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before that we had been a family with somewhat regular problems; and before the divorce, long before, if I remembered correctly, we may have even been happy. Our parents had certainly loved us, even doted on us. They read to us every night, greeted us with cocoa after building snow forts in our Connecticut yard, applauded at all our school plays, took us to museums and restaurants in New York. When we were little our mother had dressed us identically, but later, around the age of nine, we began to assert some individuality and in our final year with her she not only let us be ourselves but encouraged it, allowing separate traits and even insisting on them. Julie was calm, I was easily agitated. Julie was steady, I was impulsive. Julie dressed practically, I wore costumes (or what our mother perceived as costumes; to me they were gorgeousoutfits someone ought to have photographed). Julie was the smart one, I was the pretty one.
    That was the distinction that affected us most — smart/pretty — before we matured enough to understand that as identical twins we were more or less exactly the same. Our mother was offering us the possibility of individuality. I understood that now, but since she died before she had a chance to explain herself we spent a good amount of our growing-up energy trying to negate our presumed deficiencies. Before Julie went to graduate school in marketing, she spent a year living (with me) in the New York apartment we had inherited from our father, wearing flowing skirts and writing bad poetry, trying hard to be pretty inside and out. Broke and bored, she finally packed it in, got her advanced degree with honors, bought some nice suits and began her quick professional ascent.
    And me? I had aspired to be a photographer. But instead of following my heart and photographing people on the street wearing their own concocted fashions, which was what really intrigued me, I turned to buildings, proving that I was serious and smart, and slowly and painfully failed over six lean years to establish myself as a freelance architectural photographer before enrolling in graduate school to become a physical therapist. I had realized I needed to work with people in a way that had some impact; as a PT, I could literally touch them and see the effect of my work. The job at the prison had been my entry-level launch pad to a new career.
    Once Julie and I grew up, the idea of a smart/pretty discrepancy lost its poignancy. We both came to realizethat we were about as smart and as pretty as each other — we were identical twins, after all. Our differences were cultivated. External trappings and divergent choices might have differentiated us, but they had never defined us and they never would. Julie’s eyes were my eyes and mine were hers. When I found her looking at me now, I knew what she was thinking.
    “If Mom and Dad were here tonight,” I said, “they’d be giving us milk and cookies and telling us everything would be all right. They would have liked Bobby, don’t you think? They would have known he had nothing to do with that woman’s murder.”
    Julie dropped her foot from her knee to the floor and shifted forward in her seat. “ I know he didn’t, A.”
    “That detective. He seems okay, basically. But I really think he’s wasting his time on Bobby. Don’t you?”
    “Totally.”
    “I mean, infidelity is one thing, Jules. But murder? No way.” I shuddered at the recollection of Zara’s opened neck. “How much do you know about her?”
    “Nothing, really. She was around our age, I think, maybe a little younger. All my neighbors who used her liked her. She worked hard. Everyone said she was honest. I’d never heard about the shady brother until tonight.”
    “Wouldn’t it be crazy if — no, that’s a ridiculous thought.”
    “If what?” she asked.
    My eyes landed on one of Julie’s empty boots, where at the ankle a brass ring united straps of leather.
    Then I looked at her: “I was going to say,