Emily St. John Mandel - The Lola Quartet

There was an afternoon spent staggering through swamps under a wide-brimmed hat, listening to a park ranger named William Chandler talk about the new monsters that had been appearing since the early '90s. The creatures in the Florida swamps were terrifying and new, and the canals delivered the swamps to the suburbs. Experts speculated that some of the animals had been blown deep into the swamps by Hurricane Andrew— greenhouses that had held snakes had been found shattered and empty once the storm had passed— but most were abandoned pets. Small glittering lizards who'd seemed manageable enough when they were babies but then outgrew aquarium after aquarium until they'd become seven-foot-long two-hundred-pound Nile monitors with eerily intelligent eyes and extravagantly pebbled skin, perfectly capable of eating a small dog. Or Burmese pythons, purchased when small, abandoned when the owners got tired of having to feed them live rabbits. Capable of swallowing a leopard whole, William Chandler told him, and therefore capable of swallowing a human. All of these creatures multiplying in the brackish far reaches, the suburbs coming out to meet them. All Gavin could think of was the heat pressing down upon him, but he blinked hard against the spots swimming before his eyes and wrote down everything Chandler said. Insects hummed in the trees.

By night the suburbs glimmered anonymously from his window, but even by daylight it was difficult to grasp the terrain. There had been considerable development in the decade since Gavin had lived here, and nothing was quite as he remembered. The present-day Sebastian was like a dream version of his hometown, much larger than it had been, filled with unexpected shopping malls and new condominium complexes, entire new neighborhoods where once there'd been trees or swamp. Once this had been the outer suburbs but now there were suburbs that sprawled out still further, linked up with exurbs by lacework patterns of freeways. The heart of the city was difficult to find. The suburbs circled wetlands, and there were monsters in the swamps. He wrote about the pythons and the Nile monitors, William Chandler and the frightened residents who lived alongside the canals, working deep into the night in the cool light of the hotel room.

"How do you like being back in Sebastian?" his sister asked. Their schedules had finally coincided on his last night in Florida, and they'd met at a seafood restaurant near the hotel. Eilo was only thirty-two but her hair was mostly gray now, and she'd recently cut it very short against her skull. The haircut made her eyes look enormous. She was wearing a suit.

"It's exactly the way I remember it," Gavin said.

"A diplomatic response," Eilo said.

"Except even more sprawling."

"It never ends," she said. "You can drive from here to Miami without leaving the suburbs. How's Karen these days? She couldn't come with you?"

"We broke up a month ago. She moved out."

"You broke up? Even though she's pregnant?"

"She's not pregnant anymore." Gavin remembered, sitting here, that he'd thought seriously about naming the baby after Eilo.

"Gavin, I'm sorry."

"Thanks. Me too." He didn't want to talk about it. "How's the real estate business?" They spoke on the phone every couple of months, but he hadn't seen her in so long that being in her presence was unexpectedly awkward.

" Never better," she said.

"In this economy?"

"Well, I do deal exclusively in foreclosures." Eilo was looking at her plate. She hesitated a moment before she spoke again. "How's your health?"

"Fine," he said. "A bit touch and go in the summertime, but I stay indoors and take taxis when it's hot. Is something bothering you?"

"I don't know if I should tell you now," she said.

"Tell me anyway."

"Part of my job is inspecting homes. I inspected a property on Pau

line Street a few weeks ago, a place that had just been foreclosed on that week. The property owner's name was Gloria Jones. Older woman. She was taking care of a little girl."

"Taking care of her?"

"She referred to the girl as 'my ward.' I actually never saw the upstairs, so I don't know if the girl lived there or not. She was. listen, I know this sounds crazy, but the little girl looked exactly like me. It was like seeing myself as a kid."

"So she was half-white, half-Japanese?" Gavin wasn't sure where she was going with the story and was already a little bored by it.

"I was struck by her. I have to take pictures of the home for the real estate listing, and I made sure the kid was in one of the shots." She reached into her handbag and extracted a paperback. She'd placed the photograph in the middle for safekeeping.

"Oh," Gavin said. "I see what you mean." For a disoriented moment he thought he was looking at a photograph of Eilo as a little girl. European and Asian genes in delicate combination, the same straight dark hair and thin lips, the same faint scattering of freckles on her nose. It took him a moment to realize that the eyes were different. His sister's eyes were brown, and this little Eilo's eyes were blue. But the similarity was uncanny. She stood at the edge of the shot, by the window of an almost empty dining room.

"She's ten years old," Eilo said. Gavin was beginning to understand even before Eilo spoke again. "Gavin, I asked the kid her name when Gloria was out of the room. Her name's Chloe Montgomery."

"Montgomery?"

"That was when I knew," Eilo said.

"She looks exactly like you. Where is she now?"

"I have no idea. To be honest, the woman caught me taking the kid's

picture and started yelling at me, so I got out of there quickly. I drove by the house two days later, but they'd already moved out. I don't know where they went. I thought you should know."

"Can I keep the picture?"

"Yes. Of course." She was quiet for a moment. "I'm sorry," she said. "I know this can't be easy, especially given. I thought you should know."

After dinner Gavin walked out to his car and drove past his hotel on purpose. He wanted to keep driving for a while, alone in the air conditioning. He turned off his cell phone. He was thinking about the girl, the other Eilo. Thinking about trying to find her, trying to imagine what he might say if he did. My name is Gavin Sasaki. You look exactly like my sister. I had a girlfriend named Anna who disappeared ten years ago and you have her last name. I know this sounds crazy but I think we have the same genes.

On her last morning in Virginia Anna sipped her coffee and stared up at the sky. It was a clear bright day, clouds passing over blue. She was tired in a way that made the world seem insubstantial. The sun was rising and the park held a dreamlike sheen. No leaves on the trees but the air was bright. She sat on a swing with her first coffee of the morning, scuffing her shoes in the sand. Only when she looked at her daughter did she feel awake.

Chloe lay on her back in the stroller staring up at the clouds.

An n a a n d Chloe were in the park when Liam Deval came to them. Anna looked up— a man approaching over the lawn, the sunrise behind him so she couldn't see his face— and because she couldn't see who it was she assumed the worst and thought she was finished, she clutched the chains of the swing so tightly that blood began to throb in the palms of her hands, she tried to steel herself but her last thoughts raced together and all she could think of was how sad it was that she'd had so little time with her daughter. She looked at Chloe, trying to memorize the soft flush of her skin and her wide unfocused eyes, her miniature hands clenching and unclenching above the blankets, the heartbreaking smallness of her fingernails, but then Liam called out her name over the grass. Anna let her breath out all at once and blinked away tears.