Della

“Come on! That’s insane!” Evie jumped off the bed and began to pace distractedly in the four-foot area in the small room.

“It’s not really that bad of an idea,” Della protested. Her stomach cramped hard. This was the worst possible time, the worst possible way, but it was a way and she had to take it if she could. “It would just be for a couple of months.” She edged off the bed, stalked to her sister and gripped her hand firmly, stopping the pacing. “A couple of months to try and help Thomas. To see him through the worst of this period. Until, well, until he can be trusted to be on his own.”

“I didn’t mean that he can’t be trusted,” Evie sighed. “It’s hard to explain.” Tears filled her eyes again, but she blinked rapidly to keep them at bay. “I just mean, he’s trying to kill himself. He doesn’t want to live. He drinks himself into a stupor. He just sits and stares out the window for hours at a time and I know he’s somewhere else. He… I don’t think he’d do anything to actually harm himself, but I mean, isn’t not wanting to live the same thing as wanting to die?”

Della didn’t know. Her heart ached. Ached for her sister and for the man she’d loved, secretly, for over five years. She’d been the first one to see him. To laugh and smile and talk with him at that party. They’d been friends for months before Thomas met her sister. That was it. The minute he saw Evie, Della’s heart was shattered. She’d been a good sister. Thomas had just been a friend. If he wanted to see Evie, it was fair game. She’d been the supportive, happy sister the entire time she watched Evie and Thomas fall in love. All the while she’d been left to wonder what it was that she didn’t have that Evie did. There had to be something because they were identical. What was so wrong with her personality that Thomas couldn’t love her?

“I don’t know,” Della finally whispered. She shook her head, aware that Evie was staring at her strangely. She forced that same blank mask she’d carefully put on for years back over her face. “It could work. I could pretend to be you. Go home. Make sure Thomas is fine and then when he can actually be rational and listen, explain why we can’t be together. Unless… unless you can last a couple more months?”

“I can’t.” Evie hung her head. “I just… can’t.”

Della didn’t get it. She would have done anything, anything, to be the one who lived with Thomas Porter. To be the one who wore his ring and resided in his heart. He’d lived through hell and clearly, he still was. She wouldn’t just walk out on him. She would stand with him, beside him, the same way she’d often sat in for her sister at the hospital.

“So, let me do it. He wouldn’t ever find out. We look exactly the same. Sound the same. I know everything about you and you know everything about me. You aren’t working so we wouldn’t have to worry about me flubbing up your job and being discovered that way. And we both worked at the lighting store before you decided to jump ship and leave me.”

“I didn’t leave you. I just saw an opportunity and took it.”

“Yes. I know. I know you always hated selling lamps and ceiling fans, but you know it! That’s the whole point. We could really do this!”

Evie’s blue eyes locked on Della’s face. They were filled with disbelief, but there was also a small flicker of hope. Hope that she could find a way out, out of the nightmare that was everything Della had ever wanted.

“You would really do that? You really think it could work?”

“I know it’s not a good plan. I know all of the hundred reasons why we shouldn’t do it, but if it means making sure Thomas is going to be okay rather than just walking out on him and having all these fears and regrets, then isn’t it worth it?”

“The problem is, I don’t think it’s just going to take a couple months. I can’t get through to him. I just kept hoping things would be different when he left the hospital. That he’d want to get back to living instead of just lying in a bed all day, but it’s like he lost his spirit in that accident. Like the fire just burned up his heart and everything we might have had. He’s not the same. He’s never going to be the same.”

“I’ll get through to him.” Della squeezed her sister’s hand, a little too hard. Evie gasped.

“How? How could you get through to him when I’ve done everything I possibly can?”

“I don’t know.”

Evie rolled her eyes. “That’s the problem. I don’t know either. This is bad. It could end badly if someone finds out what we’ve done. If Thomas finds out.”

“He won’t. I promise. We’ve had so much practice with this over the years. We’ve done this a thousand times. We fooled our own parents for over two weeks.”

“That was years ago. We were just kids.”

“We were fourteen. It’s not so different now.”

“No. Now it’s just fifteen years later and I’m engaged to the guy and we’ve just lost a year of our lives living through the worst hell anyone possibly could. This isn’t a joke, Della. This is someone’s life.”

“I know,” Della whispered hoarsely. “Believe me, I know. Thomas is my friend. He’s been my friend for years. I was the one who sat beside his hospital bed when you couldn’t be there. I would never want to hurt him. That’s exactly why I suggested this. To make sure he doesn’t get hurt.”

“I… I don’t know what to do.” Evie turned towards Della and wrapped her arms around her. She rested her head on Della’s shoulder. “You have no idea what this year was really like for me. How I wanted to leave before the accident. How I kept hoping that something will change, inside me, or with Thomas, but nothing does.” She laughed bitterly, a laugh that wasn’t a laugh at all. “No, that’s not true. Everything changed. Everything just kept getting worse. Sometimes I can barely stand to be there at all. The times I said I couldn’t make it to the hospital- it was because I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to hear his screams of pain anymore or sit there and hold his hand and tell him everything was going to be alright when I felt so dead inside.”

Della shivered. She’d never heard her sister talk like that before. Not once, in the entire year Thomas had been in that hospital, had Evie ever said anything like that.

“Stay here then,” Della whispered into her sister’s hair. Her arms tightened around Evie’s shoulders and for the first time, she realized how frail her sister felt. “Don’t go back home. Do my makeup and give me your clothes and I’ll go. I’ll go and I’ll stay and I’ll keep staying until we can just go back to being us again. You’ll see. One day, when all this is behind us, we’ll look back and be glad we did this. I’ll get through to Thomas. I’ll make sure he’s okay. We’ll all be okay. I promise.”

“And what happens if we’re not?” Evie whispered into Della’s shoulder. “What happens if this all goes to hell?”

From the sounds of it, we’re already there, every single one of us. “It won’t. I promise, it won’t.”

Evie shuddered violently. She began to tremble and there was no stopping it. Della knew she had won.

The morning had started off so normal, so sweet and filled with promise and innocence and then her sister had walked in and suddenly, everything Della had ever wanted was on offer. The man she loved could be hers, if only for a short time. She would be the one to help him heal, to walk through the worst of it beside him. It was all she had ever dreamed of.

Except it wasn’t a dream any longer. It was real and she’d made a promise. A promise she wasn’t sure if she could keep. There wasn’t any alternative. She couldn’t fail. She wouldn’t fail. Not if it meant hurting Thomas. That, she could never, ever do.