I know she will never be able to fully fathom what’s going on unless I explain it to her from the beginning.
Here goes.
“My father got mixed up with some pretty…unsavory people when he was younger, trying to make some extra money to help support his family. They were very poor. But this was all before he met my mother.” I laugh bitterly. “Turns out once you’re connected with people like that, you can never truly escape. I think, on some level, he knew that. But he tried anyway. And when he did, they decided to impress upon him what a bad idea it was to try and leave. These people make their points in truly…unforgettable ways. This time it was to tamper with Dad’s boat.”
Olivia is watching me closely, listening. I have no idea if she believes a word I’m saying, but I’m not stopping now. I’m going to tell her the whole story. Right now. No more secrets.
“We were going on a family vacation. Over Christmas break. Just a short trip, really. My mother and brother had gone down a little early to take some supplies. No one thought they’d be on the boat that soon. There was an explosion. They were both killed. And burned up in the fire. ”
Her face shows no sign of any kind of reaction for at least two full minutes. I don’t say a word as she digests what I’ve told her so far. I can tell the instant it sinks in. Every bit of color drains from her face.
“Was your brother a twin? Was he really named Nash?”
“Yes.”
I hear her exhale. The breath is shaky, as are her hands where she’s picking at her fingernails.
“So there was a Nash, but I’ve never met him,” she states calmly. Maybe a little too calmly.
“Correct.”
“So all this time, you’ve been pretending to be your brother.”
“Correct.”
“Why?”
“The people my father was involved with had set up several things that would cast suspicion on him. They called him with a warning right before they blew up the boat. Told him if he ever tried to rat them out, they’d kill everyone he ever knew or loved. At the time, they didn’t realize Mom and Nash were on the boat.
“We tried to get in touch with my mother, but couldn’t. By the time we got there, the boat was already in pieces all over the bay. Not only did we both have to deal with the murder of Mom and Nash, but we both knew he’d go to prison, at the very least for something like negligent homicide. And it would only add to the sentence if there were two deaths pinned on him. That’s when I decided to be both of us. If Nash had survived, Dad would only be supposedly guilty of one murder. There wasn’t much else I could do, but I thought I could pull that much off. And I did. I guess in a way we were lucky that only a few of my mother’s remains survived the fire.”
“And this was how long ago?”
“Seven years ago. December of my senior year of high school.”
She looks suspicious. Incredulous, too, but mostly suspicious.
“And no one was the wiser? How is that even possible?”
I know my laugh is bitter. She’ll enjoy this part.
“You were right about me. I was always the bad boy, the rebel. I dropped out of high school after my junior year. I wanted to run this club that my father just bought and I knew I didn’t need a diploma for that.”
She raises her eyebrows. “This club?”
I nod.
“Nash was always the clean-cut, jock, honor student type. He was going places and everybody in the family knew it. Hell, everybody that knew him knew it. They would never have suspected for one second that it was me coming to class in his place. Me making the grades. Me picking up his diploma. Me going off to college. No one expected much of anything from me. Well, nothing but a life of quasi-crime, like my father. All I had to do was show up at a party occasionally and show my ass so people wouldn’t forget that I was alive, too, then the focus would go back to Nash. It was easy. People wanted to forget me.”
I can’t keep all the bitterness I’ve buried for so long from leeching out into my voice. It’s almost like I want her to see it, want her to feel it. Like her knowing will somehow make it less painful. I don’t know why that is, what it is about this girl that makes a difference, but instinctively I know it does. She does.
“So all this time, you’ve been leading two separate lives. Lying to everyone in the world. Including the police.”
My stomach feels hollow at her words. “Yes.”
Of all the pain I’ve endured, I think what actually hurts the most is the disgust I see on her face.
“Why? How? How could you do that? To the living, but also to the memory of the dead?”
I feel tired. So tired. Suddenly, the toll of this life and the deception of it feels like a freight train sitting on my chest.
“I lost everything in that explosion. Everyone I ever loved was taken from me. Everything I called ‘home’ was gone in the blink of an eye. I thought the least I could do was bring some kind of honor to their memory.”
“This is how you honor their memory?”
I squeeze the bridge of my nose, wishing I could curtail the increasing throb I feel behind my eyes. “It’s kind of hard to explain. Both my parents wanted nothing more than for Nash and me to make something of ourselves. Anything would’ve been better than to follow in our father’s footsteps. And Nash was brilliant. He had so much ahead of him. So much more than I did. It just didn’t seem right that he would be the one to end up dead. I did the best I could to make my parents proud and to give Nash the name and the reputation that he deserved. That he would’ve had if he were alive.”
Olivia is absolutely silent. That would worry me if not for the look of sympathetic understanding that I can see rising in her eyes, on her expressive face. As tender and good-hearted as she is, maybe she’ll be able to understand my reasoning. I just have to make sure to explain it all to her. In depth.
“On top of that, I knew that if I pursued a law degree, there might be a chance I could do something to help my father.”
She perks up at that. I’m not surprised at all that Olivia is the type to root for the underdog, to feel the need to find justice, that kind of thing. She’s just a good person. Much better than I deserve. Nash would be worthy of her. But not me.
And yet I can’t seem to make myself stay away from her.
“Do you really think you could change things? Make a difference?”
I shrug. “I don’t know, but I’m certainly looking into it. It’s one of the biggest reasons I wanted in with a big, powerful law firm, like your uncle’s.”