thousand questions, but I don’t know where to start. Jake also seems tongue-tied. He watches me with his mouth slightly open.
I understand his shock. It’s difficult for me not to gape at him, too. I don’t know what I expected—that he’d still look like the face in my dreams? I knew he must be in his midthirties, but it didn’t occur to me how much he would change in eighteen years.
“I’m sorry,” Jake finally says, shaking his head and smiling. “I know I’m staring. It’s just—it’s uncanny how identical you are.”
I smile, too. “I’ve seen a video of Iris. We do look alike.”
“Exactly alike.” He examines my face.
The waitress comes back. I order toast and juice. Jake says he’s fine with coffee. Ty gets the works; clearly his stomach isn’t tied in knots like mine.
When the waitress leaves, I say to Jake, “I thought you might want to see something of Iris’s. For proof that I really am her sister.” Sliding the violin case from my lap, I extend it across the table, using both hands.
Jake’s eyes never leave my face. “I don’t need to see her violin. I know who you are.”
I place the case on the floor beside my chair. I don’t know what to say. Where to start.
Ty saves me from having to decide. “Lily and I have a lot of questions,” he says.
Jake blinks and clears his throat. “How much do you know?”
“I know that my parents lived in Winterhaven before I was born,” I say, “and that their last name was Marshall. I know Mom taught art at the high school and Dad was a research biologist. Mom told me that Iris died of leukemia when she was seventeen. Is that true?”
“Yes.” He closes his eyes. “My god, they did it. They got her back.”
My body turns to ice, and I start shaking; but I tell myself that I’m prepared to hear the truth, that I already know it.
Ty looks at me for one long moment. I nod, pressing my lips together. Beneath the table, I grab his hand and hold on tight.
He faces Jake, and in a quiet voice says, “We know about Adam’s work with animal cloning. Are you saying that Iris was Lily’s . . .” He swallows. “Is she her original?”
“Yes,” Jake whispers.
My stomach lurches, and my chair legs scrape the floor with a shriek as I push to my feet. I thought I was ready to hear the truth, but maybe I was wrong. It didn’t seem real, or even possible, until I heard it spoken. “I’m her clone? Dad did that to me?”
“Lily,” Ty says, reaching for me.
I jerk my arm from his grasp and push past the table, then bolt toward the ladies’ restroom at the back of the restaurant, praying it’s empty. Just in time, I push through the door and drop to my knees in front of the toilet, retching.
I’m at the sink washing my face when I hear the door squeak open behind me. “Are you okay?” Ty asks in a worried voice.
I turn off the water, keeping my back to him and my head lowered. I can’t bear to see his face and read what he thinks of me. “No, I’m not okay. I’m a freak!”
“Don’t say that.” His hand grips my shoulder, and for several long moments, my erratic breathing is the only sound I hear. “I want you to know that when I came to Silver Lake, I knew about your dad’s work,” Ty finally says. “But I didn’t know about this.”
I face him. “But you suspected, didn’t you? You saw me in that photograph on Gail Withers’s desk . . .”
“Lily . . . you’ve suspected it, too. You know you have.”
“Suspecting is one thing. Hearing it confirmed is another.” I lean back against the sink, not trusting my legs to support me. “I’m just a carbon copy of my sister. An experiment.” My voice breaks.
Ty is silent for a long time. Then he nods toward the door. “Let’s go get some air, and then we’ll talk to Jake. That’s why we came here, isn’t it? To get answers?”
I don’t know why I’m striking out at Ty. None of this is his fault. Avoiding his scrutiny, I pull a paper towel from the dispenser on the wall, wipe it across my face, and toss it into the trash bin. Then I follow him outside to the parking lot. He’s right. I’m tired of trying to piece together the fragments of Iris’s