“Can I get you a cup of tea or a glass of wine? I’ve got a nice pinot breathing—”
“No, Mom. I just want to talk.” She warmed the back of her legs before the fire as Maribelle, in jeans, gold sweater, and worried expression, settled into a corner of the couch, where a paperback book lay facedown and a half-drunk glass of wine sat neglected for the moment.
Kacey extracted an envelope from her purse, opened it, and slid the contents on the coffee table toward Maribelle. Pictures of Shelly Bonaventure, Jocelyn Wallis, and Elle Alexander stared up at her.
“What are these?”
“Notice anything, Mom? These women all look alike. They bear enough of a resemblance as to be sisters.”
“So?”
“They’re all dead. Died from accidents within the last week.”
Her mother paled a bit. Reached for her wineglass.
“And they look like me, too, Mom. Don’t tell me you can’t see. It. Then there’s this woman.” She pulled out the brochure from Fit Forever Gym, already folded open to a picture of Gloria Sanders-O’Malley, and placed it near the others. “She’s a fitness instructor, still very much alive.”
“What are you suggesting?”
Kacey stared at her mother. “I just don’t think this is coincidence. I checked. Three of these women were born at Valley Hospital, here in Helena. Just like me. I’m not sure about Elle. Her background is a little murky, and unfortunately she’s not around to tell us what she knows. She claimed she always lived in Idaho, but still. .”
“I don’t know what you’re getting at. You think women who look like you are being killed?”
“Women who look like me and are from the same damned hospital.” Her insides were twisting, but she had to know, and Maribelle, if she wasn’t specifically hiding something, was definitely worried.
“Lots of people look alike.”
“I know. I was willing to dismiss it. But the hospital, Mom. If I go there, what will I find out?”
“I don’t know. Nothing.”
“What would I find out with a sample of my DNA? And a sample from some of the other women?”
“What?”
Kacey didn’t answer; she didn’t have to. She saw the change in her mother’s eyes as she realized her daughter wasn’t bluffing. Her thin shoulders slumped beneath her sweater. Suddenly Maribelle looked as old as her years.
“Oh, Lord.” She twisted her hands and glanced away, toward the window and the night falling beyond.
“Tell me what I’m missing,” Kacey demanded.
She shook her head slowly. “I was afraid this day would come.”
“Why?”
Maribelle closed her eyes and let out a tremulous sigh. For theatrics? Or from her heart?
Oh, God, who could tell?
“I was hoping I’d never have to confide this,” she said.
Kacey clamped her teeth together, waiting, wanting to scream while her mother slowly processed each word.
“Stanley isn’t — wasn’t — your real father. You seem to have figured that out.”
“You mean, not my biological father,” Kacey clarified, heart beating heavily.
“Yes.” Maribelle was on her feet, the contents in her glass sloshing precariously. “No one knew, not even Stanley, at least not at first.” She glared at her daughter, as if this were somehow Kacey’s fault.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it would have killed Stanley,” Maribelle said, as if Kacey were dense for not catching on. “When you were around seven and it… it was obvious that you didn’t look like anyone in his family or mine, he began to get suspicious and we argued. He threatened to have a paternity test and so. . so I told him. From that moment on, our marriage, what little there was left of it, was a sham.”
There was a roar in her ears.
“We stayed together for you. He loved you,” Maribelle said with a trace of regret. “It didn’t matter that you weren’t of his blood. You were his little girl.” She had to clear her throat and look away. “We couldn’t divorce… that was out of the question. . or even separate.” She shook her head. “Things were different then in a town this size. My parents. .” She fluttered her fingers. “It was better.”
Kacey wasn’t so sure. She couldn’t imagine herself remaining in a loveless marriage with Jeffrey. No way. But Maribelle’s jaw was set. Defensive.
“Dad’s gone,” Kacey said, pointing out the obvious, the ache in her heart painful when she thought of the man she’d known as her father. “You. . you could have told me.”
“It was too late then.”
“It’s not too late now.” Kacey’s stomach ached. All the deception. All the lies. Her medical history compromised, her entire life a sham. And yet it all made a distorted kind of sense somehow. It explained so much, especially why she was close to her parents, even though they’d lost their bond to each other.
“Who’s my biological father?” Kacey asked.
Her mother finished the wine and left the empty glass on the mantel. “Does it matter?”
“Of course it does. In so many ways I can’t even begin to tell you. Women are being killed, Mom. Women I suspect might have my same DNA.”
“That’s the problem with all that… science!”
“You were a nurse, for God’s sake,” Kacey said, cutting her off abruptly. “You believe in science.”
“Well, it’s gone too far. Become too invasive. There is no privacy anymore. If you ask me, people should leave well enough alone!”
“This is my life, Mother!”
Maribelle rubbed her arms as if suddenly chilled to the bone. “I really don’t want to talk about this.”
“You’ve avoided it for thirty-five years!” Kacey couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Her whole damned life had been a lie. “And now women are dying.”
“In accidents!” Something flared in Maribelle’s eyes. “Do you really think someone’s out killing women who look like you because of some kind of DNA link? For the love of God, Kacey. Listen to yourself.”
“Who is he?”
“There’s no reason to bother your father with this.”
Kacey practically sputtered, “He’s not my father. You were married to my father. But… this other man? He’s still alive?” Kacey was reeling.
“Yes.”
“You still keep in contact with him?”
“No, of course not.”
“Does he know about me?” she asked and, when her mother didn’t answer, said, “And the others. .” The faces of the women who had died ran through her brain, women with features so like her own. “Does he know of them? Are they. .” She shook her head.
No, no, this was all wrong. Suddenly she doubted her convictions for coming here in the first place. But she couldn’t, wouldn’t, stop now. In a voice she didn’t recognize as her own, she asked, “Are you telling me that this… this man went around impregnating women and just leaving them. .”
But Maribelle had fallen silent.
“Mom. .?” There was something more, and Kacey braced herself. “What is it you’re not telling me?”
The starch seemed to drain out of Maribelle, and she returned to her spot on the couch. Her eyes were focused on the fire, but Kacey knew that she wasn’t seeing the golden flames licking the ceramic logs. No, her mind was far away, in a place that only she knew of, a spot that was in the distant past. “It wasn’t like that. You have to understand. He’s a fine, upstanding man. A pillar of the community, really. People look up to him. . Ours was an affair of the heart.”