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Zusatztext "A well-written novel about complex family relationships."— Library Journal Informationen zum Autor Gwendolen Gross is the author of five critically acclaimed novels, including The Orphan Sister and The Other Mother . She has worked with porcupines and kinkajous as a science demonstrator, on mountain tops as a naturalist, as an editor, opera singer, writing instructor, and mom. She lives in Northern New Jersey with her husband, daughter, and son. Klappentext The acclaimed author of "The Other Mother" returns with a timely and touching novel about a set of triplets--two identical and one fraternal--who find their alliances suddenly shifting when a dark family secret comes to light. ONE W hen my sister Odette called to tell me Dad hadn’t shown up for rounds, my first guilty thought was that he’d had a heart attack on the Garden State Parkway, that his Benz had swerved, swiveled, and scraped against the railing near exit 142 until it flipped into the opposite lane like a beetle on its back, ready for the picking of crows. He’d fumbled for the aspirin he always kept in the cup holder, in a wood and silver pillbox he couldn’t unclasp when it mattered at last. Blood would mat the silvery-red mix of his still-thick hair, his eyes would be open, he’d be dead, and I’d never have a chance to prove him wrong. Of course, my second thought was to feel horrible for my first. “No, he didn’t say anything to me,” I said. I almost suggested she call Olivia, but I knew she didn’t need to, because Odette and Olivia, my twin sisters, know each other’s opinions, their desires and mistakes, without speaking in words. Though sometimes I am party to this peculiar frequency, sometimes I stand feeling like the last chosen for a team because they are identical twins, and I am their triplet, number three. I don’t match physically (they are four inches taller than I and my eyes are hazel green to their clear, cold blue) or hear as clearly in the ether of their silent communication. “I think I’ll try Mom again,” said Odette. She was using her distinctive stage whisper that meant she wanted everyone standing in that hospital room at Robert Wood Johnson to know she was conducting important business on her cell phone. She was allowed to have a cell phone. She was a doctor. “I can,” I sighed, thinking I didn’t want to. “Just wait,” asserted Odette, but we both already knew I’d procrastinate awhile and then go seek out Mom. “Dinner he would miss—rounds, no. I’ll start and give him another hour,” Odette finished. If I were talking to anyone else, I’d have been unable to relinquish my frustration. Even Olivia didn’t root me to myself like magnet to steel. I did feel calmer when I heard both my sisters’ voices. And I could tell them apart—Odette’s had an almost imperceptible deepness, a quiet, sad quality, a clarinet, while Olivia was all flute, in all circumstances. No one else could hear this, however. We were polyzygots—they were identical, monozygotic, one egg and one sperm met and then split into two zygotes. I was fraternal—another egg, another sperm, but the same timing, which means I was like an ordinary sibling in terms of genetic material, and they were halves of a whole. We had this special triplet quirk called Party Trick we developed in elementary school, time of Ouija boards and Monopoly (you would never want to play a strategy game with us; we knew how to team up and committed our own form of natural selection): we could speak word by word, each of us in turn, with the fluidity and natural cadence of a single person speaking. We were sleepover favorites when we were little; this was captivating, no matter how dull the subject. “We” “don’t” “like” “ham” “because” “it’s” “too” “salty.” It wasn’t practiced. We had a pact to do it whenever one o...
