F Paul Wilson - Novel 05

by Mirage (v2. 1)

  She didn't hesitate. The tape practically fell off.

  The first thing she saw when she opened it was the Mill-burn Valley Community Hospital heading, hob Report was under that. Then the name Nathan Gordon and the words, "Sperm Analysis":

  Sperm Count: 14,000,000 sperm per cc.

  Motility: 20%

  Viability: 20%

  Morphologic Forms: 30% normal

  Diagnosis: Functionally sterile

  Sterile? How could Nathan be sterile? He was the father of twins. This had to be wrong. You don't get a sperm count unless you're concerned about your fertility or you've just had a vasectomy. She checked for a date and stared in shock when she saw it.

  A month before we were born!

  Their father knew he wasn't sterile—his wife was pregnant with their first child—or in this case, children. Why would he have a vasectomy before his wife delivered?

  Clearly he wouldn't. He'd wait until the pregnancy was over and the children delivered live and intact, and then he'd have the surgery. But never during pregnancy.

  Unless...

  Julie nearly dropped the report.

  Unless he suspected someone else might be the father.

  Oh, God no!

  But if Nathan Gordon wasn't their father, who was?

  Immediately a name popped into her mind.

  3

  Eathan's face went white as he stared down at the sheet of paper on his desk. Finally he looked up at her, his voice barely audible.

  "Where .. . did you . . . get this?"

  Julie stood on the far side of the desk, trembling inside. She'd agonized all afternoon over how to broach the subject with him. It meant confessing to trespassing in his most private sanctum, but she had to bring this out into the open. >he had to know.

  She pointed to the locked wall cabinet. "There."

  "No!" Eathan slammed his fist down on the desk, rattling his pen set and sending paper clips flying. And then both fists clenched. "No!" His eyes blazed at her. "How could you? How could you break my trust like this? Sneak in here and rummage through my private files like a common thief? I..."

  His fingers curled into claws, and for a moment Julie feared he might leap across the desk at her. She cringed and took a step back.

  "I'm sorry," she said. It sounded dumb and lame but it was all she could manage right now.

  "Sorry? You seem to be saying that a lot, lately. Well, sorry doesn't—what's the expression—cut it, Julia. In fact, nothing you can say will make up for this unconscionable invasion of privacy. I want you out of here. Out of Oakwood. Tonight."

  "No, Eathan. You can't mean that. We're losing Sam. And if you were hiding this, I thought—"

  He pounded his fist on the desk again. His face had lost its pallor and was now flushed with anger.

  "I do mean it! I will not share my house with someone I cannot trust! Get out!"

  "Eathan—"

  "Out!" He pointed to the door. "Get out!" She had never seen him this angry. His fury was terrifying.

  What could I have been thinking?

  "All right," Julie said, moving toward the door. "I'll go. But I just want you to answer one question."

  "No! Leave."

  He wouldn't look at her. Did he know what she was going to say? Was that it?

  "Are you my father?"

  Eathan's arm dropped to his side.

  He kept staring down at his desk, then dropped into his chair and buried his face in his hands.

  Julie watched him a moment. He was frozen. Was it such a terrible thing? It would explain so much.

  When he didn't move or say anything, she stepped closer.

  "Eathan? Are you all right?"

  He remained motionless, his face hidden by his hands. Julie moved around the desk until she stood over his shoulder.

  "Is it true, Eathan? Are you my father?"

  A long, agonizing pause, then he nodded into the sheltering hands.

  Suddenly weak, Julie leaned against the desk for support. She'd guessed it, she'd felt it in her heart when she'd grasped the implications of that sperm count, but to stand here and have Eathan acknowledge it...

  My uncle's hiding something. . . .

  You had that right, Sam, she thought. Everybody always said he raised us like his own children....

  She reached out a trembling hand and gently, almost gingerly, placed it on his shoulder.

  "Hello ... Dad."

  Eathan took a deep, shuddering breath and pulled his hands away from his face. Without looking at her he reached up and covered her hand with one of his own.

  "Julia... I'll tell you all about it," he said hoarsely. "But let's go downstairs. I need a drink."

  4

  "How can I toss you out because of a broken trust, after how I betrayed my own brother?"

  They sat across from each other in the drawing room, sipping some of Eathan's fifty-year-old scotch. Julie barely touched hers. She was already numb. She didn't need any more anesthetic.

  "You and my mother, I saw it in Sam's 'scape ... it's hard to believe. How ... ?"

  Eathan's mouth curled in a funny way, as if the idea of Julie seeing them together was embarrassing. "Actually, Lucy and I were a bit of an item before Nathan even met her. Nothing terribly serious, so when I went out to Stanford, to medical school, our relationship . . . well, I guess you might say it attenuated itself out of existence. That was when Nathan moved in. He was pursuing his doctorate at Cornell, so he was around all the time. Eventually they were married and it seemed like a good match. I still cared for Lucinda, but I didn't mind."

  He took a sip. "Or so I thought. I didn't mind until Nathan not over-involved in his work. He ran into financial and professional setbacks; he neglected Lucy. I was lonely too. We'd talk on the phone and I'd try to comfort her. Old feelings revived. We'd stop by and visit each other. We had a history, and before we knew what was happening ..."

  He sipped his scotch and looked away. Even now he seemed ashamed.

  Julie imagined Eathan and her mother in the throes of passion. Not just a kiss, but making love.

  And suddenly she felt sorry for her father—no, for Nathan Gordon, the man she'd always thought of as her father—but she didn't know him. He was little more than a string of old memories.

  Eathan, however—Eathan had been the guiding force in their lives, supportive of anything they attempted, and always there when they needed him. A real father.

  "How long did the affair go on?" she asked.

  "Oh, not long enough to qualify as a real affair. We were both too racked with guilt to continue it, so we scurried back to our prior existences and swore never to mention it again."

  "Did you know we were ..."

  "My children?" He shook his head. "No. I think Lucy knew—I'm sure she must have known—but she never told me. Probably knew what it would do to me. No, I didn't have an inkling until after the fire when I was going through Nathan's papers. I almost passed out."

  "But you said his papers were burned in the fire. How did you get them?"

  Eathan sighed. "Nathan conned me into letting him move a filing cabinet into my basement. He said he didn't have room for it in his place and I believed him. His house was small, and with two little girls running around, there wasn't much room. I never guessed that the real reason he wanted those records out of the house was to make sure your mother never came across them. But after the fire, when I went through them, I... I was shocked."

  "But, God, it means he knew. He knew right from the start that we weren't his. And yet he never said anything to you?"

  "Never a word."

  "Maybe he didn't know whose kids we were."

  Eathan looked miserable. "Oh, I think he knew. But he kept mum and raised you as his own." He grunted as if in pain. "When I think about the countless times I dropped by and held you girls on my knee with him sitting there watching me, knowing all the while ..."

  And that image caused another pang in Julie.

  "But w
hy wouldn't he say anything? You were his brother."

  "He had some strange ideas. I have a feeling he somehow convinced himself that you two really were his children."

  "Oh, come now—"

  "No. I'm quite serious. Because in a way you were. Genetically, at least."

  Julie caught on immediately. "Because you two were identical twins?"

  "Right. My genes were identical to his. And since he was sterile, you were the closest he would ever come to having children of his own."

  "Amazing..." Julie said slowly. "Amazing that someone could rationalize to that point of view and live with it."

  "Your father—" He caught himself. "My brother was an amazing man." He drained his glass and leaned forward. He stared into her eyes. "And now I have something to ask of you."

  "Name it," Julie said.

  "Your key to my wall cabinet. I assume you had a copy made."

  Julie pulled it from her pocket and handed it to him.

  "Now," she said. "Let me ask you for something: the key to that box you kept in the bottom drawer of the locked file cabinet."

  "Kept?" Eathan said, visibly stiffening.

  "I have it."

  He shot to his feet. "Oh, no! You can't have that! You've got to give it back!"

  "I need to see what's inside, Eathan. No more secrets, please. I can handle whatever it is. I deserve to know everything. It's taken over twenty years for me to learn who my real father is. . .."

  "There's nothing in there! Trust me!"

  "No. You trust me. I need to know—"

  Suddenly he was rushing from the room. Julie followed him as he pounded up the stairs and raced toward her room. He yanked open the door and disappeared inside.

  By the time Julie reached her room he had half of her dresser drawers pulled open and was pawing through the topmost.

  "Eathan—please! It's not here!"

  He ignored her. He was out of control. It reminded her of that scene when Charles Foster Kane rampages through his wife's bedroom.

  "Eathan, stop ... please!"

  After finishing with her dresser drawers, he went to her closet and rifled through what little clothing she had hanging there. He checked the window seat—empty—then dropped to his knees and looked under the bed.

  "Julia, get me that box. Give it back to me. Enough prying into the past!"

  "It's my past, Eathan—mine and Sam's."

  When he found nothing under the bed, he began tearing it apart, tossing the sheets and comforter onto the floor, pulling the mattress off the box spring.

  Finally he stood amid the carnage, panting, turning a slow circle. His voice became plaintive.

  "Where is it, Julia? Please ... give it back."

  "As soon as I find out what's in it."

  For an instant his face changed, and for the second time tonight she feared he would attack her. She must be crazy to be pushing him like this. But he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he spoke his voice was flat, calm, cold.

  "This is intolerable. I have the key and will not give it to you. I expect you to return that box to me before I leave for London tomorrow—for Alma's wake," he said pointedly. "If you do not, I will banish you from this house forever. Daughter or not, I will see you and all your electronic garbage out on the driveway before I depart tomorrow morning. Is that clear?"

  Oh, no. Was she to gain her real father and lose him in the same night? She couldn't bear that.

  "Eathan, be reasonable. I have a right—"

  He jabbed a ringer at her. "No! No, you have no right! What is in that box is my private business and has nothing to do with you! I want it back. In my office. Now! Otherwise, start packing."

  He stalked past her and left her alone in the disheveled room.

  Julie knew he wasn't bluffing. Eathan never bluffed. When he made a decision, that was it. If she didn't return the box, she'd be out of here.

  And Sam would be gone . . . forever.

  5

  Julie latched the toolshed door behind her and turned on the flashlight. She pulled her coat tight around her. It had turned so cold.

  No easy task sneaking out of the manor tonight. Eathan had sat up in the drawing room, as if on guard. But eventually he'd come upstairs. When she heard his shower running, she made her move to Sam's room and then out the kitchen door.

  She crossed the shed and flicked the beam around until she found the splintery workbench. She placed the locked box on the scarred surface, then checked out the tools. A giant hammer hung on a rack behind the bench. She took that down. To her left sat a line of four screwdrivers. She picked the heaviest one.

  It took a lot of hammering and made a godawful racket, but she finally managed to pry open the lid.

  He'll never forgive this, she thought.

  She opened the lid slowly.

  A small manila folder lay inside. Her hands shook as she lifted it out. Inside was a report from the Putnam County coroner on the deaths of Lucy Gordon and Nathan Gordon. She sifted through it, glancing only briefly at the autopsy results, the dental matchups. She gasped when the black-and-white photo of a charred corpse slipped into the light. Nathan Gordon's empty eye sockets stared at her. His blackened, half-open jaws seemed to be leering at her.

  She told herself: That's not my father.

  Julie shut the folder and shuddered. God! Why would Eathan keep something like that? She put it aside and sail what looked like three small notebooks or journals in the bottom of the box.

  Could it be? Were these Nathan's experimental journals?

  Her heart pounded madly against her ribs as she opened the top volume and began reading the crabbed handwriting;

  Twenty-Nine

  For a memory to stay fresh and vivid, or for a false memory to be reinforced, its synaptic connections must be periodically engaged—i.e., the memory must be reviewed—on a regular basis. Sort of the neurological equivalent of pulling the pieces of a memory from their various closets, reassembling it, dusting it off and polishing it up, checking it for wear and tear, and then putting it back on the shelf.

  —Random notes: Julia Gordon

  1

  Barely aware of where she was but absolutely certain of where she was going, Julie stumbled along the dawnlit second-floor hall.

  She felt dead inside, physically and emotionally drained.

  She wanted nothing more than to crawl into her bed, pull the covers over her head, and never show her face again— never think again. Her mind and body screamed for rest, for escape, but she would not, could not, permit it.

  And so with Nathan Gordon's experimental notebooks clutched tightly against her chest, she forced herself to put one foot in front of the other until she reached her goal.

  She'd spent the night poring over the journals. At first in a state of incredulous denial, flipping back and forth in a vain search for inconsistencies, for some evidence that this was a cruel hoax, and then with a slowly growing sick realization that it was . . . all true.

  Days ago she had been accused of thinking the unthinkable by a man who had known the truth all along.

  Julie entered Eathan's bedroom without knocking, throwing the door open and letting it bang against the wall.

  Eathan stirred in his bed. "What? Who is it?"

  The sound of his voice sparked something in Julie. Anger, resentment, rage—they fueled her, renewed her strength. She must have made a frightening apparition as she approached his bed through the gloom, for he struggled to a sitting position and raised a hand to her.

  "Stop! Who are you?"

  And again the sound of his voice stoked her fires. She raised the journals high above her head and then flung them at him with all her strength. He cried out in alarm as they fluttered and thudded against his chest and shoulders.

  She didn't give a damn about banishment from Oakwood. She didn't give a damn about Eathan.

  "Liar!" she screamed. "Liar! You've known about this all these years and you never told us! God, how could you not t
ell us?"

  Eathan rolled away from her and reached for the lamp at his bedside. She heard the click and then the sudden gush of light blinded her for an instant.

  As her vision cleared she saw Eathan, dressed in striped pajamas, sitting in the bed staring at the old journal he held in his hands. He looked vaguely ridiculous, but Julie wasn't in a laughing mood.

  "Oh, no, Julia! Oh, no, you didn't! Please tell me you didn't!"

  "Didn't what?" she said. "Didn't learn the truth you've been hiding from me all my life? Were you going to let me go to my grave not knowing Nathan, your brother, my 'father,' used Sam and me as lab rats?"

  Eathan kept his head down, his face averted. He seemed to be trying to compose himself. When he finally raised his head, his expression was miserable.

  "How could I tell you, Julia?"

  "How could you not?"

  "Tell me then," he said, a note of bitterness creeping into his voice. "Tell me the words I should have used to explain to you that your father—or at least the man we all thought was your father—experimented with your brains during your first years of life, inhibiting certain neurohormones while supplying an excess of others. Just how—"

  "He made me all left-brained and Sam all right-brained. He warped our brains and personalities. He made us lopsided—on purpose!" She wanted to scream.

  "And just how do you phrase that to a child, to a teenager, to a young adult woman going out into the world? What turn of phrase will keep her from feeling like a carnival freak, like a victim, like—as you put it a moment ago—a lab rat? Tell me how you would say it, Julia."

  "We became adults. We had a right to know the truth," she said stubbornly. "It would have explained so much."

  "And the truth was going to do what—set you free? Do you feel free now, Julia? Do you feel better about yourself? Has it boosted your self-esteem? Are you more ready to go out and tackle the problems of your career? Are you happier now that to know the gold-plated truth,"