Page 63 of Phantom
My fingers pressed into my skull, and my blood started to boil. “No. Po-ta-toes.”
The woman on the other side of the counter furrowed her brow and poked out her lip. A string of words in a language I was still learning hissed back at me, and even if I didn’t know what she was saying, the sting in her voice made it clear that she wasn’t inviting me over for afternoon tea.
“What’d you say?” I barked.
An arm extended out in front of my chest and pushed me backward. Although we were identical twins, Caid and I looked very different these days. I’d chosen to let my facial hair grow out a little bit, due in part to the fact that my fiancée loved it and also because, even after almost a year, I still wanted to distance my image, at least a little bit, from how I looked in the past. Who knew how many people were still trying to find me. I figured it was at least a little bit harder with some longer hair. Caid, however, had a cleanly shaven face, and his body was still lean, even though he was pretty much free of his illness.
“You can’t get mad at her becauseyoudon’t understand her,” Caid growled.
“She called me a bitch or something. I know that much,” I spat back.
Caid handed the woman some euros, and her scowl turned into a smile. He said a series of things to her in German, and his accent sounded almost natural. She reached behind her, grabbed a bag of some of the store’s specialty potatoes, and handed them over to Caid, and he nodded with a “Danke”, and then turned to walk out.
“Bitte,” the woman sang back, then her scowl returned as she looked me up and down.
She hissed out another series of words, so I hoped that a middle finger would translate and stuck it up at her while following Caid out.
“You’re a brat,” Caid said simply.
“You’ve only been here two months longer than me. How did you learn so much faster than I did?” I asked.
“I’d already been learning it before I came here, then once I got here, it was all I did every single day for two months. Besides, you’re not really trying.”
We turned out onto a road with the sun shining above us and people happily chattering as they walked by. “I’m trying.”
“Tess is better than you,” Caid replied. “Lockjaw’s better than you.”
“Hey!” I barked. “Lockjaw isasgood as me.” Lockjaw wasn’t learning German, per se, but Caid had been teaching him German commands over the past year, and he’d gotten pretty good. “Whatever. You can just do all the talking forever.”
Caid brandished his copy of the key to our high-rise complex and opened the door. I walked through with the other groceries I was carrying. We took the elevator up to the top floor, and I used my keys to let us into the apartment. Lockjaw jumped up from his dog bed in the corner near the wall-to-wall, ceiling-to-floor windows that overlooked Munich and ran over.
“Hey, bud.” I crouched so I could give him proper head pats. “Where’s Mama?”
“In here!” Tess’ voice called back. “Come in here, both of you. Tell me how this looks.”
Caid and I dropped the groceries off on the dining room table and walked through the huge open living room to the left, which was Tess’ and my wing of the apartment. We passed the bathroom on the left but didn’t go as far down as the bedroom. Instead, we turned into the guest bedroom, which was in the process of being converted.
I walked in and saw that Tess was balancing a huge box against her waist. “What are you—” I snatched the box away from her. “That’s dangerous.”
“I’m fine, Colin,” Tess said. She turned, leading with her eight-months pregnant belly, and leaned in for a kiss. “Brat.”
“I just called him a brat five minutes ago,” Caid said, almost as if he was proud.
Tess poked his cheek sweetly and then turned around and motioned to the room. “What do we think?”
Under the windows was a white crib that Caid had built from scratch and painted, and the room was decorated with all of the white bunny stuff that we’d been collecting since we found out that Tess was pregnant.
“I like it,” I said.
“And.” Tess turned and motioned toward the small dresser that was also something Caid built. She lifted a picture of her and her dad from back in Hoppa. “So that she gets to know her grandpa.”
Her face immediately saddened, and I felt bad. It felt like we’d been living in Germany so much longer than a year. Tess had, not surprisingly, built herself a successful dog training business with Lockjaw as her right-hand-pooch, and Caid and I co-owned a furniture business. It turned out that the meticulous way I liked to work on bikes translated, and after years of watching me, Caid had developed a love for it, too.
Wrapping an arm around Tess’ back, I pulled her close to me. “That’s wonderful.”
A few tears always came to Tess’ eyes as of late every time she thought about how her dad wasn’t going to be involved in our baby’s life. It was something I couldn’t relate to. I didn’t know, nor care about, where my mom was. Caid was my family, and he had gotten to be here every step of the way.
All of a sudden, I felt selfish. I wanted a happy life so much, one I thought I deserved, but I didn’t realize how much Tess was giving up just so that I could have it.
