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a head taller than everyone else, his green eyes peeking out between shaggy blond hair. He’d been a handsome kid, athletic and muscular in his pressed suit. Confident, too, like he could take on the whole world. I wondered what had changed to make him so hard in some ways and so soft in others. When had the Big Secret happened?
    Never remembering my parents in church, I pulled a handful of directories off a bookshelf. No family pictures appeared in the pages after my birth. I backtracked through the directories and found my dad and Mom posing two years prior to my birth. They sat in front of the gray backdrop, my dad’s hand on Mom’s shoulder, a smile on his face. Mom held a suit-clad baby in her arms.
    Their names were typed under the picture.
    Mr. and Mrs. Dan Baker and Jimmy.
    I blinked the words away. A typo. It had to be a typo. My stomach lurched and my temples pounded. I sunk to the floor and massaged my fingers into the pain.
    “Gemini?” Pastor Olivier stood beside me. A melody in tune with my soul filled the air.
    I swung my gaze to a clock above the pictures. Thirty minutes had passed since I first came in, yet I didn’t remember any of it.
    “You play beautifully.”
    Only then did the music falter. Sweat washed over my body and mingled with the sour stench of fear. I sat at a piano, my fingers flying over the ivory keys. I slammed my hands down to stop the music. The discord matched the pounding in my head. “I don’t play.”
    “But, isn’t that Bach?” Granny’s pastor gazed at me, his question heavy in the air.
    I locked my hands in my lap to steady them and continued as calmly as I could. “I was just fiddling around.”
    Pastor Olivier’s brows scrunched, then straightened out. “I see.”
    Yet, he clearly did not, and neither did I. While I played first chair oboe, I couldn’t play the piano. Certainly not Bach. The memory gaps and blackouts came too fast now, my odd behavior replacing normal living. First the basketball game, and now this.
    And at the computer.
    No. That was a nap.
    “Are you sure?”
    I shook my head to clear the fog from the room and the recesses of my mind. “Sure about what?”
    “That you’re okay? It’s time.” Pastor Olivier’s voice came out a gentle nudge, and before I could waffle, he tucked my hand in the crook of his arm and guided me through the church to the sanctuary.
    While the front pews had been reserved, only my parents sat in the cordoned-off family section. Travis sat a few rows behind them with his grandfather. Keeping them as my focal point, I walked down the aisle, carrying the urn in my hands.
    Sweat rolled down my back. It caught in my bra and soaked into my knit dress. My fingers dampened, and my grip loosened. Visions flashed through my head.
    The urn slipping from my fingers.
    Bursting open.
    Filling the air with clouds of ash. Bone dust settling around me, making its way into my nose, choking off my air.
    Breathe.
    Listening to the voice in my head, I sucked in a deep breath and tightened my grip on reality and the urn. By the time I reached the altar, I could barely stand under the weight of Granny’s remains. I set the urn on the pedestal and sat alone in the front pew. Behind me and through the soft strains of the organ, Mom’s whispers made their way to my ears.
    “…should sit with Gemini.”
    A grunt, followed by a gasp. I’d seen it enough to know. My dad’s hand clamping down on Mom’s leg. Or was it a pinch to the soft part of her arm? Mom changing her mind, appeasing my father’s anger. Fueling the cycle. But what had started that cycle? What had turned the confident teen cold?
    I stared straight ahead and concentrated on the flower arrangements. Pastor Olivier stood at the altar. His mouth moved, but no sound came out. His silent voice wrapped around me like a thick wool blanket until it covered my body, my eyes, my ears.
    A hand shook my shoulder. The pastor knelt before me. “Are you okay?”
    I nodded. The