11
401words
I was peeking into the empty pill bottle when they returned.
The subordinate helped Jason onto the couch and politely said goodbye to me.
Jason was drunk, his face flushed, eyes glazed.
When everyone left it was just the two of us in the bright living room.
He struggled up and looked at me, eyes slightly squinted, a distracted smile, half a tear.
He called me "Luna." "I haven't thought of you in so long," he said.
"I met someone who looks a bit like you. I'm going to marry her. But her mom said she's the one who killed you."
I sat numb as if in an ice cellar.
He kept talking but I heard nothing.
When he said that name — Luna's name — the nickname he had used for my dead sister, the old recognition hit me.
Two years ago a woman had leapt from a high building. That woman had been my sister — Evelyn.
It made a twisted kind of sense.
No wonder Jason had behaved like a savior when we first met; no wonder he'd been so sweet to me.
"If not for this face…" he'd said. He wasn't talking to me; he'd been thinking of Evelyn.
My supposed salvation had simply been another abyss.
I stumbled into the study and rifled through the piled books until I found what I wanted: a high-school graduation photo.
Young Jason, then a girl in a uniform — eighteen and radiant — my sister Evelyn.
A sliver of clarity split through the fog. He lurched after me, stumbling to snatch the photo away.
He was still drunk but suddenly more alert.
"Why—" he cried. "Why wasn't it you?" The walls of protection I'd built collapsed. Some mental bomb went off and I lost what was left of my reason.
I shoved him with everything I had.
"Then I'll return her life," I screamed. "I'll trade mine for hers. One life for one life. Is that enough?" Jason hit the wall and gave something like a laugh.
I tore into the kitchen for a fruit knife. He tried to grab at me, clumsy and slow from the drink.
He couldn't keep up. I ran out the door.
He shouted my old nickname after me, "Luna! Luna!" but I didn't look back.
