Waiting for someone to open Sonya’s door, Jeannette’s heart is beating fast. She hopes against hope the door will open to reveal Baila, the child she has come to think of as a precious gift that was meant for her but given to someone else.

  Jeannette thought all night about how uniquely well suited she is to bring comfort and healing to this little girl. By virtue of Jeannette’s own loss, as well as her resemblance to Sonya, Jeannette will be able to help the child through this pain that Jeannette understands only too well. And Baila will fill that empty place inside Jeannette, the place where she’s longed for someone to love her.

  She knocks again, a little more forcefully. She hears voices, a scuffling of shoes. And then the door is opened—by Baila, her hair uncombed, her cheeks stained with tears.

  Thrilled, Jeannette smiles down on her.

  But the child’s expression isn’t even remotely friendly. She looks, Jeannette thinks, almost angry. Rather horrified that she’s expected to let her in.

  

  Baila has seen Jeannette only once up close, that frightening day of her mother’s collapse in Madame Pavlova’s dressing-room. And then a second time, staring from far away at the ballerina, among the flock of other dancers on the stage, who so resembled her mother. The woman her mother had referred to—briefly, only once—as Baila’s auntie.

  There had been no mention of her, after that night that was at first so magic and then so horrible—after they’d tried and failed to find the woman backstage. When they’d climbed the metal stairs and Baila felt her mother let go her hand. Felt herself in danger of being altogether abandoned.

  And here is that woman now, in their doorway, while Baila’s mama lies in bed so ill. It can only mean that something even worse is about to happen.

  

  The nurse, a black-clad sister of mercy, steps out from a darkened bedroom. “Come, child,” she says, leading Baila away, raising her eyes toward Jeannette and nodding at the gaping bedroom door.

  Jeannette walks through, flinching when the door is closed shut behind her.

  The furnishings of the room are shabbier than she expected. The beamed ceiling is low. The water-stained walls are covered in brightly colored paintings of flowers and other botanical fantasies made on sketchbook paper, affixed with thumbtacks. There’s a small window, framed by pretty curtains, looking out at the waterlogged masonry of the building next door. A pair of beeswax tapers in brass candlesticks flicker on the bedside table, alongside a huge vase of tuberoses and lilies that have filled the room with their heavy perfume.

  Sonya is lying on her back, her eyes closed. Her hair has been arranged on the pillow, her nightdress is tidy, her hands are clasped under her bosom.

  Jeannette drops to her knees at the bedside, crosses herself, and curses Paul for making her come all this way to see a corpse—and a corpse, no less, who is like a nightmare vision of her own death. No one should have to see such a sight, she tells herself. Her eyes fill with tears. The smell of the candles and flowers is making her feel sick.

  She rushes to the window and struggles, unsuccessfully, to get it open. Breathing hard, she stands there until the wave of nausea passes.

  And then she hears a sound, a faint rattling, rasping sound, like an ocean wave that slaps against a shingle beach and falls and sinks away. A hissing sound. Not from outside the door, or outside the window, but from the bed. Jeannette stands still and holds her breath and sees Sonya’s chest rise and fall.

  Every other thought is pushed out of her head by the story Sonya told her, the story that had made Jeannette cry against her will, on that sickening day at the Café de la Paix, the last time they’d been face to face. Everyone had thought Jeannette was born dead. But then she and Sonya were put into a blanket together, and Jeannette came to life again. Sonya’s touch—her warmth—had brought her twin back to life, or at least that’s what Sonya believed.

  Letting her cloak drop to the floor, Jeannette sits on the bed, lifts Sonya up, and wraps her arms around her back. The movements feel like a choreographic sequence in which Jeannette is partnered with someone feigning sleep. Someone like Karsavina when she danced her pas de deux with Nijinsky, in le Spectre de la Rose. Sonya’s head lolls against Jeannette’s bosom. “You see,” Jeannette says out loud, “I’m here now—or you would see, if you opened your eyes.”

  Sonya’s eyes stay closed. Her breathing is so shallow as to almost be imperceptible. She’s warm, but her body is limp.

  And then Jeannette remembers something else. The sensation of a heartbeat not her own but contained within the same space that holds her. Was it a memory of the womb they shared for nine wordless, sightless months of companionship? Or of that famous blanket in which they were swaddled as newborns? Or was it a memory of the crib where they slept together in a Russian orphanage?

  It’s a feeling of being safe. Of being one of two.

  And then she remembers a sound, also wordless—a sound of laughter. Silvery childish laughter. Jeannette feels a jolt of happiness, remembering. It’s like coming upon a treasure she never knew she possessed, right there among her own belongings. And then she remembers something else: a word.

  She looks down at Sonya’s face. And although the eyes stay closed, Jeannette wills the lips to speak. “Say my name!” she commands.

  It almost seems that Sonya has smiled in response, ever so slightly. But maybe it’s a trick of the candlelight.

  Is she going mad? Jeannette can hear the name inside her head, spoken in a childish voice. The name wants to be said out loud, the foreign word that had meant nothing to her—a word she’d hated hearing—when Sonya first said it on that day, and every time she’d repeated it. Jeannette can hear it now, though it remains unspoken: her long-lost Russian name, shining up at her like a coin at the bottom of a wishing well.

  Her name—is it her name?

  Jeannette wonders whether she wouldn’t have done the same thing, in Sonya’s place. How like Sonya would Jeannette have been if her sister, rather than she, had been the one plucked out of the crib in the orphanage that day? Would Sonya have become a dancer and an anti-Semite, as Jeannette had been taught to be? What sort of person would Jeannette have been if she’d been raised a Russian Jew, in the bosom of a loving family, and then learning that her twin was alive, somewhere in France? Would Jeannette have done then exactly what Sonya had done in searching for her? It made sense that they’d both be drawn to the same man. And that the flowers on these walls were nearly all shades of magenta, Jeannette’s favorite color. The color she always imagines when she pictures her own soul.

  She knows that Sonya, in whatever deep sleep she sleeps, can hear Jeannette’s heartbeat now—and she holds her tighter.

  In the beginning, they were the same person—or not a person, but the tiny start of a person that would divide into two parts, each of them exactly the same. Wasn’t it logical to conclude that each of them would have the power to resurrect the other?

  Jeannette takes a deep breath and says the word out loud then, pushing Sonya’s hair away from her ear, so she’ll be sure to hear her. She speaks in a voice she hardly recognizes as her own, a voice dredged up from the deepest regions of her past. Their past.

  “Zaneta!” says Jeannette, speaking for her twin. And then she says, speaking for herself, “Sonya!”

  

  For a long time—she can’t tell how long—Sonya has been trying to understand the sound that seems to be everywhere around her in the dark, a sound like the breath of the world itself. An inhalation and exhalation, but accompanied somehow by a fairylike percussion made of falling tiny flecks of gold—or sand. Yes! She understands in the same moment that her inner eyes open on a scene that she knows isn’t real—not in the sense of any reality she’s ever experienced before.

  The moment explodes with buttery yellow light: the sea! Waves are breaking gently on a pebbled shore—and sinking, hissing as they recede.

  She can smell salt spray and hear—what are those birds that look like paper airplanes, swirling and calling above her, bright white against the tender blue sky?

  But she is not herself as she has always known herself—and this is not any land she has ever seen before. And there is Jascha, walking beside her, barefoot, his trousers rolled up to just below his knees. Jascha not as he was when she knew him, but much older. His still-abundant hair is the color of pewter now. His face is the same face, though a little heavier. He has a mustache. It suits him. He’s smiling at something straight ahead of them on the shoreline. He’s holding her hand.

  Those children on the sand ahead of them—Sonya understands that they are her grandchildren. She always felt love for Jascha’s progeny, even when she never guessed that his children and grandchildren would also, in an alternate route to the end of her life, be hers. It makes no sense and it fills her with joy. If this is a dream, she doesn’t want to wake from it.

  With difficulty—because every movement, even breathing, seems to require a superhuman strength—she looks down at her left hand, holding the fingers splayed out. Fingers that are no longer merely long and slender but also a little swollen, most of them, at the first joint. Her wedding ring, a simple gold band, is loose on her finger. She can see the veins beneath her skin, like rivers on a map. When she presses finger to thumb, the pads of both feel soft and pillowy.

  The light is so bright that everything she sees seems ringed in gold.

  How can it be that the moment of death is, in itself, as full and rich as a lifetime? The sense of this makes Sonya smile, but only slightly, as even the smallest movement requires such effort—and there is, she knows, barely anything left. It’s all she can do to keep her inner eyes open to the swirl of time and pathways, and the multiplicity of lives, both lived and unlived. The world as she’s always seen it has only been a shadow of everything that is.

  Sonya feels herself slipping beneath the salty waters of a sun-warmed sea. She can’t breathe—but she’s not panicking. She feels a sense of peace as she drifts lower and lower, the water sluicing through her hair, the sound of bubbles in her ears.

  And then another body bumps up against hers. She feels two arms embrace her, pulling her up again into the light and air.

  Gasping, she opens her eyes and meets her sister’s gaze.

  Jeannette’s entire face is suffused with a look of triumph. “And so,” she says. “Now we’re even!”

  Paris

  1910

  Jeannette eases Sonya onto the pillow, drawing the blankets up over her chest.

  “Yes,” Sonya whispers. “We’re even now.” When she

  starts coughing, Jeannette gives her water. She stays by her side until Sonya, her face serene, drifts off to sleep. And then Jeannette calls the nurse into the room, instructing her to send for the doctor—and then to take her place at the bedside.

  Jeannette finds Baila, staring out the rain-streaked window—and joins her on the banquette. “Dry your tears, child. Your mother is going to live.”

  Baila looks up into her aunt’s face, wondering how she could have ever thought that this woman—this stranger—completely resembled her mother. Their faces, and the stories those faces told, are so different, when one looks closely. She stares into Jeannette’s eyes, thinking how untrustworthy they seem. “How do you know?” Baila says quietly.

  “Sisters know these things.” Jeannette can’t believe she’s saying this—and, in the same moment, she understands that she means it. “It must be the same for you and your sisters, isn’t it? Don’t they sometimes understand what no one else in the world could possibly understand?”

  Baila thinks about this for a moment—then lifts one hip slightly and takes out the telegram she’s hidden under her skirt. “This arrived when you were in there with Mama.”

  Baila has evidently read it already. It’s in French, addressed to Naomi, Olga, and Baila Luria. I’m on my way, dearest nieces. Stop. Contact René Blum, Esq., if worst happens prior to my arrival. This is followed by an address on rue Taitbout, in the ninth arrondissement.

  Jeannette reaches out to touch Baila’s beautiful honey-colored hair, which is hanging loose and looks in need of brushing—but then thinks better of it. There will, she hopes, be time and opportunity for that later.

  “I think I had better go bring our good news to Maître Blum, don’t you?”

  Jeannette realizes that she has to move quickly, if there’s to be any chance at all of getting herself, rather than anyone else, named as Baila’s guardian. Who better than herself? Paul must have wired Sonya’s brother on the same day he phoned Jeannette in Monte Carlo—or maybe before? Is it possible that Sonya never told her brother—their brother—about finding Jeannette? Her mind is spinning, trying to think of the best way to manage the situation. Above all, she tells herself, she must make the right first impression on the two lawyers.

  Ever so lightly, she touches the child’s cheek. Oh, to have such skin again! “I’m just going to change my clothes,” she says, heading back into Sonya’s bedroom. “I’m sure your mother won’t mind if I borrow something of hers.”

  Coming out on tip-toe a few minutes later, dressed in black, she says loudly enough for the nurse to overhear, “Go in and sit beside your mother, my pet, and hold her hand. It will do her a world of good.”

  

  Maître Blum’s secretary stares at Jeannette—and then his face breaks into an infatuated smile. “It’s you!” he says.

  Doubly glad she’s wearing Sonya’s very conservative clothes now, Jeannette stands even straighter than before. “I beg your pardon, young man.”

  “But surely you remember me!” He lowers his voice. “I sent flowers to you twice. And you waved to me once, from the stage.”

  Jeannette curses every wish she’s ever had to win fame as a dancer. She wonders whether she can get away with telling the secretary that he’s mistaken. But then she remembers seeing him in the audience at the Opéra, in the front row. She did, she recalls with a feeling of helplessness, wave to him, on more than one occasion. She might have even thrown him a kiss. His bouquets were quite lovely, extravagant for someone working as a clerk. She can’t remember his name.

  “But, of course!” she says, mustering all her charm.

  How can she possibly make her plan work now? Such a hare-brained, half-baked plan! She clears her throat, stalling for time. “I didn’t recognize you, out of context. I’m surprised you recognized me.”

  He had sad, rather beautiful eyes. “I would recognize you anywhere.”

  “I beg you then,” she says in a low, urgent voice. “Consign those moments, as I have, to the past—and do me the honor of meeting me today as someone previously unknown to you.” She’d heard that line—or something like it—in a melodrama once, at a cabaret. She can’t believe she’s actually found occasion to use it.

  He gazes into her eyes like a soldier facing a firing squad. “Your name, madame?” he says with perfect sangfroid. “Or is it mademoiselle?”

  There is something a little heartbreaking about his willingness to forget her. “Dupres,” she says. “Mademoiselle. I believe that Maître Blum and his Russian colleague will be very glad to receive me.”

  “I imagine so, Mademoiselle Dupres. I will announce you.” He rises from the desk—a fine young man, impeccably groomed. In the fraction of a second before opening the door to the inner office, he whispers, “Your secret is safe with me.”

  The office has two large windows looking out over a landscaped courtyard and a fountain. Two gentlemen rise up at the sight of her. Both have graying hair and elegant clothes, and are blotting at their eyes with handkerchiefs.

  One of them looks strangely familiar. “My God!” he whispers, staring at her wide-eyed. “Poiret, in his telegram, wrote that you were—”

  “But this is not Sonya!” breaks in the other man, presumably René Blum. “The resemblance! It’s absolutely—astonishing!” He’s looking at Jeannette in such a way that she knows at once he’s in love with Sonya. His eyes are brimming. “So she found you, after all.”

  “I can’t believe it,” says the other man, coming up to her and squeezing her hands. “But it’s true, it’s true!” He starts crying, then sobs out some words in Russian, followed in French by, “Oh, my little sister! You live!”

  He looks horrible when he cries. It reminds Jeannette of the way she looks when she cries. She gives a cursory squeeze to the hands that are squeezing hers, hoping this man, who is evidently her brother, will let go.

  In contemplating this meeting, and planning what she hoped to accomplish, she’d only thought about the importance of making the right impression. Picking the right clothes to wear and planning the right things to say. Above all, hiding her connection to the demi-monde. She hadn’t thought at all about how it would feel, being in the presence of this Russian Jewish man who is—and now it’s unmistakable as she looks at him—her blood relation.

  There’s something in his looks that upsets her—an exaggerated version of her own face, and Sonya’s, with a longer nose and deeper shadows under the eyes. How odd it is, at this late date in her life, to suddenly be faced with yet another sibling!

  “How can it be,” he says, “that Sonya never told me? Zaneta!”

  That name again. Although Jeannette had planned to hide her feelings, she can see that her complete lack of pleasure in the experience, and even her lurking sense of revulsion, have made themselves known. “And you are, of course, Daniel. Sonya’s brother.” Too late, she realizes she should have said, our brother. Or my brother.

  The Russian’s eyes are dark with tears. “Honestly, I wouldn’t have expected you to look so much like her, after all these years and no doubt such different lives.”