As I watched my sister’s 10-year-old girl, she looked up at me and quietly asked, “Auntie, are you leaving us soon?” I asked what she meant, and she replied innocently, “Mom and Dad said Auntie is about to…” I felt dizzy with fear and rushed out of the house, trembling.
My sister Clara’s lakeside vacation home is picture-perfect. Surrounded by pine trees, the tranquil lake reflects the vibrant red of the sunset. I, Elena, a successful financial executive in New York, drove 12 hours to visit my sister’s family after three years apart. Clara constantly complained about debt and her difficult life with her alcoholic husband, Mark, so I decided to bring a $50,000 check to help.
I was sitting in an armchair on the porch, watching my 10-year-old niece, Lily, coloring. She has the same golden blonde hair as her mother and me – we’re identical twins.
Lily looked up at me with her big, round eyes, hesitated for a moment, then softly asked, “Auntie, are you leaving our house?”
I smiled, stroking her hair, “No, Lily. I’m going to stay with you for a week. Why do you ask?”
Lily bent down to the picture, pressing harder with her red crayon, then innocently replied, “Mom and Dad said Auntie is going… going into the fire tonight. And then she’ll never come back.”
The smile on my lips vanished. A cold jolt ran down my spine. “What did you say? What fire?”
“Mom said Auntie will fall asleep, and then the house will be brightly lit. Dad said after tonight, Mom won’t have to cry about money anymore.”
I felt dizzy with fear. I looked inside the house. Clara and Mark were in the kitchen. They weren’t cooking. They were whispering, and I saw Mark wiping a red plastic can. The smell of gasoline lingered, even though the can was sealed.
I looked down at the coffee table. The glass of lemon tea Clara had made for me still had ice in it. I remembered Clara’s pleading eyes when she offered me the glass: “Drink it, it’ll cool you down.”
If I had drunk it, I probably would have “fallen asleep,” as Lily said.
Chapter 2: The Escape in the Pine Forest
I didn’t dare go back inside to get my bag or car keys. My bag, containing my phone and wallet, was on the kitchen counter, right next to where Mark was standing.
“Lily,” I whispered, trying to keep my voice from trembling. “Auntie… could you get my doll for me in the car?”
I stood up, pretending to stroll leisurely toward my BMW. But as soon as I was out of sight around the corner, I ran. I didn’t run to the car – Mark had definitely noticed it. I dashed straight into the dense pine forest behind the house.
“Elena! Where are you going?” Clara’s voice came from the kitchen window. Her voice was sharp, devoid of the sweetness it had had earlier.
I didn’t answer. I ran headlong. Branches lashed at my face, thorns tearing my expensive silk dress.
Behind me, I heard Mark cursing and the sound of footsteps grinding on the gravel.
“Stop! Elena! You’re not getting away!” Mark yelled. He wasn’t hiding it anymore.
I dashed down a slope, slipped, and tumbled into a thicket. I held my breath, lying perfectly still. Mark’s footsteps stopped right above me. He was holding something heavy – probably an iron bar.
“Which way did she run?” Clara panted as she ran up.
“I don’t know. Damn it! If she gets away, the plan is ruined!” Mark hissed.
“Find her! She has the car keys, she can’t go far. I’ll block the highway.”
They split up. I waited until the footsteps faded away, then crawled back towards the lake shore. I knew there was an old dock there and maybe a neighbor’s canoe.
Chapter 3: The Fire in the Night
I ran along the lake shore for two miles until I saw the lights of a small gas station by the highway. I rushed in, panicked, my clothes tattered.
“Please! Can I borrow your phone! My sister and her husband are going to kill me!” I yelled at the cashier.
I called 911. The local sheriff arrived ten minutes later.
As I sat in the police car, trembling and wrapped in a first-aid blanket, I looked toward Clara’s house across the lake. A thick column of black smoke billowed up, staining a corner of the night sky red.
“They burned the house…” I whispered, tears welling up. “They’re going to kill me in there.”
The sheriff pressed the accelerator, speeding toward the scene.
When we arrived, the wooden house was engulfed in flames. Firefighters were desperately spraying water.
“Is anyone inside?” the sheriff asked.
I shook my head. “I escaped. Mark and Clara… they chased after me. I don’t know where they are.”
A moment later, firefighters carried two charred bodies out of the back garage – the place where the fire hadn’t spread most intensely.
I covered my mouth, vomiting violently. Even though they wanted to kill me, seeing my sister dead was still a terrible shock.
“It appears they got trapped while trying to set the house on fire,” the officer said. “We found a can of gasoline right next to them.”
Chapter 4: The Deadly Mistake
The next morning, at the police station.
I sat in the interrogation room, holding a cup of hot coffee, but my body was still ice cold. The detective walked in, his face serious.
“Ms. Elena,” he said. “We need to confirm your identity.”
“I already said,” I replied wearily. “I am Elena Vance. The victim in the fire. My sister is Clara Miller.”
The detective stared at me, then threw a file onto the table.
“You’re lying. Or you’re in severe shock.”
“What do you mean?”
“We checked your fingerprints on this cup,” he said, pointing to the coffee cup. “Your fingerprints match Clara Miller’s in the criminal database (from a drunk driving case two years ago). And more importantly…”
He opened a crime scene photo.
“The woman’s body was found in the fire… she was wearing a wedding ring engraved with ‘Mark & Clara’. But preliminary DNA testing from the remaining hair samples and dental records shows that the victim in the fire is Elena Vance.”
I jumped up, shouting, “No! I’m Elena! Clara is my twin sister! We have the same DNA! There must be a mistake!”
“The DNA is the same, but the fingerprints are different,” the detective said coldly. “And your fingerprints are Clara Miller’s.” The woman who died in the house was wearing Elena’s Rolex watch, Elena’s dress, and Elena’s ID in her bag.
I was stunned. I looked down at the clothes I was wearing. It was the worn-out tracksuit I’d grabbed from the gas station shed to replace my tattered dress.
A horrifying detail suddenly came to mind.
A week ago, Clara had come to New York to visit me. She’d stayed at my house. She’d combed her hair with my comb, drunk from my cup. Could she have stolen my fingerprints or done something to tamper with my electronic medical records? No, that was too far-fetched.
But then I looked at the mirror on the wall. My face. Clara’s face. We looked exactly alike.
And I remembered Lily’s words: “Mom and Dad said Auntie is going… going into the fire.”
They weren’t going to kill me for my insurance money. They were going to kill me as a substitute.
Chapter 5: The Twist
The Detective The detective continued, “We found Clara’s diary in the safe that wasn’t burned. In it, she wrote that she was being threatened by her sister Elena because of a debt. She feared Elena would come and kill her and her husband.”
“That’s a lie!” I yelled.
“And there’s one more thing,” the detective said. “Elena Vance’s bank account in New York. This morning, the entire $5 million balance was transferred to an account in Switzerland. The transfer was executed using iris scanning.”
I was speechless. Iris scanning. Clara and I are identical twins. Our irises… theoretically, are different, but Clara had eye surgery. Could she have done something?
No. The truth was much simpler and more terrifying.
The detective looked at me with a mixture of pity and suspicion. “Listen, Miss ‘Clara’.” “We know you and your husband (Mark) killed Elena Vance to steal her property, then burned down the house to cover your tracks. But it seems Mark died in the fire, and you were lucky enough to escape and are now trying to impersonate the victim Elena to get away with it.”
“No! I am Elena!”
“Then why don’t you have any identification?” “Why was Elena’s phone tracked as being on its way to JFK International Airport?”
I collapsed into a chair.
My phone. My wallet. I’d left it on the kitchen counter when I fled.
The horrifying truth hit me like a tsunami:
The person who died in the fire wasn’t Clara. The person who died in the fire was some homeless woman who looked like us, kidnapped by Mark and Clara, dressed in my clothes, wearing my watch, and burned alive so the police would think “Elena Vance” was dead.
And the real Clara? She wasn’t dead. She’d taken my passport, my phone, and my wallet. She’d used my iris (or some sophisticated copy that Mark—a technology engineer—had prepared) to drain my money. She was on her way to the airport, posing as “Elena Vance” on a traumatic trip after losing her sister.
And me? I was… Here. No papers. No money. Fingerprints match Clara’s criminal record. And the whole world believes I am Clara Miller – the one who just killed her sister and burned down her husband’s house.
Chapter 6: The End Behind Bars
The interrogation room door opened. A social worker led Lily in.
She looked at me. The innocent eyes of yesterday now shone with a chilling coldness. She didn’t run to hug me.
“Hello, Auntie,” Lily said.
“Lily! Tell them! I’m Elena! Your mother is the evil one!” I pleaded.
Lily turned to the detective, her clear voice ringing out: “Uncle, my mother (pointing at me) and my father conspired to kill Aunt Elena. I heard everything. My mother said Aunt Elena is very rich, and after killing her, our family will have money.” “I’m so scared.”
I was speechless. She was part of the plan too. She’d been trained. Yesterday’s “You’re about to walk into the fire” wasn’t an innocent warning. It was a threat. She wanted me to panic and run into the woods so Mark could easily trap me, or to create the false impression that “Clara” (that’s me) had escaped after committing the crime.
The detective nodded, signaling to handcuff me.
“Clara Miller, you’re arrested for first-degree murder.”
I was dragged away, screaming in despair. I was Elena Vance. I was a millionaire. I was the victim. But on paper, Elena Vance was dead in the fire, or perhaps enjoying herself in Switzerland. And I, I was just Clara – the impoverished murderer who would rot in prison.
When the iron door closed,
I saw Lily standing in the hallway, smiling. In her hand was my latest iPhone – the one the “fake Elena” had left her as a reward before running away.
I had escaped the burning house, but I could never escape the trap of identity my sister had set. I had become a shadow of myself, a shadow forever imprisoned.
