Part 17 (1/2)

He held that look for one more moment, and then he rose and went back to the fireplace. ”Either way, it's too late now. She married him.”

”Yeah.”

He sighed. ”Yeah.”

I got to my feet. ”I'm gonna get another c.o.ke.”

My father didn't say anything, so I went into the kitchen and grabbed a soda from the fridge. I dug through my father's cabinets and came up pretty empty in the junk-food haul. My dad's cholesterol check had come back high a couple months ago, and he'd gone all health commando in his kitchen.

”Dad, you got any Doritos? Chips? Anything good?”

”Check the bas.e.m.e.nt. Oh, and Cooper, when you're down there, get that box by the stairs. Your mother asked me to bring a few things over to the house. I might as well send them home with you. That way I don't have to go a well, over there. And see them.”

I headed down there, not just for food, but to get away from the brick of sadness upstairs. My father was clearly holding a Good Old Days vigil, and I didn't need that. Not now. I had enough trouble with Right This Minute.

One lone bag of Lay's sat on the shelf in the bas.e.m.e.nt, stuffed behind enough canned peaches to feed Ethiopia. I grabbed the red bag, then tossed it on top of the cardboard box by the stairs. The box was filled with a jumble of old school papers, a couple of dusty soccer awards for Faulkner and me, and, tucked in the side, a purplish paper with the state of Maine seal at the top.

In the kitchen, I put the box on the table. My dad was at the sink, filling a gla.s.s. I was about to open the chips when I noticed the purple paper again. And the words stamped across the top.

RECORD OF BIRTH. Beneath that, my name typed into the first box.

I tugged out the paper and gave it a skim. Father's name, mother's name, place of birth, address at time of birthnothing I didn't already know.

I was about to put it back when one word grabbed me.

Plurality.

”Cooper?” my dad said, coming up behind me.

But I barely heard him.

Beside plurality, the word TWIN was bolded. From the s.e.x answer before it, where Male was bolded, I put together that twin was the checked answer.

Plurality? Twin?

As in, more than one of me?

I spun around and stared at my father. ”Dad?”

He saw what I had in my hands, then nodded. ”We should have told you a long time ago. Your mother thought it would upset you to know when you were little, and then as the years pa.s.sed, it just seemed like we could never find the right time.”

I glanced down at the paper again. ”I'm a twin? I have aa?”

”Brother.” My father put a hand on my shoulder. ”But he died at birth. Stillborn. I'm sorry.”

That word came back to me: TWIN.

”But how a ? I a” I couldn't get a full sentence out. My mind tried to wrap itself around the information and kept failing.

Shouldn't I have felt something? Had some inkling of a connection? Wasn't that what they were always saying on the Discovery Channel, that people who had a twin that died at birth always felt this missing half? But then again, my life in the past couple years had been far from normal-and heck, in the past few months it had been close to Hollyweird-so I could have had all kinds of absent-twin feelings and been so wrapped up in all this other c.r.a.p that I'd missed them, like a zit on the back of my elbow.

”It was strange,” my father mused, looking at the birth certificate. ”Twins never ran in the family. We were so surprised-pleasantly surprised-when we heard your mom was carrying two boys.”

I sank into a chair. My father sat opposite me and took off his gla.s.ses. He swiped at his face, but all that did was deepen the lines under his eyes. My father seemed to have aged fifteen years in the past two minutes.

”Poor kid. He never had a chance,” my father said.

The whole thing didn't seem real. Couldn't seem to sink in. I tried to digest it, to imagine another me, and I just a Couldn't.

Tears filled my father's eyes. I'd never seen him cry, not even when my mother moved out of our house, not when my grandmother died, not once. He was what people called stoic. Some people thought he was cold, but I knew better. He just wasn't comfortable around people. Give him a book, and he was as happy as a hot dog in a roll. Put him in a crowd, and he clammed right up.

He let out a breath that shook like a tree in a storm, then lifted his gaze to meet mine. ”Let me tell you something, Cooper. You lose a kid-I don't care how or when-you never get over it.

I glanced down at my birth certificate, staring at the four letters of TWIN. There had been another me, another half to me, and it had died.

And I'd never known.

But one other person, besides my parents, had known, had been there, had been there and held that baby. And had never said a word.

Sam.

Why? Why the big secret?

”I'm sorry,” I said. To my dad. To myself. And to the brother who hadn't even had a chance to breathe. Then it finally hit me, and I felt a loss so hard, it seemed as if a part of me had been left behind, as if I'd forgotten something vital in a store somewhere, something so important, and I couldn't ever get it back.

I wanted to cry. For something I'd never seen, never held, never known. Only knew I could never have, because it was too late.

”I'm sorry, Dad,” I said again, softer this time.

”I'm sorry, too.” My father reached across the table, wrapped a hand around my neck, and drew me into his sweater. It scratched my face a little.

But I didn't mind.

As soon as my father went to bed, I went up to my old room, shut the door, and upended the backpack onto my bed. Before I went after that thing and got Megan, I wanted to see if anything I'd grabbed today would give me more ammunition. I needed to know more about what I was dealing with.

The wine bottle rolled to the side. I let it go and reached for the book. I brushed off a thick layer of dust, revealing a cursive GMJ on the front.

It didn't take a rocket scientist to put that together with the painting I'd seen in the office. Gerard Jumel. Something M for his middle name. I turned the leather cover and the first yellowed page. The paper nearly crumpled in my hands. But there, in ink faded by age, were the words Journal of Gerard jumel.

A chill ran up my spine. Was it just that these were the words of a guy who was dead? Or of a guy who was in that picture in Sam's office?

Or was it that a part of me knew, somehow, this was all wrapped up together?

I hesitated, then turned the next page. The first entry was dated October i o, 18 o 8. The words were hard to read-the old ink grayed over the years, the pages as fragile as autumn leaves. But I could make out most of it.

The new property Father bought is ripe for farming. There are grapes everywhere. The old man here before us let it go to weeds. It will be a good year before we can open the winery. Must get back to work.

Gerard must have been working for a while, because the next entry was months later: Sad day. Found Ma's dead body near the woods. Looks like she fell in a sinkhole, though we haven't seen any of those hereabout before. Also strange-her body was covered in vines. A mysterious death. But we must go on without her.

There were many entries after that detailing the family's grief over the loss of the mother and their determination to make a go of it on the land nonetheless. Then this: Found an old well at the back of the property. The grapes by the well are the sweetest yet.