by Jan Coffey
He went to the kitchen cabinet and took down a can of coffee. Thanks to his mother, the cabinet was still full of soups and canned foods and other non-perishables. Looking at them, he felt a sense of comfort, knowing he could still manage here if he needed to.
He started a pot of coffee and sat down at the computer.
Mark opened his email. The last time he’d checked it was last night. He had a dozen messages. He found the one from Jennifer Sullivan at the top of the list. The email had an attachment.
He opened it, anxious and not knowing why.
There was a brief message from the nurse, summarizing pretty much what they had said on the phone. He scrolled down. The computer was taking its time to load the picture.
Mark looked over his shoulder at the coffee pot. It was ready. He turned back to the computer to see if he still had to wait.
The picture on the screen gave him a sharp kick in the gut. He stared at the face for a long moment.
Mark reached for his cell phone and dialed the last called number. The operator at the long term care facility in Connecticut answered.
“Jennifer Sullivan, please,” he told her. “Please tell her it’s Mark Shaw.”
He didn’t have to wait long before Jennifer was on the line.
“I know her,” he said into the phone.
The shock was transferred to the other side of the line. It seemed a few long seconds before the nurse found her voice.
“You do?” Jennifer asked. “Who is she?”
“Have you been watching the news about the accident and those researchers on the Gulf of Mexico?”
“I’ve read a little about it.”
“Well, I believe the name of the person in the photo is Amelia Kagan. She’s the twin sister of Marion Kagan…who died in the research facility yesterday.”
CHAPTER 22
Nuclear Fusion Test Facility
Marion aimed the axe at the door handle, but she was tiring quickly and missed. The blade hit the tile floor and glanced off, just missing her foot. Raising the axe with an effort, she took more careful aim and swung it again.
Two total strangers meeting in an airport, and yet Marion had revealed things to Mark that she’d never told to people she considered her closest friends in California.
She’d talked about the town where she was from. Deer Lodge, Montana. This was the one place she never talked about, almost never allowed herself to think about…if she could help it. Even in her mind, she liked to pretend that it never existed.
Most importantly, though, she’d told him about her twin sister Amelia. People whom she’d met after leaving Montana never even knew Marion had an identical twin.
She’d told Mark how, even as children, they were like one person divided into two bodies. What set them apart, though, was their reaction to life—their distinctly different way of handling their emotions. Amelia reacted, pouring hers out and showing everything; Marion repressed every uncomfortable feeling.
Marion leaned against the door to catch her breath. She’d been hacking at it with the axe. She knew she was almost there. She was determined to get it open. Her mind wandered to her past again.
Deer Lodge. Her mother had returned to the home of Marion’s grandparents with the twins after their father took off with another woman. As soon as she got her feet under her, Kim Kagan had immediately changed her last name back to her maiden name. She was Kim Brown to everyone who knew her. The twins were only three, and neither of them remembered much about the man who’d fathered them. And in the years that followed, they never saw him or heard from him.
Deer Lodge was not much to speak of. Except for the fact that some big NBA coach had come from there, the tattered gray town was famous for just about one thing. The prison. The biggest employer in town. That was where Marion’s grandfather had worked his whole life, and that’s where her mother had gotten a job as a secretary after returning home with the twins.
Living with a mother who always worked overtime to make ends meet, and elderly grandparents who had their own lives, Marion and her sister did not have an ideal childhood.
There was so much Marion had never liked about her life. The house was always overshadowed by a black cloud of tension, guilt, and sadness. That cloud emanated from their mother. She was unhappy and let everyone know it, feel it. Marion hid her misery and buried herself in her books and her studying. She erected walls out of the knowledge she found in those pages and hid behind them.
Amelia, on the other hand, took the brunt of their mother’s unhappiness. Sensitive and caring as a child, she felt it all deeply and eventually rebelled against it.
Their grandfather had a soft spot in his heart for Amelia. But that bit of attention made Kim only angrier. She constantly complained that the old man was meddling in the way she was raising her daughters.
The girls’ mother made sure they knew that to be vulnerable was to be weak. Because of Kim, in their home a person needed thick skin to survive.
As an adult Marion often thought back over those years and came to realize that Amelia never had stood a chance. Kim was of the school of parenting that allowed choosing favorites. And in her eyes her daughters, though identical, were each a model of one parent. Marion was like Kim and Amelia was like their father. She was one bad egg.
Amelia became more miserable as she grew older, and her actions reflected it. She ran away at twelve, was caught and returned three weeks later. For the next four years, she was constantly in trouble at school and at home…and out on the streets as much as she could be. The grandparents took sides, as well, naturally. The girls’ grandmother had as little patience for Amelia as her daughter did. Their grandfather continually sided with Amelia. It didn’t matter much, however. He didn’t have much say in the way things ran in the house.
At seventeen, Amelia ran away for good. And to this day, Marion believed that her mother was relieved. Kim had clearly been expecting it. Like father, like daughter. Good riddance.
After that, no one was allowed to talk about Amelia at home, just as no one was ever allowed to mention the name of the man who had fathered them. Even at school, no one mentioned Amelia’s name. Everyone who knew them pretended that she had never existed.
Marion picked up the ax and swung it hard, slamming it against the door.
“But not me,” she said out loud.
For Marion, her sister had never died. She knew Amelia was alive. There had been times long ago when she could feel her sister’s pain, her feeling of restlessness. But for long time now, there’d been a sense of peace. Not death. But a calmness that made Marion believe that perhaps her sister had finally found the happiness she’d been searching for.
She lifted the ax again and let it drop.
With the sound of cracking wood, the entire handle separated from the door, and it was open.
CHAPTER 23
Waterbury Long-Term Care Facility
Connecticut
There was a slight movement of the fingers. Sid looked down and realized he had laid his hand on JD’s hand as he listened to Jennifer on the telephone.
He looked up into her face. She was watching him.
“Are you listening to this, too?” he whispered.
He didn’t know exactly what was said on the other end of the line, but one thing was clear. Mark Shaw knew who JD was. Sid felt anxiety that he knew he had no right to be feeling. He’d only started working with her yesterday.
The possibility of having to stop the experiment wasn’t what concerned him now. This acceptance alone was a transformation in who he was and how he worked. But there was something more, and he couldn’t put his fingers on it.
Science wasn’t the only thing in this equation here. He felt that there was more JD wanted to convey to them; this phone number wasn’t the end of it. This was only the beginning.
Jennifer was writing things down speedily. Sid looked over at Desmond. He hadn’t done anything more with shutting down their equipment for the day. He seem
ed as interested in what the nurse was able to find out.
“I never expected this when we started, did you?” Desmond asked.
Sid shook his head. He told himself that this was the point, though, the purpose behind what he was studying, what he wanted to do. The theory of how many pictures of cats and dogs the computer could guess correctly from the readings was only a stepping stone to this. To actually help someone. To help find out who this young woman was.
“Okay, I’ll be here,” Jennifer said before ending the call.
Desmond came around the computers. “What do you have?”
The nurse stood on the other side of the bed and looked down at JD. The patient’s eyes remained on Sid.
“Amelia?” she called softly.
There was no movement. Sid kept his hand on hers, testing for any reaction.
“Amelia Kagan,” she repeated.
Sid looked into her dark eyes, wishing he could see what it was going through her mind right now. They’d removed the electrodes.
“Is that her name?” Desmond asked.
Jennifer nodded. “Mark Shaw believes she is Amelia Kagan, the twin sister of the scientist who just died in that explosion in the Gulf of Mexico.” She looked around the room. She moved to where a stack of papers had been left on a table. “Wasn’t there a newspaper here from yesterday with the article and pictures? Here it is.”
As Jennifer looked through the paper, Sid couldn’t bring himself to look away from JD. The intensity of the young woman’s stare rooted him to the same spot. He felt there was a change from what he’d seen before.
“Amelia Kagan,” he repeated the name. “Next time we connect her to the computer, I want to see if anything shows up when we mention her name.”
“Do you think they’ll let us continue?” Desmond asked.
“We have all the signatures that we need for right now. I only stop when someone comes in and tells me to stop.”
“So who is this guy…Mark Shaw?” Desmond asked. “Family?”
“No…only a friend to JD…Amelia’s sister,” Jennifer said, looking through the pages. “He’s decided to drive to Connecticut. He’s offering to help out with whatever the conservator or the police might need from him. I got the feeling that there was something between him and Marion Kagan.”
Sid felt the movement again. The fingers shifted beneath the weight of his hand.
“Here’s her picture. Marion Kagan, age twenty-five…”
Amelia’s fingers moved again. She tried to raise her hand.
“Say her name again,” Sid told Jennifer.
She lowered the newspaper. “Amelia?”
“No, her sister’s.”
“Marion. Marion Kagan.”
“She’s responding to it,” Sid said excitedly. “She’s responding to that name, but not to her own.”
“Should we hook her up again?” Desmond wanted to know.
“I believe there are some phone calls that you or I should be making first,” Jennifer reminded Sid. “Dr. Baer…the conservator. They should be ready to meet with Mark Shaw when he gets here.”
Sid knew how bureaucracy worked. Things took time. He hoped there would be no problem meeting Shaw today, considering he was coming here all the way from Pennsylvania. The last call he’d made to Baer wasn’t urgent, so he’d left a voice mail for him. This one had to be left with his answering service. They’d get the message to him. And the physician knew how to reach the conservator.
There was no reason to rush Amelia, to put her under any undue stress.
“She’s right.” He turned to Desmond. “You should pack up for the day.”
“And the calls?” Jennifer asked.
“I’m making them,” he told the nurse. “At the same time, I’m not going anywhere. This Mark Shaw doesn’t see her unless I’m in the room.”
“Just like I told you before. That makes two of us.” She laughed. “I’ll have the staff set up your tent.”
CHAPTER 24
Rancho Bernardo, California
“Stop apologizing, Shawn,” Cynthia Adrian spoke into her cell phone. As she talked, she looked out at the familiar streets. They were only minutes from her house now. “I know how these things are. I’m not mad at you, at all. It wasn’t like you were next door—or even in the country—and decided not to come to my father’s funeral.”
“I never realized you had to do everything on your own,” Shawn said from the other end. “Your mother’s a beauty.”
“It’s fine, love. Helen was being Helen. She was upset. If I’d left it to her, she probably wouldn’t have even collected my father’s body from the hospital.” Cynthia wasn’t exaggerating. “Somehow I managed to survive the week. It’s over. I’m home.”
She had arrived at the San Diego airport only a couple of hours earlier. There’d been a driver and a bouquet of flowers waiting for her, all from her fiancé, Shawn Dunlap, who was wrapping up a business deal in Botswana. Shawn had just left for the trip when she’d heard from the hospital about her father’s death. Complications from the anesthetic after a routine colonoscopy. It wasn’t right.
Cynthia motioned to the driver which driveway to pull into.
“I’ll see you when you get back next week,” she told him.
“I hope you’re going to take a couple of days off and not go back to work right away,” Shawn encouraged.
“I’ll see how I feel Sunday night,” she said. She pointed to her condo unit. “Got to go. Love you.”
The driver had the luggage out and to the steps by the time Cynthia found her keys and wallet. The young man wouldn’t even accept a tip, saying that all the arrangements had been taken care of by Mr. Dunlap. She told the driver that she could take care of things from here and sent him on his way.
Cynthia wished Shawn could have been in New Mexico. But she knew that was impossible. She knew what she was getting into when she’d accepted his proposal to marry next year. This was just a taste of what was to come. Shawn was a very successful attorney. But he was also a workaholic, similar in many ways to her father. Still, Cynthia had walked into this relationship with her eyes open. Yes, she knew what she was getting into. And she was certainly not her mother.
She’d asked one of the neighbor’s teenagers to come over and check on the cat and bring in the mail while she was gone. The Newman’s lived only two doors down, and they’d bought their place around the same time that she had bought hers.
As Cynthia opened her front door, the large pile of the mail on an end table was the first thing that greeted her. There was also a packet box leaning against one leg of the table.
There was no sign of her cat.
“Shadow,” she called, making kissing noises. “I’m home, puss.”
Putting down the flowers, she went out and brought in her suitcase.
The thirteen hundred square foot, three-story condo had been an early investment she’d made after landing her first real job out of college. Her parents had helped with the down payment and, after six years of living here, she was in the position where she’d make a pretty good profit when she sold it.
Shawn was after her to put the unit on the market and move in with him, but Cynthia wasn’t ready. And that wasn’t because she was old-fashioned or because she had any doubts about her future with him. It was all about the independence.
She wasn’t marrying to have someone else take care of her. She wanted a partner, someone with whom she could share her life. The real estate market wasn’t the best right now, to say the least, and in another year, the condo’s value could only improve. Or at least, that’s what she told herself. And in the meantime, she enjoyed her own space.
“Shadow,” she called out again, kicking her shoes off.
Sometimes, the family who watched the cat took her over to their house. Cynthia figured that must be the case, for the black cat was more focused on anyone coming through the front door than most guard dogs.
She considered walking over right now a
nd getting her pet. But she was too curious about the package even to take the luggage upstairs to her bedroom or check the phone messages.
Picking up the box, she looked at the sender’s name. A gray cloud immediately spread a shadow over her spirit.
The package had been sent by her father the day before he’d gone in for his procedure. She shook the box. Nothing moved inside that would give her a clue. Cynthia sat down on the edge of the sofa and considered what might be in the box.
Her father’s legal issues were certain to be taken care of by the attorneys. Cynthia wasn’t exactly clueless about what had been happening to her parent’s marriage the past few years. They had been spiraling downward toward divorce when he died. Her mother had been living outside of Houston for months. Fred had a girlfriend or two, and from what Cynthia heard, he wasn’t altogether shy about showing them off. She tried to stay out of it. Out of both of her parent’s lives.
Cynthia had heard Helen complaining this past week about how Fred had been threatening not to give her what was due to her in any divorce settlement. She had even implied that if there was any ‘funny business’ in the will, she’d be contesting the estate settlement.
Cynthia didn’t care about any of that. She was the only child, and as far as she was concerned, her mother could have it all. She only relied on herself and her future with Shawn. Nothing else.
She ripped open the top of the box and peeked in. It was packed with what looked to be documents.
“Great,” she muttered, pulling everything out.
Two large manila envelopes and a smaller white business envelope, held together by a large elastic band, dropped onto her lap. A folded note was on top.
Pulling off the elastic band, she opened the note and read her father’s distinctive scrawl:
