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Robert's condition had grown increasingly stable over the last several days and it was Rosalind's discovery that music helped anchor his mind which proved to be the key. Earlier in the week, Rosalind had relocated the phonograph to the bedroom and her record collection began the transition as well, slowly piling in great stacks on the floor as Robert listened his way through her library. As his balance and coordination improved, Rosalind began allowing Robert to select and put on the records himself. Initially, Rosalind supported his weight arm-in-arm during the short walk to the phonograph, but eventually he progressed to being able to make the trip on his own power, unsupervised.
One quiet evening, Rosalind sat in the bedroom in an armchair—another piece of furniture that had migrated upstairs—reading a book. From above her page, she saw Robert climb out of bed and make his way to the phonograph. There was no need for her to put down her reading, she was confident in his ability to perform the task unassisted. She returned her attention back to her page, absentmindedly listening to the sounds of Robert winding up the phonograph and placing a record on the spindle. The record began to spin and the warm, gentle tones of a solo piano began to drift across the room. The song reached Rosalind's ears and the recognition pierced her heart like a dagger, any attention she held elsewhere completely forgotten. While Robert had never played this piece, Rosalind knew it all too well. It was one she hadn't heard in a very, very long time.
Robert, making his way back to the bed, caught the vacant expression on his twin's face. He started towards her, growing concerned.
"Rosalind? Are you alright?"
She did not immediately respond, still staring off into space, lost in the music and memories washing over her.
"Rosalind?" he asked again, placing his hand on her upper arm. Focus returned to her eyes suddenly and she turned her head up to look at Robert then averted her eyes. "My apologies, I just…" she trailed off.
"Rosalind, what's wrong?"
Rosalind sighed. "It's nothing." she said, entirely too quickly to sound natural. Robert sat down on the arm of the chair.
"I know us entirely too well to not notice that evasion," Robert said softly, "What's bothering you?" Rosalind shifted in her seat, still avoiding eye contact. Robert gently squeezed her arm in his hand, softly caressing it with his thumb. "Sister, you know there is nothing in this world you can't tell me." Rosalind exhaled and met Robert's gaze.
"Robert, do you remember how Mother played the piano when we were children?" she began.
"Yes, it always sounded so wonderful and beautiful."
"It did. I could spend hours sitting there listening or skipping around the room as she played. But there was one song, my favorite of all when I was just a girl…" A look of understanding came across Robert's face at those most recent words. "This one, I take it?" he asked, already sure of the answer.
"Yes." she replied. "I would have Mother play it over and over. It was so beautiful and sweet, yet so lonely. It filled me with such a strong feeling of loneliness, a type that I didn't even have the words yet to understand or describe"
"Do you want me to turn it off?" asked Robert. "No," Rosalind replied, "This is good… I think."
"It's just…" she continued, "When I was young, I would just lay there listening and close my eyes, dreaming so desperately to have someone to dance to the song with. Not just anyone, but… the one."
Robert listened silently, attentively, keeping his eyes locked with hers.
"As I got older, that aching loneliness just got worse, more driving. I mean, you lived this life too, you know how it was. Never any time or care for dancing or dance partners. But no matter how much I buried any fleeting attraction or desires in my studies and work, the loneliness was always still there. It is still there."
She turned her head away, suddenly struck by a pang of an emotion that she couldn't quite place.
"I'm sorry Robert, I don't even know where I'm going with this…"
Robert took Rosalind's hand in his and stood up from the arm of the chair, prompting her to rise with him.
"Rosalind, my dearest sister, I should think that you are asking me for a dance." He smiled gently and sweetly. Without breaking eye contact, he raised her hand to chest-level and kissed it. "Well? Are you?"
Rosalind's freckled cheeks were flushed bright red, embarrassment clear on her face, yet she kept her eyes locked with Robert's. She nodded enthusiastically, the only response she could manage. Holding hands, Robert led Rosalind back to the phonograph and he reset the record.
As the music began again, Robert took his sister's left hand in his own and his right arm reached around her. Rosalind's heart skipped a beat as his hand found her lower back. His hands were so firm and supportive and she felt so small and helpless in them, in the best way possible. They waltzed round and round, Rosalind hugging her body closer and closer to her brother as the song went on. They danced until their bodies became one, a single form stepping and spinning in perfect unison, two hearts beating together in time with the music. Rosalind had never felt more at peace and whole in her entire life.
When the record finally came to an end, they remained as they were for several moments, Rosalind laying her head against the chest of her other half.
"Rosalind?" Robert finally asked, gently, looking down at the woman pressed against him. Her face buried in his chest, Robert heard the sniffles and small, ragged breaths of fought-back tears. With a slight start, he made to pull his hand from hers but she clenched it with an iron grip, refusing to let go.
"Rosalind…" he said again, even softer this time, "Sister…"
When Rosalind finally lifted her head to meet his worried gaze, Robert could see the tears welling up in those beautiful, sad, blue eyes.
"I'm terribly sorry," she sniffled, "I can't even remember the last time I cried."
"Did I do something wrong?" Robert began to ask, "I'm sorr—"
"Heavens, no!"
He was caught slightly off-guard by the quickness and intensity of her response.
"Robert, I—" Rosalind hesitated, looking away, so badly wanting to say what she felt yet simultaneously so scared to. Surely he felt the same; she had felt the way they had just danced, heard the way he always said her name, knew the way he never wanted to leave her side. The pair of them were one and the same, therefore he must share her feelings. Yet at the same time they were not the same. What if he was disgusted by the way she felt? What if I lose him?
She looked back into his eyes—those wonderful eyes—that seemed to understand her so perfectly without a single spoken word. They were like the tranquil surface of a lake, her every emotion somehow reflected in them. She gazed longingly into them and made up her mind.
"That was perfect. You were perfect." She paused for a brief moment, considering her words. "You know just as well as I that our life has always been a lonely one. But meeting you… it was the greatest thing that ever happened to me"
She felt Robert's fingers move ever-so-slightly, near imperceptibly, to better interlock with hers.
"Robert, dancing with you just now, feeling your hand around mine, moving with you as one… I have never in my entire life felt like more of a whole person than I do right now."
Despite all the countless thoughts and emotions swirling endlessly in her head, Rosalind suddenly found herself at a loss for words.
"Robert, I— I think—"
"I love you too, Rosalind." came the whisper from her brother's lips as he leaned in to meet hers. Time seemed to freeze as they kissed, neither wanting to ever pull away, each of their hands rising to cradle the other's face. It was at once like nothing either had ever experienced yet so familiar, their lips moving together in gentle harmony as if they had done this a hundred times before.
When their lips finally parted, Rosalind had no idea if they had been kissing for seconds, minutes, or even hours. Only a single feeling coursed through her body and it was love, pure and total, for the man in front of her.
"How long were you wanting—?"
"Far, far too long. You?"
"Every bit as long."
Upon hearing that confirmation, it took no effort for their lips to find their way back to each other.
"I want you Robert. I want you so overwhelmingly, more than I've wanted anything else in this world or any other. I want you as my colleague, as my friend. As… my lover. And I so dearly hope I can still have you as my brother." Rosalind averted her gaze and her voice dropped with a note of guilt and sadness. "But… I understand if you don't. Just tell me and we can forget that this ever happened."
Robert lightly brought his hand under her jaw. Taking her chin gently in his thumb and forefinger, he guided her head back to face him. With his other hand, he began to gently stroke her soft, ginger hair. He stared lovingly back into Rosalind's eyes. They were so much like his own, perhaps even exactly so, but never had his own eyes made him feel this way.
"Rosalind, my sister, my love… Why would I want to forget the greatest night of my life?"
He took the hand from Rosalind's chin and lowered it to hold her hand. She squeezed it tight and did not look away this time.
"I want you too, every bit as much as you want me. Brother, friend, lover—any way you'll have me, I want it. I wish I could live a million different lives, all to spend more time with you. I love you, Rosalind."
She let go of Robert's hand and threw her arms around his waist. She buried her face in his chest and hugged him as tight as she possibly could. He hugged her back and kissed her gently on the top of her head.
"Oh, Robert! I love you! I love you so much!" She squeezed him again with a sudden burst of energy, her heart giddy in her chest at finally being able to say out-loud the words she had long kept buried.
"You have no idea how truly wonderful it feels to finally say that to you." she said breathily.
"I think I have some idea." came Robert's coy yet loving response, accompanied by another kiss on the head.
Rosalind was too deeply in love to form one of her typical snarky retorts. The only thing she could muster was an ear-to-ear smile and another tight squeeze of her brother's waist.
When Rosalind lifted her head back up, Robert could see that her eyes were filled with tears again, this time of happiness. As they locked eyes, another tear ran down her soft, freckled cheeks—cheeks that were already damp from all the others she had shed. Robert lifted his hand to cradle the side of her head and brushed her cheekbone with the lightest of touches, wiping the tear away. Rosalind reflexively closed her eyes as Robert's thumb met her face, but before she could open them again, she suddenly felt the warm, soft pressure of what she now knew to be Robert kissing her. Rosalind decided she could keep her eyes shut for just a little bit longer. After several blissful, beautiful seconds, Rosalind felt his lips disconnect. Without even allowing Robert a moment to breathe, she kissed him back, harder this time. The pair melted into each other as they kissed, not stopping until they had nearly run out of air.
They stood there catching their breaths, their foreheads pressed firmly together. Each lightly grasped the back of the other's head with one hand and the accompanying were locked together at their side.
"Robert… I don't ever want things to go back to the way they were." said Rosalind, her thumb tracing gentle circles on his palm.
"I don't think they ever could," he replied, nuzzling her nose, "Nor do I want them to." Robert gently cupped his sister's face in both hands and kissed her on the forehead. She smiled, squeezing Robert's hand, and layed the side of her head to rest against his lapel. Rosalind closed her eyes once more and listened to his heartbeat. It was slightly elevated—to be expected given the circumstance—but steady, beating gently in perfect synchronization with her own.
Just like their pulse and just like their emotions, the two opened their mouths in tandem, drawing in breath to speak as one, to voice what their hearts told them to.
"I love you." they said in perfect unity.
The pair hugged each other tightly, squeezing with all of the love overflowing inside them. They looked back into one another's eyes, those perfect mirrors of emotion, and their lips again moved in unison to meet in a tender kiss. In each other's arms, lips together, they both felt so whole, so complete, so perfect, so effortlessly at ease and at peace.
Robert caressed Rosalind's cheek with one hand. "Wait here." he said as he slipped free from their tangled embrace. He crossed the room back to the phonograph, reset the needle's place on the record, and re-wound the crank. As the music played once again, he returned to his twin.
"Rosalind, my beloved, may I have this dance?"
Their bodies joined together again as if magnetized, the two lovers melting effortlessly into a single, unified form. Two hands together, one hand on back, one hand on arm, they stepped and swayed as one as the music drifted around and through them. They waltzed long into the night and into the first light of the next morning, hand in hand, time ceasing to have meaning or importance to them. Nothing more mattered than one to the other.
Rosalind loved Robert and Robert loved Rosalind. They were two halves, long kept apart, but finally whole. Nothing else could ever separate them again. They were in love. They were together. They were happy.
Finally, for the first time, they were home.