Audrey Niffenegger - Her Fearful Symmetry

Please let me know if you care to accept Ms. Noblin’s estate on these terms. I am always available to answer any questions you may have in regard to this matter.

Ms. Noblin’s executor is Robert Fanshaw. He will be your neighbour if you accept your aunt’s bequest as he lives in the flat just below hers. Mr. Fanshaw can also assist you in matters pertaining to the estate.

Regards,

Xavier Roche

Roche, Elderidge, Potts & Lefley LLP-Solicitors

54D Hampstead High Street

Hampstead, London, NW3 1QA

Julia and Valentina exchanged looks. Julia flipped to the next page. The handwriting was disturbingly similar to Edie’s.

Dear Julia and Valentina,

Hello. I was hoping to meet you both someday, but now that won’t happen. You might wonder why I am leaving all my flotsam and jetsam to you and not to your mother. The best reason I can give is that I feel rather hopeful about you. I wonder what you might make of it all. I thought it might be interesting, even fun.

Your mother and I have been estranged for the last twenty-one years. She can tell you about that if she wants to. You may think that the conditions of my will are a bit harsh; I’m afraid you will just have to decide for yourselves whether to accept on these terms. I am not trying to create discord in your family. I’m trying to protect my own history. A bad thing about dying is that I’ve started to feel as though I’m being erased. Another bad thing is that I won’t get to find out what happens next.

I hope you will accept. It gives me great pleasure to think of the two of you living here. I don’t know if this makes a difference, but the flat is large and full of amusing books, and London is an amazing place to live (though rather expensive, I’m afraid). Your mother tells me you have dropped out of college but that you are autodidacts; if so, you may enjoy living here very much.

I wish you happiness, whatever you may choose to do.

With love,

Elspeth Noblin

There were more sheets of paper, but Julia put the sheaf down and began pacing around the living room. Valentina perched on the back of an armchair and watched Julia orbiting the coffee table, the sofa, then winging off to circle the dining room table a few times. London, thought Valentina. The thought was large and dark, the word was like a giant black dog. Julia stopped, turned and grinned at Valentina.

“It’s like a fairy tale.”

“Or a horror movie,” said Valentina. “We’re, like, the ingénues.”

Julia nodded, resumed pacing. “First, get rid of the parents. Then, lure the unsuspecting heroines to the spooky old mansion-”

“It’s only a flat.”

“Whatever. Then-”

“Serial killers.”

“White slavery.”

“Or it’s like, you know, Henry James.”

“I don’t think people die of consumption any more.”

“They do in the Third World.”

“Yeah, well, the UK has socialised medicine.”

Valentina said, “Mom and Dad won’t like it.”

“No,” said Julia. She ran her fingers across the dining-room table and discovered a bunch of crumbs. She went into the kitchen, moistened a washcloth and wiped the table.

Valentina said, “What happens if we don’t accept?”

“I don’t know. I’m sure it says in the letter somewhere.” Julia paused. “You can’t seriously be thinking about not accepting? This is totally what we’ve been waiting for.”

“What’s that, sweetie?” Edie stood squinting at them from the archway between the living room and the hallway. Her hair was mussed and she had a generally crumpled aspect. Her cheeks were very pink, as though someone had pinched them.

Julia said, “We got a letter.” Valentina scooped it off the side table and brought it to her mother. Edie looked at the return address and said, “I can’t possibly deal with this before I’ve had my coffee.” Valentina went to pour her a cup. Edie said, “Julia, go wake up your dad.”

“Um…”

“Tell him I said so.”

Julia bounded down the hall. Valentina heard her shrieking “Dad-deeeeeeee” as she opened their parents’ bedroom door. Nice, Valentina thought. Why not just use an ice pick? Edie went hunting for her reading glasses. By the time Jack lumbered into the dining room she had read the first few pages of the letter and was making her way through the will.

Jack Poole had once been handsome, in a corn-fed, college-athlete sort of way. His black hair now had a sumptuous grey streak. He wore it longer than the other guys at the bank. He was quite tall and towered over his petite wife and daughters. The years had coarsened his features and thickened his waistline. Jack wore suits so much of his waking life that on the weekends he liked to be slovenly. At the moment he was wearing an ancient maroon bathrobe and a splitting, enormous pair of sheepskin slippers.

“Fee, fi, fo, fum,” Jack said. This was an old joke, the rest of it lost in the mists of the twins’ earliest childhood. It meant, Get me some coffee or I will eat you. Julia poured a cup for her father and set it before him. “Okay,” he said. “I’m up. Where’s the fire?”

“It’s Elspeth,” said Edie. “She’s not just leaving it to them, she’s prying them away from us.”

“Say what?” Jack held out his hand and Edie put part of the letter into it. They sat next to each other, reading.

“Vindictive bitch,” Jack said, without much emotion or surprise. Julia and Valentina sat down at the table and watched their parents. Who are these people? What happened? Why did Aunt Elspeth hate them? Why do they hate her? The twins widened their eyes at each other. We’ll find out. Jack finished reading and groped in his bathrobe pocket for his cigarettes and lighter. He put them on the table but did not light one; he glanced at Valentina, who frowned. Jack put his hand over the pack to reassure himself that it was there. Valentina took her inhaler from her sweatshirt pocket, set it on the table and smiled at her father.

Edie looked up at Valentina. “If you don’t accept, most of it goes to charity,” she said. The twins wondered how much of their conversation she had overheard. Edie was reading a codicil of the will. It instructed someone named Robert Fanshaw to remove all personal papers from the flat, including diaries, letters and photographs, and bequeathed these papers to him. Edie wondered who this Robert person was, that her sister had made him custodian of all their history. But the main thing is she’s arranged for the papers to not be in the flat when the twins arrive. That was the thing Edie had most feared, the intersection of the twins and whatever Elspeth had left in the way of evidence.

Jack put the letter from Elspeth on the table. He sat back in his chair and looked at his wife. Edie held the will at arm’s length and scowled at it, rereading. You don’t seem all that surprised, darling, thought Jack. Julia and Valentina were watching Edie read. Julia looked rapt, Valentina anxious. Jack sighed. Although he had been trying to push his daughters out of the ranch house and into the real world, the world he had in mind was college, preferably an Ivy League college on a full scholarship. The twins’ SAT scores were almost perfect, though their grades were wildly uneven and by now their transcripts would give any director of admissions pause. He imagined Julia and Valentina safely ensconced at Harvard or Yale, or even at Sarah Lawrence; heck, Bennington would be okay. Valentina glanced at him and smiled, raised her nearly invisible eyebrows just slightly. Jack thought about Elspeth as he had last seen her, weeping in line at the airport. You don’t remember her, girls. You have no idea what she was capable of. Jack had been relieved when Elspeth died. I didn’t realise you had any more tricks up your sleeve, Miss Noblin. He had never failed to underestimate her. He stood up, scooped his cigarettes and lighter into his palm and headed for the den. He shut the door, leaned against it and lit up. At least you’re dead. He inhaled smoke and let it stream through his nostrils slowly. One Noblin sister is the most anyone should have to cope with in a lifetime. He considered that he had ended up with the right sister, after all, and was thankful. He stood smoking, and thought about other ways things might have turned out. By the time Jack reentered the dining room he felt steadier, almost cheerful. Wonderful substance, nicotine.