Chapter Thirteen Jenn #2
“Because we had nothing good to say about this situation,” Doug tells me flatly.
“Okay, I get that. I guess maybe I’m surprised you didn’t say that publicly.”
He scoffs. “Oh, we wanted to, believe me. But we couldn’t. Not if we wanted to maintain any sort of relationship with our daughter.”
“I’m not sure I understand . . .”
“It was like we were being held hostage!” Terry snaps, suddenly agitated.
“We couldn’t criticize Sam. We couldn’t question her motives or confront her.
We couldn’t say a single word against her—not privately to Mary, and certainly not in the media.
Our daughter made it perfectly clear that doing anything of the sort would result in her cutting us off—for good this time. ”
The last part of the sentence catches my attention.
“This time? So . . . she’d cut you off before?”
Tears brim in Terry’s eyes. “Look, Dr. Flores, we’re a devout Christian family,” she replies, ignoring my question.
“We make a great effort to not be judgmental, but she just . . . she made it very difficult for us to like her. Mary wanted so much for Samantha to be a part of our family, but how could she be? She hated us! She mocked us and everything we stand for.” Terry drops back again, rubbing the bridge of her nose with one hand while holding up the other toward the ceiling.
“She was just so . . . different from Mary. How could two people who share that much DNA turn out to be so completely different?”
I sit back as well, folding my arms across my chest as I shrug.
“That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?
Nature versus nurture, right? Scientists have been trying to crack that code for centuries.
We know that some things are hardwired into us, other things are learned from our environment and the people who populate it.
” I glance out the window, spotting a pair of nurses in burgundy scrubs having lunch at a table in the courtyard.
“Not having met Sam, I can’t say for certain,” I say, “but from everything I remember from the coverage . . . it always sounded like she’d had a rough upbringing.
Those pieces made it hard not to feel for her.
Kids who grow up in custodial care—through no fault of their own—don’t have an easy time of it.
They learn to fend for themselves long before they should have to, and that kind of history carries weight. ”
“Look, even if that’s the case,” Doug says, getting more riled up by the second, “wouldn’t you think she’d have at least a tiny bit of gratitude for what we were offering her? But no! Heaven forbid she say ‘Thank you’ or ‘I really appreciate that.’ It was like we owed her something!”
I tilt my head to one side as I consider this. “Like what? What kind of help did you offer Sam?”
“Well, we let her come and live with us after her accident, for one thing,” Terry begins, then pauses.
“What accident is that?”
She goes on to tell me about how Sam fell out of a moving car that Mary was driving. It occurred the same day Mary and Sam had surprised them by just showing up at the house. Things had not gone very well, apparently.
“Of course we felt guilty,” Terry says. “How could we not? The way Mary stomped out of there like that . . . And then we thought she’d been hurt as well.
We were absolutely frantic until we got to the emergency room and saw for ourselves that she was safe!
But Sam—the poor girl was a mess. What were we supposed to do? Just leave her there, all alone?”
“Regardless,” her husband adds, “we took her in and made certain she had everything she could possibly need for a comfortable recovery—only for her to turn around and challenge us at every turn, questioning everything we said or did.”
“Okay, like what?” I press.
Doug scoffs. “Pfft, what didn’t she criticize?
Our house was too big, our cars were too flashy, we threw money around.
In her mind we were some kind of caricature of wealthy, entitled people who were out of touch with how ‘real people’ lived their lives,” he says, making air quotes around real people.
“Which was just nonsense,” Theresa informs me flatly. “Nothing could have been further from the truth. I came from a poor rural community in Georgia. My parents had nothing to give us but their love and their faith—but my home was a happy one. That’s what I wanted for our daughter.”
I’m struck by the sincerity in Terry Langston’s words, the conviction. “I can see that Sam’s portrayal of you as a couple—as a family—really bothered you.”
“Well, yes, of course it did! We may have money, but we believe in living modestly and humbly. And we believe in giving back. Those years when Doug and his father weren’t speaking were some lean ones for us.
We know what it is to live in a dump, eating peanut butter sandwiches and ramen noodles every night because you can’t afford anything else.
So for her to imply—no, for her to accuse us of being elitist and out of touch is just .
. . it’s infuriating! There she was, our guest, all the while looking for ammunition to turn our daughter against us. ”
“She questioned everything and had no respect for our authority in our own home,” Doug adds.
“All she did was disregard whatever boundaries we tried to put in place. It was a nightmare. From the moment Samantha Kinski came into our daughter’s orbit, she did her damnedest to undermine our relationship with her. ”
“I’m wondering if, perhaps, all this might have somehow been the result of a miscommunication—” I hold up my palms when they open their mouths to object.
“Please, just hear me out. When I say that, I only mean that your family dynamic was so foreign to Sam that she couldn’t wrap her head around it.
I wonder if she literally could not relate to it because it was something she had never encountered in her own life.
So I guess what I’m asking is this—are you sure this was all intentional on Sam’s part? ”
I’m not prepared for the unequivocal response I get from both of Mary’s parents at exactly the same moment.
“Oh, without a doubt.”
“Absolutely.”
I let out a huff of air. “Okay, well.” I address both of them, my gaze moving back and forth between their faces, my forearms spread open on the table.
“Let’s look at this. I mean, here Mary discovers she has a sister.
And not just any sister, an identical twin sister.
I’d say that’s pretty extraordinary, wouldn’t you?
Especially after years of being an adopted ‘only child’?
I mean, she goes from having no blood relatives to finding someone with the same DNA. ”
“But that’s the thing,” Terry objects. “We could not have loved her more had we made her. Mary was never alone. She always had us—almost from the day she was born!”
I offer a sympathetic smile of understanding. Because I do understand. I understand that they don’t understand. They couldn’t possibly—no one who hasn’t had the unique experience of sharing a womb for nine months could.
As I’m having this thought, Doug wraps an arm around his wife’s shoulders, pulling her into him.
I do a quick inventory of my instincts and what they’re telling me as I watch the couple in front of me.
I don’t doubt these two love their daughter.
I don’t doubt that they’re out of their minds with worry for her.
And I don’t doubt they’re lying to me about something.
I’m just not sure what that is.
Yet.