Page 37 of The Locked Ward
The link between you and your twin feels weaker now. Is it because Mandy has traveled back to her own town, increasing the physical distance between you? Or has something else happened to diffuse your connection?
You stand outside in the courtyard, staring at the lonely tree, trying to summon what you’ve begun to think of as your twin soul frequency. But there’s only the wind brushing across your face and a gnawing sense of emptiness.
Your time is running out. You learned today that a judge will hold a hearing for your case soon. You can be escorted to a special room that will be set up with a computer for the Zoom hearing, or you can let a mental health representative attend in your place.
Questions are exploding in your brain, but of course you can’t voice them: Can the judge order you to be taken to jail? Is the judge in the pocket of your parents and Senator Dawson, like so many other people in town?
If Honey wants you executed, you’ll be executed. Your father might try to dissuade her, but he won’t be able to help you. Especially if Senator Dawson leans on the judge, which he will.
Senator Dawson has always had a taste for beautiful young women, and his wife, Dee Dee, is so used to looking the other way that her neck is permanently twisted.
But no man should look at his best friend’s daughter the way the senator did to Annabelle that night in the butler’s pantry.
This wasn’t just the murder of a family friend; he actually seemed to be in love with Annabelle.
Which means the senator is thirsty for revenge.
The sun drifts behind a cloud. The wind picks up, stirring the leaves on the spindly tree.
A patient sits at the low picnic table that’s affixed to the cement beneath it, drumming her palms against the edge in a rhythmless melody.
The man with the lopsided smile is looping around the circumference of the patio, driven by a hidden compulsion.
A sensation of hollowness engulfs you. It’s different from any emotion you’ve ever experienced. It takes you a moment to identify it.
It’s loneliness.
You’ve been independent your whole life. You didn’t miss your family when you were sent to boarding school at fourteen—you were happy to be away from them. You’ve never had a boyfriend you wanted to stick around for longer than a year. You like living alone; having a roommate would be annoying.
But now you desperately miss Mandy.
You researched twins as soon as you learned of her existence. Suspended inside their private membrane, twins communicate long before they are born. They hug, they touch each other, and in one video, a male twin is seen reaching out to stroke his sister’s face.
Twins also changed the course of modern medicine.
In one famous case, premature twin girls who were born in a Massachusetts hospital were put into separate incubators, as was standard practice at the time.
One began to die, her limbs turning grayish-blue as she gasped for air.
A nurse who’d exhausted every other option finally put the second twin into her sister’s incubator.
Something extraordinary happened.
The stronger twin put her arm around her smaller sister as they lay facing each other. Within minutes, the dying twin’s blood oxygen levels improved. Her heart rate stabilized. She began to thrive.
They call it the Rescuing Hug.
Twins have saved each other’s lives before. You need it to happen again.