Portland Noir - Kevin Sampsell [88]
Suzanne’s eyebrows furrowed at Kara’s disinterest in others, especially after she read the books the shrink recommended when he diagnosed Kara with an attachment disorder. Blond sons and prim daughters were dragged over with their parents and sat in uncomfortable silence as Kara openly stared at them in the den while the adults had their digestifs. When they were called in from the parlor, none disguised their relief.
Uncle Phillip hid the coroner’s report between the pages of a treatise by Hobbes. Edge of the envelope stuck out, Kara found it the first time she was in the library alone. Detailed how Father’s broken rib punctured his heart as he slammed into the steering wheel. Mother was nearly decapitated when a piece of windshield glass cut through her trachea as the car smashed into the tree, only thing holding her head to trunk were neck vertebrae. When Phillip realized Kara took it, he explained that they hid the details because they thought she’d be traumatized; troubled when she wasn’t perturbed. Since she’d found out what her parents kept from her, Kara had no use for them.
When she was twelve, six months before they died, Kara had nightmares that woke her up every few hours. Always the same, being ripped apart by her mother and another woman whose face was shadowed. Once she was torn, her other half became a mirror image. For weeks her parents looked at each other and made sympathetic noises. Scared to dream, she would sit in the rocking chair, listening to silence until she nodded off. After one morning when she got three hours of sleep, Kara told them hysterically at breakfast she couldn’t take it anymore. Father looked at Mother, who brought out the locked box from their bedroom closet that Kara wasn’t supposed to know about.
Sat her in the formal living room (knew it was serious), box on the end table between them. Father tapped his foot and both began talking at the same time, tripping over each other’s words until Mother touched Father on the knee, her way of shutting him up. Didn’t say anything for what seemed like a long time. Why was she about to cry? Did someone die? What did that have to do with her dreams? “You had a sister.”
“A twin,” Father interjected.
In the time it took for her mother to pat him again, all became clear. No wonder she couldn’t make friends, why no one understood her. Someone did, once, more intimately than anyone ever could. Mother only carried her, Father donated the sperm. Kara rubbed the fingers of her left hand together. “Tell me everything. Start from the beginning. She’s identical, isn’t she? What’s her name? Where is she? You were holding back, all these years. I knew I couldn’t trust you.”
Mother nodded, swallowed hard, tears. “Kaya is, was, your identical twin; born first by six minutes.”
The part of Kara’s brain that had suppressed the memories cracked, flooded her temporal lobe. Snatches of playing with pastel wood blocks in their nursery, patty-cake, sleeping with limbs entwined. “What happened?”
“You were so adorable in your matching dresses, running through the house, always laughing. You’d only sleep in the same crib and we had to have a custom double-highchair made or you wouldn’t eat. Do you remember, Steven?”
Father nodded gravely, stared at the rug.
“What happened, Mother?”
“It was in the park. Your nanny—”
“I had a nanny?”
“Ursula, from Sweden, very nice girl. She never forgave herself.”
“How old was I … were we?”
“About to turn four. You were on the jungle gym and skinned your knee. Ursula was putting the bandage on; her attention was only away for a moment.”
“And?”
“And somebody took your sister.” Tears made tributaries through her foundation.