Though I was still managing to keep my growing impatience at bay, I couldn’t help but express my confusion. “Maggie, I’m very sorry to hear this, but I have to be honest, I’m a bit lost. I don’t mean to sound callous myself, but I’m not sure what your sister committing suicide has to do with Felicity having a sister.”
“Caitlin was dealing with a very specific type of depression, Rowan,” she replied.
“Severe postpartum,” Helen offered, already doing math that was escaping me.
“Yes,” Maggie answered.
“And, your sister was unmarried,” she added.
“Correct.”
“Okay,” I replied with a nod. “Maybe I’m just slow because I’m tired, but the way I remember the branches on a family tree, wouldn’t her daughter be Felicity’s cousin?”
She remained quiet and continued to fiddle with her rings. I watched as she repeatedly pulled the bands from her finger, silently inspected them, and then slowly slid them back on.
“Maggie?” I prodded.
She looked up at me and instantly apologized. “I’m sorry, what did you ask?”
“I said Caitlin’s daughter would have been Felicity’s cousin, not her sister.”
“Yes, of course, you would be correct were it not for the fact that Shamus was the father.”
CHAPTER 31:
“So, lemme get this straight,” Ben replied. “Felicity’s old man took a tumble with his sister-in-law and forgot to glove up, so nine months later, oops?”
“Yeah, trust me, Ben, I’m as floored as anyone,” I said into my cell phone. “He’s the last person I would have expected to do something like that.”
“Yeah, well, it’s always the holier ‘n thou loudmouths that got somethin’ ta’ hide, Row.”
“I suppose so.”
I had already filled my friend in on where I was calling from and the highlights of the previous evening that had brought us here. He was already up to speed to some extent, as Helen had contacted him to cancel their plans for Thanksgiving dinner but had, of course, left it up to me to fill in some of the blanks as I saw fit. As it was, I had already managed to put a damper on the holiday for the both of them by calling Helen, and I was feeling a little guilty about it. Not so much so, however, that I was going to even think about hesitating to call Ben. At this point he was one of the few people I trusted, even though he wasn’t actually assigned to the investigation. We would both just have to get over the intrusion.
After quietly mulling over the conversation thus far, he asked, “An’ so you’re sayin’ the sis-in-law was your mother-in-law’s identical twin?”
“It’s not just me saying it, Ben. It’s a fact.”
“Fuck me.”
“Yeah, I figured you’d say something like that.”
“The lab guys are gonna love this ‘cause identical twins got identical DNA.”
“I figured they’d be close, but they’re identical?”
“Yeah, definitely. Fraternal twins, no. Identical, oh yeah. Can’t fuckin’ tell ‘em apart with a DNA test. You didn’t know that?”
“No. Like I said the other night, genetics really isn’t my forte.”
“Damn, I know somethin’ you don’t. Gotta love that.”
“Go ahead and write it on the calendar, Ben.”
“I keep tellin’ ya’ I ain’t stupid, white man. Besides, they teach us this crap so we can do cop type work. You know, catch bad guys and shit like that.”
“Yeah, I figured as much.”
“So,” he continued his speculation. “With the identical DNA making it more or less the same mother from a genetics standpoint, and with exactly the same father, the match is gonna be close. Just like siblings.”
“That was my thought.”
“So Firehair’s half-sister is prob’ly a serial killer. Man, that’s fucked up.”
“Uh-huh. I had that thought too.”
He paused for a second then suddenly switched gears. “An’ he’s got the balls ta’ jump in your shit and throw the Bible in your face after him screwin’ around?”
“Yeah, well, we all have our dirty little secrets, don’t we.” I was commenting, not asking.
He was answering anyway. “Maybe so, but most of us try not ta’ be hypocrites about ‘em.”
“I don’t know about that, Ben.”
“Yeah, well I ain’t one.”
“That’s not really my point here,” I returned with a mild note of exasperation.
“Yeah, well, it’s a pet peeve.”
“We all have those too. So, can we get back on track?”
“Yeah,” he grunted. “So, Firehair know any of this yet?”
“Maggie is in there telling her the story right now,” I replied. “Helen thought it might be a good idea under the circumstances.”
“Why ain’t you in there too?”
“Again, Helen. She thought it would be better for me to let them do this one-on-one.”
“Well, sis knows what she’s doing. If she says do it, do it. She’ll take good care of the little woman.”
“I know she will.”
“So, anyway, like you said, back on track. What ended up happenin’ with the kid?”
“That’s the thing,” I told him. “No one is sure where she ended up. Apparently, the family pressured Caitlin to give the baby up for adoption as soon as they found out she was pregnant. The way Maggie explained it, her sister told her she saw the child for all of fifteen minutes before she was taken away.”
“Why’d they lay it all on her? Shouldn’t your father-in-law have gotten the slap down too? I mean it takes two, and, well shit, he was married to their other daughter. He sure’s hell wasn’t lily white in all that.”
“Nobody knew who the father was. Well, not the parents and the rest of the family at least. Just Maggie, her sister, and Shamus were privy to that.”
“Bet ol’ Mags was pissed.”
“Yeah, and I get the feeling she still is to an extent. Or, harboring some resentment at the very least. But she stayed with him. I don’t know why, and I didn’t ask.”
“Yeah, prob’ly a good idea ta’ leave that one alone. So, anyway, why didn’t the sister just get an abortion?”
“I asked the same thing and got a bit of a history lesson,” I explained. “This all happened in nineteen seventy-two. Roe v. Wade wasn’t decided until seventy-three, so it would have been a back alley deal. But, even so, her parents found out before she could make those arrangements, and they wouldn’t allow it.”
“Jeezus fuckin’ christ, seventy-two…” He paused at the other end, and I heard him mumbling to himself. “Seventy-two…oh-five…” A moment later he directed himself back to me. “Shit, Row, wouldn’t she have been in like ‘er early twenties or somethin’? Couldn’t she make ‘er own goddamn decisions? I mean, the abortion thing maybe not such a good idea, but how could they force her to give up the kid?”
“Yes, she was in her twenties, but it was a different time, and her family was from a different culture, Ben. You’d be amazed at the power parents sometimes hold over their children.”
“Yeah, well someone needs ta’ tell that ta’ mine, the little shit.”
“Like I said, it was a different time.”
“Yeah, ‘pparently. So no one knows what happened to ‘er? The kid I mean.”
“All Maggie knew was what her sister told her. The baby was healthy and female.”
“What about hospital records? Where’d she give birth?”
“She wasn’t at a hospital. She gave birth at a convent or something of that sort, and the baby went straight into a Catholic orphanage. Her parents had made the arrangements and wouldn’t give any information to the rest of the family.”
“Pretty fuckin’ cold if ya’ ask me.”
“I agree, but that doesn’t help us now.”
“Any idea which convent or orphanage?”
“No, only that it was out of state.”
“Great. And, you said her sister is dead, so she can’t even give us a clue.”
“Yeah. She committed suicide something like eight months later.”
“So can ya’ like do a seance or somethin’? Twilight Zone out and have a chat with ‘er?”
“You know it doesn’t work like that.”
“Well, I gotta ask.”
“Yeah, I know. You always do.”
“Shit!” he suddenly exclaimed. “So at least tell me the old farts are still alive, so we can go knock their heads together and see if the address falls out on the table.”