Page 86 of Just the Wrong Twin

“What do you mean? It’s just how they are.”

“But it’s a crazy expectation. Nothing is perfect all the time, or even looks perfect all the time.” His voice hardened. “It’s not reasonable, Sonia. Reasonable people know that.”

She bit her lip. “When your parents tell you so all the time, you become convinced.”

“I’ll bet. Do they count unreasonable expectations as abuse in therapy?”

“No.”

“Maybe they should.” His tone was harsh and she knew it was because he felt protective of her. The sound gave her a warm glow inside and made her heart flutter a little bit. The military hadn’t taught him that: he’d come to the service with that expectation already established. It was just the way he was.

And Sonia admired it.

“I’m not sure Olivia wanted to have kids,” she said, returning to her story. “But she had us, all the same. I’m not sure who our biological father is either. She married Derek shortly after we were born. I don’t remember himnotbeing in her life, but mostly I remember other people in ours.”

“Other people?”

“Hired staff. Nannies. I don’t have many early memories of Olivia and Derek. It was like they made cameo appearances and waved.”

“Like royals.”

She laughed. “Kind of. In hindsight, they worked, often at night, or were on location, or just went out together to parties.”

“But they had kids.”

“We had Maria,” Sonia heard her own voice warm in recollection. “I thought Maria was our mom, even though we didn’t look like her. She was the one who took care of us all the time, and we snuck into her bed at night when we could.” She shook her head, remembering. “We spoke Spanish first, you know, and we called Mariamamá.”

“I’ll bet that went over well,” Nate said, his tone wry.

“No, it didn’t. I can still hear the dishes breaking and the doors slamming.” Sonia closed her eyes in memory of the shrieking and accusations of ingratitude. “That’s when we learned that Oliva was our mom, but it was hard to greet that news with enthusiasm.”

“I’m starting to understand why you like peace and quiet so much.”

She nodded. “We were six.”

“Ouch.”

“Maria was fired, although none of it was her fault, and we got an English nanny next. Then we had British accents, but I guess that was okay because my parents adapted to that. The whole family spoke with British accents and we moved to a different neighborhood where no one remembered that Olivia and Derek were actually American.”

“Can I say that sounds pretty messed up?”

“Of course. It is, but when you’re a kid, you think everyone’s family is like yours. We all assume that we’re normal. It’s only when you get away from it, and maybe get some therapy that you see how bizarre it actually was. We thought everyone had to face inspection before they left the house, that everyone had their wardrobes curated, culled and corrected. We thought everyone had to be ready for their close-up all the time. We weren’t allowed to bring friends home or to go to the houses of other kids from school. It was just Katia and me and thenanny-du-jourmost the time. It didn’t take us long to figure out that none of them were going to stay long and that it was smarter not to get close, like we had with Maria.”

“Sounds lonely.”

“At least we had each other. It would have been awful to be an only child in that house.”

“But you survived it together.”

“When we became teenagers, everything got a million times worse. Life was a slice of hell and every day was a new ordeal to face. I never knew what criticism was coming next. Every blemish had to be examined—and I had a lot of them—every weakness or failure had to identified and explored. In hindsight, I suspect I was struggling with depression. Probably both of us were, but Katia covered it better.” She took a fortifying breath, hearing her mom’s sharp voice in her thoughts one more time. She felt as if she’d said too much to Nate, just as her mom would have insisted, and she was halfway waiting to be scolded. But Sonia’s history was her own story and it was her right to choose to share it or not. In a way, it was reassuring to have someone as balanced as Nate immediately take her side, although that didn’t stop Sonia from feeling disloyal. She’d been taught that outing her parents was bad, and that little voice was hard to silence.

She took a deep breath and told him more. “I was really heavy and not very graceful.”

“Because of the criticism?”

“You know it wasn’t,” she said softly.

“I still want to be wrong.”

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