Rayla’s body goes rigid and she stops.

“Will you tell me?” Mira asks, looking past me straight at Rayla.

In the half second it takes for our grandmother to turn and face Mira’s question, I brace myself for whatever truths she may reveal.

“Less than one percent. There’s a less than one percent chance a woman’s only pregnancy will result in multiples,” Rayla says, lowering the full-sized umbrella that doubles as her walking stick. “Twins. The Achilles heel of the Rule of One.”

Mira presses forward, drawn in by Rayla’s hushed words.

“If a woman is in that unlucky percentile, she will be quickly taken away by the Family Planning Division, by men and women like your father,” Rayla continues. “After she has given birth, she is denied the right to see both her newborns. The doctors swiftly and brutally tell the mother to choose.”

I close the distance between my sister and me, wanting, needing, to be next to her as we finally learn the harrowing fate we were both spared.

“The mother always chooses her firstborn. They encourage this,” Rayla says, a dark shadow crossing her face.

“And the second-born?” Mira demands. She locks eyes with Rayla, unflinching.

My stomach lurches and my palms break into a sweat. I turn away, focusing on the faint mountains in the distance, afraid to know the answer.

“The official lie of the Family Planning Division is that the illegal multiple goes up for adoption to infertile couples willing to spend the money . . . and not ask questions,” Rayla recites the rumor Father would never authenticate. “A bullshit fantasy most Americans choose to believe because they were told to.”

Rayla drives the point of her umbrella into the ground, her usually even tone now barely containing her rage.

“But those few still willing to stare the truth straight in the face know that the second-born is not given life. They become a piece of property. Owned by the government, brainwashed, raised in coastal work camps never knowing who they are. What they are. Many are sent south across the border if the mother can’t pay the fine. An indisputable death sentence.”

Mira’s breath quickens. Her face is a hardened mask.

“All live a short, brutal existence, knowing only duty and loss,” Rayla continues. “Half a person. Half-alive.”

Slowly, I grab Mira’s slack hand.

“How do you know all this?” I manage to ask.

“Because I was forced to choose.”

I stagger, blown away by the revelation. I tighten my fingers around Mira’s hand.

“Our mother . . .” My words falter.

“Was the firstborn.”

“Did she know?” Mira asks.

“Yes. I told Lynn her truth in the end,” our grandmother says. “To make her stay.” But it was the reason she left me, her unspoken words linger audibly in the air.

Mira frees her hand from my grasp. She stares down at the dead grass, drifting away from me. Untethered from my sister, I watch Rayla inhale heavily and throw her umbrella back over her head.

“The task at hand,” she repeats decisively and recommences our march through the grassland.

Concealed within a dried-up wheat field, Rayla and I cautiously survey a quaint, sturdy farmhouse situated fifty yards ahead. While Mira continues to study the ground, lost within her own mind, I note the small sustainable garden that hugs a shed with a yellow door, and an electric vehicle charging on a gravel driveway nearby. Did we come for the car?

The lace curtain in the front window stirs.

“I won’t be long,” Rayla says. “Stay in the field.”

With a final look over her shoulder, she advances into the open lawn, leaving us under the protection of the dead wheat stalks. Body taut with unease, I watch Rayla approach the house without her weapon drawn. The screen door opens, and a middle-aged man emerges. Powerfully built and wary, he holds a sleek black baton in his hand.

My fingers curl around my new knife—Rayla told me the curved rosewood handle belonged to my mother—and I take an involuntary step forward. We should make our presence known. Let this man realize that the woman standing on his doorstep is not alone.

I draw back when Rayla removes her hat and displays her face to the man.

“You don’t recognize an old friend?” she inquires warmly.

He moves closer, hand shielded over his eyes against the sun, but conveys no sign of recognition.

“It’s been a long time, Xavier.”

“Rayla?” he says, astonished, his body relaxing at once.

My grandmother nods, and suddenly she’s in Xavier’s arms, lifted off her feet in an affectionate embrace.

“I was hoping you would come,” he says, the corners of his eyes crinkling with his brilliant smile.

I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding and turn to see what Mira thinks about Rayla’s “old friend.”

But she isn’t there.

Wandering through the hardened stalks, I track the top of Mira’s head as it bobs through the sea of wheat. She makes a series of quick turns and disappears from my view again.

I find her squatting over the cracked dirt.

“We shouldn’t separate,” I tell her. “It’s safer when we’re together.”

“I’m peeing . . . or did I need to get your permission first?”

I swallow my retort. It tastes hot and bitter and doesn’t go down easy, but I refuse to let this develop into a fight. We need each other too much to be divided.

Remaining a short distance away, I pick at a tall blade of grass, and turn toward the quiet farmhouse.

“Do you want to talk about what Rayla said?” I ask.

“Nope.”

But I do. My mind races. Our grandmother was caught with twins . . . Our own mother was a twin . . . The chances of two generations in a row having identical twins are so small, so incredibly rare.

“What can Rayla possibly be doing in there for so long?” Mira suddenly asks. She pulls up her pants in one quick motion and rises.

“We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t important—”

“She’s hiding information from us, like everyone always does,” she answers, cutting me off. She shoulders past me.

“Mira, no! Rayla told us to wait—”

But she just charges forward.

“We want answers, so let’s go and get them.”

MIRA

I prowl the two-story farmhouse. I pass three sides of its cedar exterior, testing every door and window. Bolted levers and opaque glass seal its insides from me—taunting me, goading my obsession to see.

What secrets are you keeping locked within these walls? What truths are you obscuring?

Tiptoeing, jogging, possessed with the need to know, I round the final corner of the safeguarded building, past more tinted windows and unyielding cedar walls.

“Mira, there’s no way in!” Ava whispers behind me.

But there, above the dark-red branches of a dogwood shrub, I spy my opening. I plunge into the leaves and press myself against a clear glass pane, searching for Rayla, the man with the baton, and my answers.

“Mira, get back here!” Ava orders, keeping her voice low. “You’ll be seen!”

At first I see only the three reflections of my knife through the triple-glazed windows. Then my eyes adapt, and I realize I’m staring into an unoccupied bedroom. I spot a telescope. An unmade bed. An open door.