My twin sister likes to come and talk to me at random hours. Most days, she likes to work outside in the yard. Recently, she was weeding the lilies of the valley bed. Othertimes, she likes to sit in the shadows cast by my hydrangea tree.

She slips around my yard, walks along the boxwood bushes bordering my yard. She likes to run her fingers along their stubby branches from the last time my husband trimmed them back.

Last night, she sat on my mattress and waited. My daughter and I put my bed downstairs given Leia, my older dog, blew out her knee and can’t go up and down stairs for a while.

My husband had found a piece of property but couldn’t figure out why it pinged his memory. He knew it was important but not why. He asked me about it. I thought for a second and then casually said that it was where my brother and sister-in-law live.

And then I quickly amended my statement. My sister-in-law lives there.

My twin hovered in the living room doorway. She knew she had been summoned. She lingered, waiting for me as I bit my lower lip and stared at my phone screen. The YouTube video continued in its banal intonation. I could feel my husband looking at me.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“Life,” I replied. “It’s just how life rolls.”

She touched the doorway’s frame. Took a hesitant step forward but I refused to look at her. Maybe she’d go away. Amble back outside and sit on the front porch. Stroll past the dying lilac bushes that will somehow come back next year. She can go to the back section of the yard and stare, admiringly, at the fallow field that stretches behind our house.

My husband repeated his apology. I repeated my statement that life happens. He didn’t mean to cause any harm. There was no harm. It was just a casual mistake. A moment of wrong present-tense that I edited into the correct present tense. Not that big a deal. Just push forward. Right?

My twin lifted a hand. A shallow beckon. I tried to ignore her as my feet left the ottoman and planted themselves on the floor. I brushed past her, refusing to acknowledge her presence, as I went to my office and squeezed in at my desk.

I stared at the fake-Lego steampunk bridge I am building for a former student’s wedding. I stared at the piles of books. The pile of unwritten in journals. The stack of mail that needs to be shredded.

She noiselessly came in behind me. Sat on the mattress and smoothed out the wrinkles in the white fleecy blanket I love to snuggle under.

Tears. Just a few. That should be enough. A quick moment of sadness. Then, head back into the living room. Pick up my book that I have been meaning to read. Finish playing the game. Or watch the documentary about the missing princes in the Tower of London (War of the Roses stuff). Maybe learn some more about the property my husband was researching.

I choked. And the sobbing began. My twin leaned over. Rested her hands on the back of my squeaky chair. I could feel her leaning her forehead against the cracked vinyl back, the weight of her being pushing through the clumpy cushioning.

For the next hour or so, I pendulumed between a pretense of normalcy and surrendering to the grief. I see my pain as my ghostly twin sister, born when my brother died. She follows my footsteps, settles in the back of my classroom, rides beside me in my car. Often, she likes to pet my dogs, rubbing them behind their ears. She is gentle. Placid.

She is always present, though. She is that little bit of my heart that aches. The dark crescent moons slung under my eyes. My unfocused gaze in the mirror. She holds no malice, no ill-intent.

She’s just present. Lingering in the garden, waiting for the moment when a thread snaps and reality jerks back into focus.