What was the matter with her? It was her sister. It could have been her. She got up, went out to the kitchen, picked up the phone, dialed 911, then hung up before it had a chance to ring. Margo was dead. Nothing she did could bring her back.
And she’d promised the child, Jasmine.
That stopped her. She’d promised not to let her father take her away. What was she, eight? Ten? He must be awfully bad if a kid like that was so afraid of him.
Her hair was in her eyes again. She pushed it back, went back into the living room and slumped down onto the sofa. The TV was still on. Carry Ann Close was talking about how dangerous it was becoming for women in Southern California. What planet was she from? It had been dangerous for a long time. Maggie picked up the remote, clicked off the TV. Let Carry Ann tell it to somebody else.
She wanted to bury her head in her hands. She’d found a sister, only to lose her before she got to know her. Life was so unfair. Tears welled in her eyes. They would have been close.
“Come on, Maggie,” she said to herself. “You don’t have time to cry.” She wiped the tears away. She needed to find out as much about her sister as she could before Jasmine came back from her friend’s.
She went back into the bedroom. She’d only glanced at the stuff in the closet earlier. Margo must have had something a normal person might wear. Nope, not a pair of Levi’s anywhere to be found. Not a cut off sweatshirt, no old, comfy T-shirts, no broken in running shoes. Everything looked new.
She spied a checkbook on the nightstand next to the bed. Checks, three to a page on a three ring binder. Was Margo in business? A quick scan told Maggie no, but she had a little over forty thousand in her checking account.
Her mortgage was twenty-five hundred dollars a month. She deposited the same amount around the first of every month. The notation on the stub said, “Jack-child support.” The ex-husband couldn’t be all that bad if he was shelling out that kind of money.
In the drawer under the checkbook, Maggie found a savings account booklet, simple, the kind any child might have. She whistled when she saw the figure, Three million, three hundred and eighty-six thousand dollars and seventy-five cents.
She also found a schedule of classes. Margo was a student? Apparently. She was taking a full load, going five days a week, but they were freshman classes. What kind of thirty-one-year-old woman had over three million bucks, dressed for power and went to college? What was she studying to be?
Numb, Maggie went back out to the kitchen, picked up the purse, took it to the sofa. She dumped it out. Another checkbook, a normal one, a little over seven thousand dollars in the account. Walking around money? A pink wallet. Pink? A little over three hundred dollars in it. She put it back, took out the driver’s license.
Margo Sue Kenyon. Height 5?7?. Eyes. Blue. Hair. Blonde. DOB. “Oh my God!” Maggie gasped. She should have been born on May 10, but she wasn’t. March 5 is what the license said, two months before Maggie. Something was wrong. If that was true, they weren’t twins, they weren’t even sisters. It wasn’t possible.
Maggie looked at the photo, a mirror image of her own. Margo’s husband, Jasmine, the wrongful identification of the girl found dead. They all pointed to the fact that Maggie and Margo were twins. There was no other explanation. Therefore the birth date was wrong. Had to be. Why?
Did Margo know she had a twin? Did she get fake ID to hide it? She would’ve had to have done it years ago, before Jasmine. Before the husband. Again, why?
Maybe she didn’t. Maybe she didn’t know. Maybe she was kidnapped at birth, stolen from the hospital. Maybe. The new parents, the fake parents, could have gotten a phony birth certificate, raised the child as their own. Maybe.
Maggie slipped the license back into the wallet, dropped the wallet back into the purse, gathered up the other stuff-lipstick, too red, make up, too light-blush, mascara, mousse. Made up, she must have looked like Dolly Parton. She looked up at the bookcase. There were some photo albums on the bottom shelf.
She moved over to the bookcase again, sat on the floor and took out one of the albums. She shivered at the first photo on the first page. Margo in a cheerleader’s uniform. Maggie had been a cheerleader. She closed her eyes. She had her own photo albums in Long Beach. Most she could live without, except the one that documented her own high school life, the one with the pictures of her parents in it.
She looked at more pictures. Margo at the beach in a yellow bikini. Margo with a young Bruce Kenyon in a Marine Corps uniform. An officer. Margo and Bruce on an island somewhere. The Caribbean? Hawaii? Margo pregnant. Margo in the hospital. Margo holding a baby, smile a block wide, a glow in her eyes that radiated out of the photo. Margo, Bruce and a baby girl, a Christmas tree behind them. Maggie looked across the room, saw where the Christmas tree had been. Margo had lived here a long time.
Maggie turned the page, almost dropped the book. Margo on Second Street, standing in front of the candy store next door to the Lounge. The pink sign by the entrance was less than a year old. Maggie could have been inside the Lounge with Nick. They could have met. Known each other.
All of a sudden, a sadness welled up in her. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor. She bit her lip to stop the feeling, but it didn’t work. Quiet tears streamed down her cheeks. She was powerless against the emotion.
“Mom!” Jasmine said, almost a whisper. Maggie looked up, face wet. Jasmine was in the middle of the living room with another girl. Cafe au lait skin, wide brown eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know,” Maggie sobbed.
“Get your mom,” Jasmine said and the other girl left at a run.
“It’s okay, I’m okay,” Maggie said.
“You don’t look okay.”
“What’s going on?” A woman’s voice.
Maggie looked into a dark face, knowing eyes, high forehead. “I know you.”
“Of course, I live next door.”
Maggie put her hands to her head, ran her fingers through her hair as she studied the other woman. The Afro was gone, but it was her. “You’re Gaylen Geer.”
“Girls, go next door!” Gaylen had the kind of voice that commanded respect. The girls obeyed. Then to Maggie, “My name is Sullivan.”
Maggie wiped her face with her hands, looked into the woman’s eyes. “No it’s not.”
The black woman met Maggie’s eyes, shook her head, then left.
Maggie closed the door, slumped down on the couch. “Well, you certainly handled that well.” She stretched out. She was so tired. She cried for her sister. She cried for her baby. She cried for Nick, because just maybe she’d found a way to keep her baby and keep her promise to Jasmine, but it meant she’d never see her husband again.
After awhile there were no more tears. She was spent. She stared at the ceiling, imagined stars and planets floating there, imagined herself at peace. She needed to turn off, to rest. In college, when she was up at all hours studying and partying, she’d learned to grab sleep whenever she could and she did it now. She closed her eyes, made her mind a blank and in seconds she was asleep.
Chapter Ten
Horace Nighthyde shut off the engine in the Condor Aviation parking lot. He’d spent the later half of the night at a motel on Lakewood, near the Traffic Circle. Better there than going home. Ma would’ve waited up for her darling. Sometime around 2:30, she’d have started pacing, wearing out the linoleum in the kitchen. He couldn’t bear to see her gnashing her teeth as she worried about Virgil.
It was gonna be hell for her. That was a major downer for Horace. She shouldn’t have to spend the time she had left worrying about a son who was never coming home. But it was better if she thought he ran off with a teacher from Long Beach State, than if she knew what had really happened. Far better.
He got out of the car, slung his flight bag over his shoulder, went to the trunk and got out the bricks, closest thing to cement he could come up with. Not quite the same, but they’d have to do.
“Hey, Horace, how’s it going?” Startled, he turned to see Sara Hackett, the race car driver, getting out of her Jap Jeep. “Going up today?”
