Sins of the Father (9 page)

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 might 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?