Secret Christmas Twins

by Lee Tobin McClain

  Halfway down the new broken path, his phone buzzed yet again. He looked at it and rolled his eyes. What did Brian want? Impatient, he clicked into the phone call. “I’m kinda busy here, and it’s late. What’s up?”

  “I have some news,” Brian said, his voice stiff, guarded. “About that matter you asked me to investigate.”

  Erica. Kimmie. Arizona. “Oh, man, it’s been crazy here. I forgot all about that.”

  Erica glanced back at him, questioning. He waved her ahead. “I’ve got to take this,” he said to her. “Go get warm. I’ll be right there.”

  She nodded and headed toward the house. Jason walked slowly behind. “What’s up?” he asked Brian.

  “You’re going to want to be sitting down to hear this,” Brian said.

  Chapter Twelve

  Jason stood outside the house and listened to Brian’s incomprehensible words. Surely his friend had gotten it wrong. “You didn’t find this out for sure, right? It’s just a theory.”

  “It’s true.” Brian’s voice was flat. “Those twins are your nephews. Your sister was their mother.”

  “But why—” He broke off. “What could Erica...”

  “Can’t say. She trying to get something out of you? Money? Land?”

  He thought of the will, how Kimmie had left Erica half the farm. But his head was spinning too much to understand.

  While he and Brian had been talking, Erica had gone into the house. Now lights came on in the front room, and he watched as she moved around there, picking up a cup from the coffee table, adjusting an ornament, bending down to pat Mistletoe.

  From where he stood, it was like watching a Christmas movie. The perfect setting, the beautiful woman. A happy home.

  And it was all a lie. “Was she married?”

  “What do you mean?”

  His hand was sweating on the phone. “Kimmie. Was she married to the father of the twins?”

  “No.” There was a dim sound of papers rustling. “She didn’t name a father on the birth certificates, but my contact out there did a little digging, looked up her past addresses and other public records. Apparently she was cohabitating with a man around the time they must have been conceived, but he went to prison before the babies were born.”

  Cohabitating with a man.

  People did that all the time. Who was he to judge?

  All the same, the image he’d always carried of his sister—beautiful, laughing, pure—seemed to shatter into a million jagged fragments.

  “You still there?” Brian asked. “Listen, I wouldn’t worry about the father having any claim on those kids.”

  “Yeah. Thanks, man. I’ll... We’ll talk.”

  “One more thing,” Brian said. “When I spoke with Kimmie’s landlord—piece of work, that guy—he said there was a box of your sister’s personal effects that was sent to your grandfather’s address. Should have arrived by now.”

  Maybe it had, and Erica had hidden it. Suddenly, he wouldn’t put anything past her.

  “I guess there could be a note, some kind of explanation.”

  He closed his eyes for just a second, then opened them again. “Yeah. Thanks, buddy.” He clicked off the phone.

  And then he just stood still and looked up at the starry sky. The twins were Kimmie’s. His, now. He’d been getting to know them, coming to care for them, never even realizing—

  The front door opened. “Jason? Everything okay?”

  Erica was framed in the doorway. The soft light behind her made her skin and hair glow.

  A little bit like Kimmie had always glowed in his mind.

  In truth, Erica, like Kimmie, had lost her luster, if she’d ever even had it.

  He strode up the front steps and brushed past her into the entryway. Sitting down on the bench, he took off his snowy boots and tossed them into the pile of shoes by the door. They made a satisfying crash.

  “Shh! The twins!”

  He looked at her, and it was like she was a different person from the woman he’d been getting close to. “Yeah,” he said. “We should talk about the twins.”

  Her eyes widened. “What was the phone call about?”

  “Let’s take this discussion into the front room.” He watched her face. “We wouldn’t want to wake up Kimmie’s babies.”

  Her hand flew to her mouth and her eyes went impossibly wide. “You know.”

  Until that moment, in a corner of his mind, he’d thought Brian might have gotten it wrong. Or that maybe, Erica hadn’t known the babies were Kimmie’s. Which didn’t make any sense, but was easier to believe than that sweet, gentle Erica—the woman he’d fallen in love with—had been lying since the moment they’d met.

  “Jason...”

  He jerked his head sideways toward the front room. “In here.”

  She walked in ahead of him, shoulders slumping, and perched on the edge of the couch. He sat in the chair that was kitty-corner. Mistletoe lifted his head from his bed in front of the fire and whined softly.

  They both stared at the floor.

  Finally, she spoke. “Jason, I’ve been wanting to tell you about the twins practically since the first day I knew you. It’s just... It’s been complicated.”

  Understanding dawned. “That’s why you didn’t want me in the doctor’s office.”

  “Yes. I knew I had to tell the doctor the whole truth, and—”

  “You owed more honesty to the doctor than to me?” He knew dimly that his remark wasn’t fair, but he couldn’t make himself stifle it.

  “It was for the twins.” She leaned forward, elbows on knees. “The doctor needed to know everything so she could give them the best help possible.”

  A log crackled and fell in the fireplace. Mistletoe stood, turned in a circle and flopped back down with a sigh.

  “All this time,” he said. “Knowing it, being what I thought was close, and you didn’t see fit to tell me those boys are my own nephews?” His voice was too loud, but he couldn’t seem to control it. “What does that say about you?”

  “I... Jason, I’m so sorry. I wanted to tell you.”

  He pressed his lips together so he wouldn’t say the immediate, awful things he wanted to say.

  She’d lied to him. That was one thing to focus on.

  The fact that the twins were his sister’s, were his blood—that was too big to take in right now.

  His body felt like it was going to explode. He jumped up and paced the room, picking things up and putting them down. “Why’d you do it, Erica? What are you trying to get out of me and Papa?”

  “Nothing. I don’t want anything from you.”

  “Why, because you already got everything you need from Kimmie? What was that will about? Blackmail? Did you steal the twins from her?”

  “No! I—”

  “Because I’ll prosecute. If you in any way made my sister’s last days harder, if you...” He nearly choked as all the possibilities whirled in his thoughts. “If you caused her death, taking away her kids and stressing her out—”

  “No, no!” She held up a hand, looking up at him, her eyes filling with tears. “Jason, it wasn’t like that at all.”

  “Child abduction,” he recited, his voice flat because he’d said it so many times before, though never in such a personal context. “Wrongfully removing a child by persuasion, fraud, open force or violence. I don’t doubt that you’ll see prison time over this.”

  “She gave them to me.” Erica’s face was white. “She asked me to take them, because she couldn’t care for them herself anymore, and she didn’t want them to go into foster care.”

  “You expect me to believe that? Why would they have been put into foster care when they had a perfectly loving family back here and a mother there?”

  “Because.
..” She stopped, shook her head, looked away.

  “Can’t think of an answer, can you?”

  She hesitated, then met his eyes. “I don’t know if you want to know the answer.”

  He clenched his fists. “I want to know. Not that I’ll believe one thing you say.”

  “She was using,” Erica said quietly, “and the police were coming.”

  Jason pounded a fist into his hand as bitterness spread through his chest. “With her babies there, she was using?” All this time he’d been trying to maintain an image of Kimmie, and it had been false. For that matter, the same was true of Erica.

  He shook his head. “So she asked you to bring them to me and Papa, and instead you—”

  “No.” Erica shook her head. “You have to understand, it was all hectic and hurried. She thought I could live in the cabin until I got on my feet. It was all she had to offer me for...for raising her children. But, Jason, I love them like they’re my own and I want what’s best for them. I’m not trying to pull something over on you. I did this—I’ve been taking care of them since leaving Arizona and even before—because I cared for Kimmie and I’ve come to love her boys.” Her voice choked up on the last words.

  “You can do better than that. You’re a great liar.”

  “She didn’t want you to have them.” She was staring at the carpet, her voice low.

  He wasn’t sure he’d heard her right. “What did you say?”

  She looked up at him. “Kimmie didn’t want you to have the twins. She asked me to raise them and not to let you know.”

  Jason grabbed a plastic snow globe he’d loved since childhood and threw it against the wall.

  Erica flinched as it shattered, water and little plastic pieces flying everywhere. Her shoulders hunched in, like he was going to hit her.

  “That can’t be true. Kimmie would have trusted me before someone like you. A liar with nothing. No connection to the family, no experience, no resources...”

  She was looking at him now, her face set and serious, except that tears were running down her cheeks.

  “Kimmie was smart,” he continued, trying to work it out in his mind. “She knew the babies would need help—”

  “They need help now,” she said, standing up.

  “What?”

  “I heard one of them crying. Coughing. Something.” She hurried toward the stairs.

  He followed her. “You’re faking this to get away from me. But I’m watching you. I’m not letting you take the babies again—”

  “Or maybe you woke them up, throwing things like a little boy because you’re mad at your sister.” The words, tossed over her shoulder, cut into him.

  Still, he followed her into the room she shared with them. Her nightgown hung on the bedpost, slippers at the foot of the bed. Her Bible and a little devotional book on the bedside table.

  He swallowed the bile that rose in his throat and approached the crib.

  The twins lay in striped Christmas pajamas, Mikey with his head toward one end of the crib, Teddy with his head toward the other. Their legs were intertwined, and as he watched, Mikey tossed back and forth, coughed and let out a fussy little cry.

  They were Kimmie’s babies. His nephews.

  Jason’s throat tightened.

  Erica’s breathing sounded choked and she brushed the backs of her hands over her cheeks. The flowery smell of her hair rose to his nose.

  He ignored the tiny shred of sympathy and caring that pushed at him. He’d been about to fall for this liar.

  He always picked the wrong person—as witness Renea and now Erica. He had a knack for it, choosing those who were already on the way to some kind of emotional ruin, and then nudging that train along to full speed.

  Mikey fussed some more, kicking his legs restlessly, and Erica picked him up carefully, trying not to disturb Teddy. She jostled Mikey gently in her arms. “You’ve picked up a cold, haven’t you?” she said in a quiet, bouncy voice. “Let’s wipe your nose, huh?” She carried him over and got a tissue from a box on the dresser, wiped the baby’s nose. Then she grabbed another tissue and blotted her own eyes.

  Teddy thrashed in the crib as if looking for his twin and then let out a wail.

  Before he could think about it, Jason had Teddy in his arms. He gently bounced him, stroking his soft hair.

  This was his nephew. His blood.

  The babies Kimmie had borne and hadn’t told him about.

  “Did she try to get in touch with me?” The question burst out of him. “Or Mom, or Gran and Papa?”

  Erica shook her head. “She didn’t want any of you to know.”

  “But the safety of her own children, their health!”

  Teddy started to cry again and Jason swayed with him. Erica had found a little medicine bottle and a dropper and was filling it, blocking Mikey from rolling off the bed with her body. “Here you go, sweetie, this’ll help your cold,” she said, propping Mikey up and popping the syringe into his mouth.

  Mikey turned his head away and spit out some of the bright red medicine. “There, but some got inside, huh?” she crooned, using another tissue to wipe Mikey’s chin. “There, that’ll help you feel better and sleep. Rock with Mama.”

  “You’re not their mother.”

  She drew in a little gasp and her eyes flashed up to Jason’s, and then she looked back down at Mikey again and rocked, back and forth.

  “So when the nurse asked you if they were breastfed...”

  She shook her head, still rocking the baby. “I don’t know. Kimmie said she was able to stay clean while she was pregnant and for a while after. I’d assume she at least tried.”

  “You weren’t around her then?” His hunger for more information made him keep talking to the woman who’d betrayed his sister and lied to him.

  She shook her head. “I wish I had been. I wish it so much. But that was when my mom was having so much trouble and I could barely... Anyway, I lost touch with Kimmie.”

  “Lost touch until when?”

  “Until she called me two months ago and told me she was dying and she needed help.”

  He bit down the pain those words roused in him. “Why wouldn’t she call us? Why would she call a young woman, a stranger with who-knows-what intentions...”

  “We were friends, Jason, and I didn’t judge her.”

  His mouth had been open to ask more questions, to vent more feelings, but her words made him stop. Would he have judged Kimmie, had he known what had happened in her life?

  “Hey, what’s going on in here?” Papa pushed through the half-open door, clad in flannel pajamas with a plaid robe tied on over them.

  “I’m sorry we woke you up,” Erica said.

  He waved a hand. “Old folks don’t sleep well. Are the babies sick?”

  She glanced over at Jason. “I think they picked up a cold or something. They were at the doctor’s and around other kids so much, it’s inevitable.”

  “Why don’t you tell him what else has come out tonight,” Jason said to Erica.

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “Is this the right time?”

  “No,” he said, “that would’ve been when you met us for the first time. But you didn’t choose the right time, did you?”

  She sighed. “No, I didn’t.”

  “What’s going on between you two?” Papa Andy sat down on the bed beside Erica.

  “I... Papa, I’m really sorry,” she said, “but there’s a secret I’ve been keeping since I came to Pennsylvania. Jason just found out about it, and he’s angry. Understandably. You’ll probably be angry, too.”

  “Oh, now,” Papa said, patting her back, “what could a sweet young woman like you do that would make an old man angry?”

  She swallowed hard. “I... You know how Kimmie and I we
re friends, right?”

  Papa nodded, tickling Mikey’s foot.

  “Well, one reason she and I spent a lot of time together, toward the end, was that...” She trailed off and looked at Jason.

  “What she’s trying to say, Papa, is that the babies aren’t hers. They’re Kimmie’s.”

  Papa’s mouth opened in an O. He stared from Erica to Mikey to Teddy.

  Erica thrust the baby into his arms and fled from the room.

  * * *

  Erica ran down the steps and into the front room, gasping with sobs.

  Why, oh why, hadn’t she told them on her own terms rather than letting the truth be discovered? And what would happen now?

  Would the twins be taken from her? Was her dream of motherhood already at an end?

  “I’m sorry, Kimmie,” she whispered. She picked up a photograph of Jason and Kimmie as kids with Santa. It was one of Papa’s favorites, and she often saw him looking at it.

  What had gone so wrong in this family that huge, painful secrets were needed?

  She saw a tiny plastic Christmas tree on the floor in a little puddle of water. The nearby shards of plastic looked sharp.

  She walked into the kitchen and got paper towels, feeling stiff in every part of her body, exhausted, old. She came back into the room and started cleaning up the mess.

  Jason had been so furious. Of course he had. No one liked being lied to, and this was the lie to end all lies, a lie of major proportions.

  She inhaled the piney scent of the Christmas tree as she searched out all the little pieces of a broken Christmas scene. For a moment she thought about saving them. Maybe the snow globe could be put back together.

  She studied the bits in her hand. No. Hopeless.

  She carried the pieces to the trash can and threw them in. Upstairs, she could hear Jason’s and Papa’s low voices, but no sound of crying babies. The boys had probably gone back to sleep. They were exhausted from their big day.

  Loss, a huge hole in her chest, opened with such an ache that she sat down on the couch and hunched over, clutching her elbows.

  She was a horrible person, not deserving of a family.

  That little moment in the cabin, when Jason had put his arm around her like she was his longtime wife, when she’d cuddled into him, was the last time she’d have the opportunity to touch him.