Chapter 5
The Second Secret
Birmingham, UK
Present Day
Emily Evans was looking forward to starting her studies in pursuit of a doctorate in Art History and Theory at the prestigious Cambridge University.
She had promised her mother that she would help clear out the old boxes in the attic before she left to start her program.
Rents were growing each year and her mother thought it was a good time to downsize a bit, especially with Emily moving away.
She had already found a new flat and wanted to get rid of any unnecessary junk before she moved.
The boxes were plentiful and Emily wasn’t sure where to begin.
She wondered why her mother had transported so much when they moved from Manchester.
Shouldn’t that have been the time to purge? But they hadn’t and here she was.
A carton marked “Emily: Key Stages 1–4” caught her eye.
She figured that was as good a place as any to start.
She pulled the box off the pile and lowered herself to the attic floor.
The box was filled with the usual items, such as photos and Emily’s first drawings.
As far back as she could remember, she was always fascinated with art.
Learning about it and experimenting with it.
Her drawings showed a marked improvement over the years, but her passion landed on comparative art history.
She was especially interested in the Renaissance, an Italian phenomenon.
Da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael had no noticeable counterparts in the UK at the time, and Emily wanted to dig deeper as to why the Brits were left out of the resurgence of art and music for a century.
The politics had much to do with it, but why did they arrive late to the party?
Aside from the obvious wars, why wasn’t there an interest in the arts?
That was a subject she was going to explore.
She plucked a bundle of something wrapped in newsprint out of the box.
The smell of the long-stored papier-maché sculpture invaded her nostrils.
“This is bloody disgusting,” she said while she slowly unwrapped the stinky object.
She cocked her head from side to side. “What on earth is this bloody thing?” She held her breath and lifted it gingerly.
“This is definitely something for the bin,” she said out loud.
“Maybe Mum can recall.” She placed it to the side and moved on to another box.
There was one box marked “Emily’s Toys.” Why, she wondered, had her mother kept all of this stuff? Perhaps it was her way of holding on to Emily’s childhood, a time when their lives were stable, before her father left.
Emily’s dad, Henry, had disappeared when she was sixteen.
She had little information surrounding his exit.
She knew a murder had occurred behind the bank where her father worked.
Evidently, Henry was the last person to be seen with the victim, an extremely powerful man in the community.
Rumors swirled and everyone jumped to the conclusion that Henry was the killer.
But she also knew that was impossible. Her father was a gentle man, an honest man.
He could never kill anyone. Without an alibi to prove his innocence, Henry was likely to get arrested and convicted.
So he did the only thing he could do: He went on the run.
Emily and Kathleen awoke one morning to find Henry gone and a note on the kitchen table:
I love you both. This is for everyone’s good.
When the police arrived to arrest him, he was nowhere to be found.
The police insisted Kathleen knew his whereabouts, and as the days passed, Kathleen was inundated with surprise visits from the city’s constables.
Kathleen had only one ally, Henry’s friend Oliver, who was a detective inspector on the British police force.
Oliver was careful in his attempts to quell the situation.
He treaded carefully so as not to jeopardize Henry or his family, or himself, for that matter.
And after weeks with no leads on Henry, and no indication that Kathleen or Emily knew where he was, mother and daughter were left to get on with their lives …
whatever life they could salvage without Henry, the family’s primary breadwinner.
Nothing went back to normal, but things took a turn for the worse when, several weeks later, menacing threats began to arrive.
Threats against both Emily and Kathleen included suggestions that they might get hit by a car, abducted, or die in a fire.
But Kathleen was a fighter and she would not let anyone harm her daughter.
She packed up their belongings, including the boxes that were now stashed in the attic, and moved from Manchester to Birmingham.
Months passed with no word from Henry, until a small package arrived at their new residence. Inside was several hundred pounds and another note.
Don’t ask how I found you, but I know you’re safe for now. I love you and miss you very much.
Kathleen scrutinized the envelope, hoping for some trace of where it came from.
Nothing. Just her name scribbled on the front.
Apparently, it had been hand delivered. But by whom?
Unmarked packages began to arrive every other month.
Each was filled with money and a brief note. This had been going on ever since.
Emily sat and thought about how strong her mother had been through all of it.
She sighed and continued her chore of purging useless mementos of the past, when she came across a box marked “Personal.” She plucked off the lid and caught her breath.
It was where Kathleen kept the precious correspondence from her husband.
She read and re-read the notes. There was no doubt her father still loved them, yet she still grieved his absence.
Ten years later it still brought tears to her eyes.
She wiped her face with the back of her sleeve and continued milling through the papers.
At the bottom of the box was a folder marked “Legal.”
Emily gently fingered the pages and found her birth certificate.
Then she stopped short. She was staring at a second birth certificate with the same birth date as hers, but the time was ten minutes later.
She squinted at the confusing information.
The baby’s name was listed as Ashley Evans.
Emily sat back on her haunches. What did this mean?
Was the baby stillborn? Did she die shortly after birth?
Emily frantically dug further into the paperwork.
There was no death certificate. Thoughts were racing through her mind.
Her quiet handling turned into fervor. Again, she was stopped in her tracks.
In her hands were adoption papers. She read them carefully.
Several weeks after their birth, Ashley had been sent to the United States to live with a family, but their information was not disclosed.
Emily sat and stared into space. How did she not know about this? She pulled her phone out of her pocket and speed dialed her mother. Her nerves were frayed. Her hands shook. She could barely speak.
“Mum? Do I have a twin sister?” she blurted out as soon as her mother answered.
There was silence on the other end.
“Mum? Mum? Speak to me.”
“Oh, love, we should discuss this when I get home. It’s too important to go over it on the phone.”
“When will you be here?” Emily asked with urgency.
“I’ll be there at half past five. Emily, please do not fret. I can explain everything.” Without another word her mother ended the call.
Emily was frozen in place. Was this a dream?
How did it happen? Why did it happen? She had so many questions.
She tried to keep a stiff upper lip, but the tears flowed down her face.
Two thoughts raced through her mind. Why was she kept in the dark?
And could this explain why she often felt as if something was missing? Besides her father.
An hour later Kathleen arrived with a sack of groceries. A loaf of bread peeked out the top next to a head of celery.
“Hello, love. I’ll make dinner,” she said as if everything was normal.
Emily touched her mother’s arm. “Mum, we need to do this now. I’m still shaking from earlier today.”
Kathleen set the bag on the table. “I’ll put the kettle on.” She filled the electric pot and flipped the switch.
Emily reached for the tea and the cups and placed them next to the groceries. She was close to hyperventilating. She pulled out a chair and sat down.
The water took only a few minutes to boil. Kathleen poured the water into the cups and then sat beside her daughter.
“When your father and I married, money was tight. He worked two jobs, and I had a job at the pub. We wanted to have children, eventually, but we were young, in love, and careless.” She paused.
“I got pregnant.” She sighed and poured milk into her cup.
“It was not a good time to bring a child into the world, but we weren’t going to terminate the pregnancy.
Then we found out it was twins. Double the responsibility. ”
Emily said nothing and continued to stare at her cup of tea.
Kathleen placed her hand on top of Emily’s and continued her story.
“Your pop and I spent a lot of nights talking it through.
There were many painful conversations. We were gutted, but we knew we would be doing both of you a terrible disservice.
Your dad and I would have to work round the clock to provide for two of you.
I wanted to finish school and become a teacher.
We would have been absent most of the time.
“After many restless nights of fretting, we made what we thought was the best decision for everyone. One of you would have to be put up for adoption. Mind you, we were very particular about the adoptive parents. We worked diligently with the case worker, who worked with one of the most highly regarded agencies in America.”
“And so, you picked me,” Emily said flatly.
“You came first.” Kathleen attempted a smile.
“Where is she now? Ashley?” Emily asked sadly.
“She was adopted by a lovely family in the US. I presume she is still there.”
“But where in the US?” Emily was searching for something. Anything.
“I can’t say.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“I can’t because I don’t know. We had to sign papers that we would not seek her out. If she chooses to find us, that will be up to her. It’s called a confidential adoption as opposed to an open one.”
“Confidential to her or you?”
“Confidential to us.”
“Does she even know she’s adopted?” Emily asked with sad eyes.
“That I cannot say either, because I have never heard from her.”
“So, if she wanted to get in touch with you she could?”
“Yes.” Kathleen took a sip of her tea. “But we don’t know if she knows.”
Emily hung her head. “I want to find her.”
“Oh, love, I don’t think that’s a plausible idea.”
“Mum! I have a sister! We deserve to know each other!” Emily was beginning to fume.
“I understand, love, but there is no way of us knowing where she is.” Kathleen knew it would be extremely difficult to find Ashley. She had no idea of the names of her adoptive parents, nor did she know where in America they lived.
“As much as I abhor social media, I am going to do some of my own detective work.”
“Emily, you have your studies. Your new research program starts in a few weeks. You shouldn’t let this be a distraction.”
“Mum! Finding out you have a twin sister somewhere on this planet is more than a distraction.” She slumped in her chair, folded her arms and grimaced. “I feel as if I’ve been living a life of porky pies.”
“Absence of the truth does not mean it’s a lie.”
“What do you call it, then?” Emily snapped.
“Omission?” Kathleen was trying desperately to soothe the tension.
“How about a huge secret?” Emily spurted.
“You’re right, love. I’m terribly sorry to have kept this from you, but your father and I didn’t think there was a need.
” Kathleen regrouped. “Let’s do this: You get started on your studies.
After you complete the first term, you and I can put our heads together and see what we can find. We can do it over the holidays.”
Emily looked up. “Really?”
“Yes, love. Really.”
Classes started and the work was challenging, but as hard as she tried, Emily could not pull herself away from investigating the phenomenon of twins.
She discovered a significant amount of research has gone into studying twins, and one of the most referred to was “Sources of Human Psychological Differences: Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart” (MISTRA).
She absorbed the information as if she were a towel in a puddle soaking up every last drop.
The findings showed both genetics and the environment contribute to personality and intelligence.
Identical twins raised separately often display similarities in interests and habits, though each twin also displayed their own unique personalities which could be attributed to their individual environments.
There was some interesting research on empathetic feelings-having a similar reaction without being the subject of it.
For instance, a twin can stub their toe and the other one feels it.
Emily found this particularly fascinating.
Could all of this explain some of her inexplicable feelings over the years?
When she was small, she played with an imaginary friend, named Amy.
She wondered if Ashley also had an imaginary friend.
Emily was determined to find out, but first she would have to find her sister.
She had no idea where to begin, but her mother was right: It was particularly important for her to prepare for her focus on her work at Cambridge.