Page 68 of Twice as Twisted

I examine her expression, searching it for any possible data I can collect. She’s different than she was three years ago, and I want to know what brought about those changes as well as what they are. Was she so changed by what we did that it entirely shaped her new life, even when she built it far from us? Has she learned to lie as well as endure physical contact? These are questions that require further study. The prospect is far more enticing than anything Jane can teach me.

After we’ve hashed it out, I leave my experiment and follow Mabel up the few steps to the hallway, then the kitchen, where Duke sits eating a bowl of Trix cereal, a bag of frozen peas clutched to his dick with his free hand. I heard him and Mabel going at it all night after we brought her here, and she didn’t get out of bed yesterday. Duke grumbled about not having someone to do our shopping for us, but he went to the store and came back with several bags of frozen vegetables, which he carried back and forth to his bedroom all day.

I let him have her to himself all night and day because I knew that eventually, it wouldn’t be enough for her. She’d come looking for me. And she did. I could have gone in and fucked her with him, but I’d already had her that night. I know it’s important to let Duke have his own thing sometimes, just like I do. Dad knew that.

“You shouldn’t eat that shit,” I say, going to the sink. “It’s full of dye and chemicals.”

Mom knew that. She never allowed us that shit growing up.

While I roll up my sleeves and wash my hands and forearms, Mabel lingers in the doorway. Finally I turn back and nod toward Duke.

“Mabel has something to say to you.”

“Oh yeah?” Duke asks, stopping with his spoon halfway to his mouth.

Mabel rubs her palms on the hips of her white jeans, a gesture I remember from when she was learning to tolerate touch. “I love you,” she says.

Duke stuffs the heaping spoonful of dyed shapes into his mouth and chews for a minute before answering. “What changed your mind?”

“Baron,” she says simply.

“Ah,” he says, stirring the cereal in his bowl. “Of course.”

She gives me a questioning look.

“Now apologize to him for leaving,” I order.

She takes a breath. “I’m sorry I left y’all.”

It seems she has learned to lie. Maybe she always knew. She was always fascinating, more rational than anyone I’d ever met, smart and logical. But she wasn’t like me. She wasn’t like anyone. I think that’s what caught me, and what’s still holding my interest. No matter how much I learned about her—unearthing every detail of her past, hacking into her medical records, following her family tree back a dozen generations—I could never quite solve the final equation.

Through everything, she kept something for herself, some intangible mystery I could never extract or pin down, no matter how thoroughly we broke her. She kept it, and when she left, she took it with her. I suspect it’s the difference between us. Just as I’m missing something most people have, she has something most people don’t. After all, most people are easy enough to figure out. They’re relatively simple.

Mabel is not simple.

Duke finishes a few bites before he pushes his bowl of milk away and looks up at Mabel. “Are you?” he asks. “Sorry, I mean.”

“It won’t happen again,” she says.

“Really,” he says, sounding unimpressed. “Why’s that?”

“I made a promise.”

“And why would do you that?”

“Because you made a promise to me. You and Baron.”

“I don’t remember doing that.”

“Y’all can’t have anyone else, so you get to have me,” she says. “From now on we’re partners. Three corners of a triangle. All equally necessary to the whole, each adding our own unique contribution to satisfy the needs of the other two.”

Duke nods, absorbing the information. Then he asks, “What did we promise you in return?”

“We’re going to get rid of Jane,” I say.

“That’s all?” he asks. “What are you going to do with her?”

“What do you think?” I ask. Even he knows there’s no chance I can release her. After all the things I’ve done to her, if she went to the police, it would be all over. She’d make it sound like something other than it was, like I did it out of malice or sadism, as if I tortured her for pleasure. And once they found out it was a brilliant, good-looking rich guy, it would be front page news—especially if they could also bust the source of the Alice in Wonderland drug that’s now spread across the US and become a favorite with everyone from the Hollywood elite to Wall Street.

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