Which Twin?. Elane Osborn
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without even looking at her. When he came to a stop in front of a closed door, Rose demanded, “Have you heard one word I’ve said?”
The man ignored her as he stretched out the arm supporting her legs, grasped the doorknob and twisted it several times. When the door didn’t open, he finally looked at her, his eyes narrowed with undisguised fury.
“All right, Anna. Dig your key out of that dammed suitcase you call a purse.”
Rose shook her head helplessly. This was her fault, she supposed. The first time he’d called her Anna, she should have pointed out his mistake. And she shouldn’t have run, shouldn’t have acted so irrationally.
“Please listen to me,” she said in a low, level tone. “I’ve been trying to explain that you are mistaking me for someone else. I don’t have a key to this room, because I don’t belong here. So just…put me down and allow me to leave.”
“What do you mean, you don’t…” he began.
“Hey, kiddo,” another voice broke in. Rose turned to see the gray-haired man approach, followed by the blond woman. “Give me your purse,” the man went on, “and I’ll fish that key out.”
When he reached toward the bag’s shoulder strap, Rose twisted away. “No!” she yelled. “What’s wrong with you people? Why won’t you listen to me? I’ve been trying to tell you that I don’t know you. I don’t know…”
She paused, frowning as she realized that both these people’s faces were vaguely familiar. She gave her head an impatient shake and finished, “I don’t know any of you.”
The gray-haired man frowned, the woman gasped, and the stranger named Logan sighed. “Anna, give your father that damned key.”
Before Rose could tell him she didn’t have a father, the woman stepped forward and snapped open her ivory purse. “When Anna insisted on getting a key made for her room, I suspected she’d eventually lose it, so I had the locksmith make one up for my key ring. Here, I’ll get us in.”
As Logan backed off to allow access to the lock, Rose once more demanded to be put down and began kicking for emphasis. Aware that her actions had broken his grip, Rose tried to twist out of his arms, but as the door clicked open those arms tightened again and he carried her into the room. She opened her mouth once again to attempt to make these people, especially the one holding her so firmly, understand that some mistake was being made. But once she caught sight of her new surroundings, all she could do was stare.
The carpet was the color of amethyst, the walls a pale shade of lilac. The bed she found herself being carried toward was covered in pale aqua—the exact color scheme of her room back in Seattle. Well, perhaps not exact. The tones she’d used were several shades darker, but, still, Rose found the similarity startlingly uncanny.
Even more uncanny was the neatly folded quilt at the foot of the bed, composed of yellow and pink flowers appliquéd onto alternating squares of turquoise and purple. It matched perfectly the one lying across the foot of her own bed—the exact same colors, faded slightly from repeated washings.
She knew her quilt was one of a kind, made by her mother the year she was born. Yet this one was…
“Just like mine,” she whispered.
“It is your room, Anna,” Rose heard Logan say, as he placed her on the bed.
Rose looked up. The man remained bent over her, frowning deeply, but the concern in his hazel eyes lent a certain softness to his scowl.
“I’m going to get Dr. Alcott,” the blond woman said abruptly. She glanced at Logan. “Aunt Grace somehow learned that Anna was missing and became so upset that we had to call the doctor in.”
She dropped a disapproving frown on Rose, then turned to leave the room. A second later the woman’s voice echoed from the hall.
“Robert, Martina says that Chas is on the telephone. He needs to speak to you about tonight’s speech.”
The man glanced at the door, down at Rose and finally to Logan. “I should only be gone a moment. Keep an eye on your sister, won’t you?”
Rose saw one corner of Logan’s mouth lift in a ghost of a smile as he watched the older man leave. Taking advantage of her captor’s momentary distraction, she rolled off the opposite side of the bed and onto her feet, then made a mad dash for the still-open door. But before she even made it around the edge of the bed, Logan was blocking her escape with his body. When she raised her hands to push him out of the way, he grabbed her wrists and demanded, “Blast it, Anna, what the hell is wrong with you?”
Rose looked up as she tried to pull her wrists free. She winced as the large hands tightened around them, then shook her head.
“Haven’t you been listening to me at all?” she asked. “I do…not…know…you. I’m not someone named Anna. My name is Rose. I know I shouldn’t have come onto your grounds. I certainly shouldn’t have been up on your balcony, but—”
Rose stopped speaking. She had to. The man in front of her had begun to laugh.
Chapter 2
The laughter had started as a soft chuckle, but it quickly built in strength and volume until it was nearly deafening. As he continued to chortle, his grip on Rose’s wrists relaxed slightly, though not enough for her to break free.
Rose knew this because she jerked her hands down, hard, in an attempt to escape. At this point he stopped laughing, and although he tightened his grip, a slight smile tilted one corner of his mouth as his eyes once more locked on to hers.
“Good grief,” he said with a shake of his head. “Not that again.”
Rose stared at the crooked smile she’d seen so often in her dreams, then looked up to the amused eyes. Behind the gently teasing glint she saw a mix of anger and concern. Her response was a mutinous frown. Who was this man to stand there laughing at her, judging her? For that matter, who were any of these people? What was this place? Just what sort of nightmare had she stumbled into?
She gave an uneasy glance to the room. It was nearly three times larger than the one she occupied in Seattle. The bed was a queen, where hers was only a twin. These walls were nearly blank, while hers were filled with pictures and memorabilia. But the color scheme and placement of the furniture was eerily similar, even without the inexplicable presence of the turquoise-and-purple quilt that matched hers so precisely.
Then there was the matter of the blond woman and gray-haired man. They’d looked familiar, also, in a misty, half-remembered way. Was it possible that they had appeared in her dreams, as well?
A shiver raised gooseflesh on Rose’s arms. It was as if she’d fallen through Alice’s rabbit hole into a world filled with oddly familiar sights, like this room and the view of the bridge outside. And the man holding her wrists.
Rose looked at him and found that the remains of his smile had been replaced by another frown. “What do you mean by ‘not that again’?” she asked.
His green-brown eyes seemed to assess her before they narrowed. “Come on, Anna,” he replied. “You know. Rose— the imaginary friend you made up when you were little? And that business about missing a part of yourself.”
The floor beneath her feet began to roll from side to side like the bridge of a ship in a wind-tossed sea. All her life Rose had felt an odd sense of loneliness, as if she were somehow incomplete. Somewhere around the age of six, when she’d asked her mother about this, the woman had reminded Rose that she’d been born prematurely. Perhaps, her mother suggested, in Rose’s hurry to arrive on earth she had somehow inadvertently left some part of herself back in heaven.
At the time, Rose had accepted this explanation. After all, she’d rarely been alone. Early on she and her mother had lived in an artist commune in Oregon, where she’d been surrounded by other caring adults and their children. After she and her mother moved to Seattle, there had been classrooms full