Chapter Forty-Five Jenn
Chapter Forty-Five
Jenn
One week later
It’s not until I’m almost directly across the street from the brownstone where my office is located that I spot her.
She’s partially obscured by the potted plants lining the front steps, and it takes a second for me to put all the pieces together.
A few wisps of brown hair have escaped from under the hoodie she’s wearing—totally out of place for a warm June morning.
Oversize sunglasses obscure what I know to be cornflower blue eyes.
There’s only the faintest redness where there were abrasions not that long ago.
“Mary?” She scowls up at me, and I backpedal immediately. “Sorry, sorry—Sam. I’m just—I’m surprised to see you. Here. In New York. When did you—”
“Is it true?” she asks, springing to her feet so suddenly my neck snaps to follow her.
“Is what true?”
“Julian? Is he really dead?”
When she removes the sunglasses, I see the dark rings bruising the skin beneath her eyes. She looks like she hasn’t slept in days.
“Come inside,” I say, pulling the key from my bag and brushing past her to reach the door. “We can talk in my office.”
She stays silent as she follows me, the only sounds the creaking of old wooden stairs and the muted murmurs behind the other doors we pass: the dentist, the insurance broker, the psychic. It isn’t until we’re safely inside the door with my name on it that I answer her question.
“Yes, Julian is dead,” I tell her, dropping into my chair and gesturing to the one opposite me. She perches on the edge, leaning forward like the slightest shift might cost her the truth.
“Are you . . . are you sure?” she whispers.
“I am. Dr. Kellogg and I went to his house and confronted him about the journals. We hadn’t even made it out of the driveway before he killed himself.”
She collapses back into the chair, a heavy puff of air escaping her lungs. “Oh my God.” She rubs the bridge of her nose, then her head jerks up again, eyes sharp with sudden urgency. “Did he tell you where she is? Where Sam’s daughter is? Did you get that out of him before he did it?”
I shake my head, already holding up my palms so she won’t panic.
“No. But he wasn’t as brilliant as he thought he was. He left plenty of clues for anyone who was looking. And trust me when I tell you Dr. Kellogg and I were looking.”
She swallows, absorbing that, and I have to give the man credit. He pulled every string he had, turned over every rock Julian thought he’d buried his secrets under.
“Did you ever hear Julian mention a place called Mayo, Florida?”
She frowns. “No. Never heard of it.”
“Yeah, well . . . I think that was the idea. It’s one of those blink-and-you’ll-miss-it towns where he knew someone who ran a clinic.”
“Oh my God. Is that the place? Is that where he sent her to have the baby?”
I nod somberly.
“It is. She was sedated, and by the time she woke up, the baby was gone.”
When tears start to spill down her cheeks, I hold out a box of tissues. She plucks one and wipes her face as I continue. “Once we had that tiny thread, we pulled and pulled until it all unraveled.”
“Please,” she manages, her voice splintering at the edges, “tell me she was adopted by a good family. That she wasn’t . . . hurt.”
“She wasn’t adopted, Mary.”
The tears vanish. Not wiped away—dismissed. Mary bolts upright, shoulders squaring as though someone just slammed a visor down over her face.
“What? That’s what he told Sam—”
“To throw her off the trail if she went searching,” I explain carefully. “In reality, he placed her in a facility in Minnesota. Far enough away it’d be nearly impossible for Sam to find her.”
As the emotion ebbs, what’s left is the one truth that matters.
“You found her,” she murmurs, as if she only just now heard it.
“We found her.” I pause, then offer the thing she doesn’t even know she needs. “Her name . . . is Jocelyn.”
Something feral and heartbreaking rises out of her—a sob wrapped in a scream, edged with years of grief. She slips from the chair as if her bones dissolve, collapsing onto the floor in a shaking heap.
I’m with her in an instant, holding her, rubbing her back, murmuring in her ear that it’s going to be all right.
After a long stretch, when the shaking quiets, she pulls back slightly so she can meet my eyes.
“Dr. Flores . . . my parents . . .”
She leaves the question unfinished, too horrible to speak aloud.
“They had no idea you were a twin, Mary. They had no idea Sam existed. Julian spells it all out in his notes. He saw their grief for their own lost child as an opportunity to manipulate them—and to keep doing it. For years. Right up till the day he killed himself.”
Relief moves through her in a visible wave—shoulders loosening, breath shaking out of her as if her body can finally stand down.
I’m loath to take this long-awaited moment from her, but there are pressing matters to be dealt with.
“Mary . . . there’s more we need to talk about. Come sit down,” I say. I help her up to the seat she slid out of before returning to my own.
“What is it?”
I lean forward, forearms resting on thighs, hands clasped together.
“No one has connected Julian to you,” I begin slowly. “Not to you, or your sister, or to Jocelyn. Right now the only people who understand the full scope of what happened are you, me, and David Kellogg. He and I decided we would leave it up to you how you want to proceed from here.”
“What do you mean—proceed? He’s dead . . .”
“He is,” I agree. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean the story is. The question is how much do you want to reveal? Do you want to expose him for who he really was—tell the whole world what happened to you and to Sam?”
She stares down at a tissue balled in her fist.
“I don’t . . . I hadn’t really thought about that part. I mean, I was prepared to expose him when he was alive—to do whatever I had to do to stop him and to make him tell me where Sam’s daughter was. But now that he’s gone . . . And now that she’s safe, I’m not sure.”
“Okay, well, I can tell you this much—if you do decide to come forward, the press will devour the story. It will define you. And it will define Jocelyn. And it’s probably just a matter of time before someone starts sniffing around, digging deeper.
Maybe putting two and two together and unearthing the story of Julian’s experiment—and the fact that he fathered Jocelyn.
Before you know it, you’re a Lifetime movie of the week.
I mean, I understand if you want to tell the world what really happened—and I’ll be there to back you, but you’ll need to prepare yourself for the inevitable cost of that decision. ”
She lifts her head now, eyes bloodshot and weary.
“I promised. I promised Sam I’d do whatever I had to do to find her daughter and give her a good life. Can you help me with that?”
Mary didn’t entrust her secret to me just because she wanted to take down Julian.
She knew she’d need help navigating all the red tape involved in reclaiming the child snatched from her sister’s arms at birth.
And since I’m the only one on the planet who knows that she is not Samantha Kinski, I’ve felt the pressure of having to work through this on my own.
There are so many variables, so many unknowns.
Not the least of which is the woman sitting across from me at this moment.
“I’ve actually given this a lot of thought,” I confess, not mentioning the nights I’ve lain awake sorting through all the options in my mind.
This was the big reason she trusted me with her secret in the first place.
“I know deciding to take on your sister’s identity had more to do with getting out from under your parents’ influence, but it actually puts you in a better position where Jocelyn is concerned.”
“But I can’t just go take her, right? She probably has no idea she even has a mother out there somewhere. God only knows what they told her.”
“Exactly. And the reality is that if you’d come forward as Mary—as the aunt—you’d have no automatic standing.
You’re just one relative—potentially among many.
It’s conceivable that if word somehow got out that she was Julian’s daughter, someone from his family might come forward.
Really, anyone even remotely connected to Julian or Sam could petition for custody. ”
She blanches.
“If you identify yourself as Mary,” I continue, “Jocelyn becomes a child with no living legal parents. CPS would open a full investigation. They might keep her in foster care while they sort everything out. You would have to fight to prove you’re the right person. And you could lose.”
She closes her eyes as if bracing against a blow.
I go on gently.
“But . . . continuing as Sam keeps the circle small. The system treats you as the surviving parent of record, and that gives you the strongest position while they verify things. It limits who has a say. It limits who’s notified.
It limits who can intervene. It protects Jocelyn from becoming a public case and from being bounced between strangers.
But, like telling the world about Julian, this decision also comes at a cost.”
She opens her eyes. There’s steel in them now.
“I’ll have to stay Sam the rest of my life.”
I nod. “Exactly. If you proceed like this—as Samantha Kinski, Jocelyn’s mother, you’ll be burying your own life. Your past. Your dreams. Everything you thought your future might be.”
She doesn’t look away.
“There’s a lot to consider,” I go on. “Things that aren’t on your mind at this moment but that will become important later.
Someday you’re going to fall in love, Mary.
Will you tell your partner the truth? How about Jocelyn—does she have a right to know?
And then there are your parents . . . are you really okay with letting them grieve for you for the rest of their lives?
Especially now that you know they were innocent in all this?
” I pause for emphasis because she needs to hear this question and consider it.
“Mary, you’re a very young woman. Are you really prepared to carry this alone? Forever?”
A long, aching silence.
Then she wipes her face with the heel of her hand.
“I can do it,” she says. “I made Sam a promise. She trusted me with her daughter. That’s all that matters. Jocelyn is all that matters.”
There’s no wobble. No hesitation. Just iron.
I exhale slowly, nodding. “Okay,” I say quietly. “Then we’ll do this your way.”