“Lots of girls are named Bethany,” Joss says gently. “It doesn’t have to mean anything.”
I look back at the letter.
We made a deal with the devil and now the devil is demanding his due.
So sorry, Myrlie. Didn’t mean to hurt you again. We do regret that, hurting you.
Can’t come back now. Even Thursday, still had hope.
No hope now. He’s going to catch us, Can’t lead him back to you and Bethany. Can’t even call. Have to protect you and Bethany.
Be good to Bethany, Take care of her.
This money—not tainted. All legal. Was Elizabeth’s college fund. Now Bethany’s.
Tell Bethany we love her.
The tears come back when I read that last line.
“Come back and tell me you love me in person,” I mumble, because it’s easier to stoke my anger than to keep feeling so sad.
Joss glances at me, but she doesn’t say anything. She looks back at the paper, though she’s got to be done reading it. Her gaze glides across the page again and again.
“It’s not really a letter, is it?” she says finally. “It’s more like notes he took for what he wanted to say in a letter.”
“It’s more like the ravings of a lunatic,” I say. I point at the first sentences: He’s chasing me. He’s hunting me down. “Isn’t that, like, classic paranoia?”
“What if someone really is chasing him?” Joss asks.
And then I can’t hold on to my anger. I think about my parents, so fragile, my mother crying, my father holding her up. I think about how they looked in the videotapes Joss and I have been watching. They didn’t make many appearances, because the camera was almost always focused on the girls. The adults showed up mainly as a torso in the background, a gloved hand bringing out a scarf and a carrot nose for the girls’ snowmen, a pair of arms placing a birthday cake full of candles in front of Elizabeth or Joss. But the few times that my parents’ faces flashed across the screen, they looked so young and happy, so normal. I do not like to think of them being old and crazy now. Or worse—old and in danger.
I reach out with one finger and trace three words toward the bottom of the letter: Can’t come back.
“Is this true?” I ask Joss. “What if he never comes back? What if I never see my parents again?”
“Mom would take care of you,” Joss says. “You wouldn’t be left alone.”
Joss doesn’t understand. I’m not asking what will happen to me if my parents never return. I’m asking what will happen to them.
THIRTY
I go back to bed and sleep for hours. It’s long after noon when I open my eyes in Myrlie’s frilly yellow room that she decorated for her nonexistent grandchildren. I have my days and nights mixed up now; I feel like a vampire, living counter to all natural rhythms, scorned and feared by normal society.
Would you rather be a vampire or a clone? That would be a good Dilemmas question, I think. I try to picture myself sprawled out on the floor at one of my friends’ houses—Molly’s or Emma’s or Lucy’s—tossing the dice, moving the little marker around the board, answering profound questions with little jokes. But my old life seems like an illusion now, no more real than a movie. I didn’t know Molly or Emma or Lucy very well. I didn’t live in Greenleaf long enough to make any really good friends. I didn’t live anywhere long enough for that. I was just a cardboard cutout of a person, a background prop in other people’s lives.
Except for my parents’. I was always important to them. Center stage, I thought.
I get out of bed and go down the stairs because I don’t want to think about my parents. A yellow school bus is sliding past Myrlie’s front windows. I watch it stop and discharge a halfdozen kids who look to be about my age. They are arriving home; while I was sleeping they went through an entire day of school, math and science and language arts, lunch and gym and chorus. I try to imagine myself sitting on that bus, just another ordinary Sanderfield kid coming home from another ordinary day. I used to think I had a good imagination, but I can’t stretch it that far.
“Good morning,” Joss says behind me. “Or … good afternoon, I should say.” She’s sitting at a desk by the stairs, hunched over a laptop computer. “Want something to eat?”
“No…” I sink into the couch. I feel groggy and disoriented. Food would probably help, but do I really want to be able to think clearly?
“I told Mom to go on in to work today, so she wouldn’t just sit around fidgeting and worrying,” Joss says. “She’ll be home in a couple hours.”
“What are we supposed to do to keep from sitting around fidgeting and worrying?” I ask.
“I’ve been doing computer searches trying to look up all your parents’ different aliases,” Joss says. “I haven’t had much luck.”
I go and stand by the computer so I can look over her shoulder. All she’s found is property transfers, a string of names and the places we’ve lived.
“Looks like your dad’s been ‘Walter Cole’ for the past nine years,” Joss says.
I shrug, because this tells me nothing.
“What about his jobs?” I ask. “He’s always worked. He managed money.”
“I can’t find any evidence of that,” Joss says. “You want to try?”
She slides away from the computer to give me access to the keyboard. I use every search engine I can think of. I Google, I Yahoo, I Ask Jeeves. All the Walter Coles, Walter Eberns, Walter Stantons, and Walter Ronkowskis I come up with are clearly the wrong people.
Then I type in Walter Krull.
The computer hums, mulling over the name. Finally it gives me three promising matches.
Two are news stories about dangerous intersections in the state of Illinois. Joss and I skip over those quickly.
The third match is in a long report about a company called Digispur and somebody named Dalton Van Dyne. The name sounds familiar, but I can’t quite place it until Joss says, “Wait a minute. Isn’t that the embezzler, the guy who just got out of prison?”
Out of prison. Joss and I stare at each other, and I can tell she’s remembered the same line I’m thinking about from my father’s letter: Thought he would stay in prison.
Joss starts scrolling rapidly down through the story, passing screenfuls of information without a single mention of my father. I click on the search-find function, and the pages advance until my father’s name glows green in front of us:
It was discovered that Van Dyne diverted much of the money through fictitious employees, A Canadian office supposedly staffed by Sandra Despre, Walter Krull, Antonio Perez and Michael Sciullo never existed, and neither did any of those people,
Joss sags back against the chair.
“It’s just a coincidence,” she says.
“What if it isn’t?” I ask. “What if my dad really did have some connection to the Dalton Van Dyne guy? What if …?”
I can’t quite bring myself to say what I’m thinking. But I reach down and press the keys to start a new search. This time I type in, “Digispur” and “cloning.”
I get a hundred and sixty-two hits. Joss leans forward as I call up the first one, which is titled “Digispur CEO Outspoken Foe of Cloning.” It’s about some other guy, Errol Schwartz, not Dalton Van Dyne. Schwartz must have taken over the company when Van Dyne went to prison. Still, words pop out at me: “… evil technology … soulless copies … immoral, unethical … preposterous hubris of mankind …”
“Bethany, sit down,” Joss says, but her voice seems to come at me from miles and miles away. I’m swaying.
Joss takes me by my shoulders and gently pushes me over to the couch. I bury my face in my hands and listen to the pulse pounding in my ears. The next thing I know she’s forcing something into my hand. A glass. A glass of orange juice.
“You don’t need to read that right now,” Joss says. “Not on an empty stomach.”
My face is burning. I sip the orange juice and press the cool glass against my cheeks. Evil … soulless … Imm
oral … unethical…
“You believe it, don’t you?” I ask Joss. “You believe I really am a clone. That’s why you don’t want me to read that.”
“I don’t want you fainting and getting a cut on your head as bad as the one on your leg,” Joss says. She reaches back and shuts down the computer. “Now. Let’s get something for you to eat, and then let’s get out of this house, get you some fresh air. We can take another hike or I’ll take you to the Y to swim or—”
“No,” I say, shaking my head violently. I can’t stand the thought of being where anyone might see me—anyone who might recognize me as a copy of Elizabeth. “I… I want to stay here in case my dad calls again. My dad or my mom. I know he said he wouldn’t but… what if he does?”
“Bethany,” Joss says gently. “What if he doesn’t? What if you spend the rest of your life waiting in this house and he never calls?”
Never is a very long time, I think. And for some reason that reminds me of another line in my father’s letter: No hope now.
Joss is watching me carefully. She probably had some training to deal with depressed people. She’s probably working on some mental checklist in her mind to see how far gone I am: Refuses to eat—check; Refuses to leave house—check.
“I’ll go in the backyard,” I say. “I can get fresh air there.”
“Okay,” Joss says.
Half an hour later, after I’ve been fortified with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a glass of milk, as well as the rest of the orange juice, we prop open one of the windows so we can hear the phone—“just in case,” I tell Joss. And then we step out the back door.
It’s gotten colder overnight, and a sudden gust of wind whips my hair against my face. The wind also brings a stream of autumn leaves down from the trees; it looks as though the trees are crying.
“We could rake some of these leaves for Mom,” Joss says. “Though, as I remember, it’s usually a losing battle. If you don’t want to, we could just walk around.”
“I don’t mind raking,” I say.
Joss goes into the garage to get rakes, and I stomp my feet, trying to stay warm. This makes my leg throb again, but I ignore it. I make myself walk without limping toward the nearest tree, where I see a wooden sign half-hidden in the leaves at its base. I bend down and push the leaves away: The sign reads, “Hillary Elaine Easton, March 29, 1953.”
I think of the memorial plaque for Thomas Wilker on the courthouse lawn and shiver. Maybe there is more that I don’t understand. This isn’t exactly like a tombstone, but what if…?
“Oh, you found your mom’s tree,” Joss says behind me.
“Huh?” I say, trying not to act as spooked as I feel.
Joss rolls her eyes.
“It’s a family tradition my grandparents were really into,” she says, handing me a rake. “Every time a new baby was born into the family, they planted a tree. Your mom’s is a box elder, my mom’s is that oak over there, and Elizabeth and I got those maples back by the fence. Supposedly the trees planted by my great-great-grandparents for their children and grandchildren are still thriving back in Ohio, where they grew up.”
I can’t help myself: I drift back toward the fence, looking for other little signs. Elizabeth’s tree, it turns out, is the big, dramatic red tree I’d noticed my first morning at Myrlie’s house. I stand at the foot of the tree looking up. A scar on the trunk, just above eye level, catches my attention.
“I did that,” Joss says softly beside me. “After Elizabeth died, I was so mad that she was dead and her stupid tree was still alive that I tried to chop it down.”
I look up again, taking in the full sweep of the branches over my head.
“You didn’t succeed,” I say.
“Partly, I was too weak, after the accident. Partly, I didn’t really want to kill it. And partly … well, life wins. In the end, life always wins.”
I don’t understand what she means. So what if the tree lived? Elizabeth didn’t, and neither did Joss’s dad.
I start raking leaves. It is a little strange raking under Elizabeth’s tree, so I move over, toward the trees without signs. We fall into a rhythm, Joss and I, not really talking except to grunt, “Can you hold the bag for me?” and, “Steady now.” In spite of myself I am enjoying the exercise, the fresh air, the chance to move my muscles and not worry about myself or my parents or what I read on the computer screen. I like not thinking. By the time Myrlie’s car pulls into the driveway, Joss and I have cleared practically the entire backyard.
“Mom is going to be so happy when she sees what we’ve done,” Joss says.
Myrlie gets out of the car and runs toward us—evidently she’s really eager to tell us just how delighted she is. But when she gets close I can tell that her face is stretched tight with anxiety.
“Did you see this?” she demands, shaking something at Joss. It’s a newspaper. A page pulls away in the wind and I catch a glimpse of the Sanderfield Reporter masthead.
“Mom, it’s okay,” Joss says. “I checked the police report, and Bridgie didn’t mention our names, so you don’t have to worry about any of the neighbors gossiping—”
“No, this,” Myrlie says. She holds out a page for Joss to see. I creep up behind her and peer over her shoulder. There, in big, black type in a boxed-in ad, are eight words.
WALTER COLE,
I NEED TO TALK TO YOU.
THIRTY-ONE
“Maybe it’s a prank,” Joss says, unconvincingly. “Or just a coincidence? Is there some other Walter Cole who lives here? Someone whose last name really is ‘Cole,’ and it’s not an alias?”
Joss had tried to argue that the mention of “Walter Krull” on the computer was a coincidence too. I look over at Myrlie, and her expression is skeptical.
“I think Nancy Patterson works in the advertising department at the Reporter,” Myrlie says. “I’m going to call her.”
Myrlie turns on her heel and stomps off toward the house, a woman on a mission.
Joss looks at me doubtfully.
“Think we should finish up here?” she asks. “We don’t have much left.”
In fact, the only patch of leaves left is under Elizabeth’s tree.
“I’m getting a blister,” I say. I hold up my hand for evidence. “And I want to hear what Myrlie finds out.”
Joss’s expression is a battle of emotions, as if she wants to protect me but doesn’t know how.
“Okay,” she finally says. Giving up.
Joss puts the rakes away and I head toward the house. When I reach the kitchen, Myrlie is already on the phone.
“That’s all you can tell me?” she’s saying. “No, no, I don’t want you to lose your job….”
Myrlie hangs up and sits for a minute staring at the phone.
“Nancy can’t tell me anything,” she says despairingly. “The customer asked for confidentiality, so unless I’m Walter Cole, or unless I involve the police….” She looks up slowly. “You know, you hand me a crying five-year-old, and I know exactly what to do. You give me a kid who doesn’t know his alphabet, and usually I can have him reading at least a little by the end of the year. People say I’m a comfort to have around at funerals. I’m pretty good beside hospital beds too. But this … I just don’t know. Should I call the cops? Call Bridgie?”
She should be asking Joss, not me, I think. She’s the adult. But Myrlie’s dark eyes are peering at me, searching my face for answers. Because I’ve got more at stake than Joss does. It ‘s my parents, my privacy. My secrets.
I don’t know what would happen if we call the police. I don’t know what would happen if we didn’t. Which action keeps me and my parents safe?
I open my mouth, though I have no idea what I should say. I’m just good at collecting words, I think. Not using them.
The doorbell rings.
Myrlie scrambles up, seeming relieved by the distraction. I peek down the hallway after her. Maybe it’s my parents, I think. Maybe it’s the police.
“Trick
or treat!” someone screams out.
It’s a pixie, a fairy princess, a werewolf, and a zebra, his black stripes drawn on a white sweatshirt. None of them comes up any higher than Myrlie’s waist.
It’s Halloween.
“Oh, dear,” Myrlie dithers. “I totally forgot it was trick-or-treat night. No … wait, don’t look so disappointed. I’ve got the candy, I bought it last week, I just don’t have it right next to the door. Would you like to step in out of the cold for a minute while I go get it?”
“We’re not allowed to go into strangers’ houses,” the fairy princess says, self-importantly.
A woman emerges out of the dusk behind her.
“It’s okay,” the woman says. “We know Mrs. Wilker. She was Sammy’s teacher, remember?”
The trick-or-treaters step in and I duck my head back into the kitchen, out of sight. I’m not scared of pretend pixies, fairy princesses, werewolves, and zebras, but the woman might be someone else who remembers Elizabeth. Myrlie zips past me and rummages through cupboards, muttering, “I can’t believe I forgot about trick or treat. I’ve been so distracted….” She rips open bags of Snickers, Three Musketeers, Milky Ways, and Skittles, then rushes back out to the kids.
“Here you go,” she says. “Oh, don’t be shy, take two or three. Bye! Happy Halloween!”
Joss comes into the kitchen through the back door just as Myrlie returns from the front of the house.
“Can you believe it’s trick-or-treat night?” Myrlie says. “And I forgot? All the kids were talking about it at school today—they were so excited. But then I saw the newspaper in the teachers’ lounge, and everything else went out of my head.”
“What’d they say down at the newspaper office?” Joss asks.
“Nancy wasn’t allowed to tell me anything,” Myrlie says. “Not unless the police got involved, and even then—”
“Don’t call the cops,” I say quickly, because I’ve decided all of a sudden. I didn’t even want a trick-or-treater’s mom to see me. Joss didn’t want our names mentioned in the Sanderfield Reporter. Why would I want my whole life laid out for some policeman?
Double Identity Page 13
