"Think Twice" - читать интересную книгу автора (Scottoline Lisa)

Chapter Five

Bennie stopped pounding on the lid, her chest heaving. Her cheeks burned, blood rich. Her heart hammered. Heat thickened the air. Her fists stung, her arms ached. Sweat drenched her, gluing her shirt to her body. Panic lurked beneath the surface of her consciousness, like an undertow. Why would Alice do this to her?

Bennie wracked her brain, thinking back. She’d believed she was an only child until Alice had called from prison a few years ago, saying she was charged with murder and needed a lawyer. Bennie would never forget seeing her for the first time, over a filthy counter in a no-contact interview room. Alice had on an orange jumpsuit, and her hair was short then, scissored into crude layers and dyed a brassy red. Still, Bennie had taken one look at her and had seen a mirror image. She’d been struck dumb, but Alice had spoken with confidence, words that marked a turning point in Bennie’s life.

Pleased to meet you. I’m your twin.

Bennie had proved that Alice wasn’t guilty in court, but it had been harder to prove that Alice was really her twin. Her mother, Carmela Rosato, was the only parent Bennie had ever known, but by the time Alice surfaced, her mother’s depression had worsened to the point that she’d been hospitalized, comatose and unable to speak. Bennie never met her father, one William Winslow, who hadn’t stayed around long enough to marry her mother, and she’d had to track him down to verify Alice’s story. It had turned out to be true. Their mother had given birth to two babies but kept only one, because she was broke and battling depression, so she’d kept Bennie and put Alice up for adoption. So to Bennie, Alice was a complete and total stranger, who just happened to be family.

Bennie had felt so strange when she learned she had a twin; like being found when she didn’t know she was lost. She didn’t remember even meeting her father, and her whole life, it had been just her and her mother, alone against the world. In the beginning, her mother worked as a secretary, but in time, her mental illness overcame her, inching over her like a shadow growing longer toward day’s end. She’d gotten professional help while she was still well enough to ask for it, and Bennie remembered going with her, and eventually taking her, to a series of doctors and hospitals who experimented with drugs, dosages, and finally, electroshock.

All the time her mother had grown less and less capable, and Bennie had taken care of her, instead of the other way around, even from middle school. The news that there had been two children, twins, helped Bennie understand her mother’s downward slide, because such a devoted mother would be wracked with guilt over giving up her own child. Bennie had plenty of guilt herself, when the fact of Alice came to light. She’d tried to compensate for being the one chosen, but Alice had come in and out of her life only to make trouble. Their relationship was tumultuous, but after one big blow-up, Alice finally had redeemed herself. They’d made peace, and Bennie had gotten her sister the job at PLG.

As for your life, it’s over.

Bennie still couldn’t understand why this was happening, now. She’d had no warning, could fathom no reasons except ancient jealousy. Payback. Resentment. Her thoughts wandered, and she couldn’t understand how in God’s name she’d let this happen. She should’ve been on her guard. She should’ve known better. There was a time, early on in their relationship, when she hadn’t trusted Alice at all, even before she’d glimpsed how dark her soul could be. Like a test in school, it turned out that the first answer was the correct one.

In those early days, Bennie had viewed Alice as the typical prisoner who would say or do anything to get a lawyer, and her story about who had really committed the murder was almost a stereotype. The murder victim was a cop who was also her live-in boyfriend, and Alice claimed she was framed for the murder by a conspiracy of corrupt cops. Bennie thought back to how Alice had sucked her into the representation.

At their first meeting, Alice had given her a photo that she said was their father, William Winslow, holding the two of them as babies. She claimed he’d given her the picture during one of his visits to the prison. Bennie had never seen a picture of her father, much less talked with him in the flesh, and even though the man in the photo had light hair and blue eyes, she immediately suspected that Alice was trying to reel her in using the photo, like bait wriggling on a barbed hook.

Alice had followed it up with a second photo, one of her mother. The photo was also allegedly from her father, and on the back it read To Bill, in her mother’s handwriting. It showed her mother sitting with girlfriends on stools at a luncheonette, at about age sixteen or seventeen years old. Her pretty face was half-turned to the camera, which caught her lively expression, vivid with the mischief of youth.

The picture came as a revelation because Bennie had seen her mother only in heartbreaking decline, but even so, she’d wondered if the photo was a fake and the handwriting on its back a forgery. She hadn’t credited Alice’s version of its origin, guessing that it had come from one of the other girls on the stools.

She tried to remember at which point she’d lost her objectivity about Alice. Even though Alice’s story about the cop’s death turned out to be true, and she hadn’t killed him, it didn’t mean that she wasn’t a con artist. And later, something happened that made Bennie wonder if Alice really had murdered someone, at least once in her life. Before now.

Oh my God. I can’t breathe.

Bennie inhaled once, then again. Her lungs didn’t fill. She opened her mouth but still couldn’t get a good breath. Her heart fluttered, arrhythmic and panicky. Reality came back into terrifying focus. How long until she ran out of oxygen? How long could she live without food? How long without water? She had no sense of time. Her watch was gone.

Panic washed over her, drowning any power of reason. She started panting. She couldn’t get her breath and she couldn’t control herself anymore. She couldn’t think of anything but being sealed in a box until she suffocated. Tears of fright sprang to her eyes, and she began pounding on the lid again, then kicking up with her feet and knees. She screamed and hollered and prayed that somebody would hear her or Alice would come back.

She pounded on and on, fighting for her life against the darkness, unyielding.