By Jack Joseph

For the “begin with ‘the two stood face to face’ and end with ‘in the end there was only one'” prompt. I’d say “enjoy,” but that’s not the point.

The two stood face to face. She was too young to understand thesignificance of the moment, but her parents knew and they beamed. Their little Emily, who had always seemed smaller than children her age had any right to be, was finally walking. As she took one more step towards the mirror and raised a hand up to her twin, her parents looked on with pride and joy. They knew tomorrow would always bring more happiness than yesterday had, and that they would finally have peace.

As the pencil marks on the doorframe got higher, Emily’s mother began to fade. Emily saw her once flushed and rosy face turned into a pale ghost of itself. They had to spend more and more time in the big white building with too much anonymous equipment and not enough smiles. Her father often seemed to spend more time in his thoughts than he did with Emily and her mother could only weakly brush the tears from Emily’s face.

While the kids at school shrieked with joy and chased each other outside the classroom window, Emily preferred the company of the girl reflected in her pencil case. She stared into her eyes every day and didn’t pay the others much attention. She never saw any of them at the cold building, so they obviously didn’t mean as much as the men in the white suits. The teacher talked to her father one day, but Emily never learned why.

Soon her mother stopped coming home at all and Emily had to ride in the back seat to see her. It was summer outside, but her mother’s room was always frigid. Her father didn’t seem to notice the temperature; he was always quietly talking with her mother. Once there was water on his face, but Emily knew it was from the cup of water he held in his shaking hands. She never wanted the water. It tasted like the unnatural, filtered scent that permeated the place. That day, Emily’s mother told her that she was so proud of how much Emily had grown. It was silly. Emily didn’t change much from day to day, so there was no reason to point out the obvious.

One day they didn’t drive to the white building. Emily was confused, but elated. She knew that if they didn’t go back there, her mother would come home soon and the men in suits would stop asking her if she wanted a cup of water. Her father sat her down on the couch and told her that her mother needed to rest, and they wouldn’t see her much anymore. His voice choked up and Emily could only understand half of what he said. Afterwards, she went back to coloring by the ornate mirror that stood by the dining-room table.

A few weeks later they went to a park where everyone was dressed in black and didn’t smile. Men and women approached her father and apologized to him. They must have kept spilling water on him, because his face was wet the entire day.

Weeks turned into months, which passed by in the blink of an eye and became years. Emily grew out of her shoes and her father kept buying new ones. At dinner, he would sigh into the plate and push food around while Emily watched her friend in the mirror eat whatever was cooked that night. Her father grew gaunt and spent too much time working late or staring at the blank television. Often, Emily spent dinner with only the company of her twin. The kids at school (who were no longer kids) talked about college and summer, but Emily focused on what she’d cook for dinner that night; she always baked to keep the house from freezing.

When her father stopped spending time in the house, she didn’t mind. She knew he was out, probably sitting on some lonely bar stool trying to find her mother in a bottle. There were days he’d come home late, but he never stayed long and soon ceased his nightly visits altogether. Emily cooked and cleaned anyway, for lack of anything better to do. But it was no matter; she always had company. On the particularly cold days, her reflection smiled at her and warmed up the empty house. Life went on.

Unnumbered winters followed countless summers and the hair on Emily’s head began to fade as her mother once had. The woman in the ornate mirror went about her tasks as she always had, but she finished them slower each day and spent more time asleep. Emily stayed on the first floor and barely looked out her window. She was grateful for her one friend; the house would have been more frigid without her, but she could nonetheless feel a chill creeping into her bones.

One evening, the two women lay down and covered themselves in a hand-knit blanket. Their eyes closed and their breathing quieted. Then, too faint to notice, it ceased completely. The night wore on and ice began to frost the windows.

The adults who were no longer children let Emily sleep on in the earth near her mother and her father. They never buried her friend. The space next to Emily’s gravestone is empty. In the end, there was only one.