We Are Nowhere and It's Now

Tobias and Isabelle had unintentionally killed their mother.

Twins were difficult to deliver in the first place, but being connected at the hip didn't help. And not knowing beforehand that they were connected; that made matters much worse.

Deidre had loved them before they were even fully developed in her womb. She'd named them as soon as she was told she'd be having a boy and a girl. Tobias after her father and Isabelle after her mother. If her children could never meet their grandparents—who were long dead—then they could at least have their names. Her last memory on earth, the last thing she saw before closing her eyes for good, was her twins, pink and screaming and healthy, connected at the hip by no more than an inch or so of superficial tissue.

That was easy to fix. Replacing all that blood could not be done in time.

So while the babies underwent a quick surgery to separate one from the other, their mother was pronounced dead and wheeled to the morgue.

Paul raised his twins by himself, never once resenting them for the loss of his wife. Even when he looked at Isabelle, the spitting image of her mother with chocolate curls sprouting from her head and eyes the color of a freshly cleaned swimming pool; or Tobias with Deidre's long, lanky frame and full lips, always pursed in concentration.

As babies and toddlers, they spoke their own language. Paul would watch them sit in the middle of the playroom, babbling back and forth in some secret conversation. And they always seemed to be taking care of each other. If Tobias bumped his head, Isabelle was there to sooth his cries and whenever she seemed to be wandering toward the outskirts of their blanket, he cut her off at the past and urged her back toward certain safety.

Just as any parent would, Paul wanted his children to be safe, especially as they got older.

Perhaps he sheltered them too much, making sure they came straight home from school, forbidding them to stay over at the houses of their classmates, and keeping them home on weekends. He may have gone overboard, but he did it out of love. In his mind, he had failed as a husband. Twins ran in his family and because of that, he was at fault. He had failed to keep his wife alive, so he'd been determined to make sure his kids were as safe as possible. Paul had planned their lives so carefully, but he never planned for what so much sheltering would do to his children.

They lived mostly within the confines of their large Victorian house near the town square of Westerly, Rhode Island—a small town bordered by Connecticut and the ocean. Tobias and Isabelle spent many of their days in the attic, lying on stacks of pillows and watching people walk back and forth on the sidewalks below. They watched women buy bread and meats from the deli, or men pick up their suits from the dry cleaners', but their favorite thing to watch was kids their age. Some they recognized from school. They walked happily, free to go wherever they pleased, to the arcade or the movie theater, sometimes they'd pop in and out of shops and come out with brightly colored bags.

As they got older, Isabelle and Tobias' bodies began to change. They started to fill out a bit. He developed lean muscles. He wasn't a beanpole anymore. His head didn't seem so big compared to the rest of his body. Isabelle's chest practically grew overnight. She woke up one Sunday morning and her breasts hurt so badly that she was terrified something was wrong. Her hips filled out and her bottom got bigger. She was certain she was dying.

Tobias assured her that it was natural. He'd read about it in one of his science books: the effects of puberty on the female body. He was always interested in science, especially human anatomy. As kids, he and Isabelle would often compare parts, all the while making sure that the scar on his left and her right hip were still there. The human body fascinated him, but his sister's body came to be a constant distraction.

The boys at school noticed the change in Isabelle right away. Their looks lingered for a bit longer until suddenly, everyone was staring. The boys in their junior high began asking her to go to movies or to the arcade with them, but she was always forced to decline because her father would never allow it.

There was that, along with the fact that Tobias felt left out. He didn't say much, but on the inside, he was overcome with jealousy. It confused him. He wasn't sure why he was so upset. Isabelle was beautiful. Kids their age were starting to think about romance. They went on dates, they kissed, some had gone even further. There was no reason he and Isabelle couldn't do the same.

But no one was asking him on dates. No one stared at him across the hall. Even his biology lab partner, Rebecca, didn't pay attention to him anymore. He thought that she had maybe once had a crush on him, but his refusal to talk about anything other than their work must have turned her off. All he had was Isabelle, and Isabelle was all he needed.

He watched her constantly—how she smiled to herself when she ate something sweet, how she stood on the tips of her toes to see in the bathroom mirror as she brushed her teeth, how she bounced when she walked. He even stared at her at school. They walked each other to class. He carried her books. He waited for her at the back door and they sat together on the bus.

People began to talk. They wondered how close Tobias and Isabelle were when they were behind the closed doors of their house. Sure, they looked alike, but they didn't seem like twins. Kids saw them sitting closely together at the lunch table, not talking to anyone else. They saw Tobias glaring at boys when they got too close to his sister. They saw them hold hands and lean on one another.

No, they didn't seem like twins. They seemed like two people in love.

It only got worse as they went through high school. People went from wondering to themselves to talking about them behind their backs. Then, finally, around sophomore year, people began to come right out and ask them about it.

“Have you seen him naked?”

“Did you like it?”

“Do you bathe with her?”

“Have you kissed?”

“Do you share a bedroom?”

“What do you do when you're all alone in that big, old house?”

It was a well known fact that the big, Victorian house at the end of Main Street belonged to Paul DeChamps. They knew that his grandfather had owned the city's textile factory, which was long since closed. Everyone in town had heard stories about their wealth and how eccentric Paul was. They knew about his wife's tragic death. They knew about the twins coming out connected at the hip. They knew that Paul kept his twins as close as possible. People said that if he could home school them, he would.

They seemed to know everything about Tobias and Isabelle.

People passed notes about what they thought went on behind closed doors. They stared. They mocked. The torture seemed neverending.

Isabelle managed to cram so many classes into her schedule that she graduated a semester early and stayed at home with her father while Tobias finished school. She wanted him to spend his last months as a high school student free of ridicule. But her absence only seemed to make it worse.

“Where's your girlfriend?”

“What, did you get her pregnant?”

One day, Tobias came home so upset that the only thing that would calm him was to lie on the attic floor with his head in Isabelle's lap. She stroked his hair soothingly and whispered reassurances to him. It was then that she realized why people ridiculed them so much. Everyone could clearly see it. She wondered why it had taken her so long to see it, too.

Tobias was in love with her.

Maybe not in a romantic way, but he loved her so much that he couldn't leave her alone. When she wasn't by his side, he was miserable. Going to school every day without her was a torture far worse than the kids at school could provide. He even claimed that when he was away from her for too long, his hip began to burn in the exact spot of his surgical scar. Isabelle didn't share the same affliction, but she lied and said she did to make him feel better.

Sitting in the floor that evening, she decided that the best thing for both of them was to move as far away from her family as possible. She'd end up moving across the country from the sleepy little Rhode Island town she'd grown up in, and going to college in sunny, Southern California to study English literature. Tobias, miserable and distraught with grief, threw himself into working toward a medical doctorate at an ivy league school. She'd always loved to read and he had always loved the human body.

In twelve years, Isabelle had finished school and was well on her way to becoming a New York Times best selling author. Most of her novels were a reflection of her teenage years, with plenty of embellishments. A few literary reviews had called her the next V.C. Andrews, a world famous young adult novelist who wrote long, drawn out family sagas filled with mystery and romance. Tobias graduated from medical school, went through his internship, and was finishing up his residency at Mercy Hospital in Philadelphia. Both born introverts, they led quiet lives, totally apart from one another.

In over a decade, they'd only seen each other once, at a Christmas dinner a couple of years after they'd both gone off to college. It had been painful and awkward and each of them excused themselves as early as possible. Now, they were both attending their father's funeral.

Paul had spent the last few years of his life suffering quietly with liver cancer. It ran in his family. His heredity had killed his wife and now it had killed him. Shortly before he died, Paul had written letters to both of his children—Isabelle, in San Diego and Tobias in Pennsylvania—to express his final wishes. All of his money, their childhood home, any and all stocks and bonds in his name, belonged to them. All he asked was that they make sure he was cremated and that his ashes were taken to Isle au Haut, off the coast of Maine, where he'd scattered Deidre's ashes over thirty years ago.

In the funeral hall of their hometown in southern Rhode Island, the tension was so thick you could cut it white a knife. There weren't many attendees. The guestbook was virtually empty. Tobias and Isabelle had no other family. But a handful of curious townsfolk showed up, if only to gawk at the eccentric man's grieving twins. Even though Isabelle and Tobias didn't look at each other, even though they sat on opposite ends of the front row of chairs, people still whispered about them.

“I wonder if either of them ever got married.”

“How long do you think it's been since they've seen each other?”

“I heard she had to leave secretly so he wouldn't find out.”

“I thought he'd killed himself when she left.”

“They haven't aged a bit.”

After the ceremony, Isabelle stayed behind to collect her father's ashes. She had parked at the house and made the mistake of walking to the funeral home. The same November air that had been pleasant that afternoon had turned frigid and she'd only worn a thin black cardigan over her simple, black sheath dress. Carrying the nondescript black box that contained all that was left of her father, she shivered her way up the block and around the corner. It was dark outside the house, but she saw an unfamiliar silver Mercedes SUV that blocked her small, red rental car in the driveway.

Isabelle walked through the front door, somehow surprised to find that her key from high school still worked. There was a dim light coming from the back of the house and she followed it dumbly, not even realizing that she was walking toward the old playroom until she'd gotten there.

The old Tiffany lamp was on in the corner and Tobias was standing in front of the wall of windows, looking over the backyard and out at the water in the not-so-far off distance. He'd shed his black jacket and was standing in his slacks and pale blue button down shirt, his tie—black and white diagonal stripes—was loosened around his neck and he held a plain, white mug in his right hand.

She didn't need to say anything for him to know she was there. He could always feel when she was nearby. He'd felt her absence for twelve years—the aching in his hip never really went away, but he guessed he'd gotten used to it. He felt it as soon as he crossed the border into town, having driven from Philadelphia. She was already home. He could see a little red car in the driveway. It didn't seem anything like her old taste, but he knew it was hers because he could feel her inside.

“I put water on for tea.” he said without turning around.

Isabelle had absolutely no idea what to say. She was overcome with a sudden and overwhelming need to be near him, but instead of embracing him, she stepped forward and placed their father's ashes on the table to his left. Then she walked into the kitchen for a cup of tea.

He'd lain everything out just the way he knew she liked it. A memory invaded her head; when they were younger, she would make them tea when it was cold or if Tobias was sick. Although, come to think of it, if one of them fell ill, the other almost immediately followed. She always put the teapot on the tray with a bowl of brown sugar sticks and a pot of cream. Darjeeling was always her favorite and now she noticed the purple Twinings tin that Tobias had left out on the counter. Isabelle couldn't help but smile.

She fixed herself a cup, took a long sip to warm her bones, and then found herself meandering up the stairs. Her bedroom was exactly how she remembered it: pink walls, pink bedding, pink rugs over the hardwood floor, and a door that led into the bathroom she and Tobias had shared. Before she knew it, she was walking through the bathroom and into her brother's old room. Where her bedroom was pink, his was blue. She never asked their father about it, but she guessed the rooms had been painted when their mother was pregnant. Nothing in that house ever changed. Not even the décor.

The first thing Isabelle wanted to do was get out of her uncomfortable clothes and put on warm, soft pajamas. But she wanted to do that at home. Actually, she thought, if she were at home in her cozy, clean, uncluttered bungalo, she wouldn't need warm pajamas. She could sleep in just a t shirt. Or naked, if it was warm enough. But she couldn't do that in her father's house, especially with Tobias sleeping in the next room. She clacked back down the stairs, taking her tea with her to leave in the foyer, and then headed back out to her rental car to retrieve her suitcase. As soon as she opened the trunk, her bag lifted without having touched it and she screamed, whipping around to see Tobias holding her luggage.

“You scared the hell out of me!” Isabelle gasped, clutching her chest for dear life.

He looked down at her for a moment before swallowing hard. “You didn't feel me nearby?”

“What?” She bit out. “No.”

Tobias' face had been calm, serene even. He looked totally at peace. Then suddenly, he looked overwhelmed with sorrow.

“Okay.” he whispered, nodding his head in understanding. “Sorry.”

Isabelle followed him back inside and up the stairs, watching him drop her suitcase onto her bed.

Simultaneously, he looked exactly the same and completely different. His hair was the same dark, chocolate brown as her own and it still curled slightly at the ends; but it was disheveled and wild, like he'd just rolled out of bed. His eyes were the same dark brown as their father's, but now they were plagued with dark circles and they seemed be sunken deeper into his head, as thought years of sadness had literally pushed against his body. He used to stand straight and tall, constantly chastising her about the importance of good posture; now he was just slightly stooped, like there was tremendous weight on his shoulders.

Isabelle knew it was all her fault. She had to extend some kind of olive branch, but she didn't know how. How could he have changed so much, apparently for the worse, while her life had only gotten better? Sunny California had seemed to agree with her right away. She never tanned—her pale skin just didn't seem to soak up the rays—but she blossomed like a flower. She made friends. Nobody made fun of her. She was just Isabelle DeChamps, a girl from New England. The people she met were curious about what cold winters were like or how she dealt with all that rain, but no one really knew her history, so no one judged her or made assumptions. She went on dates with boys—finally losing her virginity her sophomore year of college to a guy named Kevin who'd had a crush on her since freshman year—and she went to parties with girlfriends. Her eyes were bright and clear, her head held high.

How was it that he'd been so miserable without her and she'd thrived in his absence?

Tobias had been known at Yale for his stellar grades and his laser like focus. He was a teacher's pet and his classmates resented him for it. Because he was so handsome with his dark hair and eyes, his tall, lean frame, and his full, soft lips; girls followed him around like puppies. After ignoring any and all female attention for his first year of college, he finally broke down and started dating. Nothing serious, ever. A blonde on Tuesday, a brunette on Thursday, and a redhead on Saturday. He didn't have the energy or the desire for commitment. Besides, no matter how many girls he had to warm his bed, it never filled the hole in his heart that his sister had put there when she left.

“Do you want to go together?” Isabelle finally spoke. “To Maine, I mean. He wanted us to go together.”

Tobias stood perfectly still. She wished he would turn around and look at her. She wished he would say something other than basic conversational words. She wished he didn't feel like a stranger to her.

“Yeah.” he finally said, rubbing the knucks of his left hand into the palm of his right, like he was gearing up to pitch a baseball. “He did.”

“Tomorrow morning then?” she asked.

“Yeah.” he repeated.

He didn't say anything else, and he never looked at her. He just walked through the bathroom and into his bedroom. After a few minutes, Isabelle heard the water in the sink running followed by the sound of Tobias brushing his teeth. She considered joining him, like old times, but instead she decided to wait. When she finally crawled under the blankets on her bed, she realized how much she'd missed it and she fell asleep almost immediately.



Tobias woke to the sun streaming brightly through the wide, wooden slats of the window blinds. For a moment, he was disoriented and not totally sure where he was. The bedroom of his condo was stark white, and when he looked around at all the blue, he realized he was back in his father's house. All of the emotions from the previous day came back to him at once and he had to sit straight up, gasping for air. The sound of a running hair dryer snapped him out of it.

He waited until he sure that Isabelle had left the bathroom before brushing his teeth and taking a quick shower. He dried his hair quickly with a towel, put on pair of dark jeans and a black button down. He'd make a cup of coffee to go, grab his stuff, and they'd be on their way.

Isabelle was in the kitchen, standing in front of the coffee maker, willing it to brew faster. She'd chosen a pair of light blue skinny jeans, a pair of black ankle boots, and a soft, pink sweater. She'd forgotten how much she enjoyed bundling up for cold weather. She'd only ever had to wear a jacket once in San Diego, when the temperature dropped to a record low of forty-six degrees. When she checked the weather app on her phone, it told her that the high would be twenty. She was glad she'd packed a coat.

After filling two travel mugs with coffee and cleaning all of the dishes they'd used, the twins headed out, locking the door behind them.

For almost five hours, after two standstill traffic jams, the ride was completely silent. Finally, somewhere in Middle-of-Nowhere, New Hampshire; Isabelle couldn't take it anymore.

“Will you please say something?” she whispered, letting her head fall to the right so she could look directly at her brother.

“What do you want me to say?” he finally asked, shrugging his shoulders and letting out a deep breath.

“Anything.” Isabelle pleaded.

Tobias took a few seconds before saying, “It's cold for November, huh?”

Isabelle rolled her eyes, but played along. “It's eighty degrees at home.”

“San Diego's your home now?” he asked.

The question was laced with bitterness.

“Philadelphia's yours?” she countered.

“Just for now.” he mumbled, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel.

“Where will you go after?” Isabelle asked, genuinely curious. “Will you live in the old house?”

“I can't go back there.” Tobias shook his head, swallowing hard.

“People grow up, Tobias.” Isabelle said. “They change and they learn. They won't be the same as they were in high school.”

“Then why don't you come back?” he asked.

“I've built a life in San Diego.” she shrugged.

Isabelle wondered if she really had. Sure, she was writing and she had a cute little house that she liked. She had friends from college, but they were scattered all over the globe now and she was by herself more often than not. She could write anywhere. She could go back home if she wanted. But she didn't want to any more than Tobias did.

“Hmm.” her brother murmured. “How's life, then?”

“It's okay.” she shrugged. “What about you? Did you ever choose a specialty?”

“Plastics.” he answered curtly.

“Plastics.” Isabelle repeated. “You're a plastic surgeon?”

“Yes.” he nodded, glancing at her briefly. “It's more than nose jobs.”

“I know that.” she told him. “I just didn't know you were interested in plastics. I thought you'd go into orthopedics or something.”

Tobias wanted to tell her that she would've known if she'd asked. If she'd kept in touch. If she'd called or written a letter. Even if she'd spoken to their father more than once every few months. But when she left for California, it was like she'd disappeared from the face of the planet. It took him over a year to be able to breathe normally without her. Every passing day, he felt his chest get heavier and heavier. He was heartbroken. And it wasn't until that car ride that he realized how heartbroken he had been.

Tears pricked at the back of his eyes, burning as they seeped underneath to rest on his lower lids. Isabelle looked over just in time to witness his tears falling.

“I miss him, too.” she sighed, thinking of their sweet, quiet, kind yet overbearing, paranoid, overprotective father.

By the time they reached Stonington, where they couldn't take the ferry to the island until morning, the sun had set and they were both starving and exhausted. The rest of the car ride had been as silent as the first few hours. It was just as tiring for Tobias to drive as it was for Isabelle to ride in silence. They agreed to stop for dinner and find a room somewhere in town. There was a little bed and breakfast and the owners agreed to rent them a suite that had been reserved for a client that had canceled last minute. Isabelle paid an inflated, off-season price, of course.

They ate at a charming seafood cafe next door, mostly without speaking, and headed toward their room with their bags.

The room was nautically themed with white, distressed shiplap walls and lighthouses everywhere. The queen sized bed was draped in a fluffy, white down comforter and several overstuffed pillows. It looked so inviting, even though they weren't sure how to go about sharing a bed for the first time since they were children.

Tobias offered to take the wicker chair in the corner.

“Don't be ridiculous.” Isabelle shrugged. “It's not a big deal.”

After brushing her teeth, she changed in the bathroom into the only sleepwear she had left in her bag: an oversized SDU t shirt and a pair of running shorts. When she walked back into the room, she found Tobias on the left side of the bed, reading a brochure for the ferry under the dim glow of the lighthouse shaped lamp next to him. Isabelle crawled under the blanket and settled in. A few moments later, she heard Tobias turn off the lamp. After a few more moments, she realized that she couldn't hear him breathing.

“Tobias?” she whispered.

“What?” he asked.

“Are you okay?” she pressed.

He paused, a little too long to be convincing. “Yes.”

“Why aren't you breathing, then?” she asked, rolling over on her side to look at him.

“I am breathing. Obviously I'm breathing.” he scoffed.

“You weren't a second ago.” she argued.

Now it was his turn to roll over and look at her, “Why are you so focused on my breathing?”

“Because I'm worried.” Isabelle found herself whining, on the verge of tears. “You seem so angry with me.”

“I am angry with you.” he admitted.

“Why?” she pleaded. “What did I do?”

“What did you do?” he asked. She could see his eyebrows raise in shock. “You left me!”

That was why he was so upset, she thought. She'd broken his heart and she'd never be able to take it back. But she desperately wanted to fix it.

“I left for you.” she sniffled.

“What the hell does that mean?” he demanded, sitting up and turning the lamp back on.

She followed his movements.

“You deserved to have a normal life. Your devotion to me was suffocating you!” she insisted, batting the tears away as fast as they came.

“We had a normal life.” he argued. “Our life was fine. We were fine.”

“We weren't fine.” she said softly. “Living in a town where everyone thinks horrible things about you isn't fine. It's not okay to have people whispering about you in the hallways or cornering you in the girls' bathroom to ask if you're having sex with your brother. We had to be apart. How was I supposed to live a normal life with you following me around like a puppy? How were you?”

Tobias' throat clenched tight, fighting back a sob. He remembered all the rumors and all of the whispering and all of the questions. He wanted to go back to Westerly and burn it to the ground with those people in it. They had ruined his life. They had caused Isabelle to run away from him. He'd been in so much pain for so long because of them. But she didn't have to leave. There had to have been another option. They could've gone off some place together. They could've gone to the same college. They could've moved across the country. He could've gone to San Diego with her. She could have gone to Yale. Anything could have happened. Anything but that.

He screamed in a whisper. “You were my soulmate! And you just abandoned me!”

“Tobias.” Isabelle sat back, shocked. “That was the problem. I'm not your soulmate. I'm your sister.”

“You were both.” he insisted. “You were a part of me and I was a part of you and we were best friends and I loved you so much and you just left me! How could you do that?”

Before she knew what she was doing, Isabelle was crawling over to her brother and wrapping her arms around his shoulders. She sat behind him, her legs crossed so that her shins pressed against his lower back and her arms wrapped around his shoulders. Isabelle was much shorter, so she was able to press her ear against the dip between Tobias' shoulder blades. She could hear his heart pounding.

“I'm sorry.” she repeated several times, rocking them both back and forth. “I can't take it back. I should've kept in touch. But I can be better from now on. Okay?”

“I missed you so much.” Tobias sobbed, resting his hands on top of hers.

“I missed you, too.” she breathed.

They sat like that for a while, just soaking up each other's presence. Finally, after Tobias felt like he could breathe, his chest wasn't going to cave in, and he wasn't angry anymore, he crept to the other side of the bed and laid on his back.

“We should get some sleep.” he said.

“Yeah.” Isabelle agreed.

She watched him for so long that she couldn't track the time. When she was certain that she could take her eyes off of him, she did and slept straight through to morning.

Tobias shook her shoulder gently.

“Isabelle.” he whispered. “We'll miss the ferry.”

“Hmm?” she mumbled, opening her eyes and sitting up.

Tobias was dressed in a cream colored sweater and a pair of dark jeans. His face was freshly shaven and he was bright eyed. It was the healthiest he'd looked in years. He'd woken up early that morning, feeling better than he had in over a decade.

Isabelle rushed to get ready, throwing on a sweatshirt and a pair of jeans. She pulled her curls into a messy bun and wrapped a scarf around her neck before putting on her coat. Then they were off.

They hadn't been to Isle au Haut since they were small children. Their mother's ashes had been scattered there in Penobscot Bay. When they were babies, their father had taken them to scatter her ashes, and then a few more times as they grew older. But Isabelle remembered nothing of it other than the rocky shore. She sat on a large boulder and watched the gentle waves lap against the bottom of it.

Tobias produced the box of their father's ashes from the back of his SUV and sat next to his sister. They took turns taking handfuls and letting the grains of ash fall through their fingers and into the clear blue water. Then they sat for a while, just breathing in the fresh air.

Isabelle laughed when she looked around and realized they were in the middle of nowhere. The population of Isle au Haut was less than thirty people, and she was willing to bet that all of them were either tourist attraction owners or fishermen. She suddenly remembered one thing about visiting the island.

Isabelle and Tobias couldn't have been more than eleven or twelve years old and they had been in the back seat of their father's car for a long time.

“Daddy.” Isabelle had whined. “Are we almost there?”

“We're closer than we were when we left home.” he assured her.

“Well, where are we?” she demanded to know.

After looking around for a moment, and unsure of whether to tell her that they were in Massachusetts or New Hampshire, as they were somewhere near the border, he answered.

“We're nowhere.” he said.

An half hour or so later, bored out of his mind, Tobias asked his father for the time.

“It's now.” Paul had joked.

Tobias was always the smart one, and when Isabelle asked what their father was talking about, he explained.

“We aren't anywhere in particular.” he told his sister. “But no matter what time it is, it's always now.”



The drive back down, unlike the drive up, was filled with conversation. Isabelle told Tobias about all of her books, only to find that he had read them all from cover to cover. They weren't his cup of tea, as he preferred nonfiction, but he thought she was talented. Tobias told Isabelle about a little girl whose face he'd helped to reconstruct after she was attacked by a dog. They spent the entire ride talking and catching up.

“Will you stay in Philadelphia?” she asked once they returned to their father's house. “After your residency is up, I mean?”

“I don't know.” he said. “I have an offer there. Why?”

“I was just thinking.” she shrugged. “I have a friend from college there. I could write from anywhere.”

“The cheese steaks are really good.” he laughed.

“I've heard.” she nodded, smiling. “Plus, my big brother lives there, so...”

“Your big brother?” he asked, eyebrows raised.

“Yeah.” she nodded. “They pulled you out by your arm. I just kind of came up with you.”

“I guess you didn't really have a choice.” he said.

“I guess not.” she tapped her hip where her scar was.

Tobias pulled her into a long, tight hug.

They sold their father's house and split the profits. Isabelle packed her things in San Diego, sold her bungalow, and moved in with her friend Jennifer in the Rittenhouse neighborhood of Philadelphia before she finally found an townhouse in Bella Vista, less than five minutes away from the hospital where Tobias worked.

Over time, they developed a routine. They met for lunch at least twice a week and had brunch together every Sunday. He showed her the city and within the first year, she knew it like the back of her hand. They approved each other's dates, they celebrated holidays together, and they chatted on the phone on nights when they couldn't sleep or they were bored. They became so close again that their twin senses kicked back into high gear. When Isabelle was sick, so was Tobias. When she got the flu he came to her apartment with soup for both of them and they holed up there for the better part of a week, just being miserable together.

Finally, Tobias didn't feel like he was dying anymore. And Isabelle felt like she had finally made up for the mistake she'd made at eighteen when she left her brother behind. They were best friends again: siblings and soulmates.