“Hey,” Theo said. “That’s not fair.”

“Life isn’t fair,” Lindsey said. “Like, I finally get the courage up to contact my mother and the day before I get to her, she vanishes into thin air.”

“Why did you contact her in the first place?” Theo said. “If you don’t mind my asking.”

Lindsey leaned forward and parted her lips so that Theo could see a tiny chip on her front tooth. “Because I wanted her to love me.”

“I wanted her to love me, too,” Theo said. He tried his coffee again, but now he had a sore, dry spot on his tongue. “She never forgave herself for giving you up. So I can’t understand why… why she wanted to abort our baby. You’d think she’d want to try again, you know? Do things the right way?”

“I have no idea,” Lindsey said. “I never met the woman. Never even seen a picture of her face.”

“I have a picture of her at my house,” Theo said. “A picture of her when she’s twenty-seven years old. You should come see it. You’d see how much she looks like you.”

“I thought you lived on Nantucket,” Lindsey said.

“I do. I did. I’m spending this year with my grandmother. I go to Boston Hill.”

“Boston Hill? You’re still in high school”

“I got held back,” Theo said. “I should be a freshman in college.”

Lindsey looked out the plate glass window at the dark street. Theo tried to predict his grandmother’s reaction if he brought Lindsey home. It was almost five-thirty. She liked him home by six to eat dinner.

“So what do you say? Do you want to come see the picture? Oh, and I have something else you might want.”

“What?”

“Just something. Come with me. It’s not far. Marlborough Street. You can meet my grandmother.”

“I don’t drink so,” Lindsey said. “But thanks, anyway.”

“Please?” Theo said. “Don’t you want to see the picture? I’ll give it to you if you want it. It’s, like, the only picture of Antoinette in existence. Come on.” He took her empty cup and his full coffee cup and threw them both away. “Follow me.”

It was very cold outside. Theo wore a flannel shirt with a fleece vest. He shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans.

“I have to meet someone,” Lindsey said.

“This won’t take long,” Theo said. He unlocked Antoinette’s bike, and even considered telling Lindsey that it was Antoinette’s bike, but he didn’t want her to claim it as her own or anything. “I’ll give you the picture and you can go. I promise.” He walked the bike with confidence, checking twice out of the comer of his eye to make sure she was following him.

“I’m not staying long,” she said.

“It’s okay,” he said. “We eat at six, anyway.”

“And don’t introduce me to your grandmother as Antoinette’s birth daughter or anything. Just tell her I’m a friend from school.”

“You bet.” He slowed down a little so she could walk alongside him. “Was it you who turned my mother in to the police?”

“I didn’t turn her in,” Lindsey said. “I just told them what I knew about you and Antoinette. About Antoinette being pregnant. Those seemed like relevant facts, and your mother certainly wasn’t going to come forth with them. That guy, John? He told most of it, anyway. He had it in for his wife and your mom.”

“My mom didn’t do anything to Antoinette.”

“Prove it.”

“I can’t prove it,” he said. “But they haven’t found a body, have they? I’m telling you, Antoinette is alive somewhere.”

“You can hold on to that fantasy if you want,” she said. “But I’m not going to.”

“My mother didn’t do anything wrong,” Theo said. “If you need someone to blame, blame me.”

“I do blame you,” Lindsey said. “High school. God, I can’t believe it.”

They approached his grandmother’s apartment. He had his own keys now. Lindsey regarded the building. “Nice place,” she said. “I’d hate to imagine the rent.”

“Two thou,” Theo said, though he had no idea if this was true or not. He locked Antoinette’s bike up at the bottom of the stairs. “Where do you live?”

“None of your business,” Lindsey said. He turned to look at her as they climbed the stairs, and she glared at him. “I don’t want you stalking me.”

“You are like your mother,” Theo said. He took a deep breath outside his grandmother’s door; then he unlocked it. “Sabrina?” He smelled roasting chicken, and Sabrina emerged from the kitchen wearing a flowing orange dress and a gold lame head scarf. She shimmered like a flame. Sabrina on fire. Theo watched Lindsey’s eyes widen; she was expecting another kind of grandmother, maybe.

“Well, helllooo,” Sabrina said. “Hello, hello. I’m Sabrina Montero.” She smiled and offered Lindsey her hand.

“Lindsey Allerton.” Lindsey transformed immediately into the kind of woman that one would want to introduce to one’s grandmother. Charm lifted off her like perfume. “It’s lovely to meet you. I’m a friend of Theo’s from school.”

Sabrina blinked. She looked between Lindsey and Theo. “Really?” she said. “How divine. Theo hasn’t brought any of his school friends up to meet me yet. Ashamed of me, probably. Will you stay for dinner? We’re having Cornish game hens-and you won’t believe this, but I put three of those little yummies in the oven. I had a feeling company was coming.”

Lindsey hugged her backpack close to her body. “Thank you for asking, but I’m meeting someone in a short while, so I’ll have to pass. Too bad-it smells delicious.”

“I’m devastated,” Sabrina said. “But another time.”

“Another time,” Lindsey repeated.

Theo cleared his throat. “I have some assignments and stuff to give Lindsey. Okay if we go into my room?”

“Of course,” Sabrina said. She winked at him, and his face grew warm.

Sabrina went back into the kitchen humming, “Try to remember the kind of September…”

So she knew, Theo thought. Knew something was up.

He led Lindsey to his room and shut the door. She sat on his bed, dropped her backpack at her feet. “I love how you ask your grandma if you can bring me in here,” she said. “Like we’re going to make out or something.”

“Shut up,” Theo said.

“Just show me the picture,” Lindsey said. “Because really, I have to get a move on.”

“Okay,” Theo said. He stood at his dresser. He couldn’t believe he was about to share two of his prized possessions with a virtual stranger. His artifacts of Antoinette. But what choice did he have now? He removed the snapshot and the wrinkled cocktail napkin from his underwear drawer. He handed the snapshot to Lindsey. “Here she is.”

Lindsey took the picture. “Turn on a light,” she said.

Theo hit the overhead light. Even through the closed door, he heard his grandmother humming that song. Lindsey stared at the picture. She stared and stared.

“The baby in the picture is me,” Theo said.

Lindsey stared.

“She looks like you, doesn’t she?”

Lindsey didn’t answer. Theo felt awkward standing in the harsh light. He wished Lindsey would finish looking at the picture and leave so that he could have dinner with his grandmother. He was going to tell Sabrina the whole story as soon as Lindsey left.

“Well?” he said impatiently. “What do you drink?”

Lindsey raised her head. She was crying. Or not crying so much as leaking tears. “I can’t believe it,” she said. “We’re twins.”

“Yeah.”

She wiped her face. “Sorry,” she said. “It’s just that my whole life I’ve never had anything biological. You know? My parents are wonderful people, but they’re not related to me. The whole reason I started searching for Antoinette in the first place was that I wanted that void filled. I wanted a biological connection.” She held up the picture. “This woman is related to me.”

“She’s your mother.”

More tears fell as Lindsey studied the picture. Theo hurried to the bathroom and brought back a three-foot strip of toilet paper. Lindsey blotted her eyes.

“So I can keep this?” she asked, waving the picture.

His heart flagged. His only picture of Antoinette. The only picture of Antoinette in existence, that he knew of.

“Sure.”

“Thanks,” she said. “And you said there was something else?”

“Oh.” Theo paused. He removed the napkin from his vest pocket. “Here. This is a note I found on her refrigerator.”

” “L. Cape Air, noon Saturday,’ ” Lindsey read. “L? That’s me.”

“Yeah.”

Lindsey put the picture and the napkin in her backpack. She was taking them. Theo touched the sore spot on his tongue to his teeth.

“You realize,” Lindsey said, “that if she were planning on picking me up at the airport, then she didn’t disappear intentionally. She drowned, Theo.”

Drowned.

He shrugged. “Whatever. I can think otherwise.”

“I guess you can. But why would you torture yourself? You’re so young. You need to accept that Antoinette is dead and move on. Maybe you should see a therapist.”

“Maybe.” His throat clogged with impending tears. She was right: He was young, his life did have possibilities beyond this. He could marry someone else, father other children. Move on. Heal. But Theo’s future would be colored forever by his love for Antoinette. This was what he couldn’t explain to Lindsey, or to Sabrina, or to his parents-the way his love for Antoinette and for his unborn child haunted him. He heard it in the top note of Pachelbel’s Canon, he tasted it in Sabrina’s paella, he saw it in the slender, graceful arms of the ballet dancers at school. His love and his pain would follow him wherever he went next in life. They were all he had left.

Lindsey stood up. “I have to go.”

“Okay,” Theo said. The polite tiring was to walk her out, which he would do, he would hold himself together until Lindsey left, and then he would shout and scream and cry. Sabrina would feed him; she would listen without asking questions.

Before she put her hand on the doorknob, Lindsey leaned over and kissed Theo on the lips. The lightest kiss, like a kiss from a ghost, Theo thought. A kiss from Antoinette.