He sputtered some more.
“So what you’re not saying is that you have a secret brother, a desperate criminal, and that’s the friend who asked for your help?”
“No.”
“A sister you never knew who got put out for adoption at birth?”
“Uh, no. Stop letting your imagination run wild.”
“So what’s left? You care so much about this Carinne because . . .”
He sighed. “She’s my daughter.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I had a stalker and a skin condition and, holy shitolly, a sister!
“Dad, stay right where you are. Do not move. I’ll call you back in ten minutes after I catch my breath.”
“Good. I need a drink.”
“You’re not supposed to drink.”
“I’m not supposed to have two oddball daughters, either.”
Oh, boy. I had ten minutes to rearrange my worldview and my place in that world. My father? Hell, my mother! Where do you start when a tornado rips your house apart? You have a cigarette, a bottle, a prayer—whatever crutch you need to help you limp on.
I hugged my dog.
“Okay, Dad,” I said a few minutes later. Maybe I misunderstood. Maybe he said he had a dilemma. “Start at the beginning, only slower this time, with a few more details. True ones.”
“What, now you’re with the Royce truth squad?”
“No, I trust you to tell me the whole story. You have to, after dropping a bombshell like that in my lap.” Where my iced tea also landed.
He said all right and started. I tried not to interrupt.
He never lied to me, he swore. Sure, he never needed to. Why would I ask if he had another family somewhere? How many kids think their fathers are bigamists or philanderers?
And he was faithful to my mother, he also swore, no matter what she always thought. Which was that he screwed around every chance he got, like he did now. According to him, he never did, not while they were married.
“Did Mom know about you and Shirley?”
“Hell, no. She would have cut off my— That is, we would have been divorced years earlier.”
“Does she know about Sister Carrie?”
“No, again. Nor about the money I sent.”
“Whoa. You haven’t mentioned money before. I’m sorry for getting sidetracked. Start over.”
“That’s what I am trying to do.”
By my father’s standards, he had not committed adultery. He and my mother were engaged at the time, but the wedding kept being postponed, canceled, or rescheduled so many times neither of them were certain it could ever take place. Or should.
“Kind of like you and that Grant fellow.”
Nothing like Grant and me. We had never been officially engaged, and I never would have slept with another man if we were. In fact, I broke off with Grant before I dated anyone else. I believed in old-fashioned honor. If you said I do, you damned well better don’t mess around. Get a divorce, like my parents. Don’t lie, like my parents.
“Go on, but leave me and my boyfriends out of your story.”
Dad had to go on a business trip, he told me, an important convention in Florida. Mom refused to go with him, even though his company was paying all expenses.
“She was minding a pregnant dog. She wouldn’t leave it with the vet or a kennel. No, she chose a goddamned pregnant dog instead of me, my career, my wanting to be someone, wanting to be a success, for her. So I went, but with a mad on. Not crazy mad, more a disappointed, jealous, hopeless mad.”
I knew the feeling.
“Shirley lived in Florida, but she attended the convention. She was single, pretty, and had none of your mother’s hang-ups, that I could see. None of her amazing talents or great intellect, either, but we had a lot in common. We talked, had a couple of drinks, dinner, and went back to my room. That’s all there was. Nothing more, I swear. It was the Seventies, so no big thing.”
Leaving out what they did in that hotel room, which produced Carinne.
“I loved your mother, thorns and all. Being with another woman only made me see it better.”
So he came back and convinced Mom to get married a week later. They produced me and lived semi-happily for a decade or so.
Shortly after the wedding, though, he received a letter at his office—people still wrote letters then—from Shirley, announcing her pregnancy.
“What could I do? I was recently married, hardly knew the woman in Florida, but knew your mother’s attitude toward loyalty and faithfulness. She judged everyone by dog standards. I sent Shirley money to help, to fulfill my responsibilities as much as I could. And I set up a separate bank account your mother never found.”
“She always knew you were keeping something from her.” I wondered now if we’d had to go without luxuries or niceties, so that Carinne could have them. “She assumed it was another woman, not the money.”
“There was no other woman!”
He said he had nothing to do with either the woman or her child, except sending the checks and receiving an occasional picture Shirley sent to his office. And a wedding announcement to Harry O’Dell, who adopted little Carinne and took good care of her and Shirley until he died.
By then, my parents had divorced and my father had moved to Florida, so he called Shirley to see if she needed help. He met Carinne for the first time.
“How did you know she was yours? Maybe Shirley’d been stringing you along all those years, for the money. Maybe she was already pregnant when she came to your hotel room. Did you do a DNA test?”
“There was no need.”
Carinne had talent. My father recognized it right away, how she tried to warn younger kids not to ride their bikes in the street, kids that a year or so later got hit by cars. Her mother had a lot of such stories, and seemed proud. My father was appalled. How could he get Carinne to Royce without admitting whose child she was? They’d know. My mother would know. Grandma Eve would know.
I could hear the fear and trembling in his voice.
So he kept quiet. And agreed with Shirley that Carinne had a bit of Irish blood in her—from Harry O’Dell?—and everyone knew the Irish often had The Sight, or some such bullshit.
Carinne got better at the prescience as she grew older.
“She had a talent I never heard of. A kind of a foretelling, but way better than I can do, and not only for danger, not only for her loved ones. She can look at a person, any person as long as they are younger than she is, and know what they are going to be doing when they reach her age.”
“Say that again?”
“I know, it’s complicated. But it worked fine for her. She went to college for an education degree, got her master’s in adolescent psychology, and became a high school guidance counselor. She knew what direction the kids should take to reach what she’d seen when they were her age, twenty-something by then. You know, if she saw them as a cook, she’d suggest culinary classes. A doctor, they better take science courses. The kids appreciated her encouragement, and most followed through. They came back to thank her. It’s all documented in a journal she kept.”
“What if they became criminals, or died? Or if she saw them miserable, washing dishes in a diner?”
“She didn’t tell them anything, just that the vocational and aptitude tests were inconclusive. I think that’s what made her hear the voices, shouting over the lies she had to tell. It drove her crazy. Not true crazy, of course.”
“Of course. So what did she do about it?”
“She got a job at a senior center, where everyone was older than she was.”
“Good. But . . . ?”
“But they had young aides, and they brought in the Girl Scouts once a week. And the residents always had grandkids visiting. She started yellin
g at the girls not to follow the path they were on, they’d end up as hookers or addicts or night shift counter clerks. Some of the boys would grow up to be wife beaters or carjackers or wretched executives. She saw them, their futures, the way I see danger sometimes. It was too much for her. And for the Girl Scouts. And the senior center. She lost her job, her friends, her savings. And she kept hearing voices, telling her people’s fates that she didn’t know how to change or if she should try. I mean, what if, when Carinne turned thirty, she met a younger waitress, call her Hope, because she hoped to be a singer. Only Carinne sensed her still waiting on tables when Hope turned thirty. That didn’t mean Hope couldn’t get a big break when she was thirty-two, or wasn’t saving money to study with a voice coach, or a hundred other reasons. Carinne couldn’t interfere, but the voices shouted too loudly.”
And I thought I carried a heavy burden being the Visualizer.
“She managed to hide her problems for awhile, claiming migraines, her mother’s stroke, all kinds of anxiety. I didn’t know how bad it got until some social worker called me, as a friend of Shirley’s. I went to Carinne and had to explain to her that she wasn’t insane, she was normal for who she was.”
“Your daughter.”
“Yes.”
“She wasn’t surprised?”
“She always knew she wasn’t Harry O’Dell’s kid. I think she was happy knowing her real father instead of wondering. And she liked me. She was relieved at my explanation, even if she only half believed me, but she was better for awhile.”
“Why didn’t you get her more help? Your friends in Paumanok Harbor would have known what to do. Someone could have gone to talk to her. Police Chief Haversmith, the mayor. Any of the others.”
“I was going to invite a couple of them down here for the golfing, and see what they thought. Maybe they could convince her to get on a plane. But, hell, what if she started telling the younger passengers they’d be in a plane crash or something? I figured I’d fly to England with her, myself. Keep her calm and distracted. Or drugged. Then I had the heart attack and the surgery. And your mother arrived.”
“Mom would have helped. She can’t walk away from a creature in need.”
“Carinne’s not a dog.”
“Okay, Mom mightn’t feel so strongly about wounded people, but she’d know what to do. She always does, or she’d ask her mother. And neither of them had to know Carinne’s parentage, just her talent.”
“They’d know. She kind of looks like me. Or you.”
“She looks like me? Enough that Mom would know?”
“You know the way your mother can look at a mutt in the pound and rattle off its ancestors’ breeds?”
“Carinne’s not a dog!” I threw his words back at him. “Mom would have helped. She came to take care of you after the bypass, didn’t she?”
“And almost killed me with her nagging.”
“Irrelevant. But, all right, if you won’t call Mom, then call the people at Royce. You know they’ll send someone to help her. I can give you numbers for people right in this country, so there’d be no planes. One of them is in the apartment next door.” I didn’t know what Lou could accomplish, but he’d do something, for sure.
“No, once I heard about Royce opening a branch in Paumanok Harbor, I knew that’s where she had to go. With you, baby girl. You’re the only one I can trust.”
“Trust? I wouldn’t have the slightest idea what to do for her.”
“No, but you’d make sure to find the right people, and keep her safe until then.”
I tried to tell him about Deni, and how I couldn’t keep myself or my neighbor safe. He didn’t listen.
“You fought like hell to save that kidnapped boy, and the injured colt that caused all the nightmares. They say you did everything but burn up the whole village trying to keep that sea creature and its arsonist firefly friends alive. And you wouldn’t give up till you found the professor who’s there now, then almost got everyone drowned in helping him banish that sea monster. You’ve got a staunch heart, Willy. You care.”
I grasped at straws. “That doesn’t make me an expert on espers.”
“You do not need to be. I checked. Your Dr. Harmon is one powerful wizard, and he’s used to advising younger talents.”
“He’s a retired professor of creative writing!”
“Who stood up to a kraken and got it locked in the center of the earth. Who knows more about the Others than anyone else in our world. Who’s too old to come here, so Carinne has to get to him. People in London might be more familiar with her problem, they did fine with my mother, didn’t they? But now there’s help on your doorstep. It’s like fate sent you the troll so DUE sent Grant, whose father’s a big shot at the University, who saw a vacant estate suitable for the outreach center, where the professor can live, so Carinne has a place to go, where she won’t be alone.”
I didn’t think fate planned so far in advance, but I’d seen so much strange crap recently, I could believe anything. “So I’m supposed to play camp counselor to her in Paumanok Harbor?”
“You’re the only one who can do it, who can protect her from all the dangers, all the pettiness of that foolish little town that keeps its secrets hidden, all the backbiting.”
“But what danger, Dad? Do you sense anything?”
“Nothing specific. Just a lot of menace.”
“For her or for me?”
He sighed. “I wish I could tell. Maybe both. You know my thing only works for people I care for. I love both of you.”
My father loved his other daughter? I’m a big girl. I could handle that. I had to. Or not. “But you love me better, don’t you?”
“Of course. You’re my baby girl; the one I bottle-fed and taught Beatles songs to. The one I took to the park every Saturday while your mother held obedience classes.”
He taught me to be afraid of the dark and riptides and electric storms and a hundred other things, with all his warnings and worries, too. Because he cared.
And she was my sister. “Okay, Dad. Matt and I are planning a vacation for November. Maybe we can drive down to Florida and bring her back with us. He’s great, calm and steady and understanding. And he wants to meet you anyway.”
“Aren’t you listening, Willy? They want Carinne locked up. She told some people on line at the unemployment office that they’d OD before their thirty-seventh birthdays. Another that she’d die of AIDs. She started a riot there. When they sent for some junior bureaucrat to take charge, she told him he’d be in the same cubicle in five years. He freaked out, called for security.”
“But what do you expect me to do? I hate planes as much as she does, it sounds like, and I can’t drive to Florida to get her. You know how I am with bridges and tunnels and getting lost. I don’t even have a car!”
“I’ve got that covered. I’ve reserved a compartment on a train with a sleeping car. They’ll bring her meals and she won’t have to see anyone.”
“That sounds great. Maybe next week, if this mess with Deni gets straightened out.”
“Carinne’s train gets into Penn Station the day after tomorrow. I told her you’d meet her there.”
Oh, boy.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I had dread. And hair dye.
How was I supposed to handle this? I wasn’t worried about the paranormal parts, not with the pros in Paumanok Harbor. They’d teach her control, like someone had taught Connor Redstone, the Native American who could diagnose mortal illnesses without being able to cure them. Carinne had to suffer the same agonies and frustrations, besides the voices in her head.
And getting a loony through Penn Station didn’t faze me. Half the people who hung out there would have been hospitalized a couple of decades ago.
But how could I manage the personal side, bringing a stranger who looke
d like me to the Harbor? Or getting Carinne past my mother, without humiliating Mom in her hometown? Or letting my mother vent her anger at Carinne, who hadn’t committed any crime? I’d guess she was the victim in all this, except she had a mother and father who loved her and stayed together for most of her life, and she also had my father’s love and money.
The first thing I did after taking a shower to wash away the nervous sweat from my conversation with my father was Google Carinne O’Dell. She had citations for journal articles, speeches at colleges, appearances at conferences for school psychologists. And—aha!—she had a website.
The site included an impressive résumé and a discreet mention that Ms. O’Dell was now available for private counseling in career management and life.
A photograph accompanied the bio. I studied it carefully, and my dread morphed into despair. She had a narrow face with a straight nose like mine, sandy blonde hair cut short like mine, and big blue eyes. Like mine.
Crap, I never counseled anyone about anything, yet here I was, looking for a job as a life coach. Any thoughts of passing Carinne off as a friend from college, as a chance-met train-station stranger, as an anonymous person in need, just evaporated.
She could have been my twin. A little older, a little thinner, hair smooth where mine wanted to frizz. Maybe she had it straightened. She looked serious, but maybe because she was looking for a job. Or thinking she was a nut job.
The second thing I did after my shower—I needed another one already—was pull apart the cabinet under my bathroom sink. Somewhere I had a box of hair color from years ago, when I felt dull and dreary. My books hadn’t caught on, the men I dated were losers, and my hair made dirty dishwater look appealing. I’d decided to become a redhead, or a strawberry blonde at the least, to add spice to my blah existence, to change my appearance and, hopefully, my life.
I chickened out and took a karate course instead.
I did it now, before I had second thoughts. I was not going to parade around Paumanok Harbor as part of a surprise twinhood. Or the butter-stamp sister of an illegitimate sibling.
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