by Becki Willis
“Where the hell did they go?”
“Hell if I know. They must have gone inside one of the buildings. The parking lot is empty.”
“You take this building, I’ll take the little row. They couldn’t have vanished into thin air.”
“Offer twenty bucks to anyone who can tell us where they went. Fifty if they help us find them.”
“What about the old man?”
Even muffled, the laughter had an evil sound. “He’s worth a hundred.”
The men shuffled off, leaving the trio alone again in silence. Instinctively, Makenna edged closer to her sister, as the man guarding the door turned toward them.
He looked first at Makenna, then at Kenzie. There was an odd softness in his voice as he said, “Hello, Lady Girl. It’s been a long time.”
“Not long enough.” Kenzie’s voice was cold and sharp.
“K-Kenzie?” Makenna asked. “Kenzie, who- who is this man?”
The air crackled around them. The man’s eyes glittered expectantly as he waited for the dark haired woman to answer the question. Kenzie assessed him with cool green eyes, while Makenna stood to the side, frowning in confusion.
“Kenzie?” she asked again.
“Sorry. I’m just not sure how to introduce him. Richard Adams? Eddie O’Connell? Murray Beckerman? Ronald McWhorter? Leon Reese? Or should I just call him his real name, Joseph Mandarino?” Kenzie’s voice remained cold and steady as she said, “Makenna, meet your father.”
Chapter Thirty
Too stunned to even speak, Makenna stared at the man in surprise. The only photos she had ever seen of their father were taken well over twenty years ago. Intellectually, she knew he would look different now, but she had not expected the years to change him so drastically.
In the pictures, he had appeared tall and handsome. This man was smaller than she expected, barely five foot eight after his shoulders stooped inward. He was thin, almost to the point of being gaunt. Instead of the dark wavy hair in the photographs, this man’s hair was as much gray as it was blond. The thinning strands were long enough to pull back and hold with a leather band. A mostly-gray beard hid much of his face, but what she could see of his face was pale and drawn. And his eyes. His dark, intelligent eyes were best described as weary.
Those eyes were flitting between the two women now, noting the similarities and differences.
Quite out of the blue, he began to ramble. “Have you two ever considered zygosity testing? The science of gemellology wasn’t well refined when you were born in ‘88, and of course testing wasn’t readily available for another ten years, but I often wondered if you were polar body twins or, in fact, monozygotic twins. Here in the United States, roughly only 30% of spontaneously conceived twins are monozygotic. Except for the hair color, which was just a wisp of a curl when you were born, we had trouble telling you two apart, which would lead one to believe you were, in fact, monozygotic, or identical. However, as you became toddlers, there were a few differences in the two of you. Not much, mind you, just a scant handful of features in minute capacity, but it gave thought to the notion you might possibly be polar body twins, or, in lay-men’s terms, half-identical. This phenomenon happens when the ovum splits in two before fertilization. Each half is then fertilized by a separate sperm, so the twins share 75% of their DNA, as opposed to-”
“Stop it!” Kenzie hissed. Her low voice was filled with such venom it drew two sets of startled eyes her way. “You haven’t seen me in eight years. You haven’t seen Makenna - Tamara- in twenty-three years. And the first question you think to ask is whether or not we’ve considered some sort of scientific test? All you can do is spew technical terms at us? Just stop it!”
Joseph Mandarino stared at the ranting woman before him for a full ten seconds. He finally blinked, his eyes clearing as he visibly pulled himself from an intellectual trance. As his gaze sharpened with focus, he looked first at Kenzie, then Makenna. Despite his earlier observation, it was as if he saw them for the first time.
“Lady Girl, is that really you? You’ve become such a beautiful woman…”
In spite of herself, Kenzie’s eyes filled. Praise from her father was so rare.
When he turned his gaze upon Makenna, it was Joseph’s eyes that filled with mist. “Tamara? Is that you? I-I thought I’d lost you forever!”
Makenna huddled closer against her sister, clutching her hand.
With an anguished wail, Joseph dropped to his knees and buried his head in his hands. His daughters watched in stunned silence as he shook his head from side to side and moaned aloud. “How did it go so horribly wrong? How did this happen?”
Kenzie finally went to him. He was her father, after all, and he was obviously distraught. She touched his shoulder with light fingers. “D-Dad?” After so many years, the epithet seemed foreign on her tongue.
His words came out muffled through his palms. “We planned it out so carefully.” He lifted his head suddenly and grabbed Kenzie’s wrist. His eyes held a desperate light as he insisted frantically, “We just wanted to protect you girls.”
His words were so ominous. She was not sure she wanted to know, but she had to ask. “Wh-What, Dad? What are you talking about?”
Joseph stumbled to his feet. It struck Kenzie that her father had aged in the eight years since she had seen him last. His entire body seemed to have shrunk, curling into itself. Never a big man, his shoulders were now hunched, his spine stooped. Even without the graying hair, he looked far older than a man yet to see his sixtieth birthday.
When he did not answer right away, Kenzie sighed. Her father’s attention span had never been long, and she wondered if this would be yet another time when his brilliant mind wandered away, chasing a new line of thought. Without a word, Joseph walked past his daughters, around a stack of boxes and odds and ends, disappearing behind the brick support beams that dominated the middle of the old basement.
Kenzie threw a helpless shrug to her sister before scrambling to follow.
Beyond the beams, a small cot was set up along the outside wall, under another set of low windows. As her father sank onto the rumbled covers, Kenzie realized this was where he was living, in this dark, dank basement.
After a brief hesitation, she settled on the opposite end of the bed, motioning for Makenna to take the only chair in the room. Oddly enough, it was an upholstered Queen Anne wing chair, covered in rich burgundy brocade. If not for the gash running along one arm, the chair would be upstairs in the art gallery. A quick glance around noted other cast-offs that gave an air of sophistication to the stark living environment: a large canvas print in an ornate gold-leaf frame, an exquisite blown-glass sculpture with one crippling chipped point, a bone china vase rendered useless by a crack down its side, a finely carved side table currently serving as a pantry of sorts.
Determined not to let her father -or herself- get sidetracked, Kenzie cleared her throat and started to speak. Before she could utter her rebuke, Joseph surprised her by speaking first.
“We thought we were protecting you.”
Kenzie frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“We knew we were in danger. It was just a matter of time before they came after us. We decided-”
“Before who came after you?”
“People with secrets to keep.” It was a flimsy answer, brushed aside with a dismissive wave. His mind was following another path. “We had to protect our girls the best way we knew how. We mapped out a plan, a safety net should the worst happen.” Oddly enough, they understood his cryptic tale, even when his voice faltered and he added, “And then one day, it did.”
“Why was I left behind?” Makenna finally came out of her shocked stupor. She could no longer keep the tortured question inside. She had to know the truth. “Why did you abandon me in a church in San Antonio?”
The surprise was evident in his eyes. When Joseph stared at his auburn haired daughter with unblinking eyes, she could see the gears churning in his mind. He finally shuttered h
is eyes and let out a long, weary sigh filled with sadness. He mumbled something that sounded like ‘My poor Maggie’ but neither daughter could be certain of what he said. They waited for him to compose himself and continue.
“When we found out they were closing in on us, we left immediately. We went to San Antonio, the first stop on our planned route. After two weeks, we thought it was safe to move forward. We were certain no one had followed us.” A deep frown burrowed into his forehead. “Lady, you and I went on to Louisiana. Maggie and Tamara would wait two more weeks and follow.” His voice broke as he faltered with his story. “But they never came.” The words were pure heartache. “I waited and waited. I thought… maybe she would come later. Maybe she would meet up with me in Denver. Or maybe in Wyoming. By Utah, I knew she wasn’t coming.”
Joseph’s voice was filled with such intense misery, such sadness, there was no doubting his sincerity. But it really explained nothing.
“But why-”
“I don’t know.” He cut Makenna off before she could finish. “I don’t know why your mother left you. She must have known she was being followed. She must have thought leaving you at a church was the only way to keep you safe.”
“She was right,” Kenzie said quietly. “She was killed in a car accident there in San Antonio. Orchestrated, I’m sure, by Bernard Franks.”
Joseph flinched, as if the very words stabbed into his soul. Sorrow etched his weary face and filled his eyes with tears. “My poor, dear Maggie,” he whimpered. Lost to grief, he dropped his head into his hands once again, absorbing the irrefutable fact that his beloved wife was dead. Even after all these years, even after knowing it in his heart, the news was hard to hear.
After a moment he lifted his head and looked at Makenna. “But you were safe,” he said with conviction. “She protected you.”
Tears streamed down Makenna’s cheeks as she nodded. “Yes.”
“She loved you both so,” Joseph insisted. “We both did.”
Why, then, was it the first time Kenzie could remember hearing the words fall from his lips? In spite of the tears wetting her own cheeks, in spite of the rush of warmth she felt at his proclamation, a chunk of ice remained frozen in her heart. In a cold voice, Kenzie asked flatly, “Who was she, Dad? Who was that woman that raised me? And why did you let me believe she was my mother?”
He had the grace to look ashamed. He even hung his head, unable to look her in the eye. Eyes that looked so much like Maggie’s.
“Her name was Ellen, and she was my assistant. She was as innocent as you were, as innocent as your mother, but she was caught up in the madness just the same.” He exhaled wearily, his entire body deflating along with the air pushing from his chest.
After a long pause, goaded on by Kenzie’s furious glare, he elaborated. “She came to the house that evening, warning us of a conversation she overheard. They were coming for us… they had guns… We had no choice but to take her with us. She was young and scared and in as much danger as we were.”
“Fine, so you had to bring her along to keep her safe. You didn’t have to take her as a substitute wife!”
Her father did not even look guilty. He merely looked sad. “That’s not what happened. Not, at least, until many years later. By then, I knew for certain your mother was gone. And Ellen… Ellen had been through the worst of times with me, she had cared for my daughter when I was in no shape to… I never loved Ellen, but I depended on her. She was a good mother to you.”
Kenzie jumped to her feet, staring at her father incredulously. “What! You thought that woman was a good mother to me? She was cold and indifferent to me. She was verbally and emotionally abusive and she made me wish I had never been born!”
Joseph raised startled eyes to his ranting daughter, clearly surprised by not only her outburst, but by her very words. In that instant, Kenzie realized her father - her absent-minded, scatter-brained, genius father- had never even noticed the relationship between the two females in his life. Lost in his own world of pain and brilliance, he had been oblivious to what happened around him. And why should she be surprised? In so many ways, he was isolated by his own intelligence.
“Oh, my little Ladybug, I never knew,” he said sorrowfully.
“No, you always had your head buried in your books, or your computer, or your long string of numbers.”
“I’ve always been absorbed in my work. When I lost your mother and your sister, I was devastated. My work was my therapy. It was the only way I could deal with the pain. But I suppose I never even noticed what was happening right under my nose,” Joseph admitted, realizing that fact twenty-odd years too late.
“Is that why you forgot Christmas when I was eight?” All these years later, the pain should have been gone, sealed over by the passage of time. It wasn’t.
“I’m sorry, Lady Girl,” he said sadly.
“We actually decorated a tree that year. She even helped me. On Christmas Eve, we made hot chocolate and we waited for you to come home so we could drive around town and look at the Christmas lights. But you didn’t come home that night, or the next one.” There was accusation in her voice. “It was the day after Christmas before I got to open my one and only gift. A coat.”
As she listened to her sister’s sad tale, tears streamed down Makenna’s face. Growing up in the Reagan household, ‘Christmas’ was an entire season, not just one day, and was filled with more gifts than any one person could ever need.
“Odd tradition, that,” Joseph murmured. As a far-away light came into his eyes and he began to ramble, Kenzie knew his intelligence had stolen him away again. “For thousands of years, evergreens have been used in winter festivals, both pagan and Christian. Early Romans used fir trees to decorate their temples during solstice at the feast of Saturnalia, which honored Saturn, the god of agriculture. As early as the 16th century, the Christmas tree -similar to what we know today- was introduced in Germany. Protestant reformer Martin Luther is credited with adding the tradition of candles, or lights, to the tree. It was said one evening he-”
“Dad.” With a firm voice and a touch of her hand on his knee, Kenzie drew him back into the conversation. “Why are you living in a basement?”
“Because all my accounts have been frozen.”
Kenzie refused to feel guilty. He had been living on illegal gains, after all. Grudgingly, she asked, “You’re here alone?”
“Your mo- Ellen,” he corrected himself with a slight shake of the head, “became ill a few months ago. By the time the doctors discovered the cancer, there was nothing they could do. She passed away last month.”
While Kenzie sorted through her reaction to the news and wondered why she felt nothing, not even sadness, Makenna murmured words of comfort. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Cancer is a horrible, wicked disease. Statistics say -” This time, Joseph stopped himself. His hand trembled as he lifted a palm, signaling a halt to his derailed train of thought. “It’s just me here, so I make do.”
“Why did you do it?” Makenna asked. “Why did you get involved with the Zaffino mafia to begin with?”
“I didn’t realize who I was tangling with until it was too late. I was an accountant for a firm out of Conrad. I made a decent living, but I could not give Maggie the luxuries she was accustomed to. Of course, she said it did not matter, she said they were only things, but her father had a way of making me feel inferior…” Having met their grandfather, the girls understood what he meant. “I took on a few side jobs, and one in particular seemed very lucrative. And then I discovered a secret, one that could potentially devastate your mother. When I tried to quit my job, I discovered I was dealing with some very dangerous and powerful people. They threatened to kill my family if I did not go along with everything they demanded. I had no choice but to comply.”
“You could have gone to the authorities,” Kenzie finally spoke up.
“You don’t understand who all was involved in this organization. Lawmakers, a federal judge… your
own grandfather.”
“Actually, we know exactly who was involved. Have you not seen the news these last few days?”
Joseph looked around the darkened room. “I’m a bit limited on my resources at the moment,” he admitted.
For the next several minutes, his daughters explained what they knew about the Modern Power scam and the aftermath created when they turned over their evidence. Joseph expanded on his involvement, making no excuses for his criminal activities but saying he felt forced into doing what he did.
After several questions, Joseph finally fell silent. In a sad voice, he mumbled, “My dear Maggie. I had no idea. If I had known what she was doing, I would have never let her gather and hide such sensitive information.”
“You didn’t know?” Kenzie asked in surprise.
“No. She never wanted to believe her father was guilty, but when forced to choose, she chose me.” His voice broke. “That may well be what killed her.”
“No, Bernard Franks and his greed killed her,” Makenna said softly.
“She always hoped there was some way to clear her father’s name. When Harry disowned her, it broke Maggie’s heart. She adored her father. And even though Leigh Anne stayed in our lives, there was a strain in their relationship after that. I’m sure she was hoping to find proof that her father was innocent.”
Kenzie had read the letter from her mother so many times that the words were engraved into her mind. Recalling the last paragraphs, she recited them aloud softly, “Never lose that desire to find the truth. Always dream, always imagine. Always search. The answers are there, waiting for you to discover them. Use your head and think about what I am saying and why I am encouraging you. Never be afraid to explore the possibilities of life. Go out and save the world, my child!’
“‘Save the World’ was one of Harry’s favorite slogans,” Joseph said. “I’m sure that was Maggie’s way of saying his involvement should be questioned, to find the truth, once and for all.”