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Was her heart broken? Each night as she tried to fall asleep—impossible after what she had overheard on the stairs—Ruth pressed a hand against her chest, against the slight swelling that had, to her great relief, finally begun there.

It had started first for Ivy, of course.

Beneath Ruth’s swelling, her heart went thud-thud-thud.

Faster than usual. Meanwhile, Ivy breathed steadily in the next bed because, thought Ruth, she knew she was their parents’ real daughter.

She prayed every night for her father to come home, but God had apparently chosen to ignore her, probably because they never went to church.

She planned to ask about that in the morning, to see if they could start attending.

Everyone else in Enid did, and she didn’t like to stand out.

But Ivy spoke first at breakfast the next day.

“Where’s Dad?” Ivy wasn’t shy about asking questions. The only surprising thing about her asking this one was how long she’d held off. Their father had been gone for nearly two weeks, when his usual run took four days.

“On an extended run,” said Grandma Adele.

“Why?” Ivy’s voice had a taunting edge, which her mother and grandmother ignored.

“Because the folks in charge asked him to, and he said yes,” said Grandma Adele.

Their mother sipped her coffee and worked her crossword.

After they left for school, Ruth knew she’d go fly her plane.

Then she’d have lunch with Frank Bridlemile.

(“Why,” asked Ivy, shortly after she informed Ruth that her mother and Frank were having an affair, “are you and Uncle Frank always having lunch together?” “To talk business. Real estate. Investments,” said their mother.

Grandma Adele had cleared her throat and rattled the paper.) After her mother and Frank Bridlemile talked real estate and investments, she’d come home and cook them dinner.

She’d ask Ruth and Ivy for a report on their days, and no one would mention their father or when he might return.

“Brush your hair, Ivy,” said Grandma Adele.

“I already did!”

“Well, it needs brushing again. What are you brooding about, Ruth?”

“Nothing.”

“Good. Stop moping, then. No one likes a moper.”

Right. No one liked a moper. It was essential—now more than ever—to be a sunny, likable girl. She straightened her shoulders, brightened her expression. It didn’t matter that her face didn’t match up with how she felt on the inside.

After breakfast, she studied herself in the hallway mirror.

From hairline to ankles, she compared her own face and body against her mother’s.

Everything was different. Her mother’s skin was fair and rosy.

Ruth’s was sallow. Her mother was tall and lanky and carried herself with an easy grace.

Ruth hadn’t grown, it seemed, in three years, and was always bumping into table corners.

They both had hazel eyes, but then, so did tons of people.

George’s hair was shinier than Ruth’s. Her nose less prominent.

Her chin stronger. Everything about her, in fact, was superior to everything about Ruth.

She didn’t need a mirror to compare herself to Ivy.

They weren’t identical—Ruth had often wished they were—but she knew her twin through and through.

Their constant togetherness meant she’d known, that night on the stairs, exactly what it meant when the muscle in Ivy’s arm twitched as she pulled away from Ruth.

That she was embarrassed for her. Because obviously, if one of them didn’t belong, it was her.

One of them was Vivian’s, and one of them was George’s. One of them was Tom’s, and the other was ... whose? Ivy speculated about Frank Bridlemile. “That’s ridiculous,” said Ruth.

“You’re right,” said Ivy. “The math doesn’t work. He would have been in the Far East. For the war.”

Ruth had been too distraught to calculate conception dates.

The fact that Ivy could calmly assess the possibilities only confirmed that Ruth was the one who didn’t belong.

To Ivy it was just a game—a mystery to solve.

They were detectives—like Trixie Belden or Nancy Drew.

They drew up lists of questions for their mother and father, for Adele and Aunt Vivian.

Their father had listened patiently to their inquiries.

He seemed relieved to offer up the date and location of his wedding to their mother, reluctant to discuss anyone he had dated before meeting her.

“No one important, no one that mattered.” He grew defensive when asked why he wasn’t there when they were born.

“There was a war on, for God’s sake. If every man whose wife had a baby had been sent home, we’d all be saluting Hitler now. ”

“So you never actually saw us be born?” pressed Ivy. “You never actually saw us as babies.”

“You were still plenty babyish when I got back. Still are some days. Now, I’ve got to get ready to go.”

Adele was a vault. Though she did agree to let them look through her picture album.

There was their mustachioed grandfather, looking stern and old fashioned.

“He was actually a very modern man,” Adele corrected them.

There was her mother as a baby, eyes wide, startled by the camera or perhaps the world in general.

There she was again next to a pump jack, next to a ridiculous car.

“Our good old Nash,” said Adele. “What I wouldn’t give to have it back.

” Their mother in her high school graduation robe.

And then with Aunt Vivian, their arms around each other, beaming.

“Their graduation. I went down to Sweetwater by myself. Your grandfather was not able.” Was that a sniffle?

Ruth looked up in alarm, but her grandmother blinked twice and returned to her normal self.

Then, in a frustrating leap through time, their mother in a starched dress and pinafore (a pinafore!) holding the two of them on her lap.

“But what about the wedding?” asked Ivy.

“I wasn’t there. Ask your mother—she’s probably got a snapshot somewhere.”

“Why weren’t you there?”

“There was a war on, young lady. We couldn’t all go gallivanting around the country.”

“Or we’d all be saluting Hitler right now,” said Ruth.

“Fat chance,” said their grandmother.

They compared their own baby photos to George’s, but babies looked boringly similar. Did Grandma Adele have any baby pictures of Aunt Vivian?

“Of course not,” she said. “Why would I?”

Their mother was busy. Mostly with Frank Bridlemile. “Real estate is a time-intensive business,” she said when they complained about her spending yet another evening out.

“Was Aunt Vivian at your wedding?” asked Ivy.

“Of course.” Her mother snapped her compact shut and scooped up her keys.

“Did she already know Dad?”

“What? Oh yes. They’d met. There was a war on—we all got thrown together one way or another. I’ve got to run. You girls be good for your grandmother.”

Vivian didn’t return to Enid for a long time. Ivy wrote her a letter, which Ruth reluctantly cosigned, requesting childhood photos. They received no response. They wrote another. It was returned unopened, Addressee Unknown. No forwarding address.

Their mother shrugged. “You know your aunt Vivian. She’s a nomad. We’ll hear from her when she settles somewhere.”

After their initial questioning, their father didn’t come home for nearly two weeks. Ivy wanted to interrogate him again, but Ruth refused. “He doesn’t like it. He’ll stay away even longer if we keep at him like that.”

“But—” Ivy began.

“I won’t,” said Ruth. Why was Ivy so determined to prove that they weren’t sisters? “Don’t you want to be twins anymore?”

“That’s not the point,” said Ivy. “The point—”

“I don’t care what the point is. I just want to be sisters. If you don’t, you can figure it out for yourself.”

Ivy’s eyes widened in the most gratifying way. Why should she always be in charge? thought Ruth. Just because their friends went along with every game Ivy suggested didn’t mean Ruth had to. Why should she keep playing a game she could only lose?

She much preferred the research game that they’d started playing at sleepovers.

Sandra, not Ivy, had initiated it. Over the course of seventh grade, Sandra went from a training bra to a C cup.

Her authority grew right along with her boobs.

Suddenly Sandra took charge of their group, and she had her own ideas about how they should spend their time.

In the research game, they practiced doing things boys would like. “So that when we’re old enough to go on dates, we’ll be ready,” said Sandra. She had a seventeen-year-old sister, who told her all about what boys liked.

“Pair off,” commanded Sandra. Many of the games involved breaking their group of six into pairs. Sandra had called them each the day before to instruct them to wear something sleeveless. They needed access to each other’s arms so that they could learn to give hickeys.