Page 4 of The Locked Ward

She’s your twin.

The lawyer’s words reverberate in my mind as I ring the doorbell of my old therapist’s office.

After my parents died, I went to see Dr. Lisa Galper to help me cope with my grief.

She encouraged me when I told her I wanted to quit my boring marketing job and take over my parents’ bar, Sweetbay’s.

She’s a good sounding board, and I’ve learned to trust her judgment.

I haven’t been here in more than a year, but Dr. Galper agreed to squeeze me in for an emergency session this morning.

She opens the door, the spring sunlight glinting off the top rim of her silver glasses.

“Mandy, it’s good to see you again. Come on in.”

I bypass the couch and take my usual chair next to the small gas fireplace. She settles in across from me, a fresh yellow notepad on her lap.

I don’t waste time with preliminaries. I blurt out my story, my voice jagged with emotion. When I finish, Dr. Galper is silent for a long moment, her brow wrinkling. I know she’s considering my jumbled narrative, untangling the knots and distilling it down to its emotional core.

“This must feel completely disorienting,” she finally says.

“Yes! It’s so bizarre—how could I have a twin and not know? My parents obviously didn’t know, either. They would’ve told me.”

“Do you want to see this woman who claims to be your sister?” she asks.

“I’m incredibly curious. But it’s a little scary, too. She’s accused of murder. What if we’re not related and she’s a psycho?”

“If she is, why did she pick you?”

Her calm is contagious. My mind becomes more centered as I formulate a plan.

“I could find her date of birth and see if it matches mine—it’s probably public record somewhere,” I say.

“That would be a good start.”

“It’s just…” My voice trails off.

Dr. Galper waits me out, letting me gather the courage to voice what I need to, her eyes steady on mine.

“I want to see her. I think she really is my sister. I can feel it.”

She jots a note on her legal pad, the first she has taken. “It might be better to wait until you have more information. Why the rush?”

“Shouldn’t I at least go and hear what she has to say?”

“Mandy, I would caution you against plunging into a relationship with this woman too quickly.”

I can read between the lines. I know what Dr. Galper is getting at; we’ve discussed this particular element of my life before.

A lot of women I talk to—especially when they’re downing margaritas at my bar—confess their struggles with men. They scrutinize two-word texts, wonder about guys’ ulterior motives, and strategize how to make the men they’re falling for want to be with them, too.

I’m the opposite. Men have always been easy for me; I enjoy their company, and when I feel chemistry, I sometimes act on it. It’s female friendships that confound me. They’re so nuanced and complex; it’s like there’s a rule book I can’t decipher.

Maybe because I grew up without siblings or cousins around, I’ve never fit into a group with its unspoken hierarchies and social codes.

What worked for me was having one best friend, someone I did everything with.

It’s rare for me to find someone I truly click with, but when I do, we can become as close as sisters.

Twice in my life, though—once when I was fourteen and again in college—my best friends were abruptly taken away from me, tearing gaping holes in my life.

The summer before ninth grade, my closest friend Melissa’s family moved to California for her father’s new job, and though we swore we’d write and call every day, we gradually lost touch.

Then, in college, my roommate, Beth, transferred midway through our junior year after she was sexually assaulted by a guy she’d gone to a party with.

Dr. Galper thinks these losses are why I struggle with female friendships, jumping in too quickly when I find someone I click with and scaring some women off.

You’re not the type of person who can have lunch with a friend every few months and catch up , she told me.

You crave something much deeper. But that’s not everyone’s preference.

Now I pull my laptop out of my tote bag. “I was wondering if we could look at pictures of Georgia together.”

“You haven’t already?” she asks.

I shake my head. “I’m nervous. What if we’re identical?”

Something flickers in her eyes, but she nods. “Sure. Let’s take a look.”

The images spring onto my laptop screen. At first, I can barely glimpse them before yanking my eyes away. It’s the visual equivalent of touching a hot stove. Seeing Georgia’s face shocks me to my core.

I know her instantly, even though we’ve never met.

My hair is dark, while Georgia’s is streaked in shades of red and gold.

Her features are more delicate, and she is reportedly five foot seven to my five foot five.

Those aren’t the only differences between us, but the others are more subtle.

In a photo taken at a charity event, she is captured in a dress of sapphire-blue silk, her hair an almost liquid cascade down her back, her wrist as graceful as a swan’s neck as she holds a flute of champagne.

She looks like someone born to money. Even if I put on the same dress and posed the exact same way, I could never look like that.

“What do you see?” Dr. Galper asks.

“We look kind of alike… She feels familiar somehow.”

“You don’t look all that much alike to me,” she says gently. “I have to search to find a resemblance.”

Her hand reaches out, as if to touch mine, but she pulls hers back before making contact. “You’ve had a lot of deep loss in your life. It’s natural to yearn for a secret relative, but there are so many damaged people out there, and I don’t want anyone preying on your vulnerability.”

We talk a little more, but when our forty-five minutes is up and Dr. Galper suggests I schedule another session before agreeing to meet with Georgia, I tell her I’ll get back to her.

I can feel her watching me as I go.

I head to Sweetbay’s, knowing I won’t be disturbed since we don’t open until 4. I sit in the silence of a wooden booth, searching for every scrap of information I can find on Georgia Cartwright.

In pictures, Georgia presents as exactly who she is: a former debutante, a product of the finest girls’ boarding school, a glittering fixture in the moneyed Southern social set.

She exudes charisma; not only does it leap off the pictures, but I see it in the way people in the background are turning their faces to her, like she’s the sun on a chilly day.

We may share DNA, but in many ways, we’re opposites.

I look beyond the photos, absorbing the facts of the case.

The victim’s name was Annabelle Cartwright.

It was her birthday, and a grand party was thrown at the family estate in her honor.

Annabelle was found shortly after midnight on the floor of the dining room, her blood soaking into the heirloom rug.

She’d been smashed in the temple with a heavy sterling-silver paperweight in the shape of the letter A .

It was a birthday gift Georgia had just given her younger sister.

Georgia was discovered looming over her sister’s body, blood on her hands and clothes, her expression vacant.

The first police officer on the scene ordered a seventy-two-hour psychiatric hold for Georgia and summoned an ambulance to take her to the psych ward because she appeared to be in a dissociative state.

Yet the press seems to have already convicted her.

Georgia looked like the girl who had everything, but there was something off about her even as a child , a neighbor confided anonymously to a tabloid.

One of Georgia’s aunts was blunter in an interview with The New York Times : Georgia wanted to be an only child. She was so jealous when her little sister came along. She never got over it.

And the most searing quote of all, from Georgia’s mother: She is no longer my daughter.

I grew up seventy miles away, yet worlds apart from Georgia.

My dad was a bartender and my mom a waitress until they had saved enough money to buy Sweetbay’s.

I inherited their house and bar after they died, him of a heart attack and her of a stroke I’m convinced was caused by a broken heart.

It wrenched me to sell the house with the family room addition my father had built with his own hands and my mother’s garden with her prized espalier—an apple tree she trained to grow so its limbs spread flat against our wooden fence.

I couldn’t bring myself to sell Sweetbay’s, too. I guess when everything shatters, you try to hold on to whatever fragments remain.

Now I look up above the liquor bottles lining the bar shelves, staring at the picture of my parents I keep on the highest shelf.

Next to it is a keepsake they gave me the day I was born: a small bronze St. Michael the Archangel figurine in a leather pouch embossed with the words Protect Me Always .

Customers often come in with stories of things my parents gave them, too—a ride home after too many shots, a shoulder during a divorce, a few bucks to keep the lights on.

Georgia might have grown up with all the advantages, but I suspect I was the lucky daughter.

My mom and dad said they had never met my birth mother, who re quested the adoption records be kept sealed. I was told only that she was very young, refused to name the father, and wanted no future contact.

I do one final search as the skin on the back of my neck prickles.

Georgia and I share the same birthday, December 14. We both turned thirty-two a few months ago.

I close my laptop and tuck it into my shoulder bag, then check traffic. It should take me an hour and a half to get to the psych ward where Georgia is being held.

I call Scott, my bartender, and ask him to open Sweetbay’s, saying I have an appointment and I’ll be in later this evening. Then I phone Georgia’s lawyer and tell him I’ll be there at 2 P.M. I head into the parking lot and unlock my Honda, wondering what I’m about to walk into.

I’m the only person Georgia is willing to see.

Why? And how long has she known about me?

If she’s telling the truth, we shared a womb and a blood supply, pressing up against each other for months.

We were as close as it is possible for two people to be, suspended in our own private world. Then we were split apart.

I turn on the engine and head for the highway, struggling to keep from speeding.

My actions aren’t driven by curiosity or yearning. I need to see Georgia. I’m terrified yet exhilarated, my emotions linked yet contrasting. Just like me and my sister.

Sister. How easily that word flows into my mind, like it has been tucked into a deep cranial fold all along, in a place that predates memory and knowledge, just waiting for the right moment to emerge.