The Other Her - R. S. LaSalle

Chapter 1

Siobhan Randal had built her life on routine. Not because she loved it. Because the routine didn’t ask questions, it didn’t dig into her mind and ask for things she couldn’t give.

It didn’t wake you up at 2 a.m. with half-formed memories or leave you staring at the ceiling, replaying things you couldn’t change. Routine was predictable. Contained.

Safe enough to breathe inside.

“Luis, if you chug that, you’re going to regret it.”

“I won’t,” he said, already tipping the bottle back.

“You say that every time,” Oscar muttered, lacing up his shoes at the table. The twins couldn’t have looked less alike. Oscar had dark brown hair and matching eyes, and Luis had dirty blond hair and blue eyes. “And every time you regret it.”

Siobhan didn’t look up from the counter as she slid a plate of eggs toward them. “He’s committed to the lesson. Let him learn it.”

Luis paused mid-sip, narrowing his eyes. “You’re supposed to be on my side.”

“I am,” she said calmly. “I’m on the side of natural consequences.”

Paul snorted from the hallway, leaning against the frame with his arms crossed. Unlike the twins, he had blond hair and brown eyes. “That sounds like a threat.”

“It’s not a threat,” she replied, finally glancing over her shoulder. “It’s a guarantee.”

The twins dissolved into quiet bickering, but Paul stayed where he was, watching her.

He’d been doing that more lately. Watching. Not suspicious, exactly, but like he was trying to solve something and hadn’t figured out how to ask yet. Siobhan grabbed her coffee and took a slow sip, giving herself a second before meeting his gaze.

“What?” she asked, eyeing him like a challenge.

“Nothing,” he said quickly, pushing off the wall. “Just... making sure you’re not poisoning them.”

“Tempting,” she said dryly. “But if I did, you’d never know.”

He smiled, but it didn’t quite settle. Something lingered underneath it, tight, restless, unfinished.

Three weeks. Three weeks until he left for the Marines. She didn’t say anything about it. Neither did he. Instead, he moved into the kitchen, opening drawers as if he’d never lived there before. “Where’s my charger?”

“Top drawer.” She took another sip of her coffee.

He froze, hand halfway to the cabinet. “You didn’t even look.”

“I don’t need to.”

He shook his head, a small laugh breaking through. “That’s still weird.”

“Efficient,” she corrected.

“Suspicious,” Luis added.

“Impressive,” Oscar countered.

“Correct,” Siobhan said, taking another sip of coffee.

After that, the house settled into its usual rhythm: loud, chaotic, alive. Shoes thudding against the floor, backpacks dragged instead of carried, someone complaining about something that didn’t matter in the grand scheme of anything.

Siobhan let herself stand there for a moment, just watching it. Letting it sink in. Memorizing it. Five years ago, this house had been quiet. Too quiet to stand. Her husband’s presence gone in an instant, ripped away by a brutal accident. She’d retreated into herself after that, closing off, surviving more than living for a long while. She’d worked hard to make sure it never felt like that again.

“Alright,” she said, setting her mug down. “Shoes on, bags up. If you miss the bus, I’m not driving you.”

“That’s cold,” Luis said, whining and dramatically throwing his head back.

“That’s life,” she replied.

The twins scrambled, suddenly motivated, grabbed their things, and headed for the door in a rush of movement and noise.

Paul hung back. Of course he did. He slung his bag over one shoulder, watching her again. “You working today?”

There it was. Casual tone. Not a casual question. Siobhan didn’t miss it.

“Yeah,” she said, turning back to the counter. “I’m going to spend a few hours on the book.”

“The book,” he repeated, like he didn’t quite believe her.

She could hear the skepticism in it. It wasn’t an outright challenge. He wasn’t there yet, but close.

“It’s called a hobby,” she said lightly. “People have them.”

“You’ve never had one before.”

“People change.” She sipped her coffee one more time and set it in the sink.

He didn’t respond right away. Siobhan could feel his eyes on her back, weighing it, turning it over. He wasn’t wrong. She hadn’t had hobbies before. Not real ones. Not since her husband died. A beat passed.

“You good?” he asked, a hint of concern in his eyes.

Siobhan turned, leaning back against the counter like the question hadn’t landed any differently than the others.

“Yeah,” she said. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Paul shrugged, but it wasn’t careless. “I don’t know. You’ve just been... I don’t know. Busy.”

She held his gaze for a second longer than necessary. Then, she gave him just enough truth to satisfy him. “Just trying to stay ahead of things.”

He nodded slowly. Not fully convinced. But willing to let it go. For now.

“Alright,” he said, heading toward the door. “I’ll see you after work.”

“After work,” she echoed.

He smirked, then stepped outside, immediately yelling at the twins who had missed the bus and now needed a ride to school. The house went quiet. Not empty. Not like before. But quieter in a way that settled into the walls. Siobhan stood there after the door shut, listening to the refrigerator hum and the last echo of her children’s voices fade from the walls. Then she exhaled. The shift was immediate.

She walked back to the table and moved a stack of papers aside. Underneath them sat her laptop. Beside the laptop, her phone screen lit briefly with an old photo notification of Abi in uniform, smiling too wide, one arm thrown around Paul’s shoulders like she owned the world. The photo was six months old. Abi had sent it after an argument, no apology, just the image and one message beneath it: Don’t be dramatic, Mom. I’m fine.

Siobhan looked at it for half a second longer than she meant to. Then she turned the phone face down. She rested her hand on it for a second, staring at nothing in particular. Almost like she knew something was missing, even if she couldn’t name it. Her work was private; her kids thought she was working on a book. One day, she might actually do that. She sat at the table, put on her reading glasses, and opened her laptop.

A knock hit the front door. Three sharp raps, evenly spaced.

Siobhan froze.

Anyone could knock three times. But her body recognized the rhythm before her mind accepted it. The knock came again in the same rhythm.

Her hand slid slowly off the laptop. She crossed the room quietly and told herself nothing was wrong. By the time she reached the door, her expression had settled back into something neutral. Calm. Practiced. Almost normal. She opened it.

And just like that, normal was gone.

Jason McCord stood on her porch like a ghost she hadn’t buried properly, older, harder, but unmistakable. For a second, she saw the younger version of him beneath the years—the man who knew too much, survived too much, and still had the nerve to come to her door.

“Siobhan.”

She didn’t say his name. Didn’t invite him in. Didn’t move. “You’re a long way from where you’re supposed to be,” she said.

His mouth twitched slightly. “You shouldn’t be here,” she insisted.

“No,” he said. “I shouldn’t.”

Silence stretched between them. Heavy. Familiar. Dangerous in a way that hadn’t dulled with time. Siobhan shifted slightly, just enough to block his line of sight into the house.

“You should’ve called anyone else,” she said.

“I did,” Jason replied. “Then I came to the only person who would actually find her.”

Jason’s gaze flicked past her for a fraction of a second, taking in what he needed before settling back on her. His voice dropped.

“There was an incident this morning.”

The world seemed to narrow around her. She stopped being involved in incidents a long time ago.

“What kind of incident?”

“A naval vessel was bombed and boarded.”

Her pulse didn’t spike. Her breathing stayed steady, controlled, the way it had been trained to. But something deep inside her shifted, locking into place with a precision she hadn’t felt in years.

“Which one?” she asked.

Jason hesitated. Just long enough. Her eyes narrowed, something sharper cutting through the calm.

“Don’t.”

“USS Halcyon.”

For a second, the world tilted. Not visibly. Not enough for Jason to see. But inside her, everything went still.

“Abi’s ship,” she said, her voice quieter now, but no less steady.

Jason nodded.

Behind her, the house remained unchanged, quiet, ordinary, untouched by the weight of what had just been said. The low hum of the refrigerator filled the kitchen, steady and familiar, while the old wood in the walls creaked softly as it always did. Everything continued exactly as it had moments before, indifferent to the shift that had just taken place, as if her world hadn’t quietly fractured beneath her feet.

“Casualties?” she asked, her voice even despite the tightening in her chest.

“Unknown.”

Siobhan held his gaze for a fraction longer, searching for something more than that single word, but it didn’t come.

“Survivors?” she pressed.

“Some.”

The answer settled uneasily. Vague. Carefully chosen. And far too familiar to ignore. Her hand found the edge of the door frame, fingers tightening against it not out of weakness, but to anchor herself, to keep everything else from slipping. “And the rest?” Jason didn’t look away.

“10 missing.”

The words didn’t echo. They didn’t need to. They settled in, heavy and suffocating, filling the space between them with something final and impossible to ignore. Siobhan swallowed, forcing everything down, every instinct, every flicker of panic that threatened to rise. For a moment, she said nothing, even as the answer began to take shape in her mind, unwanted, inevitable. Then she asked the only question that mattered. “Why are you here?”

Jason didn’t hesitate.

“Because the bosses don’t think it was random.”

Of course it wasn’t. Siobhan held his gaze, something colder settling in behind her eyes as the pieces began to fall into place. She had known, years ago, that this life, this quiet, was never going to last. Some part of her had always been waiting for it to break. At least Llyod wasn’t here to see it happen. He had believed she could outrun this life. Some days, she had almost believed it too.

He stepped closer, lowering his voice.

“And because your daughter wasn’t just on that ship.”

Something in her chest tightened, not enough to break her composure, but enough that she felt it. Enough that it mattered. Jason paused, just long enough for the weight of it to build. Then he said it.

“She was taken.”

Siobhan didn’t move. For one impossible second, she saw Abi at eight years old, barefoot in the kitchen, arguing that cereal counted as dinner. Then the image vanished.

“Tell me she fought,” Siobhan said.

Jason’s expression tightened. “From what we can tell, she didn’t make it easy.”