Chapter 2

 

I didn’t want to react too strongly with Geoff around, but I was inclined to mutter a few obscenities.

What the hell was going on?

Between Mother’s quaint mystery and the reappearance of the little man I hadn’t seen since I was seventeen, I had enough to deal with. Seeing a match for a single earring I’d had for years was starting to push me towards a rather narrow ledge. And it’s not like it was a common earring that could have coincidentally shown up. It was an upside down silver leaf and stem with the emerald as the flower.

I started to wonder if I’d always had two and just didn’t remember.

That was the worst part of this, feeling like I was losing my mind. I’d been questioning my own sanity for far too long, and it was getting old.

Closing my eyes, I exhaled to try to get some kind of grip on myself. Then I put the earring with the first and left the room.

Geoff was waiting for me at the door, reading the note over again.

I felt for him. He really missed Mother. I’m sure it must have been difficult for him to have her leave something for me after all this time.

I clapped him on the shoulder, smiling as I took the note and key. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s see what we have waiting for us.”

He nodded, but said nothing.

As we walked towards the elevator, I remained quiet with him. It wasn’t an awkward silence — we were just both caught up in our own individual thoughts.

Of the couple of things that were going on, the earring was the most troubling. I could understand the hallucinations returning. I hadn’t renewed my meds and I was due for a tune-up with Dr. White. But the earring was physical. I couldn’t argue its existence.

When the elevator arrived, I decided I didn’t want to think about it anymore, so I broke the silence.

“So how long has this been going on with Layne?” I asked. I pushed for the parking garage.

Geoff’s face lit up. “Three weeks,” he said. He didn’t expand on it like I thought he might, and I chose not to pry. I smiled inside, though, at the thought that hopefully Layne was better endowed than his brother.

We took Geoff’s Jetta since my old Tempo was on its last legs. It was an amicable ride. Geoff filled me in on neighborhood gossip and things he’d done around the house since Mother’s passing. I didn’t push to see it, and he didn’t invite me.

At the branch he took me past the line and the tellers, and brought me back to where the safety deposit boxes were kept. No one stopped him, but considering his position at the branch it wasn’t really a surprise.

Trust my mother to pick the bank where Geoff worked, unless, of course, she wanted this moment to unfold like this.

After retrieving the bank’s key for the box, he ensured we had a small room for us to review the contents privately.

I took a deep breath before inserting the key and opening it. Despite the fact I valued my independence, there was a small hope that there might be some money. I hated myself for the thought. I really didn’t want her money, but the sensible part of me thought that it could come in handy. I did have student debts to pay after all.

Geoff leaned over, but refrained from touching anything. His fingers twitched though, like he was as anxious as I was.

I exhaled as we saw the contents. A manila envelope sat upon a leather-bound collection of old documents. I hacked open the seal.

Geoff stood over my shoulder as I pulled out a sheaf of papers.

On the top was a letter from Mother. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to read it, but my eyes seemed to make the decision for me.

 

Dear Katherine,

 

I am writing this knowing I have little time left. The cancer in my body has spread to the point I have only two months to live and I could not bring myself to tell you this in person. I have lived with a large burden upon my shoulders and have not had the courage to tell you this in person. I suspect Geoffrey will want to know this as well, but it is your choice if you wish to share it with him.

I apologize that you’re receiving this information now, but at the very least I wanted you to have some knowledge of what is coming. There are things you need to know.

First, I suppose you may have wondered why I left nothing for you in my will. To be blunt, you are not my child. I never gave birth to you. You were adopted at infancy in the second year of our marriage. I told James, the man you think of as your father, a lie. I told him I could not bear children, and we made arrangements to adopt a child.

On the day James passed away, I learned I was pregnant with Geoffrey.

If you are wondering why I deceived James deliberately, it was because of a problem in his family.

Within the pages I have left in this box are the writings of various family members, detailing a history to which you are the heir. The death certificates, dates, and relevant information are all there.

I will leave you to read them, but here is the essence of what you will find. The eldest child in James’s family will die in their twenty-fifth year. Before you decide that it is some absurd notion, know that this has come to pass for five generations now. You are the sixth.

I know this may seem harsh that I chose to adopt a child before having one of my own, but there it is. If you have the strength of will, I implore you to not have a child in the coming months. First, you will be unlikely to see it to term since your twenty-fourth birthday is now three days away. It is unknown at what point your death will come, but it will surely happen in your twenty-fifth year. And second, this anomaly could die with you if you choose to end this.

This may be a prudent time to settle whatever legal affairs you may need to.

If you inform Geoffrey of this, please let him know all of this was done for his sake, so that my own child by James would live.

 

Sincerely,

Joan Gregory

 

I handed the letter to Geoff as I grabbed the closest chair. My stomach felt like it was up around my throat. I sat down, bracing my head in my hands.

Geoff plunked down beside me. He was just as speechless.

The woman had never loved me, I had figured that. I suppose it made sense she wasn’t my birth mother — we didn’t look anything alike. I just always assumed I had inherited more of my father’s traits. But I had lived a life unloved by a woman who had some bizarre notion I would die at the age of twenty-four?

What sort of sick joke was this? Had she been mentally unstable?

I could barely make my fingers flip through the remaining pages attached to her letter — adoption papers, a British passport, citizenship papers. I couldn’t even look at the rest, never mind the leather-bound collection that still waited at the bottom of the metal box.

Geoff said nothing. At this point, I didn’t want words.

How was this possible? And my father, or the man I thought was my father, went along with this? It had to be some kind of joke. Who would do this to a child?

I was trying to make some sense of it when I noticed a name on one of the documents — a witness signature. There was scrawled a name I knew. It was on every Christmas card I had received since I was a teenager.

Marigold Gregory.

The harsh reality of this settled on me as I looked upon the scrawling signature. This was no joke.

My aunt was going to be getting a phone call, if I could find her number. I had questions. A lot of them.

Geoff rummaged through the papers as I got up to pace. I didn’t really know what to do with myself, but my legs itched to move.

“What are you going to do?” Geoff finally asked.

Anger seeped out of my eyes in tears that slipped down my cheeks.

“I don’t know,” I said.

My brother and I had never discussed my mother’s relationship with me. We both knew it wasn’t what it should be. He likely knew it was not my fault, but I think he never truly wanted to know because it would ruin his own image of her.

At this point, I had had enough of dancing around the big, white elephant in the room.

“She never loved me,” I muttered. “I knew that. But this is stupid. They adopted me because… because of some ridiculous idea that their first child was going to die? What the hell is that?”

Geoff said nothing. Thankfully. Because I wasn’t finished.

“And I grew up unloved all these years, deliberately. I’m like a human shield. ‘Here, take this one, it’s no good to us’!”

I pulled at my hair.

“I don’t know what to do. I don’t know who to talk to. My psychiatrist will have a field day with this!”

Geoff got up from the table and walked over to me. He looked like he might try to hug me.

“Don’t touch me. Please.”

Geoff backed off, but his silent eyes never left me.

“How did this happen? Who let something like this happen?”

I grabbed the letter. “Look, just like the other letter, she didn’t even sign it with ‘Your Mother’! It’s like she was finally admitting to me what I knew all along — I was never hers.”

I threw it on the table.

“All these years of meds and questioning my own sanity, all because of this. Do you have any idea what my life has been like? I’m exhausted, Geoff. I’m mentally and emotionally exhausted from a roller coaster ride that never ends. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t.”

Eventually I gave in and sobbed. My legs buckled and I grabbed the table for support.

I wept. There was nothing left to me but torrents of pain that flooded out in gasping sobs. I let it all out and Geoff stood there beside me.

“Why?” I managed to say. “Why?”

Finally he whispered to me. “I don’t know,” he said. “But we’ll find out who did this.”

I looked at him.

“We’ll start with Aunt Marigold. And I’ll search through the house for anything Mom left behind. Something isn’t right here.”

I said nothing. I lowered my head. I wasn’t sure I even cared to know. At this point, I just wanted to go home.

“I know she wasn’t a very good mother to you. I think I’ve always known she liked me more, but this seems too cruel. It’s crazy. I can’t believe she would have written this, or she would have done this. It’s not like her.”

I blinked for a moment.

What?

It was exactly like her, actually. And the letter was in her handwriting. Those “o”s were unmistakable.

As I looked at Geoff I could see the denial in his eyes. He was refusing to believe that our mother, or rather his mother, had been capable of this. I didn’t know what to do with it.

As he backed up, I felt like a giant knife came down, severing the last of any connection I had with him. He paper-clipped the papers and passed them to me. I suddenly felt very alone. I suppose I could have protested his disbelief, but what was the point. A few more tears slid down my cheeks before I took them from him and then followed him out the door. He’d have to come to his senses on his own.

Geoff left me at my apartment, promising to get back to me with anything he found. I needed to sleep, and I think he needed some time to think. I tossed the papers from Mother on the coffee table. They skidded across, knocking the cordless to the floor. I didn’t bother to retrieve it since it was in line of sight of the ficus. I just collapsed on the bed.

It usually takes me some time to fall asleep, but this time it was almost instant. I didn’t dream, or I didn’t remember if I did. I just turned off.