by LS Sygnet
“I needed you. Not in two minutes. Right that second.”
“I remember. I was there too, you know.”
“You weren’t complaining then, Helen.”
“And I’m not complaining now. Let’s just not romanticize this to make it feel like it was planned.”
His wounded expression stabbed at my heart. I hardened it. My reminder was the absolute truth. If planning had entered into this equation, I would’ve never become pregnant. Now I had as many as thirty weeks of double the agony ahead of me.
“Is that how you really feel?”
I rolled my eyes – at least internally. “Of course not. I’m… hormonal. Doubly hormonal truth be told. There’s no crime in the fact that this pregnancy was an absolute, unplanned accident, Johnny. It happens to very careful people. It might’ve happened even if we had been more careful. There’s no way to know.” I paused and reached for his hand, gave it a little squeeze. “Could be that the whole thing is your fault, being such a virile bastard.”
He grinned. “I am, aren’t I? Two babies. God bless us.”
I didn’t burst his bubble. This had nothing to do with his virility and everything to do with the fact that my ovaries dropped two eggs instead of one, a condition that probably pointed to a genetic trait of my mother and had nothing to do with Johnny at all. Curiosity about Kathleen Conall clawed at my belly like the proverbial alien trying to burst out into the real world. I had to meet her.
As for Aidan Conall, if I never saw him again it would be too soon.
“Please tell me that I don’t have to keep this news secret,” Johnny said. “I’m so excited, I think I could just about bust open and bleed.”
“Please don’t do that. It’s going to be hard enough with twins and two parents without you up and dying on me,” I chuckled.
“Does that mean I can show off the first picture of my children?”
A little bit of his exuberance infected me. Viral joy. Contagious happiness. Infectious bliss. “Are you really going to have that framed?”
“There’s a professional place over by La Pierre that can blow this thing up to a better size,” Johnny said. “We could have it mounted over one of the fireplaces at home.”
I groaned softly.
“Get dressed before Dr. Harvey comes in here,” he said. “We can talk about picture frames and matting and the proper size of our children’s first photograph on the way home.”
I slipped into my clothing quickly, perched on the end of the exam table and watched Johnny stare at the tiny photograph until Julie Harvey came back into the room.
“Well, I hear that double congratulations are in order, Helen,” she said.
I nodded. “Thank you, doctor. Is there anything else I should be doing now that I’m carrying a litter instead of a single child?”
She chuckled. “You could start taking a multivitamin in the morning and one at bedtime. Make sure you’re taking both with food, Helen. You said your appetite is improving, correct?”
My stomach growled on cue.
“Good enough. I’d like to see you more often during this pregnancy since we know you’re having twins. Your age has put you at higher risk anyway. But this is how we manage all multiple births. I know it seems like your due date is an awfully long way from now too, but it might be a good idea for you to start talking about how you want to deliver these babies. I recommend vaginal delivery if at all possible. The risks with C-sections make that an option that should only be considered as a last resort, plus your recovery time will be extended significantly if we have to deliver surgically. For vaginal deliveries there are some different options – natural versus medication assisted.”
Johnny’s arm curled around my waist. “I want her comfortable, Dr. Harvey. We’re not going to be one of those couples who thinks maximum suffering is necessary.”
I didn’t remind Johnny that I recently danced pretty close to the line of drug dependence.
“So when you talk to our scheduler, I want you back here in two weeks instead of four. We’ll see how things look at that time. I want Joan to do a 3-dimensional ultrasound next time. She says you’d like to know the sex of these children in advance. That method has proved far more reliable in seeing gender.”
“That would be fine,” I said.
“At about sixteen weeks, we can do an amniocentesis. It’s not necessary unless there’s anything in your family’s histories that might put the babies at risk for birth defects.”
My heart took off running. I thought I knew my family’s health history. What if I didn’t because I never really was Helen Eriksson?
Another thought popped into my head. Was Helen really my name? It wasn’t like I could stroll up to Crevan and ask him. Hell, he was still in denial that his mother had given birth to a boy and a girl instead of twin boys.
Johnny’s voice filled the pause in my responses. “We’ll discuss it Dr. Harvey. I think we both gave pretty accurate histories earlier.”
“Then it’s probably not necessary. The amniocentesis would be of course, the definitive test for gender as well.”
“I think we’ll take our chances with the ultrasound,” Johnny said.
My cell phone rang inside my purse. I yanked it out and stared at the screen. Maya. My hands began to tremble.
“Helen?”
“Shock catching up with me. She knew about my appointment this morning. She’s probably calling to see how things went.” Lie. I shoved the phone back into my purse. “I’ll call her back later.”
“I’ll make the appointment,” Johnny’s hand rubbed a small circle low on my back. “I’m eager for you to start spreading the good news. Call her back now.”
I drifted out of earshot to make the call. Johnny’s euphoria expanded around him like a physical presence. I stepped away from it into the medical building lobby.
“Sorry I missed your call. We were talking to Dr. Harvey.”
“Hello to you too, Helen. How did the appointment go?”
“We can talk about it later. Why were you calling?”
“Oh, well, I’ve been here all night, Helen. I completed the process, but as you know, it’s necessary for peer review whenever we’re dealing with DNA samples.”
“And? Hurry, Maya. I haven’t got much time. Johnny’s making my next appointment.”
“We concur, Helen. I’m not sure if you’ll think this is good news or not –”
“Spill it!”
“Your mitochondrial DNA is a match, honey.”
“Shit. Shit!”
“As brothers go, you could’ve done a lot worse than Crevan, sweetheart.”
“It’s not that,” I said. “And I don’t know why I feel so shocked by this. The circumstantial evidence has been piling up by the hour it seems.”
“What does that mean?”
“Twins,” I whispered. “I’m carrying fraternal twins.”
“And we’re not happy about this?”
“I don’t know how I feel about anything at the moment. I’ve got to talk to my father, Maya. I need answers. I need them before I’m big as a house and waddling too much to travel.”
“I’m not sure I like the sound of where I think this is going, Helen.”
“You swore to me that you’d keep this private, as long as I told you what I was doing every step of the way.”
Maya’s silence became oppressive.
“I have to go see him, Maya. I have to know if he…”
“Stole you?”
“Yes,” I nodded.
“And he never told you anything about your birth when you were a child?”
“Oh of course he talked about it. A beautiful fucking fairytale which I now know was complete bullshit.”
“Honey, you don’t know it for sure. Just because you’ve got some evidence, it’s not an indictment against your father. He might’ve been just as clueless about this as you were.”
She had no idea what I already knew deep in my bones about my father. I migh
t not have concrete evidence, but there were enough fingers pointing at his guilt to convince me that Wendell Eriksson was less than a sterling example of morality. Besides, I’d suspected for my entire adult life that Dad was somewhat of an adoption specialist. What I couldn’t fathom was why he’d steal me and leave Crevan behind.
“Helen, are you still there?”
“Yes,” I said softly, steeling my will for what had to come next. “Johnny’s coming. I need to act excited about our fabulous news.”
Chapter 8
David Levine was parked on the street in front of our house when Johnny pulled the Expedition up to the gate. He grinned and waved.
Unreal. Had it just been a few months ago that he was insanely jealous of my relationship with my mentor?
“That was fast,” I muttered under my breath.
“Oh, come on, Helen. He’s gonna be thrilled when we tell him that we’re not only expecting but having twins. Do you think we should ask him to be the babies’ godfather?”
“I seem to recall the night you met David. You looked like you wanted to tear his arms off, Johnny. You also accused me of being a little too friendly with my former boss.”
He snorted. “Please. The guy’s practically old enough to be your father.”
My father. There it was again. Gnawing away at my newly discovered identity. The idea that any part of me came from Aidan Conall made me physically ill. I couldn’t understand my instant dislike of a man who literally gave me life. For months, I pitied Crevan because even my incarcerated father… Wendell… whatever, had been a better parent to me with his warped sense of morality than Aidan Conall was to his son.
Johnny pulled into the garage the second I was no longer able to suppress my tears. The news hurt me deeper than anything had in my entire life. It was harder to lose my father this way than it was to watch him go to prison for Marie’s stupid mistakes.
Marie…
Marie!
“Honey?”
I heard the door to David’s sedan slam in the distance.
“I’m sorry. I need a few minutes alone, Johnny.”
“Are you all right? What’s wrong?”
“Hormones,” I wept. “I’ll be fine.”
His eyes followed me into the house. Instead of retreating to the sanctuary of our room, the place I usually chose to compose myself, I ran up the back stairs from the family room to the second floor, rounded the corner and bounded up the flight that led to what the blueprints of my house designated the nanny’s quarters.
How ironic was that? My new life came with a residence for a nanny.
This little sanctuary I never intended to actually use was still the repository for everything important that I had salvaged from another life, one I abruptly left behind just like Dad taught me to do. One fist flew between my teeth to stifle the keening wail the truth sucked from my soul. My dad hadn’t taught me a goddamned thing. And the only potential bit of good I could imagine that would come from exposing what really happened to the Conall’s daughter almost 39 years ago was that it would suddenly make Crevan look like the ideal child.
I started tearing through boxes with renewed purpose. My father, the only one I loved, the one who nurtured me and loved me and taught me everything that sustained me as a human being, he couldn’t have been part of this. It was not possible.
In the bottom of one box, I found it. The baby book.
It was a quaint tradition popular back when I was born. Mothers kept a type of journal that recorded all the milestones in their infant’s lives. I had no idea if this was something that mothers still did, couldn’t possibly care less.
What I knew was that there could be clues in mine. I hadn’t looked at this book since I was a small child. I found it, promptly crawled into Dad’s lap and demanded an explanation.
That was the first time that I could remember that he told me about the circumstances of my birth.
We didn’t think that Marie could have babies, he said. But that was before she started getting fat.
Dad had never been particularly sensitive to Marie’s feelings on anything, least of all the inverted-ketchup bottle shape of her body. I didn’t know that moms had another configuration until I started going to kindergarten and saw what other kid’s moms looked like.
Finally one day, I insisted that she see the doctor about all the weight she had gained, Sprout. It’s not healthy to be that fat. Imagine my surprise when the doctor told me that I was going to be a father.
“Were you very happy, Daddy?” I echoed my childhood words in a whisper. “Were you so happy that you were going to have me?”
Sometimes it’s more complicated than happiness or sadness, sweetheart. Do you know what shock is?
“Like what happens when I pet Kitty too long?”
My father laughed softly. I guess it is, my precious girl. I was very shocked because Marie told me that she couldn’t have babies at all. And all of a sudden, we were having you. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that at all. You know Daddy has a very dangerous job. I couldn’t imagine what would happen to my little girl if something happened to me at work, and all you would have left was Marie.
In hindsight, I couldn’t imagine such a horror either.
The night you were born, I was at work. We were arresting some very bad men, so when Marie called the precinct and told them that I needed to go to the hospital right away, I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t get there until the next day in fact. You were already born.
That was when Dad flipped open the book to the very first picture. He was wearing a hospital gown and a mask, holding a pink-faced baby in his arms.
This is the moment that I met you, Helen.
“Why did you name me Helen, Daddy?”
He squeezed me closer. Because Helen is the name of the woman I admired most in this world. Your grandmother’s name was Helen, sweetheart. And when I saw all the beautiful red fuzz on your head, I knew that you would grow up to be just like the Helen I loved my whole life. I couldn’t think of a better name for you.
“What did Mommy say about my name?”
Oh, she wanted to call you something silly. Cailín. Do you look like a Cailín?
He even pronounced it with a strange sort of accent. Not quite Colleen. More like CAW-lin. My fingers drifted over the photograph. Cailín and Crevan. Twins. Girl and boy. Crevan was Irish, meant fox and God only knew what my name meant. It was Irish too.
I flipped page after page in the baby book. Nothing was written in the smooth script of my mother’s handwriting. It was all the crisp block letters of my father.
Marie.
She had to know I wasn’t her child. Women don’t go through labor and forget the experience. What had really happened? Was Marie Eriksson really the elusive Martha Henderson? How could I ever find the truth?
Tony had said it himself at lunch yesterday. There were very few old timers left on the force who would remember what Martha looked like. He was a beat cop at the time, probably a rookie. Had he even seen a photograph or a sketch of the suspect? He must’ve. Tony said she wasn’t attractive, the kind of woman who’d have to steal a baby rather than make one with a man.
My attention fixed on that baby book. Why would Marie steal me in the first place? I didn’t get it at the time, but it was obvious to me now. Dad didn’t want kids. He was angry that Marie got pregnant.
Had she ever really been pregnant? Why pretend? It wasn’t as though she had ever shown an ounce of nurturing toward me when I was a child. In fact, she was always distant. It was Dad who loved me, who doted, who raised me entirely. By the time I was ten years old, he and I both called her Marie. That she never objected came as no surprise now. She wasn’t my mother. Why insist on a respectful moniker?
What on earth could’ve motivated her to steal me from parents who ostensibly wanted children but also had the means to raise them? Aidan Conall was filthy rich. We would’ve wanted for nothing.
Nothing but unconditional love.
&nbs
p; I couldn’t regret the life that Wendell gave me. Even the morality that had been skewed by him was preferable to the abject hate that Aidan embraced with such vigor.
All I had were questions, never any answers. Did answers still exist somewhere? Anywhere? Had they been right under my nose all along, but I had no reason to look for them? Until now. Did Dad know that Marie pulled a scam when I was born? Was he part of it? Were the stories he told about my birth little more than a beautiful fiction to placate a child’s curiosity?
Footfalls sounded on the staircase. I slammed the book shut and buried it in the box where I found it.
“Helen?”
Johnny poked his head around the corner.
I sniffled and wrapped my arms around my knees and hugged them to my chest.
“Honey, what’s wrong?” He dropped to his knees beside me, helpless and helpful at the same time.
I said the first words that popped into my head. “We are not hiring a nanny to raise our children.”
His arms folded around me, lips scattered gossamer kisses over my hair. “Baby,” he murmured, “is that what’s got you tied up in knots? We can call this room whatever we want to. It doesn’t mean that we have to use it for its intended purpose when the floor plan was designed.”
“Why would people want to do that, Johnny? Why would they want their children raised by strangers?” Another thought flitted through my brain. Had the goodness Crevan possessed been instilled by a nanny hired by his high-class father because that was how things were done in his social stratosphere? I shuddered.
“I don’t know, honey, but you’re right. We’re going to raise our children together, without some stranger doing all the work. Ah, Helen. I love you so much, but I don’t understand where these ideas are coming from. What did I ever say to make you think –?”
“It wasn’t you,” I whispered. “Oh, Johnny, I know you’re going to be the best father in the world.”
“And you’re going to be the best mother. Helen, please stop thinking that you’re going to be like Marie. It’s not possible. Do you think I could love a woman with a cold heart like she had?”