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Cicero stood and visited the bar cart, which was fast becoming his favorite piece of furniture in the library. Maybe he could steal it for his bedroom. “I said I was sorry. I think you can cut me a little slack after I delivered your flowers for you. Driving to Branley and back isn't my idea of a great way to spend the day. You could always tell her the truth about me, or are you afraid she'll go for the more handsome brother?”

Lucien raised his eyebrows at the thought of Cicero interacting with Jane. He wanted her to be intrigued, not horrified. “I don't think she's ready for you, Cicero. And what good are the flowers if
she thinks I'm an obnoxious idiot? It's like everything I touch turns bad lately.”

If Cicero minded being called an idiot, he didn't let it show. He seized on the one detail that Lucien had been hesitant to address when he filled Cicero in on where he'd been for the last twenty-four hours.

“So you did touch her? I don't blame you. There wasn't much covered by that dress, but I'd like to see the rest.”

“No, I didn't touch her. I had other things on my mind. Raleigh, for instance. He's more unstable than I thought. We need to find out about this Portia woman, too. Her programming was more sophisticated than anything I've ever seen before. It was a close one Cicero, closer than I thought it would be.”

Cicero plopped back down in one of the club chairs. “Raleigh's money is green, and that's all we need to know about him. Just keep your distance and give him what he wants. Well, copies of what he wants anyways. As for the authenticator, we've never had problems before. Nobody has ever been able to figure out our counterfeits. Computer or not, she's still working with the same characteristics we pride ourselves on being able to duplicate, or circumvent.”

“You're a great salesman, but I'm not so easily compelled. There's another detail about Jane that I need to tell you. I mentioned it to Laurel, but I need your opinion. When I met her the first time, she told me the Barye bronze was a fake. Just in casual conversation.” Lucien paused to let Cicero absorb this latest information. “How could she know that, Cicero? We worked on that thing for five years until it was good enough to replace with the real one last month. She's not an authenticator, she's barely educated. She knew I was lying when I told her my name was ‘Lucky'. She says she's like a human lie detector, but not just for what you say. All she has to do is be in the same room as one of our fakes, and she can tell it's not real. I don't know how, and I don't think she even knows what she's doing.”

Cicero sneered in disbelief. “I doubt she's that good. It's probably just coincidence she mentioned the Barye. Maybe she was trying to get your attention. When you look like me, girls say anything to start a conversation. As for ‘Lucky'; that's not anyone's real name. Who would name their kid ‘Lucky' unless they wanted a compulsive gambler for a son? You're being paranoid.”

“Paranoid? Am I also paranoid to wonder how Raleigh found me at the museum? He usually just calls if he wants to talk to me. He must have called my cell phone that morning, but I didn't answer it. You had my cell phone, Cicero. Did you happen to take that call?”

Cicero finished his drink with a satisfied exhalation. In truth, he had forgotten about it. Who calls at eight o'clock in the morning, anyway? “Yes, I did. He called and I pretended to be your colleague. I took a message. He seemed eager to talk to you. I might have also told him that you were at the museum.” Lucien stared at his brother. Cicero stared at his glass.

“Well, I guess he was lucky that you were so helpful.”

Cicero shrugged nonchalantly. “It wasn't anything you couldn't handle.”

“It would have been nice if I could have made that decision.”

“Sometimes people need a little push, Lucien. I did you a favor. You haven't been this charged up in a while.”

Lucien was struggling to contain his exasperation in the face of such indifference. Cicero did not feel the need to comply with many facets of the social contract; least among his concerns was delivering phone messages in a timely manner. Whatever his intentions, Cicero had contributed to a dangerous situation. Anything could have happened.

“We've never had to go out and look for trouble, Cicero. It finds us. I don't want to push my luck if I don't have to. Yes, it got my blood pumping, and it turned out okay. But, Jane might have been killed. I don't want that on my conscience. As it is, she's still foremost on Raleigh's mind. That's not a great place to be.”

“Okay, fair enough. Just try to keep your romantic life separate from our business.”

Lucien recognized Cicero's obvious needling, but tried to rein in his brother's imagination by downplaying the nascent attraction between he and Jane. “There's nothing romantic going on. I had to make sure she was okay, that's all.”

“I read the card, Lucien. You're a pretty good salesman yourself, but that was personal. If you want to meet with her again so badly, then why don't you?”

“It doesn't feel right. The family will always come first. I don't want to lose focus.”

Cicero rolled his eyes. Sex wasn't a distraction. Life was far more agitating if he didn't take part in the most fulfilling diversion two people can share. It was their right as human beings to fulfill their natural tendencies. “Good. Then I confess, I indulged my own curiosity while I was in her apartment.”

Lucien gripped the arm of the chair in barely contained fury. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“She was passed out on her bed and I happened to see that she was naked as the day she was born and also a bit of a thrasher when she sleeps. Ergo, I saw her breasts, and other gently curving parts. Who knew such a scrap of a dress could conceal so many wonderful surprises. Also, she snores.”

Unaccountably, Lucien looked relived. “You bastard. I thought you…”

“What? That I seduced her? That I touched what you won't? Wait, that would have been an excellent idea. I'll try that when I see her next.”

“You will do no such thing.”

“Why? You don't want her. Maybe I do. I did mention the breasts, right?”

“Find someone else's breasts to ogle.”

“I'd much rather ogle yours, or hers rather.”

“She's not mine.”

“Then why are you acting like she is?”

“Cicero, I don't want to do that again. I don't want to get close to someone just to lose them. It rips my heart out.”

“If you live like a monk, you're going to lose touch with reality. We've come too far in seven hundred years to just give up on our humanity. It's the only thing that makes it easier. If I had to become some kind of supernatural creature, I don't think I could see a purpose in it all. Be glad you still have a heart to get ripped out of your chest.”

This was the discussion Cicero had been working up to. He wanted to see if Lucien would argue with him and take up the banner of the righteous, or give in to the melancholy he expressed in his journal entries. It took several moments for Lucien to rejoin the conversation and his answer wasn't all that Cicero hoped it would be.

“It's just hard to keep going after all these years. I was getting tired of it even before China, and while I was there, all I thought about was how useless it all is. What do we have to look forward to? We can't have families of our own. The relatives we do have are cursed by the same genetic anomaly that keeps us alive. How they must hate us sometimes. We live countless lifetimes, while their sons die before they even have a chance to live. I hate us sometimes.”

He had tried everything else, now it was time for Cicero to yell.

“It's not our fault, Lucien! We're doing everything we can to try to fix it. They know that. We could disappear tomorrow, and they couldn't stop us. We both know that neither one of us will do that. We were given time. More time than anyone should have the right to. Maybe the reason we have that time is to find a cure. Our lives, our genes, are either a gift with consequences, or a curse with a way out. You can agonize over it all you want, but this is the way it is.”

Lucien and Cicero were silent for a while, each trying to wait for the other's mood to change. Finally as only twins can manage, they sensed what the other was thinking. Lucien broke the silence first. “So, I should go and get laid, huh?”

“Yes. That is the best course of action.”

“Maybe you're right. I just don't think she's the one to get me out of my slump. I'm pretty sure she hates my guts after you confused her with a prostitute.”

“Don't worry, there's always another woman. Maybe even one that wouldn't mind being confused with a prostitute.”

Lucien made a face. “What a delightful woman that would be.”

16

JANE WAS JUST ABOUT BACK TO NORMAL
by the time her Saturday night shift rolled around. She had slept through most of the day. Hunger ended up driving her out of bed around five. She made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and checked her email. Her older sister, Caroline, reported that her kids were driving her crazy during the summer vacation from their school. Caroline had three children, a house in the suburbs of Milwaukee, and a very caring husband who worked as a civil engineer.

Caroline's life was perfect for Caroline, but Jane didn't really see herself in her sister's charmed circumstances. She wanted to travel. Kids weren't out of the question, but she wanted a career before she wanted a family. Her mother had devoted herself to Caroline, Jane, and their father. Jane had watched her struggle through her father's financial ups and downs. It seemed like every time they managed to get into a stable situation, he would find a new “investment opportunity” that would inevitably lead to disappointment and an empty bank account. When he finally left, Jane's mom could barely manage the mortgage and food. Within a few months, she was working as a daycare manager for a family friend and earning only enough to keep them afloat.

Jane was in her junior year of high school when her mother started forgetting things. She was constantly misplacing her keys. She missed more than a few of Jane's school functions. Dinner burned at least once a week when she forgot to take it out of the oven. Finally, she forgot about a child in the back of the daycare van. Their usual driver had called in sick and she had taken over the morning pick-
ups. She got all of the older kids out of their seats, but forgot about a 5-month-old girl in the back. Luckily it was spring and the weather was temperate. One of the caregivers realized the child was missing within an hour. The baby was fine; she slept through the whole thing. But, the daycare had to let Jane's mom go. To avoid prosecution, Caroline convinced her to go see a doctor, and the diagnosis was devastating. Their mother was suffering from early onset Alzheimer's disease. Within six months, her dementia required full time care. She was only 49 years old and she didn't have one grey hair, but she was wrestling with a mental condition that typically affected people decades older.

Caroline moved their mother into her house two hours away. Jane finished out her senior year of high school alone. When Jane graduated, she talked with Caroline about what they should do. Jane already had a partial scholarship to Branley. She wanted to go to college, but she also wanted to help take care of their mother. Finally, Caroline settled the matter. “You're going, Jane. Mom would have wanted you to go to school.”

Caroline had married her high school sweetheart. She had started a family and was living the life she always dreamed of. Managing their mother's care would be difficult, but Caroline remembered that their mother always wanted her daughters to have a chance at happiness despite the sometimes unkind circumstances of their life. Caroline was willing to give Jane a chance at a new life, even if the financial burden of their mother's living and medical costs would fall solely on her. They sold their old family home, and Jane left for Georgia. Now, a couple of years later, they were trying to cope with their mother's declining condition.

Jane read through the email update and finally got to the part where Caroline talked about their mother. She wandered away less because the kids were there to help keep an eye on her. However, Caroline had found her hiding bottles of alcohol in her dresser. Their mother had never been a heavy drinker, but since the diagnosis, she had often overindulged. Jane wasn't sure if it was a result of depression or the disease itself changing her personality. Caroline kept the alcohol out of the house, but their mother must have found a way to buy it and smuggle it into her room.

Jane was scheduled to visit for the last two weeks of summer before school started. She was taking as many shifts at the bar as she could until then to make money for her living expenses, which weren't covered by her scholarship. Every day that she wasn't in Wisconsin, she wrestled with the guilt of not being there to help her sister. Some days, it was too much, and she couldn't bring herself to read Caroline's email update. Once in a while, Caroline broke down on the phone and admitted that it was more difficult than she ever thought it would be to care for her own mother.

During the school year, Caroline's older kids went to school, but she still had her 3-year-old daughter to care for. She couldn't leave her mom in the room with her daughter alone because her mom might forget where she was and think that her granddaughter was Caroline or Jane and try to take her for a ride in the car. The older boys sometimes got scared when grandma would yell at them for no reason.

It was becoming clear that Jane and Caroline would have to consider a full-time care facility. Jane had taken a psychology course with Sadie last year and one of the topics had been Alzheimer's disease. One of the statistics quoted in their textbook was that most patients died within seven years of their diagnosis. Jane hated to see those words in black and white. She knew that her mother wouldn't be able to function like she should at her age, but this was a death sentence. Jane was scared of the future. She didn't want possibly the last years of her mother's life to be spent with strangers, but every day her mother was becoming more of a stranger to herself and a danger to those around her. She would need care that Caroline and Jane couldn't provide.