Chessy's POV
When I was in high school, I was in love with England. Or, to be more precise, boys with British accents. Because of this, I watched all the British television shows and movies I could get my hands on. Which wasn't much, but I did learn a lot about England, its culture, the fact that no one says "Pip pip cheerio" anymore (if they ever even did in the first place) and how to tell a real British accent from a fake.
The fact that Elizabeth was from England might have been my main reason for not jumping on the "You just met her! What were you thinking?" bandwagon. And then, the twins were born. I loved them so much, and I discovered that I could tell them apart even better than their parents. (I lost count of how many times I saw them check the initials on the lockets.)
I was furious and heartbroken when Elizabeth left with Annie. I don't even know what they fought about, and who are they to split up twins? Nick never even planned to tell Hallie that she had a sister, let alone a twin. He was the parent though, so I let him have his way and knew that Hallie was smart enough to figure it out herself one day.
When Hallie came back from camp, I knew something was off, before Sammy started treating her differently, before her appetite vanished and she stopped biting her nails. I just knew something had changed.
After about a week I decided it was just puberty, her voice was off, at any rate. I took a deep and told myself to forget about it. This was just a phase, she'd go back to her old self soon enough, in the mean time I could continue my break from cooking and watch more BBC.
The deep breath thing didn't work. Hallie started acting weirder, and then she came back early from riding with her dad and started talking to herself. I confronted her, about her appetite, her newfound organizational skills, and then I started thinking of Elizabeth, she was tidy, she ate almost nothing, was this just her mother's genes making an appearance after eleven years? I caught myself before I said her mother's name out loud, barely.
"Almost as if I were who, Jessie?"
I was not going to mention her mother, that just open yet another can of worms that she did not need to deal with.
"Nobody. Nobody, forget I mentioned it."
"Almost as if I were Annie?"
I swear my heart stopped when she said that. I thought me missing Annie was bad, but finding out that you had a twin? How had she been able to act so normal with this information?
"You know about Annie?"
"I am Annie."
I didn't need to hear her accent to know that she was telling the truth.