Sarah had spent ten years believing her twin sister was gone. The grief had settled into her life in the way old grief often does: no longer fresh every day, but always present. Then a routine call from a dentist’s office brought back the one name she never expected to hear again.
The receptionist said a woman named Clara had finished a dental procedure and needed someone to take her home. Her phone was not working, and she was still groggy from the appointment. Sarah’s first reaction was confusion. Clara, her twin sister, had died a decade earlier.
Or so the family had believed.
Ten years before, Clara’s car had gone off a dark highway, crashed down an embankment, and caught fire. She was only twenty. The damage was so severe that little could be identified, and the family held a closed-casket funeral. With no better explanation, they accepted the worst.