LEWISTON — When Tori Smart felt the telltale signs of nausea that just would not go away, she called her sister.

“You’re pregnant,” Tori told Tara Lauze. “She’s like, ‘What?’ ‘Oh yeah, I’m sick as a dog. Seriously, you’re pregnant.'”

The identical twins had gone through the same thing six years earlier, when Lauze was expecting her oldest son.

Lauze was pregnant but Smart had morning sickness for the entire first trimester.

“I was fine,” said Lauze, 43, laughing. “She’s like, ‘Really, we’re going to do this again?'”

The twins, who say they have had “twin telepathy” their entire lives, laugh at how much they laugh — days are a stream of messages, photos, jokes and sometimes, just a single word.

“Nobody gets us,” Lauze said. “Our mother will always say, ‘Oh, there they go.'”

These days, they also laugh at all of the double takes. The last three years, both have had work that’s either based them at or routinely brought them to Lewiston District Court.

Lauze, who spent three years at the courthouse window, now works as a researcher and victim’s advocate in the Androscoggin County District Attorney’s Office.

Smart, a former officer, has worked for Maine Pretrial Services, mostly with clients awaiting trial, since 2012.

Just last month, Smart said she felt a new judge eyeing her at the end of the week.

“She’s like, ‘Do you have a double?'” Smart said. “‘No, I have an identical twin.’ ‘I knew it! There was no way you could do (both jobs) Monday through Friday!'”

The twins were born in Rockland and moved to New Gloucester around fourth grade. Eleven years ago, Lauze moved to a cul-de-sac in Auburn. Smart, their mother and stepfather and Lauze’s mother-in-law followed.

“Like a rash, everybody just shows up,” Lauze said. “In the summertime, we can hear each other through the open windows.”

As kids, they say they could visualize where the other was.

“She could tell my mother what my father and I were doing. I could see what they were doing and what was going on,” Smart said. “I was in a really bad car accident my senior year in high school — she knew at impact that I hit the tree. She called my mother and said, ‘Tori was just in a bad accident.’ My mother was like, ‘What do you mean?'”

Their mother left work a short time later and drove up on the scene. A bus had pulled out in front of Smart.

“The impact was so hard the jack from the trunk landed in the back seat,” Smart said. “It flew through the seat.”

“I just got this really sad feeling and afraid feeling,” Lauze said. “I knew it was her.”

Lauze has two sons and Smart a 20-month-old daughter. The twins also have an older sister.

Smart, who was an officer for the Kennebec County Sheriff’s Office, said she always wanted to go into law enforcement. She meets with defendants for drug testing and, when they need a hand, helps get them into treatment or find housing or work.

“I love my job like there’s no tomorrow,” she said. “You only have to be one person in their life that makes a difference. A lot of times they don’t know which road to go down, so we help them navigate.”

Lauze said she used to love to work the courthouse window, it was always something new, but now really enjoys jobs like compiling reports of criminal complaints and keeping victims updated.

They are sometimes in the courthouse at the same time, but have not been in the courtroom at the same time since Lauze took her new position in January.

“It amazes me how people still confuse us,” Smart said.

People You Know is a regular feature on faces in the community. Know someone we ought to feature? Contact staff writer Kathryn Skelton at 689-2844 or [email protected]