by Aimee Laine
She ruffled his hair, much like Lily had done. “Mac and Cheese then?” Her gaze stayed on Cael’s.
“At this point, any food I don’t have to think about making is good.”
“Oh, honey, you hate cooking. You don’t even remember that?”
Cael shook his Angela head. “Unfortunately not. I’m quite the blank slate right now.”
“And you’re taking it so well. Much better than I would in your position. Then again, at my age, a little faltering memory is normal.”
It only looks like I’m dealing well with memory loss because it’s not the truth. He walked with her into the kitchen.
“Then again, you always took things in stride, you know?” She tittered. “No, you don’t. What exactly do and don’t you remember?”
“Not much. I get these little flashes but haven’t been able to piece any of it together.”
Levelyn scurried about the kitchen to multiple cabinets, pulling stuff from each. “Now, do you want hot dogs or tuna in your dinner?”
Max hopped up on the barstool. “Hot dogs.” His wide smile said ‘Grandma’s here,everything’s going to be great’ in so few words.
Levelyn chopped, boiled, sliced and mixed for fifteen minutes while Cael joined in with Max as he munched happily on carrots. Small, subtle hints of Lily showed in her mom—like the movement of her hands or the slide of round hot dog pieces from the cutting board to the casserole.
A tear slipped over the rim of the woman’s lid. She wiped at it with the back of her hand.
“I really do believe it’s all going to work out, Mom.” Cael’s attempt to shore up her confidence received a shoulder shrug.
The more Levelyn interacted with Max and with ‘Angela’, the harder it was to pin her for Lily’s torment. Facts were facts, though. Lily had been sold. He’d seen the records. He’d also seen the damage, both mental and physical.
Lucy. Evelyn. Lucy. Evelyn. Name change? Different person? Something else?
He would get more details.
He’d rat her out if he had to.
Somehow he’d find his own statute of limitations.
Just not in front of Max.
9
Staring at the login screen and the password field on the Mac’s screen made Lily flinch. “I am so not good at this kind of stuff.”
She typed in ‘Max’, and the fields bounced at her, eliminated their contents and offered up another chance.
She typed in Leigh, and the computer gave her the same response.
“I need …” the phone.
Lily grabbed it and dialed, hoping James would pick up.
At the connection, Charley’s hello came across the line.
“Hey, Charley,” Lily said.
“Lily!” Charley screeched Lily’s name through the phone line. “Are you okay? What’s going on? Cael filled us in, but, oh, Lily. Why didn’t you tell me you have a sister?”
Immediate tears threatened as Lily considered the past. Family had never been on her personal ‘to-do’ list, just on her wish-I-had list. “I didn’t know. Cael told me and now … I don’t even know what to think.” Charley had been the closest person to real family outside of Cael and James. Wyatt and Stuart completed the picture of the life she thought she’d sought. “My … uh … mother is here.”
“Oh, no.” Charley knew most of Lily’s history—or the part that Lily had shared, at least.
“Yeah. I can’t see her, you know? That would put me over the proverbial edge. I’m weak. I’m a coward.” Saying it helped relieve the tension she’d built up.
“Lily,” Charley’s tone soothed. “You’re not weak. You’re amazing. If you can handle everything you’ve been through in the past and whatever has gone on in the last twenty-four hours and still be standing? You’re stronger than me or Cael … or James.”
A small tear streaked its way down Lily’s cheek.
“We all do what we have to do in order to survive, Lil. If you want to come out of the closet with your sister, do. If you want to confront your Mom, do. If you want to believe it was all a misunderstanding and forgive, there’s another option. Do what you want.”
“I don’t … not yet at least … I can’t—Cael’s mimicking me.”
“What?” Surprise came with a chuckle.
Lily drew in a deep breath. “Tony called Angela’s mother … our Mom. He called her to come help, and I just—”
“No, of course you couldn’t. No, Lil, no. This is not on you. No tears, okay?”
Lily wiped at the one that had already fallen.
“You trust him, right?” Charley asked.
“I do. Always have.”
“He’ll do what needs to be done. All you have to do is ask it of him.”
“Yeah. I know. He’s always been like that.” Always.
Charley’s deep sigh passed through the phone. “When all this is over, I think you and Cael need to sit down and talk.”
Lily agreed. But how? What if he didn’t have the same underlying feelings? What if Angela is gone, and I decide to stay here? I can’t be in two places at once.
“He loves you as much as you love him, Lily. Has for years and years, probably decades by now. You have to see that.”
“I … do.” As friends. One accident grew into friendship, and that remained for a lifetime.
“But—no, never mind. What’d you call for?” Her tone changed to one of light-hearted friendship.
“Um …”
Voices on the other end broke through, James and Wyatt both taking part of the line, each with a quick ‘hello’.
“I need help getting into a computer,” Lily said. “A laptop. It’s Angela’s, and I thought I’d break in.”
“Lily the little con woman.” James chuckled.
“Ha. Ha. Very funny.” That he could make her want to laugh warmed her. “I’ve tried a couple simple names as passwords, but so far nothing.”
“Can I connect to the machine?” James asked.
“I don’t know. Can you?”
Chuckles sounded on the other end of the line. “Yeah, I can.”
James talked her through going in as a guest so that she could run some commands to hack, or as he put it, take control. Once in, the mouse moved without her effort and letters typed on the screen until, all at once, the screen opened to a desktop with a family photo of Angela, Tony, Max and Leigh and dozens of files and folders around it.
“I think you’re in, Lil.”
“Well … you are. I’m just along for the ride.” A smile tweaked her cheeks. “Thank you, James.”
“Know what to look for, or want me to do some digging?”
She could sit back and let him at it but wanted something to do other than twiddle her thumbs—then again, he’d get to the heart of the information faster than she would. “Um, can you, and I’ll watch? Maybe I’ll learn something.”
“All right, then. Let’s see what’s hiding in here.”
• • •
Fifteen minutes later, after the three of them had eaten the entire box of Macaroni and Cheese and chatted about everything and nothing important, Max yawned.
“Long day getting Mommy back, huh?” Levelyn ruffled his hair again. “How about Grandma gives you a bath and gets you tucked in?”
Cael smiled at Max’s overexcitement as he nodded and jumped from his chair, wiggling like every little boy in preparation for time in warm water.
“Afterward, honey …” Levelyn stared into Cael’s eyes as she followed Max. “… I want to talk with you in P-R-I-V-A-T-E, where certain little ears won’t hear us.”
With their disappearance, Cael’s worry returned to Lily, upstairs, who hadn’t eaten in at least a few hours, though he wondered at what Lily and Angela’s mother wanted to tell him.
He reached for her wallet.
Evelyn Lilian Hayes.
Not Lucinda.
He’d do more digging after they talked.
• • •
Charley and Wyatt
had dropped off the line, leaving Lily in James’s capable hands.
With the door locked, Lily ignored the sound of feet above and below, the smaller ones having gone up first and the louder, slower paced ones second—neither of them Cael’s.
When James opened a folder of pictures on the screen before her, she stared at each one, taking in the faces and the smiles, the activities and the sense of family that the foursome had.
An older woman graced many of the photos, the ‘spitting image’, as Charley liked to say, of Lily and Angela but with box-colored hair and the lines of age. Though the images of the woman she’d called Mom didn’t quite match up with the face in the photo, Lily blamed that on age and the hell she’d gone through skewing her memory. Fear and hatred welled up inside Lily even as worry and desire for a happy ending warred with it.
You can love the family and hate the mother, Lil. There is no time limit on pain.
There’s no time limit on memories, either. Some of her early ones remained. Some, though, she’d managed to block.
James sorted through to a set of files labeled ‘Leigh’. For a second, Lily forgot he’d remained on the phone. A separate password required an extra minute for him to break and open the files.
Folders labeled California, New Mexico, Indiana, Switzerland, France, Romania, North Carolina and China filled the hierarchy.
“Is she going to China now?” Lily asked.
James dove deeper, opening and closing folders with titles like ‘doctor’, ‘medical’ and ‘travel’.
Lily hated doctors; even Mimics needed them for healing of some injuries, like normal humans. Phantom pain shot through her left shoulder from the thought alone. She’d have cried out if she hadn’t bit her lip to keep James from hearing her. The man in the room—the room with the white, sheet-draped bed—had injected her with something that burned, that made the muscles in her arm grow without Lily’s intervention.
He’d called himself a doctor, though of what, Lily never knew. She only remembered, after the agony, waking in her bedroom made of glass where any and all could stare inside.
A change of the screen brought her back to the moment. James revealed saved pages from the Internet, including maps, directions and emails. A series of notes labeled by day must have caught his attention since he clicked on each, one by one, scrolling through the writing as Lily watched.
“Why didn’t she take her laptop, James?”
“Traveling through Romania? She could’ve lost it or had it stolen. I’d guess if that’s the last place her husband expected her to go, she might’ve left it for safe-keeping, expecting to come back and get it.” He kept opening and closing files. “We did trace her flight records, and it shows she flew into New York and down here a month ago. Her ticket had been changed several times while in Romania.” More files appeared and disappeared.
James could speed-read with the best of them, but whether he took in a word in any of the files, Lily could only wonder.
“It seems that once she locked in on this area, she finally made her plans. We got hold of her credit card statements, too. Wyatt’s going through them tomorrow while Charley chats with your … husband.” He chuckled. “Sorry.”
“That’s okay. I’m … getting used to it.”
“Really?”
“No. Not really. The kid is so cute and amazing, though. I wouldn’t mind being around him longer.”
“What about—No, never mind.”
“What about what, James?” Lily propped her head on her elbow, immersed in the information and the comfort of his voice.
“Well, shit, Lil. Nothing. I just don’t want to see you hurt.”
Lily hid her pain from as many people as she could, though Cael, Charley and James all knew snippets about her past—specifically her request to never, ever return to the rocky coast of California. That she hadn’t had a panic attack at the sight of the coast or in hearing about her location meant she’d buried the internal emotions well enough.
“Forget I said anything.” James’s chuckle sped through the phone line. “We miss you already around here.”
It’s only been a day. “I miss you guys, too.” And I’d have to give you up to stay here. She lowered her head to the laptop, hitting the mouse button.
“Stop clicking, Lily!” James called out.
She lifted to find a stream of files James had highlighted opening one after the other. “Oops.”
The last one had a name and text, another name and more text as if Angela had transcribed a conversation. RDM started one line. AEJ the other. She read through the text, assuming James did the same since the file didn’t move.
They gasped at the same time.
“You see what I see?” Lily asked.
“Do you see the word Mimic at the bottom of this file and an address in Romania?”
She did. The two connected dots confirmed what she’d suspected about Leigh.
“Lil, you there?”
“Yeah. Yes. I see it. She found us through Google searches?” If she can find out about us … can others? If they can, would someone come back to find me? Lily shook her head at her own question. No, no. It’s been over forty years since they let you go. They’re not looking. They let you go.
“These are text messages, like from an instant messenger window. It’s the log—the history. Back and forth, they’re typing back and forth, and RDM, whoever that is, calls what Leigh has “Mimic disease.”
“It’s not a disease.” Disgust coated Lily’s tone. That same argument had been used around her. Electroshock it out of her, one so-called doctor had said. Another had suggested and tested ice-cold, two and three-hour long baths to do it. Her skin grew cold under her own touch.
“We know it’s not a disease, Lily, but there are people who disagree and … as you well know … plenty of scientists in the world who want to see what they can do to make us normal.”
Test after test. Skin tone changes. Eye color. Hair color. Changes under extreme heat and cold without a break. Changes with no food or after having gorged for two straight days in a panicked belief she’d never get anymore sustenance.
“Not just around the world, James. The stuff they did to me was right here in the great ole U.S. of A.” In California. In Montana. In Nevada. A variety of locations she could bring to mind. If she burned her finger in the kitchen, the heat of the desert would take hold of her thoughts and could tear her from her happiness. After so many years, she’d learned to quash it, to force herself to calm and to remind herself she’d gotten out. She’d been safe for decades.
A sigh played the line. “I know, and I’m so, so, so sorry, Lily.”
She straightened her shoulders, reminding herself to tuck the memories into the recesses again. “It’s okay. I—I just need Cael to deal with the woman downstairs, find my sister and her daughter, get them to safety and move on from this problem.”
“You know … if she knows already … her family could know, too.”
The sticky note popped into Lily’s mind. “I don’t think they do. I think, somehow, Angela knew to keep it a secret.”
Just like our mother did.
“We’ll see once we find her. Let’s just hope it’s soon because Roy being in town probably means whomever he works for is here, too.”
Lily had only heard of the Roy exploits, the superstitions about his capabilities and his talents. She hadn’t thought of Roy in over a week. He’d shown up on her doorstep one day, but James had chased after him before losing him in the trees.
“What does it mean that Roy’s in Rune?”
James’s sigh hit her like a soft whisper. “It means someone’s looking for something. We thought he was after Charley, then after you, but now I’m wondering. If Angela was coming here … did she find out something that Roy did, or are the situations completely coincidental?”
“How could they be anything but coincidence?” Lily shook her head. “I mean, seriously. Angela lives in California. Until a year ago she pro
bably had no idea …” She choked on her own air.
“What?”
“Unless that damn woman downstairs told her about Mimics.” Lily curled her fingers into a fist. “She probably sold Leigh into it, too, since Angela didn’t show any signs.”
The knock at the door silenced Lily. She didn’t know whether to answer or break through the window and run.
“Lily?” James’s voice called to her through the phone.
The door handle jiggled.
Oh, god, please don’t find a way to come in here.
“Lily, what’s going on?”
Another small knock. “Angela, you in your office?”
Lily bit back the terror. Stay silent. Say nothing. James remained quiet, too.
Only when feet shuffled down the hall did she release the breath she’d held.
“Oh, my god, that was her.”
“Talk to Cael, Lil. Let him guide you. You’ll get through it much better with him than without.”
Cael’s voice, in the tone of Lily’s, came from downstairs. “Mom? You coming to finish our chat?”
Thank goodness.
“I’m logging off,” James said. “Call me tomorrow if you need me, and we’ll be in touch about Tony.”
“Thanks, James.”
She re-cradled the phone, taking deep breaths. What if her mother had entered? What would she have said? Thanks for nothing! Why did you give up on me? I’m not a freak!
Lily drifted to the window seat, tucked one leg up under herself and stared out at the ocean.
“I’m sixty years old, and I still want a mom like you are Angela. Willing to go to the ends of the earth for your daughter. To not stop or give up. To wipe away the tears, put lotion on the burns, ice on the bruises and tell people to go to hell when they break your leg in the name of science.”
As a tear slipped down Lily’s cheek, she leaned her head against the glass, wishing the ocean would jump up and swallow her whole or at least steal her memories back.
10
Cael brought cups, coffee and scones into the living room to wait for Evelyn’s return. A quick flip of the record button on his phone ensured their conversation would become part of his investigation.