Lisa Jackson - Most Likely To Die

“Oh…right, it’s Leo.” He flashed her a brief smile, ever the gentleman, as his mother had taught him.

“How’d you do on the exam?” she asked again.

“All right, I guess. How about you?”

“I don’t know…I’m not very good at science. And all that genetics stuff was confusing, don’t you think? Dominant genes, recessive genes…” She shook her head.

Confusing? Ha.

Leo could tell her a thing or two about confusing genetics, if he wanted to.

But he didn’t.

It was none of her business that he had grown up the dark-haired, dark-eyed son of blue-eyed, sandy-haired parents of Sicilian decent. That they let him believe he was their biological child until he encountered his first Punnett square in high-school science.

It wasn’t until then that he stumbled across a startling scientific fact: two blue-eyed people couldn’t possibly have a dark-eyed child.

When he confronted his parents with his puzzling find, he half expected them to say that Mr. Davidson, his biology teacher, was wrong. Heck, he expected them to confirm that Gregor Mendel, the father of human genetics, was wrong.

Instead, they told him that he, Leonardo Anthony Cellamino of Queens Boulevard, wasn’t who he thought he was.

He had been adopted as an infant, his mother-not really his mother-told him tearfully, rosary beads tightly clenched in her hand for strength to get through the conversation.

“The doctors had told us we couldn’t have children,” she sobbed. “We were heartbroken.”

“What about Mario, then? How’d you have him?” Leo knew his brother wasn’t adopted; he remembered his mother’s pregnancy, remembered comforting her through her labor pains while his aunt Nita tried to track down his father, who was MIA as usual.

“We never expected Mario to come along. It was some kind of fluke.”

“Fluke?” Leo’s father-not really his father-bellowed. “You call our son a fluke?”

Our son.

In that moment, Leo realized it wasn’t just his imagination that his father always favored his kid brother. That was because Mario was his biological son. Leo was not.

“He was a miracle,” Betty Cellamino amended. “Not a fluke. We thought God sent us another baby to save our marriage.”

That was pretty funny, in retrospect.

His parents-not really his parents-were divorced not long after Leo graduated from high school. He turned eighteen just in time to become the man of the house, and his father took off for Miami or Fort Lauderdale-somewhere down on Florida’s southern Atlantic coast. Leo didn’t know exactly where Anthony Cellamino was now and he didn’t care; he had no intention of ever seeing him again.

But Ma still cried and prayed every night for his return.

And Mario still called him on the sly-mostly asking for money, Leo supposed. Sometimes Pop sent some cash in an envelope addressed to Mario alone.

Leo tried not to let that bother him. Just like he had tried, for the past few years, not to let the truth about his birth bother him.

But it often nagged at him, like an itchy, aging scab that was still firmly rooted on one edge, and that if touched, would rip open and bleed all over again.

So Leo tried to leave it alone.

That had worked, for the most part…until last night.

The e-mail, with the provocative subject line birth parents, came from an AOL screen name he didn’t recognize: cupid 21486.

Leo opened it after a moment’s hesitation, thinking it was probably spam and wondering why he was bothering.

I have information about your birth parents. If you’re interested in finding them, please reply to this e-mail.

He’d still have thought it was some kind of hoax, except for one thing: a jpeg file was attached. He worried just briefly that it might contain a virus. Then temptation outweighed common sense and he opened it anyway.

He found himself looking at a photograph.

It was a professionally snapped portrait of a beautiful dark-haired girl who appeared to be about Leo’s age now, maybe a little younger. He could tell by her dated clothing and hairstyle that the photo had been taken years ago.

With her coloring, her delicate bone structure, and that distinct dimple in her lower left cheek, she bore such a striking resemblance to Leo himself that she could only be a blood relative.

My mother?

He had replied to the e-mail, of course.

Thank you for sending the picture. I’m very interested in finding my biological mother and father and I would appreciate any information you might have.

That was late last night.

As of this morning before he left for campus, there had been no reply. But he quickened his pace instinctively now, eager to get back home to his computer.

Sarah Rose kept up with him. “Are you done for the day?”

“With exams, you mean? Yeah.”

“Do you want to grab a cup of coffee or something, then?”

“I can’t.”

He said it hastily, harshly, almost-and instantly regretted it when he saw the hurt expression on her face.

“I have to be somewhere,” he explained, softening his tone. “Maybe some other time.”

“Really?”

“Sure. Give me your number. I’ll call you.”

She did give it to him…but her expression told him that she doubted he’d dial it.

He doubted it, too.

Then again…he did give her his number when she asked for it.

After all, he and his high-school girlfriend, Elisa, had been broken up for months now-ever since she came home from St. Bonaventure over Christmas break and told him she wanted to see other people.

Which meant she was already seeing other people. More specifically, one other person, Leo suspected.

Turned out he was right.

Oh, well. He and Elisa were mostly a comfortable old habit by that time, anyway. Moving on was the right thing to do.

As for pretty, red-haired, green-eyed Sarah Rose…

Maybe he’d call. Maybe he wouldn’t.

Right now, the only woman on his mind had dark hair and eyes and a dimple to match his own.

“See you,” he told Sarah Rose and hurried toward the subway, unaware that he was being watched from the shadows beside a campus bus shelter.

“Kristen?”

“No…this is her daughter.”

“Oh. May I please speak to Kristen?” Lindsay held her breath, hoping her old friend was at home. It was around noon in Portland. She had tried the work number first, at the newspaper, only to get her voicemail. She hung up. She couldn’t just leave a message after twenty years.

You did when you called Aurora back, she reminded herself.

But that was different. She couldn’t leave a message about something like this.

“Who’s calling, please?” asked the teenaged voice on the other end of the line, sounding polite, efficient, and bubbly-very much like her mother had twenty years ago.

“It’s an old friend…about the reunion.”

“Okay, hang on,” the voice said politely. There was a clatter, then a bluntly bellowed, “Mom! Phone!”

Lindsay would have smiled if she weren’t still so shaken by the doctored photograph in her hand.

“Hello?” The voice that came on the line was a decidedly grown-up version of the one that had just left it.

“Kristen?”

“Yes…?”

“It’s Lindsay.”

There was a gasp on the other end. “Oh my God. I was going to call you later.”

Yeah, sure you were, Lindsay found herself thinking reflexively. She’d heard that before, senior year, when they were both trying halfheartedly to cling to a doomed friendship, pretending they still cared about each other, that they were still making an effort.

Then she reminded herself that this wasn’t high school anymore. Kristen was no longer holding a grudge against her over Jake…she couldn’t be.