by Maddy Hunter
I scrutinized his features as I jammed the plastic bag and bloomers back into my shoulder bag. Was it my imagination, or did he resemble Heath through the eyes and mouth? My notion was completely absurd, and yet—“Did your parents take a lot of pictures when you were a baby?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Do you have an album with a lock of your hair, and a christening photo, and all the statistics people mark down for newborns? You know. Baby’s first year?”
“Is that a polite way of asking if I’m adopted?”
My heart pumped double time. “Are you?”
“No, I’m not adopted! And if I don’t have a baby album, it’s because parents in the forties didn’t bother with things like that, especially during wartime.”
“A lot of parents never told their children the truth.”
“Sorry, Emily, but you’re way out of line. If you’re trying to prove that Nora Acres and I had some connection because we have the same birthday, you’re going to end up looking very foolish.”
Spoken like a man without an ounce of female intuition. “Do you remember the photo Nora showed you in Port Campbell?”
“Vaguely. What I remember most was that it was about to disintegrate.”
“It showed Nora posing with her sister, Beverley, and their mother. The twins were in pinafores and had Shirley Temple banana curls.”
Guy lifted his brows. “And?”
“Okay, you might think I’m really grasping at straws, but what if the reason you never had a baby album was because your parents never saw you as a baby? What if Nora’s photo is actually a picture of her mother…and another child who was born in England on March 17, 1943?”
He struggled to keep a straight face even as laughter exploded from his chest. “You think the other child is me? Why would I be posing with Nora Acres? Better yet, do I look like a Beverley to you?”
“No! But you were born in England. The English have been known to stick their male offspring with girls’ names—Evelyn, Marian, Carol, Beverley.”
“Are they also guilty of dressing little boys in pinafores?”
“I’ve seen some of my grandmother’s family photos where you couldn’t distinguish the girls from the boys because they were all in dresses and pipe curls. People did that back then. Little boys didn’t get into trousers or have their hair cut until they went off to school.”
“And they all ended up in therapy.”
“Seriously, I think I’m onto something. The twins were placed in different orphanages during the war and never saw each other again, so the only link Nora had to her past was that photo. She assumed the other child in the photo was her sister, but what if it wasn’t? What if it was her brother? What if the children weren’t identical twins? What if they were fraternal twins?”
“I’m not adopted!”
“Oh, my God, Guy! You may have found a sister you never knew you had! Don’t you believe in serendipity?”
“I believe in good fortune happening by accident. I don’t believe in pipe dreams. Now, will you drop it?”
“But think what this could mean to Heath! You could provide the closure he and his mother had been looking for for so many years, and that would be so meaningful to him. You look like him, you know. I didn’t see it before because I wasn’t looking for it, but you have the same full lips, the same blue eyes. You even have the same physique! You could have DNA testing done to eliminate all doubt. You have to talk to him, Guy. This is so amazing! You come to Australia to meet the relatives, and you end up with one more than you expected. A nephew! We need to speak to Henry. Heath is supposed to call him later, and when he does, maybe you can—”
“I told you to drop it!”
“But don’t you want—”
“NO! I don’t want! Kee-REIST, what the hell is wrong with you? You couldn’t leave well enough alone. You had to keep picking and picking. And that’s a damn shame, because I liked you, Emily. I really did.”
Liked? Uh-oh. Past tense wasn’t a good sign. “I’m sorry, Guy. I’ve been acting like an unfeeling, insensitive clod. I just get so excited when I start connecting the dots. This has to be a huge shock, and I haven’t allowed you any time for it to sink in. Why don’t we go back to the café and—”
“What a lousy way to learn you’re not who you think you are.”
Guilt lodged like a hairball in my throat. “I’m sorry,” I rasped, hoping a whirlpool would appear at my feet and swallow me whole.
“They could have told me when they were alive, but no, I had to find out after they were dead.”
I placed my hand on Guy’s forearm. “They probably had a very good reason for not telling you.”
“It was all lies. There was no newspaper job in London. It was one giant cover-up to keep the truth from me. But I couldn’t understand why. The newspaper clippings, the old family records, why would they want to hide those from me? Madelyn was one of the most respected names in Australian history. You’d think they would have been proud of that. But that’s exactly why they had to keep it from me: because if I started asking questions, their world would collapse like a house of cards.”
I could hear him talk; I just wish I understood what he was saying. “Um, I’m a little confused. Would you mind backing up to the part about newspaper clippings and old family records?”
He regarded me with eyes so distant, I wasn’t sure he could actually see me. “I found them in the attic after my dad died—after the nephrologist told me that in addition to my being diabetic, my blood type was incompatible with my dad’s, which meant, he couldn’t have fathered me. I found everything—travel documents, passports. My parents left Canada right before the war for Australia. I found clippings about the Meridia and photos of my dad with his Aussie relatives. News articles about a ship that carried English orphans to New South Wales in nineteen-forty-six. A record of adoption for an English male child named Beverley Gooch by Nicole and Guy Madelyn. My adoption papers. I was apparently born in England, but my parents adopted me in Australia, then whisked me back home to Canada even before the ink had dried. I guess my dad didn’t want the Aussie relatives finding out that Guy Junior, no longer known as Beverley, wasn’t the genuine article. What a blow to the ego, eh? A man so inept, he can’t get his own wife pregnant, so he needs to settle for someone else’s kid.”
“It’s not settling! Adopting a child has to be a wonderfully rewarding experience. Your dad couldn’t have thought that.”
“Then why the lies? Why the isolation? I’ll tell you why. Because he was so ashamed, he couldn’t face telling them the truth! So he cut off all ties to them so he wouldn’t have to. I knew something was wrong. My dad always gave off these tense, angry vibes that would earn you a good smack if you crossed him on certain days. He was so cold and secretive. And that was the other thing. I wasn’t blind. I wanted to know why I didn’t look like either of my parents, and you wouldn’t believe the double talk my dad dished out to explain it. I think that’s the reason I went into photography. I wanted to find a face that looked like mine.”
“And now you’ve found one!” I enthused. “Heath! Did you get pictures of him? Could you see the resemblance?”
Something dark and disturbing flickered in his eyes. “I didn’t need to see him.” He removed his wallet from his back pocket and slid a photo out from its plastic sheath. “I knew the moment I saw this.”
He handed me a photo of a young woman with bobbed hair who was cuddling two toddlers in frilled pinafores and pipe curls. “This is Nora’s picture. What are you doing with it?”
“It was in the same box as my adoption papers. When my mother delivered us to the orphanage, she apparently left a photo with each of us, only mine didn’t include any names. I didn’t know who the three people were until Nora showed me her photo, then it became fairly obvious. The three of us had been a family at one time. It was a photo of my biological family.”
“So from that first day at Port Campbell, you knew Nora was a relat
ive?”
“I knew she was a relative. You made the nightmare complete by telling me she was my twin. What a great way to ruin a gold mine tour.”
“You knew, and you didn’t say anything?”
He reacted as if he’d been slapped. “What? Give up the celebrity of being a Madelyn to admit I was brother to a pathetic old crone whose biggest thrill in life had been to visit a Big Banana and a Big Oyster?”
“Yeah, but she was your sister! Did it really matter what her taste was in tourist attractions?”
“She was an embarrassment! Can you imagine the looks on my kids’ faces if I introduced them to the aunt they never knew? You think they’d want to introduce her to their friends? Maybe she could have entertained them by killing insects with her bare hands! How do you think that would have gone over?”
“She wasn’t a freak,” I said quietly.
“The only reason you can say that is because she wasn’t related to you! In the neighborhood where I live, with the high-class people I run with, she’d be a freak.”
I inhaled a calming breath, but it didn’t do much good. “I’m not sure why I ever thought you were such a nice man. You’re nothing but a…a world-class snob! And for your information? Nora had more class than you could ever think of having. Here’s your picture back.”
He seized my wrist. “Like I said, Emily, I liked you, so I’m sorry it’s come to this.”
“What—!” I wrenched back on my arm. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Getting rid of leaks. Sorry, baby doll, you know too much.”
“About your family history? Who cares about your stupid charade?” Which is when I realized that Guy Madelyn cared. He cared very much. “Oh, my God. You killed her. You killed Nora!”
“You saw the shape she was in. She was way overdue. I just gave nature a little nudge before her fool son could track me down on any of the new internet adoption sites. You told me yourself he was getting close. So it was either take care of the problem now or risk having her show up on my front doorstoop. And that last part wasn’t an option.”
“You bastard! You drugged her wine at the vineyard.” Which must have required some fancy sleight of hand considering he hadn’t been anywhere near her at the wine tasting.
“You know about the overdose?” He clucked his disgust. “Autopsies are a real pain in the ass. However, in a tour group this size, I can’t be the only person taking insulin tablets. And since I have no connection to Nora, what possible motive could I have had to kill her?”
“You spiked her wine with insulin? You killed your only sister by sending her into insulin shock?”
“You’re not hearing me. I didn’t want her as a sister. And I didn’t touch her wine. I dropped the crushed tablets into her cucumber raita at the Indian restaurant the other night. It mixed up incredibly well in that thick yogurt base. I doubt she ever tasted it.”
“But she didn’t take ill until the next day! Do you know how many hours you made that poor woman suffer?”
“She didn’t look as if she was suffering too badly.”
“Not suffering badly? She died!” I yelled, driving my foot into his kneecap.
“OW! You—!” He yanked me against his chest and grabbed my hair, jarring every bone in my body and all thirty-two teeth. My bag fell off my shoulder. The photo blew away.
“Is that how you killed Claire?” I yelled into his face. “Did you send her into insulin shock, too?”
“Claire Bellows? Why would I kill her? I didn’t even know her.”
“You didn’t know Nora, either!”
“And thankfully, it’s going to remain that way. Look, Emily, I’m sorry to have to do this, but one of us needs to make an exit, and it’s not going to be me.”
He tramped into the surf, pulling me by the hair behind him. My mind raced. Adrenaline shot through me. Oh, my God. He was going to drown me in the kiddie pool!
“HELLLLLLLLLLP!” I shrieked. Hey, it always worked for Bernice. “HELP ME! SOMEBODY HELLLLLLLP!”
“Jeesuz Mighty.” He clamped his hand over my mouth and jerked me off my feet, crushing me against him.
“MMMMMMMMHHHHHHPPPPPP!” I pounded his forearms and flailed at his legs, my limbs whipping around like eggbeaters.
He waded deeper into the surf, dragging me with him. Oh, God!
I bared my teeth and bit down hard on his finger.
“Aaarhh!”
“I’m glad Nora never found out you were her brother!” I screamed, when his hand flew off my mouth. “She didn’t have to live with the disappointment!”
He plunged my head under the water.
Foam. Bubbles. Muffled quiet. Nooo!
I pulled my legs up beneath me and kicked out like a mule, jackknifing my feet into his groin.
His grip faltered. I rocketed out of the water and gasped for air. “HELLLL—”
WHOOSH.
He plunged my head deeper, holding me down with two hands. I batted the water. Struggled to hold my breath. Kicked helplessly while seawater stung my eyes. I screamed in my throat, but I knew it was a sound no one would ever hear. Panic overwhelmed me. Pain seared my chest. Images flashed through my mind. Beloved faces. Welcoming arms. And the one face I loved more than all the rest, but would never see again. We’d wasted so much time! If only I could do it over again. If only we’d—
My lungs burst like a popped balloon, causing my breath to escape in a riot of bubbles. I clawed at the seabed as water poured into every orifice, scalding my throat, filling my nos—
Fresh air hit me in the face as I was hauled to the surface amid fevered shouts and cries. Chaos surrounded me. Splashing. Thrashing. Kicking. Punching.
“You’ve got it all wrong!” Guy bellowed at Etienne and Duncan. “I was trying to save her!”
Etienne drove his fist into Guy’s face with a crunch of bone and cartilage. Duncan followed up with a blow to the midsection that sent him backflopping like a beached flounder. Etienne seized his shirt-front, spat something in Italian, and tossed him back at Duncan. “You got him?”
“I got him.”
I paddled and splashed my way into Etienne’s arms.
“Are you all right, bella?”
I burrowed against him, wheezing and gasping, my legs wobbly beneath me. “I thought I’d never see you again,” I sobbed.
He kissed the top of my head, calming me with his quiet touch. “Emily, Emily. Heath called with the results of Nora’s autopsy. She died from an insulin overdose, and according to Henry’s medical forms, only one person on the tour is taking insulin.”
“Guy Madelyn.” I watched Duncan strong-arming him toward shore.
“But he was nowhere in sight. Henry suggested he might have hiked over to this beach, which is where you were heading, so that’s when all hell broke loose. I’m probably only a half-step ahead of your grandmother and her crew.” He hugged me tighter. “Let’s get you to shore. You’re shivering.”
As we splashed through the surf toward dry land, I noticed that the deserted beach was deserted no longer. People were popping out of the tunnel with their cameras already clicking. Nana, Tilly, Alice, Osmond, and Margi rushed forward, hovering over me as I sank onto the hot sand.
“We was so worried about you,” Nana fretted.
“Everyone dropped their crayfish to come rescue you,” said Tilly.
Margi nodded breathlessly. “We would have got here sooner, but it’s pretty slow-going through the tunnel, especially with certain people hogging the passing lane.”
“Someone needs to go back to tell Henry to call the local police,” I rasped, my throat still stinging and my nose burning all the way to my brain.
“We’re on it,” said Nana, grabbing Tilly and taking off like a shot.
“You fellas really knocked the stuffing out of old Guy,” said Osmond, looking farther down the beach. “Would you look at the size of his bottom lip? Woohee.” His camcorder chimed as he powered it up. “This is going to be so good. Real blood
!”
“Does he need a nurse?” asked Margi, chasing down the beach after him.
“Maybe I can get a group shot,” said Alice. “Any chance we can locate a shark for local color?”
Etienne went down on one knee, cupping my face in his hands and smiling gently. “Are all you Americans this resilient?”
“Not all.” My eyes filled with tears as I smiled back. “It helps to be from Iowa.”
“It’s gonna be a while before we can get to Henry!” Nana yelled from the direction of the tunnel. “It’s on account a the Dicks. They’re stuck!”
Chapter 18
After breakfast the next morning we were scheduled to drive southeast for a morning of shopping in the German settlement of Hahndorf, but in light of the harrowing day we’d spent on Kangaroo Island, Henry canceled the tour and gave us a free day in Adelaide to get our feet under us again. He suggested the real diehards in the group could entertain themselves by hopping the Glenelg tram to the seashore or visiting the East End Market, but if we wanted something more relaxing, he recommended the rooftop pool and a pitcher of maragaritas. Nana was so relieved I hadn’t drowned, she announced an open house and prepool appetizers in our suite, so by ten o’clock, our living room was crawling with people eating smoked salmon on mini bagels and knocking back fresh-squeezed orange juice.
“This fresh-squeezed is a pain,” griped Bernice. “I’ll be spittin’ out pulp all day. Who’s got floss?”
We’d moved Nana’s laptop to make room for the food, and I was happy not to have to look at it anymore. The Google Earth download had been useless. The program finally transferred, but when we typed in Roger’s coordinates, the image it relayed showed Port Campbell National Park as it had appeared three months ago! Remote areas of distant continents apparently got no respect when it came to live satellite feeds.
“I’m offering a toast,” Henry said, raising his juice glass. “May the nixt lig of our tour be nothing like the first lig.”
A resounding, “Hear, hear!” echoed through the room.