“Seri is the important one,” she says again in her flat, toneless voice. “We only come out when she needs us. When she has this need, she sleeps.”
“And then she doesn’t remember what happened?”
“Yes.”
“Like she…she doesn’t remember that she and I…I mean, Iris and I…” Fuck. I have no idea how to put this shit into words. Even as I say it, it sounds insane. It is insane.
“She is not aware of your interactions with Iris.”
“Yeah,” I mutter. “That. How can she not know?” I take a long breath and adjust my position on the rough ground. I don’t understand how Seri can wake up the next day and not realize we’ve had sex, but I don’t want to say something so blunt. I feel like I’m standing on very thin ice with a deep marsh below me. “I mean, she has to realize time has passed, right?”
“Seri…compensates.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It might be best to give you an example,” Netti says. “Iris made the decision to go to Canada. She wanted to get as far away as possible to an area where no one would look for her. She made the decision to go north of Calgary. Seri rationalized that she just wanted to get away from city life and people. She is not aware of the real reason we left.”
A chill runs through me, but it’s not from the temperature.
“Who is trying to find her?” I whisper against her hair. “Is Seri…trying to hide from someone?”
“No, Seri is not,” Netti says quietly. “We needed a fresh start.”
I tense a little and hold my breath as I contemplate what this information might mean. She said Seri wasn’t hiding from someone, but she didn’t say that about herself or Iris. However, her tone is slightly off, and I’m not sure I want to ask for any more details—not just yet.
“Why do you call yourself ‘Netti’?”
“A childhood name,” she says simply. “It is what Iris called Serenity when she was young. It is a bond they have between them.”
“Do you…do you mean the Iris that’s here now?”
“Iris is sleeping.”
“I mean, the one…the one who’s in there with you—with you and Seri—or do you mean the one who died?”
“They are the same.”
“But Seri and Iris…they’re sisters, right?”
“Yes.”
“So, at one point there were two of them.”
“They are still two.”
I roll my eyes, glad she can’t see me in the dark. I’m getting nowhere with this. Again, I wish I had made notes with all the clues I have gathered so far—the differences in personalities and the inconsistencies in Seri’s story about her sister. Now that I have the opportunity to ask Netti to explain, I can’t seem to get a satisfactory answer.
“But she has always been Seri, right? Iris…Iris used to be…to be someone else.”
Netti tenses in my arms. Apparently, my question isn’t one she wants to answer. Maybe she doesn’t know. I don’t know exactly who Netti is and decide to change the question entirely.
“If Seri and Iris are sisters, who are you? How do you fit in?”
“Iris is our strength. Seri is our heart. I am the negotiator.”
“What does that mean?”
“I help Seri bridge the gaps when Iris comes around. I fill in her memories with those things that are most important and exclude those that would cause her distress.”