom. Please come back.”

Sarah’s eyes never left the window, but Andy saw the smallest twitch in her cheek, a micro-expression so brief he wouldn’t have caught it if he had not been studying Sarah’s face. For a moment, it looked like Sarah might speak, or cry, or at least break rhythm. But then the old current seized her, and the loop continued.

“My baby girl, I’m sorry. Sweet girl.”

Laura shuddered. She pressed her mother’s hands between hers, squeezing so hard the bones must have ached, and Andy felt the agony of it—a need so complete that nothing else would ever fit inside.

“Mom,” Laura said, “I’m not a ghost. I’m here. You can hold me.” Her voice was shredded, and Andy wondered if she even heard herself. “Please, Mom. I love you. Please.”

Nothing.

Behind them, Marie stood by the door, her arms folded so tight across her chest that her knuckles blanched, eyes glued to the scene but face blank of any readable emotion. She looked like she’d been watching this for years, and Andy guessed she probably had.

He didn’t move, didn’t try to break the circuit. The bond told him to stay, to bear witness, to let the two of them complete whatever ritual had to happen here. He kept his hand on Laura’s shoulder, sending what comfort he could, and absorbed the rest of her pain.

Time warped, became meaningless. Laura didn’t rise, didn’t look away, didn’t stop talking. She whispered to Sarah, begged her, tried every combination of word and tone and plea that a daughter could summon. She told stories, shared memories, recited whole childhood days in the hope that one would land. The responses were always the same: the rocking, the loop, the unwavering vacancy of a woman lost at sea.

Andy felt himself go a little numb. He watched Laura repeat herself, each pass wearing a groove deeper than the last, and realized that before him stood a different answer to the same question he had asked himself for years: how can you survive loving someone this much, and then losing them?

The light in the room shifted, the angle of sun slanting higher, but still Laura stayed on her knees. She never let go of her mother’s hands. She never gave up.

Eventually, her voice gave out, reduced to a hoarse rasp that only Andy, standing just behind, could even hear. But she kept at it, stubborn and relentless, a **** of nature unwilling to abandon hope.

“Please, Mom. Just one more time. Say my name. Call me Laura. Tell me you know I’m here.”

Sarah rocked.

“My baby girl. I’m sorry. Sweet girl.”

Andy shut his eyes, just for a moment. When he opened them, Laura was still there, still holding on, still refusing to let go.

He understood, maybe for the first time, that this was not a contest with an outcome. It was a testament. The proof of love, even when the object of it was gone.

Marie hadn’t moved. Her gaze was fixed, but her jaw trembled, just a bit, as if she were holding something back with every muscle she had.

There was nothing to do but let it continue. And so Andy did.

The scene held, unbroken. Laura’s hands pressed her mother’s. Her words filled the space, even when her voice was gone. Andy stood behind her, his hand an anchor on her shoulder. Marie kept her place at the wall, silent and unmoving.

---

The urgency had left Laura’s body. Not exhaustion—her frame still hummed with the kind of aftermath that followed a tornado, the leftover charge and the sense that something more might still crash through the door at any moment—but the drive to change things, to shake them awake, was gone. She remained on her knees, hands wrapped around her mother’s, Sarah’s skin warm but inert beneath her touch.

Sarah’s body rocked with the same metronome regularity, her face never twitching, her mouth continuing the phrase: “my baby girl, I’m sorry, sweet girl,” over and over, always landing in the same spot. It was a lullaby with no one left to sleep. The eyes never shifted. The set of her face was so fixed it hurt to look at. Andy stood just behind, hand still on Laura’s shoulder, feeling every beat of the moment as if the bond had become his own nervous system.

After a while, Laura stopped speaking. She just knelt and studied Sarah’s face, as if committing it to a kind of memory that could not be erased or rewritten. Andy saw her catalog the line of her mother’s jaw, the stubborn mouth, the way the corners of her lips always seemed about to smile, even now. She looked at the way Sarah’s hands curled in her lap, at the lines on her knuckles, the particular bend of her spine. She absorbed every detail, not out of longing but with the clarity of a scientist before a slide, as if there were a secret formula hidden in the lines of this woman and if she could just see it, all of it, it would explain everything.

She did not cry. She just watched, and took in, and stored.

Marie, who had not moved since the beginning, finally crossed the room. Her boots made no sound on the rug, but Andy could feel the shift in the air as she came up behind Laura and crouched. She placed a hand on Laura’s back, a simple pressure between the shoulder blades, and left it there.

“You know what Dinah says. You know what Arabella says,” Marie said, her voice pitched for Laura’s ears only. “I don’t believe it, not really.” She didn’t elaborate, didn’t fill in the subject. “She’s not gone. She’s just somewhere harder to reach. Maybe you didn’t get through today. But maybe you’ll get through. Even if she can’t show it, you have to know it matters.” The words were as much for herself as for Laura, but they landed exactly where they needed to.

Laura nodded, very slightly, as if conceding the point but not quite ready to let it become hope. She stayed there, hands folded around her mother’s, the movement of her breathing so fine that Andy could barely see it.

Marie’s hand never left Laura’s back. She held on, silent, her own face aimed just above Sarah’s, as if she were looking for some clue in the way the dust danced in the slant of the window light.

Andy wanted to do something, anything, but he knew this was not his moment. He kept his hand where it was, a grounding wire, and waited.

After what felt like another lifetime, Laura leaned in and pressed her lips to the back of Sarah’s hand. “I’ll come back,” she said, not to her mother, but to herself, as if it were the promise that would keep her from breaking. “I’ll come back, Mom, I promise. I love you.” She said it again, quieter, and then she let go, slowly, as if pulling her hands from quicksand.

For a second, she didn’t move. Then Andy stepped forward and placed his hand under her arm, gentle as he could. He could feel her ****, her need to stay, but she let him guide her up. When she was standing, she turned and looked at Sarah one last time.

Andy felt something in his throat, thick and jagged. He looked at Sarah, too, and saw the remnants of the woman he’d always tried to remember. He didn’t have a lot of memories of her, since he had never played in Laura’s house. But he remembered her being quiet, and a bit sad, and always sneaking a candy to him as if that was the only way she could show how grateful she was that Laura had him. He realized with a shiver that perhaps that was the actual truth. He wanted to say something to her—wanted to thank her, or apologize, or at least leave a marker in the moment—but nothing came out. He just stood, and watched, and waited for Laura to move.

At last, Laura stepped back from the chair. She stood, shaking, and Andy steered her gently toward the door. She let herself be led, but stopped at the threshold, turning back for a final look. She stared at Sarah, memorizing the way the sun hit her hair, the way her body folded into the little chair, the way the sound of her voice filled the entire room even at a whisper. Then, in a voice so soft Andy could barely hear it, she said, “I love you.”

She didn’t wait for an answer. She let Andy guide her out.

Marie followed, closing the door behind them with a touch so soft it barely disturbed the air.

Inside, the room stayed the same. Sarah rocked by the window, her litany filling the silence as it always had. “My baby girl, my baby girl, I'm sorry, sweet girl. My baby girl, my baby girl, I'm sorry, sweet girl.” A pause, barely a breath. “My baby girl, my baby girl, I love you, sweet girl.” Then the groove found itself again, and she continued as before.

---

Outside the cottage, Laura paused. The light was cool and clear, the sun behind the leaves making a dappled grid across her shoulders. She stood perfectly still, then took a deep, slow breath. It was like watching someone wake up from a nightmare and remember that the world still existed. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, she split: the doubled bodies flickering for a moment, then resolving into two separate forms, side by side, each standing with the same posture, hands hanging at the same angle. It looked effortless, as usual, as if the act of holding herself together as one had been the strain, and this was simply the return to baseline.

Andy watched her—both of her—and didn’t say anything. He kept a hand on the left Laura’s hand, then, after a beat, found the right Laura’s as well, holding them both. The simple contact made the bond hum, not as a sharp ache but as a steady pulse, grounding and real. He didn’t want to let go.

Marie followed them out, closing the cottage door behind her with a careful, deliberate motion, as if she were afraid a rough noise might disturb the fragile balance they’d left behind. She stood with her back to the wood, hands tucked in the crooks of her elbows, watching Laura but not intruding. Her face was set, but there was something new in her eyes—a clarity, or maybe a gentleness, that hadn’t been there before.

Laura turned to face her aunt, both bodies pivoting at once. “I’ll be back,” she said. The tone was final, not a plea or a plan, but the declaration of someone who had decided what she was and wasn’t willing to lose. “I’m not leaving Mom alone. I’m coming back.”

Marie nodded, a small twitch of the head, as if she were agreeing to an appointment that neither of them needed to schedule. “I’ll be here,” she said. The two of them held the silence a second longer than necessary, the eye contact not quite daring but unflinching, then both looked away at the same time, as if some mutual calculation had been completed and filed for later.

Marie looked at her niece—both bodies, both faces—and something in her own face gave way, just slightly, the way a wall gives before it falls. She pressed her lips together. Her chin moved once, a small involuntary thing, and then she stepped forward and pulled Laura into her arms—both of her, one arm around each, drawing them in together as if the doubling were the most natural thing in the world. She held on, not briefly, her hands pressed flat against Laura’s back, her face turned down into her shoulder.

Andy let go of Laura’s hands and stepped back, giving them the moment. He felt the bond settle into a low, persistent hum that matched the hush of the Garden, and he stood quietly in it, watching Marie hold the living proof that her sister’s love had not disappeared into nothing.

The two of them stood in the silence that followed. Andy saw in their postures the same shape: the tension carried high in the shoulders, the same tilt to the jaw, the habit of keeping hands tucked close when the body had nowhere safe to put them. He wondered if, in another timeline, Laura would have grown into someone like Marie, or if the world had always intended her for a stranger fate.

Laura turned, both bodies, and faced Arabella. “If I need to come back without Andy, can I?”

Arabella smiled. “You can. The Elevator will respond to you anytime.” She looked at Andy, then at both Lauras. “There are no locked doors in the Suite, for the Consort. If you need me, just call.” The way she said it, Andy could believe she meant it literally.

Laura nodded. “Thank you,” she repeated, this time to Arabella alone.

Marie exhaled—maybe relief, maybe just exhaustion. “Will you—” she stopped, as if the words had jammed in her mouth, then finished, “Will you bring the others, if they want?”

Andy stepped in, gentle as he could. “We’ll try,” he said. “When Laura’s ready, we’ll talk to Myra about coming down. If she wants it, I’ll bring her myself.”

Marie’s jaw tightened, then eased. “Thank you.” There was nothing else, so she didn’t say more. But the look she gave Andy was the opposite of the one she’d worn at their first meeting. Not warm, but open. Maybe that was the most any of them could do.

Arabella stepped forward then, still the Host but with the formality dialed down to a private register. “If you’d like, I can adjust your return so that you’ll arrive with most of your morning left. You have a date with Liesa this afternoon, and I imagine you’d like some time to recover before then.” She glanced at Andy and at both of Laura’s bodies.

The offer was practical, but there was a kindness in the mechanics of it that Andy did not miss. He nodded. “That would be good. Thank you.”

Arabella turned to Marie. “Marie, if you ever want to visit the world above, just let me know. I can arrange it.” It was, Andy thought, as close to a promise of freedom as the Hollow Garden could ever make.

Marie didn’t answer. She was already looking back toward the cottage door, her eyes scanning the paint for cracks, her hands flexing as if she wanted to go back in but knew she shouldn’t.

Andy and Laura followed Arabella down the path, the moss springy and cool underfoot, the sunlight slicing through leaves in a way that felt new now, as if the old sadness had been sanded down just enough to let the day get in. Andy stayed close to Laura, his hands finding both of hers again. The touch, the bond, the presence of her—it was not enough, but it would have to be.

They walked in silence to the Elevator. Arabella keyed it open with a flick of her hand, then stood back, not crowding them.

Andy turned to Laura, looked at both faces. “Are you ready?” he asked, quietly.

She looked at him, both sets of blue eyes bright and unreadable. “Not really,” she said, and both faces smiled, a tiny, fragile echo of the old Laura. “But I want to go home.”

He nodded, and together they stepped into the Elevator. As the door closed behind them, Andy wrapped his arms around both of her and held on, feeling the pulse of the bond and the solid fact of her body—her bodies—grounding him against whatever storm would come next.

Outside, Marie leaned against the doorframe of the cottage, staring into the light. Arabella lingered at the Elevator, eyes soft. In the distance, a single bird started singing, tentative at first, then gathering confidence as the world began, slowly, to move again.

---

The return to the Suite was anticlimactic, as if the building itself had no interest in witnessing the fallout from the Hollow Garden. The elevator chimed, the doors slid open, and Andy and both Lauras stepped into air that still smelled faintly of citrus and linen, as if the world had never upended itself at all. The only sign of any difference was the light—morning had advanced, pooling on the tile in long, sharp slabs, and there was a hush in the rooms that felt different from before. Less expectation, more aftermath.

Andy did not pause. He steered Laura—both bodies—gently down the hall, past the empty common area, and straight into the kitchen. He didn’t ask if she was hungry. He opened the fridge, scanned the shelves, and started taking out eggs, butter, a carton of orange juice, and a bowl of cut fruit someone had placed there before they left. He set it all on the counter and got to work.

Laura drifted behind him, then split, both bodies settling onto two stools at the island, side by side, their knees almost touching. She watched him, both faces identical in their blankness, hands resting lightly on the edge of the counter. He cracked eggs, beat them, melted butter with too much care. They had already eaten that morning—she knew it, and he knew she knew it—but his hands needed something to do, and this was the thing they knew how to do. He didn’t look at Laura, but he felt her presence in the room like a low, constant note. He poured juice, set out plates, brewed coffee.

He overcooked the eggs slightly, got the toast a shade darker than it needed to be, cut the fruit in awkward chunks. He made enough food for four people, more than even a doubled Laura could manage, but he plated it all anyway and set the first plate in front of the left-hand Laura, the second in front of the right. He poured coffee for both and then, after a pause, for himself. When it was all ready, he stood across the counter from them, hands braced on the granite, and waited.

Laura picked up a fork with her right-hand body, then—after a beat—her left. She ate in silence, not fast, not slow, just mechanical, as if she were learning how to do it for the first time. The eggs were a little rubbery, the toast cold by the time she reached it, but she didn’t complain. She didn’t seem to notice. Andy watched her eat, then picked up his own plate and started on it, standing at the counter, facing her. There were no words.

For a long time, that was enough. The only sound was the scrape of forks and the faint hiss of the coffee maker refilling itself, the way it did every hour whether you wanted it to or not. Outside, the day brightened. Inside, nothing moved except for the hands of the people at the island, and the slow draining of the coffee pot.

The silence was not uncomfortable. It was the silence of two people who had seen something together, and had nothing new to say about it. Laura’s faces remained calm, but Andy could see in the way she moved that she was not calm at all. Her hands kept picking at crumbs on the plate, arranging the cut fruit in geometric patterns before eating it, eyes always scanning the middle distance. She drank her coffee in small sips, both bodies alternating, so that one was always holding the mug.

Andy didn’t try to break the quiet. He just ate, kept her cups filled, and waited. He had learned, over years of therapy and longer years of failing at therapy, that nothing you said could ever make a difference until the other person was ready to let it. He let the silence be what it was.

Eventually, after the food was half-gone, Laura spoke, both voices at once.

“It’s strange,” she said, “how easy it is to believe the story with the right context. All my life I was sure I was just unlucky. The only girl in town with a father who hated her and a mother who couldn’t talk above a whisper. The kind of family people make up rumors about. But this—” she gestured, vaguely, with one hand, “this was a new genre. I didn’t realize until today how much I needed it to be fiction.”

She broke a wedge of toast in half, then lined the pieces up before eating them. “You ever hear the term ‘confabulation’?” Both faces turned to Andy.

He nodded. “Making up a story to explain something you don’t understand.”

Laura’s left mouth smiled, the right one stayed flat. “Exactly. I spent years doing it. Why mom couldn’t talk about her childhood, why my parents wouldn’t tell me where they were from. I built a whole world out of patches, because the real story was impossible.”

“Turns out I was right,” Laura continued, both voices steady, both faces impassive. “None of it was ever normal. Greg wasn’t just an asshole, he was a monster. Mom wasn’t just sad—she was destroyed by design.” She cut another piece of toast, then crumbled it, both hands moving in the same distracted rhythm. “I spent years telling myself there must have been something good about my parents before everything fell apart. Something I could trace back and say: see, I’m not a cosmic mistake like Greg said, I just got dealt a bad hand.”

She took a bite, chewed, swallowed. Her faces didn’t change, but Andy saw the tremor in her throat, the way her hands kept fidgeting with nothing. “Marie said something out there, about how Mom used to be. About how the women were all like family before Greg figured out how to break them. I wanted to believe that maybe, somewhere inside, Mom was still that person. But I saw her today.” She looked up at Andy, both faces together, not asking for sympathy, just wanting it acknowledged. “She’s not there. She’s… gone.”

Andy refilled both her coffees, then his own. He didn’t try to argue, didn’t offer hope or correction. He knew, better than most, that there was nothing worse than someone telling you how to feel about your own grief.

“It hurts more than I thought it would,” Laura said. “I didn’t expect to care this much.” She stirred cream into her left-hand cup, then set the spoon down and did it again with her right. “I always knew my mother was broken, but I didn’t realize how much I’d still wanted her to hold me. Just once. To call me by my name, or say she was proud, or even just look at me like I mattered.”

Both faces flicked up at Andy, searching for a sign, a reflection, anything to make the room less empty. “I spent my whole life wanting that. Even after I died, even after I came back, I still hoped.” She snorted, her mouths twisting into a mockery of a smile. “Hope’s a real bitch sometimes.”

Andy smiled, but didn’t make it into a joke. “Yeah,” he said, “it is.”

Laura looked down at her plate. Her right hand moved a piece of melon to the edge and back. “I know it’s fucked up,” she said. “I know what I saw. I know what happened to her. I know I held her hand and called her and she didn’t even look at me.” She paused. “But I can’t help but think she’s in there somewhere. I can’t stop thinking it.” Both faces looked up, not quite ashamed, not quite asking for permission. “Does that make me an idiot?”

Andy didn’t answer right away. He turned his coffee cup once on the counter, thinking. He didn’t want to hand her something that would break later.

“Marie thinks she’s still in there,” he said, finally. “Not gone. Just—buried. Harder to reach than she used to be.” He watched Laura’s faces for a reaction, then kept going, carefully. “For what it’s worth, I think she might be right. I was watching your mother’s face the whole time you were talking to her.” He paused, making sure he had the words exact. “Twice, something changed. Once, the phrase shifted, just for one repetition, ‘I’m sorry’ instead of the usual loop. And there was a twitch in her cheek, when you asked her to come back to you. Small, gone almost before it was there.” He met both sets of her eyes. “I don’t know what it means. I can’t tell you it was recognition. But something moved, while you were there. And based on what Marie said, nothing ever changed until now.”

Laura was quiet, but her eyes stared at him wide and blue.

“If there’s any way back to her,” Andy said, “it’s through you. It wouldn’t be easy, or fast.” He met both sets of her eyes. “But if anyone can reach her, it’s you. You’re the only one she’d have any reason left to surface for.”

For a long moment, Laura didn’t move. “That’s an enormous thing to put on a person,” she said. Both voices, but thin.

“I know,” Andy said, taking her hands.

She nodded, once, and didn’t say anything else. But she didn’t look away, either. And after a moment, something in her shoulders dropped—not relief, not resolution, just the particular exhaustion of someone who has been handed a weight they already knew they were going to carry.

“Okay,” she said, very quietly. Both voices. “Okay.”

They sat a while longer, the food slowly vanishing. The rhythm of the kitchen became a kind of comfort, the scraping of plates and the hiss of the coffeemaker a metronome to measure the time since the world last made sense.

“I have an aunt,” Laura said, and both faces looked up as if the fact needed Andy’s permission to exist. “No, I have several aunts, and two half-sisters.” The words sounded unreal, as if spoken by a stranger.

She shook her heads, both at once. “It doesn’t feel real. I barely even know what to do with it. Myra is my sister. And so is Riley.” She picked up a slice of melon, didn’t eat it, just pressed it between her fingers until it split. “All the things I was jealous of, or angry about, or hurt by… they were all just symptoms. I have sisters, Andy.”

Andy waited, let the silence stretch.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do next,” Laura said, both voices smaller than before. “I know I have to go back. I have to try again with Mom. Even if it’s hopeless.” She set her hands down flat on the counter, fingers splayed, both bodies lined up like they were about to push off from shore. “But I don’t want to tell Myra. Not yet.” She looked up, both faces serious. “Is that awful?”

Andy shook his head. “No.”

She nodded, a sharp jerk of the chin. “I want to be happy for her. I want to tell her the truth, and hug her, and say I’m sorry, and that we’re sisters. But I can’t yet. I’m still too angry at Greg, and too sad. And I want to process all that by myself for just a little longer.”

Andy understood perfectly. He’d spent years in that space, after all.

Laura’s right face looked at him, then the left. “Are you disappointed?”

“No,” Andy said, and meant it. “It’s your call.”

Both faces softened. For the first time since the elevator ride down, the tension seemed to leak from her shoulders, a slow untensing that left both bodies looser, less braced. “Good,” she said. “Because I think if you’d told me to get over it, I might have thrown this entire breakfast at your head.”

Andy smiled, and this time it lasted. “Wouldn’t be the first time you threw food at me.”

Both faces almost smiled, then settled into a smaller, more private expression. “I like this,” Laura said, and her voice was gentler, the pressure off. “Just sitting here, not having to explain myself.”

Andy didn’t say anything. He just topped off her coffee again, then his own, and they sat in the new quiet for a while. It was the kind of silence that built up in layers, each one softer than the last, until it became not an absence but a place where new things could start to grow.

After a while, Laura started clearing her plates. She did it with the same methodical precision she always had, stacking the plates just so, gathering utensils into a tidy pile. Andy moved to help, but she shook her heads and waved him off, as if to say: I’ve got this. The left body carried the plates to the sink, the right poured the dregs of the coffee into the drain, and together they moved around the kitchen with a choreography that was seamless, almost beautiful to watch.

When she was done, Laura sat back down, both bodies resting arms on the counter, hands folded. She looked at Andy, then looked at herself, and then—finally—looked at the window, where the morning light had started to break through in wider, more generous bands.

“I don’t want to see anyone else today,” she said. Both voices, but quiet, like a secret between them. “Is that okay?”

Andy nodded. “That’s okay.”

Both faces closed their eyes for a second, and Andy saw the real exhaustion settle in—the kind that came after adrenaline, after hope, after everything else had drained away. She leaned forward, both bodies, resting her forearms on the counter, and just let herself be tired.

Andy stood there, hands still on the granite, and let himself be tired, too. There was nothing left to say. Not now, not for a while.

---

After the kitchen was cleared, Andy rounded the island without ceremony. Laura’s left-hand body turned on its stool to face him, the right stayed in place, but both reached for him at the same time. He stepped into her arms and let both bodies lean against him, his hands cradling her heads as if she were the most delicate thing in the world. He was much taller, so Laura fit easily under his chin, both sets of hair soft against his throat and chest. For a long time, neither of them spoke or even moved. It was an embrace with no urgency, only the need to prove that the world had not ended after all.

Andy felt the bond run through both of them, a low-grade electricity, the sensation of two currents merging at a point and then radiating out through every limb. Grounding, anchoring. Stabilizing, like it always did. They were safe, when they were together.

He didn’t let go. He didn’t even think about letting go until Laura, both bodies, started to relax against him, the tension finally draining. When she was ready, she peeled back, both faces lifted to look at him, then, wordless, she took his hands and led him to the couch in the living room.

She sat with both bodies, one on each side of him, and curled herself into his arms, knees drawn up, heads on his shoulders. He wrapped his arms around both of her, not possessive, just there, an anchor for whatever came next.

Time passed, but it didn’t feel wasted. Andy stroked Laura’s hair with one hand, then the other, and she let herself be soothed. The bond was stronger now, not as an ache or a tug but as a sensation of total alignment, the way two guitars in perfect tune would make the same note hum louder and more beautiful. He felt, distantly, her exhaustion, her fear, her relief at not being **** to perform for anyone, not even him. It was enough to just be.

Andy squeezed both of her, feeling the way she instantly leaned into it, drawing comfort from every square inch of contact. He had never understood why physical touch worked on some people and not on others. But with Laura, with the way their bond intensified when they were touching, it was like the whole world had reduced itself to one point, and everything else could fall away.

They stayed like that for another long while. No one tried to fill the silence. Eventually, the bond quieted to a slow, deep thrum, like an idling engine after a storm. The sun crawled higher, and the living room filled with golden morning light.

After a time, Laura straightened, both bodies at once. Her faces were more composed now, some of the strain gone. “You have a date with Liesa today,” she said, twin small smiles flickering on her mouths. “You should get ready.”

Andy made a face, an exaggerated wince. “You’re changing the subject.”

Both faces managed a smirk, but only for a second. “It’s not a subject,” she said. “It’s just a fact. I don’t want to do anything else today. I want to sit here, or maybe go back to bed, and just… process. By myself.” The directness was classic Laura, and it made Andy relax a little.

He nodded. “You’re sure?”

Laura looked at him, both faces, and both voices spoke together, perfectly in sync: “I’m sure. Grief isn’t a disease, Andy. You don’t have to quarantine me or fix it for me. I want to feel it.” She pressed her lips together, both sets, and for a moment her hands balled into fists before she unclenched them. “If I don’t let myself feel it, I’ll never be able to see Myra, or Riley. Or my Mom. Or anyone else.”

Andy believed her. He could feel it through the bond, both the sorrow and the deliberate refusal to be comforted into numbness. It was the same stubborn streak that had carried her through the worst years of her life, and he loved her for it.

He let go of her, just enough to turn and face both heads at once. With one hand, he cupped the left Laura’s cheek; with the other, the right. He kissed each forehead, slow, then kissed both sets of lips in turn. “I love you,” he said. “You know where to find me, if you need me.”

Laura smiled, both faces this time, and it was real. “I’ll call if I need you. Or ping the bond, if I need you fast.”

Andy stood, not all at once, but with a hesitation that made it clear he would stay if she even blinked the wrong way. Laura watched him go, both sets of eyes clear and unafraid, and when the bedroom door closed behind him she let herself sink into the couch, her arms wrapped around her knees.

She sat like that, in the strange quiet of a Suite that was both too large and perfectly her size, and let herself feel sad, and didn’t try to change it, or run from it, or make it into something noble or useful.