The Song That Didn't Fit

“Morning, everyone,” Mrs. Gable called as we hurried to our seats. “We’ll do math in a minute. First, the office wants your emergency-contact information checked and updated. Take these papers home for a parent to sign, and return them tomorrow.”

She moved between the desks, placing a yellow form in front of each student. The paper slid onto my desk with a soft whisper.

I looked down. Most of it had already been filled in from the school’s records.

Student: Emma Reynolds.

Primary Contact: Thomas Reynolds (Father).

Then I reached the next line and stopped breathing for a moment.

Secondary Contact: Nora Vance (Aunt).

Before Mom died, her name had been listed there. Dad must have changed the school information when the year began. Nora wasn’t written as “Nora Reynolds,” his wife, or just “Nora.” The school had her down by her old family name.

Vance. My mother’s name before she married Dad.

My finger hovered over the word Aunt. It sat there in plain, dark type, as if it were an ordinary fact and not a crack in the story I’d been told. The school’s filing cabinet held the truth while our house seemed built around hiding it.

I kept staring until the letters lost their edges. Desks scraped behind me; children talked over one another as they gathered their things. Their voices felt far away, and a thin ringing filled my ears.

Nora Vance. My aunt.

Dad had given the school her name. I couldn’t remember seeing him fill out the paperwork, but I could picture the slant of his capital letters. He had known exactly who she was when he put it down.

Mom had a twin sister named Nora. Now Nora slept in Mom’s old room, cooked the food Mom used to make, and acted as though she had first met Dad in a bookstore downtown only a few months earlier.

“Emma?”

I jumped in my chair. Mrs. Gable had come to stand beside my desk, her face kind and a little worried.

“You haven’t packed your things, honey,” she said. “The buses will be called soon. Are you feeling all right? You were home sick yesterday.”

“I’m okay,” I said, though my voice came out small. I folded the form once, then again, and slipped it into the front pocket of my blue folder. “I was thinking about something.”

“Please remember to have your dad sign it tonight,” she said, tapping the folder lightly. “You’ll need to bring it back tomorrow.”

“I will.”

The ride home seemed to take forever. I leaned my forehead against the window and watched the neighborhood drift past, trying to fit the pieces together without letting them fall apart.

If Nora was my aunt, why had Dad denied it? Why had she pretended to be a stranger? They had both made the lie sound simple, but the yellow paper made it impossible to ignore.

I wondered if Nora’s being here had something to do with Mom’s death. Maybe the reason everyone avoided talking about her was tangled up with the accident. The thought frightened me, so I tried to hold on to what I knew.

Mom had died on a rainy Tuesday, when her car slid on the interstate and struck the concrete divider. The police had come to our house. Insurance calls had lasted for months. Everyone said it was a terrible accident, and that was what the official story said, too.

I reminded myself that it had been called an accident. Nora’s name on a school form didn’t prove anything about how Mom died. I was eight, not foolish, but I didn’t have enough answers to turn a suspicion into a fact.

There had to be some other reason Dad and Nora were keeping the sisters’ history from me.

When I opened our front door, cinnamon and warm apples filled the entryway. The smell should have been comforting. Instead, it tightened my stomach.

“Em? Is that you?” Nora called from the kitchen.

I took a careful breath, left my backpack by the stairs, and went to find her.

She stood at the island, working on a pile of Granny Smith apples. Mom’s old floral apron was tied around her. The pale yellow fabric wrapped a body so much like Mom’s that anger pricked through me before I could hide it.

“Hi, Nora,” I said.

“How was school, sweetheart?” she asked, smiling up at me. “Are you feeling completely better?”

“I’m fine.” I climbed onto a stool and settled at the counter, keeping my eyes on her hands.

Nora held the peeler in her left hand. A long green strip curled down toward the sink as she turned the apple. I blinked. Until then, I hadn’t thought to look for that difference.

Mom had always used her right hand. When she wrote in a hurry, she used to grumble about dragging her hand through the fresh ink. Nora’s left hand moved easily over the apple.

“What are you watching?” Nora asked, catching me looking.

“The apples,” I said, pretending the answer was enough. “Are you making a pie?”

“Apple crisp,” she gently corrected. “Your dad told me it was his favorite once the weather turned chilly, so I thought I’d make some for him.”

Mom used to bake apple crisp every October. It had been one of our family traditions, something familiar enough that I could almost smell the sugar and cinnamon before it came out of the oven.

But Nora talked about it as though Dad had just mentioned a favorite dessert to his new wife. Her voice held none of the memories that belonged to it. She sounded like she was learning a small detail, not repeating a ritual she had shared with my mother.

I didn’t tell her what I knew about the crisp. I kept the yellow paper tucked away in my folder, its printed words certain in a way no one in our house seemed to be.

I had a school form that called Nora my aunt. If she was Mom’s sister, then something had happened between them to make everyone hide it. I decided I would find out what had driven the sisters apart.