That night the sky was expressionless (if you overlook the stars). It had a colorless blankness the twins would come to intimately know.

Their father had been a soldier who’d seen some of the world. A steadfast Catholic, he always attended daily Mass at the still-dark hour of 7 a.m. That morning he gazed at the dark wood altar, yet again admiring the intricate perfection of wood so flawlessly shaped and sanded that it seemed as though it hadn’t been made but had always existed in this form. The whole church felt like this – the stone walls, the stained-glass and Stations of the Cross, even the empty space overhead stretching up and up to the high peaked roof.

As he returned his attention to the Priest, who was just then turning bread and wine into body and blood, he decided on names for his daughters: India and Indiana. He smiled. And both girls would have the same middle name. Mary. It had been his mother’s name.

When the twins were seven years old, they wore matching blue frocks on Easter. By then their black hair had grown long, though their mother cut their bangs with a rusty pair of scissors, a straight line just above their eyebrows.

For Easter Mass they wore these dresses with black patent leather shoes and white tights, and when neither one was smiling, which was often so, they were identical.

In that town the sky can be gray nearly all year: murky like dirty snow and slushy gravel roads.

“Like your wool sweater when it’s wet,” said India.

“Like the sharp end of the shovel,” Indiana replied.