Abigail said, “This is precisely why I had no choice but to lock you out. There’s been a divergence and not for the better. I know if you would just take a deep breath and think it through, you’ll agree that your recent actions testify to the truth of that.”
“To the contrary, my recent actions are precisely why it should be me.” Then she turned to Con. “Shall we head inside?”
“I’m good right here,” Con said.
“I thought you wanted answers.”
“All you’ve given me is more questions and a headache, not answers.”
“And they lie within.”
“How about don’t talk like a fortune cookie? You promised me answers—answer this. How can there be another one of me?”
“Is that what she told you?” Abigail said, raising a curious eyebrow. “That’s she’s Constance D’Arcy?”
“She didn’t have to tell me anything. Look at her,” Con said.
“Well, looks aren’t everything,” Abigail said.
“Who the hell is she, then?” Con said, an uneasy prickling on the back of her neck accompanying her question.
“She’s Abigail Stickling,” Abigail said.
Con looked at the other Constance D’Arcy again, her mind spinning wildly like reels in an old slot machine. “Then who are you?”
“We’re both Abigail Stickling.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Con felt sick and as angry as she’d ever been in her life. The kind of violent, instantaneous reaction that high school chemistry teachers showed off the first week of class to wow their students. Only it was happening in her chest, and the longer she stared at the other Constance D’Arcy knowing who was actually inside, the angrier she became. Her vision became pixelated, and she sat down hard in the grass. It was her own family who had done this to her.
Up on the porch, the two Abigails were locked in intense discussion—a pair of witches in the doorway of this gingerbread house deep in the woods.
“I beg you to reconsider,” Abigail was saying. “This next phase is so delicate, and you’ve changed so much.”
The other Constance D’Arcy, who wasn’t Constance D’Arcy at all, answered, “Of course I’ve changed. You don’t know what it was like. To you, he’s just a name. I lived with him. Knowing what was coming. But I got the job done.”
“Him?” Con repeated, her voice a thin, cold razor. There was only one man that could be. She climbed back to her feet. However angry she had been before was nothing compared to now. “It was you living with Levi?”
The women were too engrossed in their argument to hear or acknowledge her question.
“Was it you?” Con screamed, this time getting their attention. The two Abigails stopped and stared at her. Side by side, their mannerisms, even in completely different bodies, were eerily similar.
“See?” Abigail said with clinical detachment. “You’ve upset her.”
“Was what me?” the other Constance D’Arcy asked, although it was messing with Con’s head to think of her that way anymore. Instead, she spontaneously christened her Cabigail. A dreadful hybrid, like those celebrity couples the media would fuse into a single name once they stopped being individuals. That’s how Con saw Cabigail now, as a thief and God only knew what else. Con’s feet were moving now, carrying her up the stairs straight toward Cabigail. Her hands gathered in pressed fists.
“That’s far enough,” Cabigail said, raising her gun.
Con brushed the gun aside like it was nothing and drove Cabigail back against the house. “It was you living with Levi Greer?”
“Get your hands off me,” Cabigail said, although it sounded more like a question than a demand.
“Please stop. Both of you,” Abigail pleaded.
“Was it you?” Con repeated.
“Yes. It was me.”
“For how long? Was it always you?”
“Six months,” Cabigail said. “I took her place six months ago.”
Six months. That was when Stephie said Con had told her she couldn’t come around anymore. Except it had been Cabigail. Con could see it now. All that bullshit about having trouble at home had been a cover story. There was no trouble at home and never had been. Then she’d kept making regular trips to Charlottesville to keep up the suggestion of an affair. That’s why Con hadn’t recognized Dahlia that day on Water Street. Because it hadn’t been Con at all.
“Why?” she asked.