When Clara died, people stared at me as though they had seen a ghost.
I understood why.
We were identical twins. We had the same face, the same eyes, the same smile, and, when we were younger, even strangers sometimes struggled to tell us apart.
But after Clara was gone, looking like her stopped feeling like a blessing.
It became a reminder of everything I had lost.
At her funeral, her husband, Michael, held my hand so tightly that my fingers eventually went numb.
He was shaking.
“Don’t leave me too,” he whispered.
I didn’t know what to say.
I had just lost my sister.
He had just lost his wife.
Neither of us knew how to imagine life after Clara.
For the next two years, Michael appeared at my house almost every Sunday morning.
He always brought two coffees.
He never crossed a line.
He didn’t flirt with me. He never touched me inappropriately. He didn’t make inappropriate suggestions.
