Lisa Miscione - Twice

“Where’s Rebecca?” asked Jeffrey.

“I’m filling in. She called in sick. Flu,” he said. “She sounded like you look, Lydia.” A boyish smile broke his long, narrow face and saved him from the barb she was about to toss back at him.

“Thanks. Thanks a lot,” she answered as she stepped into her office. At the door, she paused a second. Something felt off. She looked around the room, saw nothing unusual, and decided she was just being paranoid. She shed her coat, though she knew they’d only be there for a short time, draped it over the sofa, and sat at her desk. She pulled a compact from her bag and gazed at herself in the mirror for the hundredth time since she’d gotten out of bed. A face only a prizefighter’s mother could love , she thought. She snapped the compact closed and booted her computer.

“Was someone in my office?” she heard Jeffrey ask Craig over the intercom.

“Not that I know of,” he answered. “Why?”

She got up and walked across the hall to Jeffrey’s office. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. My computer is on, my day planner is open. It’s just not the way I left things,” he said with a frown.

“Maybe Rebecca was looking for something?” she offered, knowing even as she spoke that it wasn’t Rebecca’s style. Everything would have been left exactly as she found it. Rebecca was precise, effective, and compulsively neat. Her appearance was always perfect; her work was always exceptional. In fact, Lydia couldn’t remember a time when Rebecca had called in sick before today.

“Hm,” said Lydia.

“What?”

“Let’s get her on the phone.”

“Why?”

“Because I had a feeling someone was in my office, as well.”

“Something missing?”

“Nope. Just a weird feeling,” she said thoughtfully. She walked back to her office and stood in the doorway. The space was pretty sterile because of Lydia’s compulsive need to carry things with her everywhere she went and because she really considered her office at the loft to be her workspace. Still something seemed different.

“I got the machine. Left a message for her to call,” said Jeffrey, coming up behind her. “I’m sure it’s nothing.”

Lydia nodded. “Yeah, you’re probably right.” The uneasy feeling in her gut said something else. It was a feeling that stayed with her as they headed out the door, on their way to get some answers from Eleanor Ross.

When Lydia and Jeffrey reached the Waldorf, Eleanor and the twins appeared to be on their way out. Their luggage had been loaded onto a cart and a porter was leaving the room as Lydia and Jeffrey entered.

“Going somewhere, Ms. Ross?” asked Lydia.

“Back to the apartment. The children need to be in their home.”

“But it’s a crime scene,” said Lydia, appalled that she would even consider moving the children back to the place where their father was murdered and wondering how she was even allowed access.

“Money talks,” said Eleanor, drawing back her shoulders and jutting out her chin. “It’s up to me to decide what’s right for the children now, since there’s no one to look after them.”

“But to bring them back to the apartment where their father was-” Lydia stopped abruptly when the children entered the room.

They seemed to move as one, holding hands as they walked into the room. Their matching white blond heads of hair glowed golden in the sun that shone in from the window. Ivory skin and ice blue eyes, they looked as if they were made from light, luminous and ethereal.

“Grandma, Nathaniel can’t find Pat the Bunny,” said Lola, her voice light and musical.

“It’s on the cart headed downstairs, Nathaniel. You’ll have it before we get in the car. I promise.”

Nathaniel nodded, but Lydia could see his anxiety. The kid wanted his bunny. Lydia felt an irrational wash of anger that Eleanor hadn’t kept the bunny off the cart, knowing, as she must, that he would be looking for it.

“Who’s that?” said Lola, eyeing Lydia suspiciously.

“These are friends of mine, children. Their helping us find out who hurt your father.”

Lydia was surprised at the candor of Eleanor’s answer and couldn’t imagine what good could come of them knowing that. But the children didn’t seem upset. Both Lola and Nathaniel turned their eyes on Lydia and Jeffrey with a kind of wonder. Lydia leaned down and offered her hand.

“I’m Lydia,” she said, smiling. Each child shook her hand properly in turn. “And this is my partner, Jeffrey.”

“Is he your boyfriend?” Lola wanted to know.

“He’s my partner,” she said again. It was really a more truthful answer anyway.

“Oh,” said Lola with a little frown, as if sensing the complexity of the answer but too young to really understand.

“What happened to your face?” asked Nathaniel, pointing to her bruise. “It looks bad.”

Lydia smiled at Nathaniel and then looked up at Eleanor. “Can we have a few minutes with you?”

Eleanor nodded and escorted the children from the room.

“Nice to meet you,” Nathaniel tossed over his shoulder with a little smile. He had been taught to be polite and the lesson had stuck.

When Eleanor returned, Lydia didn’t waste any more time.

“Why didn’t you tell us you had a son, Eleanor? A son who’d been committed and escaped from a mental institution; a son who tried to kill you and Julian.”

A stillness came over Eleanor. She moved over to the couch and sat unsteadily.

“My son is dead,” she said quietly.

“No, I don’t think so, Ms. Ross. I have this bruise on my face to prove it. He attacked me in the basement of your house in Haunted.”

Eleanor shook her head firmly. “Whoever did that to you, it wasn’t my son. He was found dead last year in that same house. There’s a death certificate to prove it.”

Lydia was feeling a little unsteady herself suddenly. Her face had flushed with a rush of heat and she moved to the chair beside Eleanor.

“What about your brother, Eleanor? What about Paul? Where is he?”

Eleanor shook her head again, this time slowly. She cast her eyes to the floor. A deep sadness had come over her and for the first time since Lydia had met her, Eleanor seemed human.

“He’s been missing for many years,” she nearly whispered. “I’ve long believed him dead. He was my twin; I’d know if he was still alive.”

“There are rumors, Eleanor. Ugly ones. About you and Paul, about James and Julian.”

Eleanor slammed her hand suddenly down on the coffee table in a hard, flat slap.

“Goddammit!” she yelled. The lid that had opened in Lydia’s office flew wide and all the demons flew out. “Why do you think I took Julian and left that place? Those rumors, the curse-they plagued us. Do you know what it’s like to live beneath the shadows of others’ fear and ignorance, their voyeurism? Everyone always whispering; thinking that they know you, your family. It is a nightmare.”

She stopped and took a shuddering breath. Lydia and Jeffrey were silent, allowing her to collect her thoughts.

“When Jack was murdered, things became unbearable for us in that town. All they had was each other, James and Julian. None of the other children would play with them; at school they were taunted, bullied. James was fighting every week, defending himself and his sister. They became inseparable, united against the rest of the town. But then James started to change. I’d seen it before in Paul. The mental illness, the delusions, the terrible rages. That is the curse of our family, the shadow we live under.”

Lydia imagined James and Julian, their father murdered, their mother accused, the people of the town treating them like pariahs. Adolescence is such a tortured time under the best of circumstances; there was no telling how additional pressures like that could damage a person.