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through the tall, buzzing grass to the glade, then down to the river. It tumbled the stones at its depths, polishing them. Charles removed his linen suit and tossed it on the bank, then flung himself into the water.
    “Come join me, Charlotte! It’s wonderful.”
    I stood shyly under the trees, dappled with green and golden sunlight. My heart was pounding, and I couldn’t tell if I was feeling his excitement or my own. We used to bathe together as children, but it had been years. My dress had so many tiny buttons it felt as if I stood there forever while he splashed like a fish, coming up to grin at me. Finally I hung my dress on a branch and waded in. I felt his gaze across the water. I took off my camisole, my knickers. I walked into that water as naked as when we were born.
    When we got out of the river that day, we put oneach other’s clothes. We were the same size. He was so beautiful in my white linen dress. And his linen suit felt so natural hanging off my shoulders and hips. Almost as if I were wearing him.
    We never told anyone of this indiscretion. It was our secret. It was one more perfect moment I would lose when he was gone.
    Charles Charles Charles Emerson. Where did you go? Why couldn’t you have received this curse along with me? We would live forever all over the world, buying and selling our beautiful things, changing our homes, our lovers, our coiffures with the ages. But always together.
    Charles contracted rheumatic fever and died when we were fifteen. I was not yet cursed; there was nothing I could do to help him. The night the disease entered his body, burning him up from within, I woke in a sweat, screaming. Our mother came to me first.
    “Go to Charles!” I shouted. But it was too late.There was nothing that could have been done anyway.
    You have visions, you have powerful thoughts, I told myself. I sat by my Charles’s bedside and tried to imagine him healthy again, running beside me through the meadows. But my visions and thoughts were useless; they did not save him. And they died with Charles. I wish that I had died then, too, so as to have ended the neverending story of Charlotte Emerson.
    My father withdrew to the study in his tower to watch the planets. My mother lay catatonic on Charles’s bed. No one could get her to move. We had to bring her her meals on a tray and spoon-feed her so she would not starve to death.
    How did I, Charlotte, twin sister of the deceased, cope with such a loss? I stood at his grave in a black dress with a high collar, a black lace veil over my dripping face. The old stone graveyard where all our ancestors were buried, where one day everyone thought that I, too, would finally be put to rest. I imagined my headstone beside Charles’s; I did not at that timeconceive of a husband, alive or dead. The slabs of gray marble, the twining rose briars, the day too bright and blue for the death of a boy. I ran out into the fields, tearing my lace dress on brambles, my hair wild around my face, my cheeks streaked with mud and tears. I ran and ran, hoping my heart would explode, but it had become too strong from trying to keep up with Charles all those years. It betrayed me and has continued to do so for almost a century.
     
    What else did I do? What would you do? If William Stone Eliot had materialized one Halloween evening, dressed as the devil, more handsome than any young man you had ever seen except the one who was gone, and offered you everything, would you not have accepted?
     
    I told none of this to Jared Pierce, of course. I knew he was ill with sorrow. I accepted his scorn.
    When I looked at him, I saw a strange vision, likethe ones I used to have when I was mortal. I saw Jared Pierce stripping off his clothing and walking into the sea.
    I said, “If you ever need me, come to me. Maybe I can help in some way.”
    He looked as if he might spit. “Just leave me alone,” he said
    There was nothing more I could do. Before he could say anything more, I was gone