by Cathy Lamb
“Yes, no problem,” Tiala said, and the three followed her. I
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noticed one of the women stopped at the mystery shelves and the other stopped at nonfiction best sellers.
I went out to my deck overlooking the bay and closed my eyes. I made myself repicture the accident in the ditch. His socks didn’t match. They were both white. But one had a brand name written across the top and the other had a different brand name.
Obviously this wasn’t foolproof; he could wear mismatched socks again, but today his socks were the same mismatched pair as in my premonition.
I got my little knife out of my purse in my office, went outside the bookstore, and slashed the tires of his blue bike—blue for his loving mom—as subtly as I could. I am skilled at slash and dash. It was one strike against the front tire on the way to the mailbox, one slash against the back on the way in with the mail.
The young man was going to be hit by a truck and land in a ditch, which would snap his neck, but with my interference he would need to get new tires. That would allow plenty of time for the truck to be on its way and change the premonition.
I went right back into the bookstore and rang them up. They each bought another book in addition to the one on bike rides and trails on the island.
I didn’t like seeing the look of despair and anger on his face when he saw his mangled tires, but it was better than having a mangled neck, and I was able to send him to Harry Charles, who I knew would give him a good deal.
I gave them all chocolate chip cookies and a cup of Kenyan coffee before they left. It was the least I could do for saving his life.
Jules and I both received emails from the DNA company on Saturday afternoon.
“Don’t open it!” she yelled at me over the phone when I called to tell her. She was on the last ferry tonight from Anacortes and headed to Rose Bloom Cottage. “We’ll do it together.”
“This will be fun,” I said. “How do you think they’ll catego-rize ‘Witch Ancestry’?”
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At ten that night, Jules at my house, both of us in matching heart pajamas, we set our computers side by side.
“Here we go. This is where we find out that you’re part Italian,” she said to me. “It’ll explain that black hair.”
“And this is where we find out that you’re actually Chinese, Jules. That’ll account for your blonde hair.”
We eagerly opened our e-mails, read the information, then looked at the pie graphs and studied the percentages.
“Wow,” I said, stunned as I examined my graph. “I can’t believe this. This isn’t what we were told by Mom and Dad and Grandpa. I’m 22 percent Iberian Peninsula. Twenty percent Russian. Thirty-eight percent Irish and 12 percent Welsh. And unknown. Eight percent. They can’t trace it yet? It’s a mixture?
What does yours say?” I turned to Jules.
“There’s got to be something wrong,” Jules said.
“Why?”
“Look at my graph.”
I scooted over. “What? This can’t be right. There’s a mistake.”
Jules’s chart showed English, Scottish, German, and Norwegian, for a total of 83 percent, and 10 percent total of Bantu, Mali, and Senegal, plus 7 percent unknown.
“This doesn’t make sense,” I said. “We should have exactly the same genetic background as sisters. Our percentages would be different—you’d be 10 percent of one country, like Scottish, because of Dad, and I’d be 15 percent—but we’re not . . .” I peered back and forth at the computer screens, as Jules was, comparing and contrasting. “This can’t be right, Jules. We don’t share any of the same countries at all. Not one.”
“They probably got the spit mixed up with someone else’s,”
Jules said.
“Right. There was a spit mistake.”
“This is a mess,” she said. “I can believe the English, Scottish, and Norwegian in our DNA. We were told that by Mom and Dad and Grandpa. And having German in us is believable, too.
But what in the world with the Bantu and Mali and Senegal?
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And what about Grandma? She said she was French and Greek, but neither one of us has French or Greek in us. . . .”
What the heck? “I have no idea. . . .”
“This has to be wrong. Here,” Jules said. “Let’s go online and check out who we’re related to. Maybe somehow we’re related to the same people, you and me, and they got that part right. And the part about where we’re from, that’s where the mistake is. Yours is wrong or mine is wrong or they’re both wrong.”
“Yes, let’s try it.” It didn’t make sense, but . . .
We went online to the ancestry website. We figured since we were getting our genetic information, we could meet long-lost cousins, so we had bought the whole enchilada. We logged in.
We went to the place where relatives could be found and messaged. . . .
“Look at this!” Jules said. “We have second cousins on here, third cousins. One’s in Galveston. Two are in Norway, one in England. A German . . . Huh. I don’t get this. This is confusing.
There are two second cousins in Mali. One in Senegal. And . . .
these are their photos.”
The cousins in Mali and Senegal were black.
“I don’t get this,” Jules said. “But they’re both pretty.”
We studied the people on our screens, back and forth, back and forth. There was something very, very wrong again. None of Jules’s relatives matched mine. Not one. My relatives were in Portland, Oregon, three of them. They were in Mexico and Russia, and several in Ireland and one in Wales. They were in Texas and California . . .
“Okay. They’ve screwed this up,” Jules said. “We need to call the DNA company and tell them about this. Geez. This is irritating. Mack and I need to know what recipe our kids are going to be. What ingredients.”
I studied my screen, totally confused.
There were two people on my family tree—Betsy Baturra and Johnny Kandinsky—who were married. It said that these people were my parents. There was also another woman . . . Tilly Kandinsky. It said it was highly likely she was my aunt.
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But this couldn’t be right. Betsy and Johnny were not my parents. Poppy and Henry Lindsay were my parents.
Tilly Kandinsky was not my aunt. Aunt Camellia and Aunt Iris were my aunts.
Where had I heard those names before? Johnny and Betsy.
Johnny and Betsy. I racked my brain. Tilly.
“Oh, my God,” Jules said, looking at my screen. “This isn’t right. Those are not your parents. This DNA company has roy-ally screwed up.”
“I’m looking them up on Facebook.” I found the woman’s name and her page. My breath stuck in my throat, my heart pounded. “That woman, Betsy, looks exactly like me.” Looking at Betsy was like looking at me in twenty years. She had thick black hair, like mine, although she had a few streaks of white. I have gold eyes. She had gold eyes. My eyes tilt. Hers tilted. We had the same mouth, same high cheekbones.
Jules was breathing rather heavily beside me as we stared at the photo of Betsy.
“We’re not listed as sisters,” Jules said. “And that . . . that woman . . . who is listed as your mother . . .”
I stared at the screen with Jules, her cheek almost touching mine.
Yes, something was very wrong.
“You look like her,” Jules breathed. “It’s like looking at you in twenty years.”
“She owns Rose’s Market.” I touched the screen with a trembling finger.
“That’s my favorite market,” Jules mused quietly. “Great wine. I don’t understand what’s going on.”
“She has a daughter,” I said. We stared at the girl’s photo.
Her name was Kayla. Black hair. Gold eyes.
“She looks so much like you did when you were a teenager,”
Jules breathed.
I was starting to understand, eve
n as my brain pushed back, unable to accept. I remembered where I’d read those names before.
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It all came to me in a rush. Like a tsunami. Like a hurricane.
Like a thunderstorm.
Betsy and Johnny were the young couple who were jailed for murder.
They had to give up their baby. The baby was born in Portland, like me, in 1975.
Tilly, Johnny’s sister, remembered what happened that night after years of not remembering anything, after years of not speaking. . . . Dead women in a dirt cave under the ground in Idaho, dead women in a crawl space under the basement in Portland. . . .
Betsy and Johnny found innocent in their next trials.
They fought in court to get their baby back. They lost.
They had named her Rose.
Oh. My. God.
“Evie, I want to apologize to you.”
“Thank you.” I turned away from creepy, obsessive Chief Ass Burn and started walking back to my bookstore as dignified as I could while holding a thrashing Ghost in her cat carrier and a pile of books in my other arm. Ghost was hissing and meowing.
I think she sensed Chief Ass Burn’s basic disgustingness.
“And I bet you want to apologize to me.” He hurried around and stood in front of me, stomach out. North Sound wasn’t crowded this morning, but there were people milling about, fishermen in the bay, bikers riding through on their way to the lake.
I laughed at him. After what I learned last night, I really didn’t want to be dealing with this shark, so it made me, paradoxically, laugh loudly. “You have to be kidding.”
“You owe me an apology. I apologized, now you apologize and we’ll call a truce.”
“What would I need to apologize for?”
He flushed with anger, his sneaky pig eyes narrowing. “Un-dermining my authority with the other islanders. Not obeying me when I told you to bring your ticket in to me when your taillight was fixed so I could reduce it. Telling Marco to defy me.
Back talk from you when I had to run a Breathalyzer on you because you were swaying in your lane. Not bringing that ticket to
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me so I could reduce it. Reporting on me to my superior. Calling me Chief Ass Burn when that is not my name. You are un-friendly and rude and disobedient . . .” He paused and coughed.
“Disobedient to the law.”
“Disobedient?” I wanted to choke. “I do not have to obey you. I don’t have to be friendly to you. I can say whatever I want because we have something here called free speech.”
“And there you go again, Evie,” he said, taking a step closer, his stomach coming straight at me.
I put Ghost, who was cat-screeching now, right between us.
She hissed at Chief Ass Burn. “Don’t try to intimidate me, because I don’t intimidate. Now step back.” I said “step back”
loudly.
His mouth tightened, then inexplicably he smiled. Which was so creepy it made my whole body tense up.
“You want the truth, Evie? I think we could be friends, if you lose some of your attitude and stop trying to challenge me.
When are you free for dinner? We’ll go to dinner, talk this out, come to an agreement. You haven’t even taken the opportunity to get to know me.”
“I like my attitude and I’m not changing it. You feel challenged because you would feel challenged by any woman who doesn’t praise you or stroke your ego. I am never going to dinner with you, and I don’t want to get to know you any better.” I turned and walked around him toward my pretty bookstore.
“Evie, stop!” he ordered in his police chief’s voice.
I kept walking.
“It’s Marco, isn’t it?”
I didn’t stop.
“Well, if you want to date a man who has a thing for animals, go ahead. If you want a real man, then there’s me.”
He makes me sick. I turned around and he was smirking, chest out. “You, Chief Ass Burn, are nowhere near the man that Marco is.” A rush of anger charged through my body. Chief Ass Burn would not leave me alone. He was making this idyllic life, this serene island, which had always been a haven for me, ugly.
Plus, he’d criticized Marco, and I was flaming mad. “Marco has
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integrity. He is a highly intelligent military veteran. He is brave and compassionate. He heals animals all day, every day. He treats people with respect and with kindness. You two are entirely, completely different. Don’t you ever criticize Marco again.
I don’t want to hear it, and no one on this island wants to hear it.
In any comparison between the two of you, you will lose out.”
He was almost purple with fury. “You’re a—”
“What?” I taunted him as Ghost hissed again. “Say it. I would like to be able to write it down in the documentation that I’m keeping about your behavior on this island and how you treat people. So complete your sentence.”
“You’re threatening a police officer.”
I laughed. “Then arrest me. My first call will be to my attorney because it is illegal to lock a woman up because she won’t go to dinner with you. My second call will be to your superior, who is already getting complaints left and right about you. So.
Do you want to arrest me because I hurt your massive ego by telling you that you are nowhere near the man that Marco is?”
“I’ll arrest you for telling people the future like a gypsy and lying to them,” he huffed, but I saw the malice behind his eyes, the desire for revenge. Narcissists always have to get revenge.
They do not forget, they do not forgive. If you do not treat them like you think they’re God, they will attack. “You’re ripping them off. You’re running a scam and you’re preying on vulnerable people and leading them astray.”
“You’re a fool, Chief Ass Burn. I never charge people, I never take money, I never take anything. But go ahead. Find one person on this island who wants to file charges against me for being a gypsy. I dare you.”
I walked away, his eyes burning a hole in my back, Ghost almost apoplectic.
He would do everything he could to get back at me. He was a vile snake.
“Mom,” I said, “Aunt Camellia. Aunt Iris.” I fiddled with my teacup at Rose Bloom Cottage. I was shocked. I was angry, hurt, confused. I felt betrayed.
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Beside me, Jules was shocked, too, and quiet.
I’d spent much of last night at the beach, staring into the darkness, the gentle lapping of the waves the only noise I needed, as my brain was a hive of noise and chaos. Under the moon’s white-gold tunnel, I’d walked through my grandma’s garden, past the gazebo, the pond with the lily pads and the bridge. I sat on her colorful benches and saw two deer and hid in the secret garden room where a six-foot statue of a fairy watched over the perfectly trimmed boxwood and maple trees.
I could not find peace.
My reality of my own life was not mine. My truth was not my truth.
I had called the DNA company. I had talked to a very nice woman there. She explained how the tests were done, how the tubes were handled, how “many people find surprises in their DNA.” DNA did not lie. There were no mistakes.
“Jules and I received our information back from the DNA company.”
My mother dropped her delicate purple rose teacup. It clat-tered to her saucer and broke. I stood right up to help her, as did Jules and Sundance. My mother didn’t move as we picked up the shards of china and wiped up the tea. She stared straight ahead, stricken. Aunt Camellia and Aunt Iris, always helpful, did nothing to help us, either. They had frozen, exactly as our mother had, their faces worried. Resigned. Guilty. And, overall, pained.
We sat back down again, at the table where my grandpa used to pluck feathers out of chickens, Sundance at my feet. I tried to get my emotions under control. It is not every day you find out you are not related to your parents and you are not related to your sister when you tho
ught you were. In fact, there is a whole other family out there who says you belong to them. “When I first received the DNA information I thought there was a mistake.” I took a deep breath. “There was no mistake.”
I stopped as my mother’s eyes filled.
“Mom? Please, Mom.”
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She leaned back in her chair, her body crumpling, her eyes shutting, as Aunt Camellia put her arm around her.
“DNA doesn’t talk about love,” Aunt Camellia said, her voice wavering. “And that’s what we have here.”
I felt a bit faint.
“Too much information can, statistically speaking, cause problems,” Aunt Iris said, but it was weak.
Beside me, Jules twitched.
“Mom, Jules and I, according to this DNA site, are not sisters. We’re not related at all.”
My mother opened her eyes, then started to cry, her face in her hands. My mother so rarely cries.
“You are not my biological mother and Dad is not my biological father, are you?”
Her shoulders shook.
“Oh, Mom.” I didn’t know what to do. I was so angry at her, but I loved her, too. I didn’t want to see her cry like this.
“Remember our bonds, our family bonds,” Aunt Camellia said.
“Family is family,” Aunt Iris said.
“Mom,” Jules said. “Are we both adopted?”
“No,” my mother sobbed. “No. Just my beloved Evie.”
I sat back, my mind numb. Jules sat back, too. We didn’t think that Jules had been adopted, but we knew there was a possibility. She looked like my mother and aunts—blonde hair, although their hair was now white, dark brown eyes. Jules resembled them in photos when they were her age.
“I’m Baby Rose, aren’t I?”
My mother gasped, as did my aunts.
“Yes, darling,” my mother finally choked out, “You are Baby Rose.”
I was Baby Rose. My biological mother and father had been jailed for murder. One of them, probably my mother, had killed Johnny’s father. It was a huge trial. Their baby, me, had been taken from them after Betsy gave birth in jail.
“Evie,” my mother said, tears all over her face. “I couldn’t get pregnant. We didn’t know what was wrong, and the doctor
