Ten more minutes before I had to leave for our visit with Grandma and Aunt Bethany. I quickly opened up my laptop and typed in the keywords, extra+ rib+ bloodline. Search results came up, all of the websites conspiracy theorists who referred to people in various different parts of the world, popping up randomly though the years. Some postulated the bloodline was possibly part of an alien race. Other websites spoke about the direct connection to Adam and Eve from a Creation standpoint, “The immaculate humans are living proof that God exists, and that Creation is, in fact, true.”
Other websites referred to the connection with the ancestral ‘Eve,’ an African ancestor all modern humans were supposedly descended from, some 200,000 years ago that scientists called the ‘Mitochondrial Eve.’ These websites appeared more scientific than the others, and somewhat matched what the geneticists had told me. Was the extra rib part of the Mitochondrial Eve mutation, or was it simply an unrelated recessive trait? I thought about the stiff debate that occurred between Dr. Bomer and Dr. Halan at the institute. Some sort of theory. An endo-symbiosis theory, or something that sounded like it.
I typed in mitochondrion+symbiosis+theory. Immediately a Wiki page popped up, “Endosymbiotic theory.” The thrust of the theory was based on the idea that mitochondria originated as symbioses between two independent, free-living, single-celled organisms that were taken inside another cell as an endosymbiont. I stared at the electron micrograph image at the right corner of the screen of a mitochondrion, showing the interlacing matrix within the membrane. Was it possible? Was the mitochondria the product of symbiosis? Did that mean the mitochondrial DNA was once a parasitic organism? I went on to read the rest of the article. “There is some biochemical and molecular proof to suggest the mitochondrion is the result of symbiosis of proteobacteria and the plastids from cyanobacteria.”
Not that I truly understood the meaning of it all, other than the basic biological concepts I’d learned last year in Bio and that it had something to do with me and Analiese, and the fact that we were different. Obviously we were far more different than I ever could have imagined.
Dr. Halan’s and Bomer’s arguments ran through my mind.
“We are considering the possibility that the mutation is an evolution into the original mitochondria,” Dr. Bomer had said.
“The likelihood of that is one in twenty billion,” Dr. Halan had responded.
Dr. Bomer: “There are seven billion people on the planet, Dr. Halan.”
Dr. Halan: “There is some debate within the scientific community, that the maximum energy potential was much stronger in the original mitochondrion. A theory we would like to test out.”
“The Endosymbiotic Theory is highly disputed,” Dr. Bomer had finished.
I tried to find another site, but the only thing I could find based on the endosymtiotic theory was a video game about a parasitic evil superwoman. I glanced at my watch and shut down my computer. I’d have to finish my research later.
I rolled up to grandma’s care home where my mom was waiting for me just inside the entry. The home was named The Legion. It was a brown brick structure with nicely maintained yard space where several weeping willows that had lost their leaves. The gnarled, bowing trees created a canopy overhead, with one small apple tree beneath them. Rotten apples spotted the ground around the miniature tree, and as we got closer, I saw there was still one overripe apple left on the tree.
“Hi, Mom,” I said. My mouth felt twitchy with the news about Analiese’s missing body, but I kept it shut.
“Hi, dear.”
I felt a pang of guilt for not visiting in so long. It was increasingly difficult to visit, ever since grandma had begun losing her short-term memory. The first time she’d forgotten my name was the worst, like a butter knife to the ribs. But now with Analiese gone, I had a whole new appreciation of family because I knew they could be wrenched from my fingertips at any moment.
Grandma Marion and Aunt Bethany were all we had left of Mom’s side of the family. Mom’s dad was dead, having died on a construction site when Mom was three years old. They were older parents when they had her, both in their mid-forties, and mom was their only child. Now, Grandma, Bethany, me and Mom were the only ones left.
Aunt Bethany was grandma’s baby sister. She’d been a source of entertainment for years with her exaggerated innocence and dry wit. Dad always referred to her as a ‘spinster’ on account of the fact that she never married. The seventy-five year-old lived in Stonewood, and was still spry and active in her senior’s community, as far as I knew.
A few steps in and we were at Grandma Marion’s door. I knocked three times, hoping she would remember we were coming and be dressed appropriately, or… at least dressed.
She answered the door and her face drew up into a big smile I hoped was recognition.
“Hello my dears!” she said, hugging us. “Come in.”
I exchanged a glance with Mom as we stepped into the small room Grandma called home. All that was left of the personal belongings of her life she shared with Grandpa was the intricately carved antique jewellery chest and two flowery blue sofas. Aunt Bethany was already seated in the living room. She reached out to greet us, since her hips prevented her from getting up off the couch without pain. “Hello!”
We greeted Aunt Bethany with hugs and kisses and sat down next to her on the sofa, Grandma joining us in the chair across the living area. Bethany was a slightly younger version of Grandma, with slightly darker hair, her complexion a tiny bit rosier.
“I’m so happy you could come today,” Grandma said. “I’ve been thinking it must be time for you to visit.” Grandma’s mossy blue-green eyes were still as bright as ever. Her hair was grey along the sides, but the top and back were darker, the length of her hair tied up into a neat bun at the back of her head. No matter who or what she forgot in her life, be it her grandchildren or her boiling tea kettle, she somehow always remembered to wear her hair in a bun.
“I’ve been thinking so too, Grandma,” I said. “How are you?” Would she even remember Analiese’s death?
Grandma smiled. “Just fine, dear. Just fine.” Obviously she’d forgotten about Analiese altogether. She turned to Mom. “And you?”
“We’re both doing well,” Mom said perfunctorily. Clearly she wasn’t going to bring up Analiese and experience the fallout from the entire discussion. “We came to talk to you both about something important,” Mom said.
“Oh?” Grandma glanced back and forth at us, her eyes wide, revealing yellowed whites.
“Adriana has been asking about the bloodline, and the extra rib,” Mom said. “I remember hearing you, Aunt Bethany and Virginia whispering about it once. What do you know about it?”
Grandma Marion merely blinked at first, her eyes unfocused as if her mind was in some faraway place. Then she snapped out of it and glanced at Bethany. “When I first heard about it, I was a new mother, having just had you, Carla. I was introduced to a woman, about your age, who had an extra rib. I was told she had the same rare blood type as my niece, Virginia. No rhesus factor. Do you know what that is?”
“Rh factor refers to antigens, right?” I asked, not to clarify what I knew, but to confirm that grandma knew what she was talking about.
Grandma Marion nodded. “Antigens are what make the blood impure. Your blood has no antigens. No impurities. It is like O-negative, but yet it’s not O-negative.”
I still felt no more informed than I had when I walked through the door.
“What about her extra rib, Mom?”
“What other story in history talks about a rib?” Grandma prompted, eyebrows high on her forehead as she waited for us to figure it out.
My mind whirred. “Eve?”
Grandma Marion’s face lit up into a wide grin, showing off long teeth. She nodded with enthusiasm and then all at once her face fell. My mother’s complexion was an ashy shade of pale, her expression clouded over.
“You’re not saying Adri
ana is… somehow connected to the Biblical Eve?” Mom asked.
“That is exactly what I’m telling you, dear,” Grandma said.
Mom’s pallor was still a chalky grey. “I think that assumption is going a bit too far, Mom.”
Grandma held my mother’s gaze. “I suppose only God would know for sure.”
Damnit, Alzheimer’s.
Thankfully, Aunt Bethany finally spoke up. “The strangest thing about that girl with the extra rib and the blood type was that she could have been Virginia’s twin sister. I’ve never seen anyone resemble another person like that, especially when there’s no blood relation. They even sounded the same. Do you remember that, Marion? Remember her dark hair and strange green eyes? She was the spitting image of Virginia.”
“That’s right,” Grandma said. “Gosh, I almost forgot. Remember how we debated that for years after? We researched her family tree, trying to find a connection, a long lost relative we’d forgotten about. It was uncanny, how they looked exactly the same. Carbon copies.”
Who was this woman? Perhaps I already knew. “Did you find anything?” I asked.
Grandma wrung her hands in her lap. “No. Nothing. There were no relatives, not even distant. Genevieve said she was French, but Virginia was Scottish. No overlap whatsoever, not that we could find, anyway.”
“Genevieve,” I said. It sounded an awful lot like the extended version of Jennie or Jeannie.
Mom shook her head. “Why has nobody ever told us this before?”
Grandma Marion’s face flushed pink, and her expression looked like she’d been caught stealing. “An omission of necessity, I suppose. When Virginia was alive, we thought we had to keep it a secret, even from our own family members. Government officials were speculating about the blood, wondering where in the world it came from. Of course, some crazies thought Virginia was an alien.” Grandma chuckled at the memory, but grew serious immediately after. “Once she realized she was so different, special, a kind of scientific curiosity, she tried to hide, disappear, for privacy, and for safety. She became a hermit, as my mother would say.”
I stared at Grandma in a whole new light. “For safety? What safety risks were there?” I considered the experience I had with the National Human Genome Research Institute and their request that I stay for testing, followed by my mother’s wacky response.
“The scientists.”
“Scientists? Who? The Human Genome researchers?” I asked.
Grandma glanced to Bethany, who shrugged. “We’re not sure.”
It now seemed like an appropriate time to tell everyone about Kalan and Marcus. “I have something I think I’d better tell you all.” I did so, explaining that they were here in search of their biological mother, who also had the blood type and the extra rib.
Auntie Bethany looked like she’d just gotten an incurable diagnosis. “Oh, no. Marion, the worst has happened, hasn’t it? They’ve found each other.”
“Wait. What do you know about them?” I asked.
Grandma and Bethany locked gazes and something passed between them, an unspoken communication.
“The girl, the one that looked exactly like Virginia,” Aunt Bethany looked like she was about to cry, “their meeting wasn’t accidental. Virginia was told by government officials she had to report to the Center for Inherited Disease Research, following an incident involving her blood when Virginia was ten.”
An unwanted image of Analiese lying lifeless atop the stretcher following the botched blood transfusion flashed through my mind and soured my stomach. That moment was inexorably burned into my brain.
“What was the incident?” Mom asked.
Bethany continued. “A blood donation. Virginia had donated her blood for the first time, and when it was typed, they placed it in the O-negative category. But as we all know, it isn’t O-negative, is it? The blood she donated killed a seven-year-old girl with nonfatal leukemia.”
My stomach flipped. “No.”
Bethany spoke next. “After that, they wanted Virginia and bothered her for years. Even eighteen years later, they continued to hassle her. And apparently, they wanted this girl as well. She also had the strange blood. Eighteen years after the fatal blood donation, Virginia and this girl were both asked to come to the Center for Inherited Disease Research on the same day.”
“Who was the girl?” I asked. But I already knew the answer.
“The mother of those twins,” said Aunt Bethany.
An icy shiver tiptoed up my back.
“Genevieve!” Mom said, less of a question and more like she’d finally made the connection.
Grandma nodded. “Yes. You remember her, Carla?”
My mom nodded, her eyes glassy, absent.
“Poor Genevieve. And to top it all off, she was already pregnant with twins!” My heart thumped so loudly in my ears I barely heard the rest of what grandma said.
“How old was she? Genevieve?” I asked.
“Still in high school, I believe.” Bethany replied. “About the same age as you, Carla.”
“The same age?” I said.
“Well, within a few years of one another,” Bethany looked at grandma for corroboration. Grandma blinked. “I think Genevieve was about ten years younger than Virginia.”
Virginia and Genevieve were ten years apart. Virginia was ten when she made the fatal donation of blood. They looked like carbon copies of one another. And yet, they weren’t related, not even distantly. What were the odds?
“She was absolutely hysterical with fear,” Bethany said. “She couldn’t abort them. She tried, but it didn’t work. Those demon babies refused to be terminated.”
Demon babies. My skin crawled at the idea of Kalan having nearly been aborted. “She tried to abort them? Why?”
“Because,” Bethany answered. “Genevieve was used. The scientists used her body for a scientific experiment. They used her body, like she was an animal, to create a new breed.”
A new breed. I swallowed back the lump in my throat. “What did she do?”
“She came to live with us,” Grandma said. “And spent the remainder of her pregnancy with Virginia, who took care of her, tried to keep her protected from those people. But Virginia couldn’t protect her, and they both knew that. That’s why they were so secretive, those two. They couldn’t have been more like twins if they’d come out of the same womb. They had secrets they never told anybody, not even us. Those scientists already knew exactly where Virginia lived. She was being monitored, wire-tapped, everything.” Grandma turned to her sister. “Remember when Les found that wire-tap, Bethany?”
Aunt Bethany nodded, then her eyes widened. “Adriana, is there a chance you are being monitored?” she asked.
“I…I don’t know,” I said.
“You’d better watch out.” Bethany warned. Grandma bobbed her head in agreement.
“Would Uncle Les know anything else? About where Genevieve went?” I asked.
“No!” My mother said with a wild expression. Her mouth clamped shut.
Bethany agreed. “Les can’t be trusted. After what he did to your sister… Well, he’s a despicable man. There’s something wrong with his damn noggin’.” She tapped her head with her finger.
I cringed at the thought of Les, the old pervert who felt Analiese up when she was only twelve. The fact that Analiese was now dead only intensified my feelings of hate toward the nasty pedophile.
“What happened to the babies?” I already knew the answer, but I wanted to know what they would say.
“Genevieve gave those unnatural babies away,” Auntie Bethany said. “Sent them to different ends of the country, and she went into hiding.”
Mom’s eyes flashed, her nostrils flaring. “Where did she go?”
“We never heard of her again. Not once did she try to contact us. Not once did she call. She disappeared. Fell off the face of the earth. After a while, we tried to forget about her. It was safer that way.” Aunt Bethany
looked at grandma, and they nodded in agreement.
“Safer. Why?” I asked.
Aunt Bethany’s eyes darkened. “Because Virginia died two weeks before those babies were born. From ‘unknown causes.’”
I swallowed. “And you think…?”
Now it was Auntie Bethany’s expression that was dark. “They killed her. The scientists murdered our Virginia.”
Grandma grew agitated, pacing the room and cursing weird old swears like little buggers and damn ragamuffin. It was strange to see how the brain worked, or, perhaps more accurately, didn’t work. It was as if shut down occurred at the most inopportune moments and grandma was the unwitting victim to its randomness.
It was time to go. Everyone agitated and rattled, we left with the minimum of goodbyes.
Immediately, we went to Mom’s house and headed into the basement to search through grandma’s old boxes. We found the autopsy report from Virginia’s death.
“Patient died of unknown causes.” I continued to read, watching for details about Virginia’s anatomy. There was a cursory comment on the blood type and how it was likely due to lab error. Further down the report it was noted that she had a surgical scar at the bottom of her abdomen, where, “it appears the patient had some sort of surgical procedure involving the ribcage, based on the scar tissue along the top row of ribs. While there is some evidence of a possible former presence of a supernumerary rib, however, there are currently twenty-four intact ribs.”
Had Virginia’s extra rib been removed?
Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?”
“I don’t know,” he replied. “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
-Genesis 4:9, The Holy Bible
CHAPTER SIX
ADRIANA SINCLAIR
“I think I know something about what happened to your mother.” The words spilled from my mouth. Damn it.
Kalan sat in an armchair at the foot of the hotel bed, making a list of places to look once we were in Maryland. I sat on the bed across from him. His eyes widened. “Really?”
The Eve Genome Page 6
