"So," Raylen asks as Mr Leed escorts Ms Allister out, "what do you think?"
"I think I want to hit you with a very heavy brick." Despite the levity of his words, there is no trace of jest or mirth in Kai's voice. "This is an unnecessarily cruel joke to play. You better explain yourself before I break your nose."
"It is not a joke. At least I did not mean for it to be one." Raylen sighs.
"You could have given me some warning in advance," complains Kai.
"Yes," Raylen replies, "but I was not sure. I was not sure if I was imagining the similarities. I wanted to see if you would react like I had."
"How could you be unsure?" Kai's irritation is not the least bit assuaged. "You should be the one most familiar with Delaney's appearance."
At that question, Raylen looks pained. "You know," he says quietly, "I do not have any photographs of her left. She systematically destroyed all of them. I think about her every day but I doubted myself after I saw Ms Allister. What if I wanted to see Delaney again so badly that I saw her in any woman with a passing resemblance?"
"Alright," Kane concedes, reluctantly accepting that explanation. "You were not hallucinating. That girl looks exactly like Delaney. She even sounds like her. It's as if Delaney had an identical twin a decade younger."
A heavy pause lingers between the two men before Raylen speaks again. "Delaney did have a younger sister—Charlotte. Do you remember her? However, that girl is currently studying at Greton University which is a good eighty kilometres from here. She cannot be Ms Allister."
"I trust," says Kai drily, "you have done some digging into Ms Allister's background already."
"I have," Raylen answers. "It is as she implies. She has no blood relation to the Sackville-West family. She only recently came to Sicaster and Delaney, as far as I am aware, had never been to Plinas."
"It's a small city with nothing to see but azaleas. Not something that would have interested Delaney."
"Exactly."
"I am," Kai prompts, "hearing a silent 'but' at the end."
"But they really look too similar for there to be truly no connection."
"Well, it is said that given that there are eight billion people in the world, each of us have seven lookalikes who are unrelated to us," suggests Kai.
"You do not really believe that."
"Indeed I do not. However, I do not know if this is grief speaking. I tried tricking the girl. If she was lying about her background then she had done her homework quite thoroughly. Plinas's sole claim to relevance—and it is really not much of a claim—is indeed azaleas instead of cherry blossoms."
Raylen closes his eyes and leans back into his chair. "I feel like someone is out to get me."
"With a personality like yours, a lot of people are out to get you. Including your soon-to-be ex-wife."
Raylen grimaces. "One thing at a time. Let us focus on the meeting with Ms Allister."
"It's so perfect it makes me feel like we're barking up the wrong tree due to unresolved grief. She is just the right level of nervous and uncertain, and I am sure whatever she said lines up with your investigative efforts. If not, you would not be sitting here, defeated. You would have a direction to pursue. In fact, you should know more about her than I do."
"I do. It is as she said. She does have a mother and elder sister living in Plinas. The mother has early onset dementia and her sister is the primary caretaker. Their father died of a heart attack a few years ago."
"Seems," Kai remarks as he spins his best friend's favourite fountain pen, "a little cruel to leave a family like that for a faraway city."
"She did look a bit guilty when this was brought up."
"Appropriately so." Kai puts down the pen before looking seriously at his friend. "What exactly are you hoping to accomplish from this?"
"I want," Raylen begins, "to know if she is related to Delaney, and if so I want to know how they are related and why she is denying their connection. I also want to know why she is appearing before me at this point in time. I want to know her motives."
"What if," Kai demands, "there is no intrigue, no deception, no subterfuge? What if things are just what they appear to be? What if this is truly just a simple and unfortunate coincidence?"
"Then…"
"You know what I think? I think you're clinging to the scraps of Delaney's memory and hoping, just hoping, you can find another thing or another person connected to her that you can treasure to make up for what you did to her."