What Finds You
Your shadow shows what you're really thinking. Not what you're saying. Not what you're pretending to feel. What you actually want. What you're about to do. The truth you're trying to hide from everyone else. From yourself.
The marble appeared on my kitchen counter on a Tuesday morning.
Small. Blue. Cat's eye pattern. The kind Daniel and I collected as kids.
I picked it up. Turned it over in my fingers. We hadn't spoken in four months. Not since Mom's funeral. Not since what he said during the eulogy.
He still had my spare key. Must have let himself in while I was at work.
I threw the marble in the trash.
Three days later, the toy soldier.
Green plastic. Missing its left arm. Sitting on my bookshelf like it had always been there.
When we were kids, we played this game. Hide something small in each other's rooms. First to find it won. We called it Finder's Keepers.
These were Daniel's favorites. The marble. The soldier.
I called his number. Straight to voicemail.
"Stop breaking into my apartment. We're done. Leave me alone."
I put the soldier in the trash with the marble.
The third time was worse.
Two in the morning. I woke up to that feeling. Like someone was watching me.
I checked every room. Nothing.
But there was a photograph on my kitchen table. Facedown.
I picked it up. Mom. Daniel. Me. Maybe six years ago at some birthday dinner. Before she got sick.
We looked happy.
My hands were shaking. Daniel had been in my apartment three times now. In the middle of the night. While I was sleeping.
I needed to talk to him.
Daniel's apartment was in Mom's old building. Same floor. He'd moved there after she died. We'd fought about it at the funeral.
No answer when I knocked.
A door opened down the hall. An older woman stuck her head out. She stared at me. Her face went white.
"You're supposed to be in the hospital," she said.
"I'm his brother. Tom. We're twins."
"Jesus Christ." She put her hand to her chest. "You look exactly like him."
"What happened?"
"Ambulance came. Found him unconscious in his apartment." She wouldn't stop staring at me. "Blood everywhere, they said. Mercy General."
The nurse at Mercy General told me he had a stroke. Hit his head on the corner of the kitchen counter.
Found unconscious. Medically-induced coma. Significant blood loss.
She kept thanking God that someone finally came to see him and then led me to his room.
Daniel looked small in the hospital bed. Tubes everywhere. Machines beeping. His face was pale. Thin.
No shadow on the floor beneath him.
I sat in the chair next to his bed. Didn't know what to say.
"I found your marble," I finally said. "And the soldier. And Mom's photo."
The machines kept beeping. Daniel didn't move.
"You've been in my apartment three times. Leaving them for me." My voice cracked. "Playing our game. Finder's Keepers."
Nothing.
I looked at the nurse on her way out. "When was he admitted?"
She checked her tablet. "April 15th."
The floor tilted.
April 15th was two months ago.
The marble appeared last Tuesday. The soldier three days later. The photograph last night.