All the Broken Pieces (26 page)

“I love them, too.” As mad as she was, and as confused as she was, she did love them.

But the missing girls. The heart that shouldn’t be mine.

Pain radiated from her stolen heart. Again, she felt lost, completely adrift in this new world where she was no longer sure who or what she was. Where she felt responsible for a girl’s death. She sniffed, fighting to keep control of her emotions. “What if love isn’t enough to fix things, though? What if there’s something that ruins it all?”

Lori grabbed another cookie. “Well, without all the facts, I’m not sure how ruined it is or isn’t. But I don’t think all’s lost. When you love people, you don’t give up on them. No matter what.”

39

Liv leaned across the car and kissed Spencer’s cheek. “Thanks for everything.”

“Call if you need me,” Spencer said. “I can get someone to cover my shift. I’ll do whatever you need me to.”

“It’ll be okay. I’ll give you a call later, though.” She took a deep breath, grabbed her suitcase out of the back, and carried it up the sidewalk.

She paused in front of the door, her courage faltering. Last night she’d hardly slept, thinking about having someone else’s heart, wondering how she’d ended up in Mom and Dad’s care.

Mom and Dad.
A sharp pain shot through her chest. Henry and Victoria Stein weren’t even her real parents.
So why did they take care of me?

All the questions swirled through her head again, pushing her to confront them so she could put the final pieces together. Another deep breath. In and out. In and out.

The instant she walked in, Mom was at the door. She threw her arms around her, hugging her so tightly she could hardly breathe. “I was so worried.”

Dad appeared by her side seconds later, his eyes red and bloodshot. In fact, both of them looked disheveled, like they hadn’t slept any more than she had.

“Time to tell me everything,” she said, looking from Mom to Dad. “I want to know what really happened the night of the wreck, and this time, I don’t want you to lie to me.”

Dad took the suitcase from her and set it aside. He swept his arm toward the living room. “I think you’re going to want to sit down for this.”

…

Mom and Dad told her about all the procedures they’d gone through to try to have a child, and how after years with no success, Mom finally got pregnant, only to lose the baby halfway through the pregnancy. After that devastating miscarriage, the doctors told her that she’d most likely never carry a baby full-term.

Having a child was one of their greatest desires, so they decided to adopt. It was a long process, but they eventually met a young pregnant woman who had decided to give her baby up for adoption. They met with her and she told them the amazing news—she’d picked them to be the baby girl’s parents. The paperwork was filled out, the nursery was painted, clothes bought, everything ready to go.

“So the night of your accident, we’d gotten the call that Abby was having our baby.” Mom looked at her, tears glistening in her eyes. “We sat in the waiting area for several hours. The nurse came out and got us, we went into the room…I was filled with such joy, knowing my dreams were about to come true. Knowing I was about to hold my baby for the first time.

“I looked at Abby, who was holding our perfect baby girl. Chubby cheeks, ten tiny fingers, ten little toes. Then I saw the way Abby was looking at the baby in her arms. The love and awe filling her features was so apparent, and I just knew…” Mom pressed her lips together and tears ran down her cheeks. “She looked up at us and said, ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t.’ And just like that, our dream was shattered again.”

Dad put his arm over Mom’s shoulders. “So we did the only thing we knew to do. We drove home. There was a horrible storm and the rain was pouring. Everything was slick and muddy and it took forever to drive from the hospital. We were almost home when we saw the two wrecked cars.”

Liv scooted to the edge of her seat.

Mom picked up the story, and her recollection of that night was so vivid, Liv could see it.

Headlights illuminating two cars off the side of the road, hoods accordioned together, engines still steaming.

She could hear the faint music, smell the damp earth mixed with the sweet liquid pouring from underneath the cars. She could see Dad putting his fingers on the neck of the blond girl sprawled across the hood—Lindsay. The rain carrying the girl’s blood in red streams down the side of the white car.

She heard the grinding noise the wipers made as they worked across the buckled glass of the other car’s windshield.

And there she was in the other car—her body, anyway. Injured head resting on the deflated airbag, blood-covered clothes, Elizabeth’s Hello Kitty keychain hanging from the ignition.

“Dad had already started working on stopping the other girl’s hemorrhages,” Mom said. “I got into the car with you. The depressed skull fracture alone…I’ve seen a lot of brain injuries in my life, and yours…” Mom’s chin quivered. “I took off my scarf and wrapped your wounds the best I could. Knowing neither of you would make it to the hospital in time, we took you to my nearby lab where I’d been working on a cure for Huntington’s disease.”

Mom lifted her red-rimmed eyes. “The brain injuries to the other girl were very bad. Compound depressed skull fracture with internal cranial cavity exposed to the outside environment.” She shook her head. “It’s not an injury she’d ever recover from. Even if she lived, she’d be in a vegetative state for life.”

She lifted her clasped hands to her lips. “But you, you only had one damaged area on the right side of your brain, the only healthy part the other girl had left. So I used my skills to graft it in.”

The hairs on the back of Liv’s neck rose, and she slowly brought a hand to her head. “You’re saying…? My brain is…it’s made up of two different brains?”

“I did what I had to do to save you. The surgery I performed was highly experimental, but I had to try. If I hadn’t done it your brain never would have functioned properly. It’s why you’ll never completely get your memories back.” Mom leaned forward. “It was risky, but I couldn’t let you go through life without a shot at normalcy, and I couldn’t let you die. Not when there was a chance to save you.”

The opposing thoughts, the weird dreams—it all made sense now. While completely not making sense at all. This was crazy.

Liv moved a hand over her chest. “What about the heart surgery?” Her stomach rolled, and for a moment, she thought she was going to puke. “What? You figured you’d used the girl’s brain, you might as well take all her other good organs, too?”

“Your ribs punctured your chest,” Dad said. “From what I saw, you already had a weak heart, and it was severely damaged in the wreck…” His face paled. “The only other option was letting you die, so I performed a heart transplant. Using the other girl’s…” He closed his eyes and dropped his head, unable to say the rest.

But he didn’t have to. All the air left her lungs and suddenly the room felt too big and too small at the same time. It was what she’d guessed, but having it confirmed made it that much worse.

Just when I started to feel like I know who I am, I find out that I’m two people
,
and suddenly, everything I thought I knew seems wrong. I don’t know who I am, because I’m not anyone. I’m parts. Pieces.

A science experiment.

A monster.

Tears ran down her cheeks. She didn’t try to stop them or bother with wiping them away. At this point, she wasn’t even sure she could move. And if she did, which part of her would be moving? Vivienne? Lindsay?

There was no Liv. Olivia. Livie. It didn’t matter what anyone called her. The name didn’t change what she was.

“I was the one who pushed your father to do the transplant,” Mom said, her voice sounding tiny and far away. “But we had a choice to make, if you could even call it that. We could let your life slip away, or we could give you a new one. Even if you and the other girl
had
gotten to the hospital in time, neither of you would’ve made a full recovery.

“When I realized that what we’d done…” Mom’s voice shook and she seemed to be struggling for words. “Well, with all the foreign tissue, you were no longer who you started out as that night. You became two people’s daughters all at once, but no one’s at the same time. So knowing you’d need someone who could take care of you, the kind of care required after those extreme surgeries, I decided the best thing to do was to raise you as our daughter. I thought of you as our miracle.” She gave her a weary smile. “And you are truly a miracle.”

“I’m sure this is overwhelming,” Dad said, “but we both love you very much. We’ve dealt with guilt over our decision, because of the other families involved, and because of all we had to do to cover it up, but we’ve never regretted saving you. In fact, I thank my lucky stars every day that you’re in my life.”

“See, we don’t really know what we’re doing. This whole parenting thing is new to us, and I know we’ve made mistakes, but like your father said, we love you very much. More than I even knew was possible. That’s why I can’t bring myself to regret what we did. Because the idea of you not being in this world…” Mom wiped the tears from her cheeks, then scooted forward, anxiety filling her features. “So now you know everything. How are you? Are you okay?”

Liv was still dealing with that rug-being-pulled-out-from-under-her sensation, no longer sure of anything anymore. “I don’t know what to think. But I’m most definitely not okay.”

…

Finding out that you used to be two people is more than confusing. It’s more than life-changing. It’s so much more than anything, that there aren’t words to describe it.

Liv lay back in her bed, mourning the loss of parents she never knew. She felt bad for Lindsay, who never got that math scholarship or the love she really needed from her mother; that after her rough life, she’d lost everything she did love in one night, and was so desperate and hurt over it that she got into her car drunk and drove to her death.

She wept for Elizabeth, waiting all night for her sister to come home, when she never would. She cried for Vivienne, who struggled with whether she wanted to give up her convictions to fit in, because no matter how much she tried to act like she didn’t care, she wanted to fit in somewhere, too. And when it came down to it, she loved her sister—would’ve done anything for her—and was trying to do the right thing by turning around to go back home.

Her mind returned to the wreck, her thoughts spinning over Mom and Dad’s unbelievable story. She pictured them coming across the two cars, doing all they could, and knowing they could only save one person. By using organs from the other.

A shudder ran through her as she thought about the blood and the brains and the heart. She was a freak of nature—no, not nature; she was a freak of science. An experiment.

Mom had called her something else, though. She’d called her a miracle.

Liv stood and looked in the mirror. She thought about how unfamiliar her reflection used to be. In time, she’d come to recognize herself; she’d gotten more secure with who she was, even without her memories. Really, both girls had pushed her to learn and grow in different ways, even though they’d also driven her crazy. She wasn’t the perky cheerleader, yet she wasn’t the nonconformist outsider, either.

Vivienne Clark and Lindsay Rogers had died the night of the accident. And here she was in their place. Their memories were fuzzy. Hers were real.

At that moment, something inside her changed. Her body felt lighter, her mind clearer. Then there was only the quiet of her room, and her own thoughts. The strange, unbelievable truth was what she’d needed to set the voices inside her head free.

I’m just me now.

She glanced at the clock.
Finally. I thought five o’clock would never come.

Waiting for Spencer to get off work had been torturous. She grabbed her phone and dialed his number.
Pick up, pick up, pick up.

“Hey, I was just about to call you,” Spencer said.

“I was hoping we could talk. In person.”

…

As they drove to Dead Horse Ranch, Spencer held her hand, talked about music, and everything almost felt normal again.

He kept glancing at her, obviously waiting for her to tell him what had happened, but as she’d said when he picked her up, it wasn’t a riding-in-the-car discussion. Part of her wanted to blurt it out and get it over with, but she was also scared to tell him everything.

He parked and they got out of the car, took the blanket from his trunk, and spread it on the ground. As they sat looking over the river, she noticed everything: the sound of the water rushing against the rocks; how the leaves on the trees were starting to turn yellow; the rabbit hopping away from them.

“Okay, I’ve held it in as long as I can,” Spencer said, twisting to face her. “What happened?”

Explaining the whole story to him took a while, but out it came, one word at a time, until he had the whole truth. When she finished, he just stared.

Panic welled up in her. “Was it too much? I always feel like I tell you too much.”

He shook his head. “Not too much. It’s just…Whoa.”

“Yeah. Definitely whoa.”

He took a few breaths, his chest rising and falling with each one. His eyes locked onto hers. “What are you going to do?”

A giant lump formed in her throat. “I don’t know. As much as I’d love to see Elizabeth again, I only remember flashes and nothing else. And from what I know about Lindsay, she and her mom didn’t exactly get along. In fact, her life was a pretty big mess.” Liv looked out over the water. “My parents did what they had to do to save my life. They’d be in huge trouble if anyone found out—they’d lose their medical licenses, maybe even end up in jail. The fact of the matter is, I don’t think I belong anywhere else. Maybe we’re not a conventional family, but we’re a family. I know they love me, and I love them.”

She blinked back her tears and swallowed. “What do you think?”