Not Real. Not Fake. Sisters.

The real daughter had been back barely a month when she was diagnosed with depression and I was diagnosed with anxiety.

Mom and Dad looked at the two printouts the clinic had sent home with us. They didn't say anything for a long time.

The next day the two of us were packed up and shipped north, to my birth parents. Neither of us talked much on the drive. Now our situations were reversed.

She was afraid that the parents who had raised her for eighteen years would stop wanting her now that they had their real daughter back. I was afraid too.

They had known her for eighteen years. They had known me a few days. That first night, Pa and Ma put their heads together over the two printouts.

They sounded honestly puzzled. "One of you is unhappy and one of you is scared." "All that, and that's it?" "What are you two so worked up about?" We both looked down at the same time. "One of us is the real one and one of us is the fake…" Pa and Ma smacked their knees. "A kid isn't a hundreddollar bill.

What's real or fake about it?" "You're just sisters, aren't you?" Chapter 1 At the word sisters, Sadie Fenske and I both looked up and glanced at each other.

For the past month, everyone in the Ashford house had been teaching us how to get along smoothly as "the real daughter and the fake one." Nobody had ever once said we were sisters.

After Pa said it, he went through the two printouts three times over, front and back. "Which one's the scared one?" I raised my hand slowly. "Me." "And which one's the unhappy one?" Sadie Fenske was leaning against the dresser.

Her voice came out hoarse. "Me." Pa nodded, solemn, like he had finally gotten the right name matched to the right ailment. "All right.

Got it." He said it lightly, but his hands were careful. He put on his reading glasses and read the instructions out loud, one word at a time.

Ma got out the hardback ledger she used for the little roadside store out front. She copied down our medicine names, the doses, and the times, stroke by careful stroke.

Both drug names were long and impossible to say.

Ma got them wrong three times and got so worked up she jabbed the point of her ballpoint into the page. "What were they thinking, naming a pill that?

Scared the family might be able to read it?" Gran sat off to the side with her eyes narrowed and put in, slow and easy: "Poor things.

So young and already on that much medicine." "Too much of that stuff can't be good. It could rot their brains.

Why don't we go ask Ida down at the end of the road if she's got a remedy?" Pa heard that and shot Ma a look.

Ma snapped the cap back on the pen and turned to her mother. "Ma, this is one you listen to the doctor on. We're not listening to Ida run her mouth.

Last time she was telling people pokeweed root soaked in liquor would get you a son." Pa jumped right in. "Woman's always cooking up something nasty.

She brewed that batch and didn't dare drink it herself. Besides, boy or girl, it's all the same. Two girls suit me just fine, don't they?" Gran pursed her lips and let it go.

While the three of them worked over our diagnoses, Sadie and I sat side by side on the edge of the bed.

The two handquilted coats were cut enormous, the cuffs wide enough you could nearly stuff a cat up one.

Sadie looked down and ran her fingers over the big red rose stitched on her cuff. Her eyes drifted. I knew she had worn one like it when she was little.

And me, this was the first quilted coat I had ever put on. There was a row of photos on the wall. All of them were Sadie. Chapter 2 Pigtails. A missing front tooth.

A backpack on, standing in front of the elementary school in town. She had lived here eighteen years. Traces of her were all over the house.

There was a crooked line notched into the door frame, with something written next to it in pencil: [Sadiegirl, 10 yrs — 4'7"] The only thing connecting me to this house was a DNA report, fresh off the printer.

I was still staring at that line when Ma stood up. "Let's get you two sorted into rooms." My heart went straight up into my throat.

Sadie's first week at the Ashford house, the two of us had been through a room assignment too.

Mom and Dad had the two best bedrooms on the second floor redone, everything the same brand, in the name of absolute fairness.

Because my room faced south, Mom had a fullspectrum daylight lamp installed in Sadie's.

Because my walkin closet was about ten square feet bigger, Dad transferred fifty thousand dollars into Sadie's account. After that they had an assistant build a spreadsheet.

Square footage. Number of items of clothing. Monthly allowance. The price of jewelry.

Even the time the two of them spent alone with each of us over a meal, tracked to the minute by an app. They did everything in their power to keep the scales perfectly balanced.

Terrified somebody would say they played favorites, terrified of how that would look for a family like theirs.

And in that careful, careful month, neither Sadie nor I slept one good night.

Now Ma pointed at the front bedroom. "Sadiegirl keeps her old room." Then she pointed at the back one. "Nora takes the back room.

That wall backs up against the chimney, so it stays warm, and it's close to me and your pa.

You get scared at night, knock twice on the wall and we'll hear you." The front room was bigger. The window was brighter, too. Sadie's shoulders drew in, barely.

I spoke right up. "Either one is fine with me. I could sleep in the shed out back." Almost at the same moment, Sadie Fenske stood up. "I'll take the back room.

Give her the front one." We looked at each other and then away, fast, like we had been burned. The room went quiet for a few seconds.

Pa frowned. "That how you two talk at the Ashfords'?" I didn't follow. "Like what?" "Every other word out of you two is 'either one's fine' or 'give it to her first.'" Pa pointed at Sadie. "You get the front room because you've slept in it eighteen years and you can't sleep in a strange bed." Then he pointed at me. "You get the back room because you wake up in the middle of the night, and it's easier on you being right next to us." "One of you needs somewhere familiar, one of you needs people close.

Works out, doesn't it?" I gripped the cuff of the flowered coat. "But… the rooms aren't the same size." Pa looked more baffled than before. "Course they're not.

Nobody stood over this house with a tape measure when it went up, making the two of them come out identical." Ma dug a blue folder out of the suitcase I had brought.

A title was stamped across the cover in gold foil lettering. [Equitable Coexistence Plan for a TwoDaughter Household] Ma read it out twice, word by word, then looked up at me. "What in the world is this?" My cheeks went hot. "My mom… Mrs.

Ashford put it together." The document ran twentyseven pages. Page one was standards of address. Page two, principles of resource allocation.

Page three, a quantified table of parental companionship hours.

From page four on, it was dense with contingency protocols for every conflict that might come up in daily life. [Discrepancy in gift value shall not exceed five percent.] Chapter 3 [Should either party spend more than two hours alone with a parent, compensatory time of equal duration shall be scheduled for the other party within one week.] [Sensitive terms — biological, raised, blood, owed — are not to be used in the presence of the other party.] [In the event of a dispute, both parties shall first state the facts, then express their feelings, and finally submit an actionable request.] Pa leaned in, got as far as page eleven, and his eyes about popped. "Is this raising kids or is this processing paperwork?

Every step spelled out. Even a fight has to follow procedure.

Keep that up and won't the two of them end up strangers?" Sadie hurried to explain. "They're just afraid we'll get hurt." I nodded along.

Mom had stayed up three nights straight putting that plan together. It wasn't that she didn't love us. She was just too afraid of getting it wrong.

Afraid that making something up to Sadie would hurt me, afraid that taking care of me would shortchange Sadie.

So she broke love down into precise little cells and set it carefully into a spreadsheet.

And whenever we failed to get close and happy the way she had projected, she got more anxious. She would ask us, over and over: "I've gone this far.

Why are the two of you still unhappy?" I never knew how to answer. Neither did Sadie. All we could do was say nothing. And then they would shake their heads and sigh.

Ma set the folder aside. "Your mom put a lot into that." I had only just let my breath out. Then she said: "She just aimed it wrong." Sadie looked up.

Ma patted the edge of the bed. "One quilt. You can pull it as straight as you want, but you don't give one girl the left half and the other one the right half.

Whoever's cold gets another wrap of it. When the other one gets cold, you pull it over her. That's how people live." Right then my phone rang. A video call from Mom.

I sat up without thinking and buttoned the flowered coat all the way to the top. Sadie smoothed her hair down fast. Ma gave us a sideways look. "It's a phone call.

What are you two sitting up like that for — like the boss just walked in on you?" The call connected.

Mom was in the study, worn out, and the first thing she said was: "Have the rooms been assigned?" Before I could answer, her eyes landed on the big red flowered coat I had on. "Eleanor's in red and Sadie's in green?" "Who chose them?" "Are they the same price?" Ma leaned into the frame and answered plainly. "One's from my sister, the other one Karla from next door brought over.

No idea what they cost.

Didn't cost us a thing, either way." Mom's brows came together. "If you don't know the prices, how do you guarantee it's fair?" My stomach knotted. "Mom, I like red." Sadie spoke up at once too. "I like green." We said it too fast.

Our voices almost collided. Mom was quiet on the other end of the screen. "I didn't say you don't like them.

I'm only concerned that unintentional differential treatment will create a psychological gap between you." She started asking about the rooms. Square footage. Which way they faced.

Whether the furniture was the same tier.

When she learned Sadie had the front room and I had the back one, her face visibly changed. "Why didn't you flip a coin for it?" I said quickly: "The back room is nice.

I really don't mind." Sadie said: "We can switch.

I can sleep anywhere." Chapter 4 Ma looked at the two of us for a moment, then reached over, took the phone, and turned it on herself. "Oh, honey. Mrs. Ashford.

You want both these girls to give up their rooms and go sleep out in the yard together?" "It's zero degrees out there.

You trying to freeze them to death?" For a second Mom's expression wasn't quite natural. "I'm only trying to consider each of their feelings separately." "Eleanor needs to feel secure.

So does Sadie.

I'd like them to be considerate of each other." "Considerate how?" Ma shot back: "Every other word out of you is 'is this fair,' and it drives the two of them to race each other to say they don't mind getting the short end.

That your idea of considerate?" Mom didn't answer.

Dad's voice came from offscreen. "That isn't what we meant." He came into the frame and sat down next to her, serious. "The girls' situation is complicated.

All we can do is try to keep things balanced." "Sadie lost eighteen years with her family of origin, and Eleanor is going through an identity crisis.

Any visible favoritism would cause secondary harm to one of them." Pa had been listening a long while.

He finally dragged a little stool over and sat down in front of the camera. "And this system of yours hasn't caused any secondary harm?" Dad was certain. "We don't favor either of them, so no, we haven't harmed anyone." Pa laughed and pointed at us. "Then what's wrong with these two?

One of them's too scared to breathe out loud and the other one won't open her mouth.

That balance of yours — is it level inside the kids, or is it level for other people to look at?" The screen went completely silent. Dad pressed his lips together.

Mom's eyes went red, slowly. "Then what do you want us to do?" There was an exhaustion in her voice she couldn't hold down anymore. "We've done everything we can." "The rooms split down the middle, the company shares split down the middle, the same allowance, the same tutors.

We even hired the best psychiatrist we could find for each of them." "And Sadie says we're compensating a stranger, and Eleanor thinks we might abandon her any minute." "Care a little more about one and it's wrong.

Care a little less and that's wrong too." She stopped, as if she couldn't hold the hurt up any longer. "Why is being a parent this hard?" I opened my mouth to comfort her without thinking.

Sadie lifted her head too, her lips moving. But Ma got there first. "Being a parent is hard." There was no mockery in it and no blame.

She was stating a fact. "But you don't get to find it hard and then make two kids work at proving every day that you did it right." Mom froze. "I never asked them to prove—" "Then what's the daily debrief for?" Ma cut her off. "People who report to a board do a daily debrief.

A kid eats a meal, sleeps a night, and you've got to go over her KPIs?" Dad frowned. "Structure and communication support their development." "Whether it supports anything shows up in how the kids turn out, not in whether your chart's filled in all the way." Ma propped the phone on the table so the camera took in all of us at once. "Keeping the scales balanced doesn't mean forcing both girls into the same mold until they break." "The clothes have to match, the money has to match, even which room they sleep in has to match." "That isn't fairness." She pointed a finger at that polished couple on the screen.

Chapter 5 "This is the two of you being scared you'll do it wrong, scared people will point at you behind your backs, scared you won't be able to show your faces.

That's why you're in such a hurry to go measuring everything." The color drained out of Mom's face. Dad didn't say another word. Ma didn't wait for a response.

She reached over and hung up. Pa picked up the blue folder, weighed it in his hand, and tossed it into the wood stove. "Burn it.

No sense looking at it and getting worked up." I woke at five the next morning. Anxiety was an invisible hand around my sleep. I could hardly get through a whole night.

I could hear faint snoring through the wall. Pa and Ma. They couldn't have been sleeping well either, because of us. I couldn't be any more trouble than I already was.

Before it was light I got up on tiptoe, folded the quilt in the back room into a square, found a rag, and went to wipe down the big table in the kitchen. I wiped it three times.

The first time clockwise. The second time counterclockwise. The third time I got into the corners with my fingernail.

I was about to start a fourth when Ma's voice came from behind me. "What, this table owe you money?" My hand jerked and the rag slapped onto the floor