whispering, You should be taking care of him yourself.
I turn into the narrow driveway for my apartment (which is actually the carriage house behind the house where Annie lives with her uncle Don), debating what kind of pie I’m going to procrasti-bake tonight, when my headlights flash across a person. Two people. I slam on the brakes and scream, because this is it. This is the beginning of my murder story, the one that will eventually be told on the true-crime podcast about my death. Clearly whoever this is has been methodically stalking me for weeks—no, years!—and has finally come here to finish the deed, while Annie’s out of town and Uncle Don’s preoccupied with D&D and no one will hear me scream and—
Oh. I blink as I realize that one of the people is my brother.
I step out of the car and slam the door. “What are you doing standing in the middle of the driveway, you maniac?” I ask.
“Blasting the Doobs, huh?” He squints at me through his giant glasses (the kind that are in style but sort of make him look like a serial killer from the ’80s), and that’s when I remember that he’s not alone. He’s standing next to a tall, attractive, almost impossibly fit black man who I’m certain I’ve never seen before in my life. Trust me. I’d remember a man who looks this good.
I paste a smile on my face, using my years of customer service training. “I mean . . . um . . . to what do I owe this pleasure, brother?”
Milo steps toward me with his arms outstretched, his dirty-blond hair rumpled and his T-shirt wrinkled, and even though I’ve barely seen him for the past few years, I let myself sink into his hug. For one second, I bask in this familial embrace, but then I take a step back and smack him on the arm with my purse.
“What the hell, dude? I haven’t seen you for, what, an entire year, and you show up in my driveway with no warning and a beautiful man?”
Milo gives the other man a smile, one of those Sorry, this lady’s crazy smiles that I hate so much. The other man steps forward, offering me his hand.
“Fred,” he says.
“It’s so nice to meet you, Fred,” I say sweetly, then turn back to Milo and hit him with my purse again. “I texted you last week about changing Dad’s medication and you didn’t even bother responding. You don’t think you could’ve been, like, ‘Okay, thanks for handling one hundred percent of our father’s medical care and PS, I think I’m going to be back in Ohio next week’?”
Milo groans. “Chloe. This is exactly why I didn’t tell you I was coming back.”
“Great. Put it all on me.”
Milo looks me in the eyes and then, there it is. My own smile mirrored back at me. “Hey. Can’t you be glad to see your other half?”
The traitorous corners of my mouth start to twitch up in a smile. That’s what Milo and I used to call each other when we were little: my other half. Back then, when we’d only been given an incomplete birds-and-the-bees lesson from a VHS tape my dad borrowed from the library that left a lot to the imagination, we thought that being twins meant we were actually two halves of the same person. And then Dad told us that “other half” was more typically used to refer to romantic partners and not so much fraternal twins, but we didn’t care because the description felt true. He’s the irresponsible half, and I’m the responsible half. He’s the half with his head in the clouds, I’m the half with her feet on the ground. Together we make one complete person, and knowing that he’s been out there floating around Brooklyn for the past few years has made me feel, well . . . not whole.
“Damn it,” I mutter, smiling, as I let him hug me again. I catch Fred’s eye and he shrugs, signaling that he’s already well aware of Milo’s charm. “Just come inside,” I say into Milo’s shoulder.
* * *
* * *
“So how long has it been since you’ve been home?” I ask as Milo and Fred settle into the couch. My apartment, which is a glorified room above a garage, is tiny; one room with my bed, a couch, and a small, round kitchen table, with a sloping ceiling that means you can only stand up straight if you’re