All Acts Of Pleasure: A Rowan Gant Investigation (39 page)

“I believe that information would be covered
under doctor-patient confidentiality anyway, Rowan,” she said. “You
need not worry.”

* * * * *

“I honestly hadn’t ever expected to be having
this conversation,” Maggie said, shifting in her chair. She had
calmed considerably since the phone call, but I could tell there
was still a nervous streak underscoring her tone.

Looking at my mother-in-law, it was easy to
see from which parent Felicity had inherited her looks. Maggie was
slight, just like my wife, and sported a shoulder-length coif of
chestnut hair, although it was rapidly giving itself over to grey.
Still, it softly framed her smooth, delicate features and bright
eyes to form a pleasing and deceptively youthful visage. In fact,
discerning her true age simply by looking at her would be no easy
task. A box of hair dye from the corner store would instantly shave
off a dozen years. And, though she was still extremely pretty, she
had been an absolutely stunning sight in her youth. In fact, I had
seen hard evidence of it from old family photos.

“It’s okay, Maggie,” I replied. “I think that
pretty much goes for both of us.”

“Yes, I suppose that would be true, then,”
she agreed. “Although for different reasons, I’m sure.”

“If it would make you more comfortable, I
will be happy to leave you two alone to talk,” Helen offered.

“No,” Maggie replied hesitantly. “I think it
may be important that you hear this.”

“Yes, I will admit that any insight you can
provide is most welcome, however, Rowan can fill me in later if you
wish.”

“No. You should hear it from me.” My
mother-in-law paused, and her tenuous composure faltered for a
moment as she suddenly blurted, “Is my daughter going to be all
right?”

“Yes,” Helen replied. “She is going to be
just fine. She has simply dealt with far too much strife in a very
short period of time.”

It was the truth. It was just missing all of
the gory details.

“Maggie,” I started. “I hate to sound
impatient, but I’m really looking for answers here, and I got the
feeling when we were on the phone that you just might have one or
two.”

“It’s understandable, Rowan. You’ve dealt
with more than your share of this, and we’ve given you little
support where that is concerned.”

“That’s not important right now. I’m hanging
in there.”

She grew quiet and looked down at her hands
where they were resting in her lap. Her right was absently fiddling
with her wedding set, twisting the rings in a circle. Every now and
then she would pull them up the length of her finger, almost to the
tip, then slide them back on and begin twirling the interlocking
gold bands yet again.

“I suppose I should give you a bit of
background if this is to make any sense,” she said as she looked
up, casting her glance between Helen and me, though her fingers
continued to toy with the jewelry of their own volition. “To begin
with, and this you may already know, Rowan, I am an identical
twin.”

I nodded. “Felicity mentioned it, and I think
I’ve seen a picture or two in the photo albums.”

“Yes,” she replied. “She may also have told
you that, Caitlin, my twin, passed away many years ago. In fact,
Felicity was very young.”

I simply nodded.

“Actually, the story the children were told
was that their aunt was killed in an accidental car crash, but,
that is only partially true.”

She stopped and stared off into space for a
long moment then shot us both an embarrassed glance before lowering
her eyes to her lap once again.

She continued. “That was nineteen
seventy-two. One would think I could have come to terms with it by
now.”

“If you have been hiding painful details for
all this time,” Helen offered, “then it is unlikely you could
actually come to terms with the event, as you have not allowed
yourself to do so.”

“Yes,” Maggie replied without looking up. “I
suppose you are correct. But it was necessary. We simply didn’t
feel a need to burden the children with the embarrassing
truth.”

“You said Felicity was very young. Austin
isn’t that much older,” I observed. “Would they have even
understood?”

“I don’t know,” she replied. “But they both
adored Caitlin. Especially, Felicity. I believed then that our
decision in sheltering them was correct, as I would now were it not
for this turn of events.”

I nodded then offered, “But, they aren’t
children any more, Maggie. They grew up.”

She looked up at me with a soft smile that
held a small hint of pity. “Yes, Rowan, they are still children. I
know it sounds cliché, but they always will be, no matter what
their ages. But, one must be a parent to truly understand
that.”

“I’ll give you that,” I replied.

Any other time I would have taken the comment
as a diaphanously veiled reference to the fact that so far, neither
Austin nor Felicity had produced a grandchild. Of course, I had a
valid reason for the assessment because we had all heard the
contentious remark several times in the past, though I’m certain
they would prefer a set of genes in their pool that didn’t belong
to me. However, I could easily tell by her tone that this time she
was sincere in what she had just said, and no goading or malice was
intended.

After a pause I asked, “So, your sister
wasn’t killed in a car crash?”

She took in a deep breath and visibly
gathered herself before continuing. “Yes, actually, she was.
However, it wasn’t an accident. She deliberately drove her car onto
a railroad crossing, and waited.”

“How can you know she did it on purpose?”

“Trust me, Rowan, she did.”

“Was your sister being treated for
depression?” Helen asked, obviously picking up on something in my
mother-in-law’s tone that I had missed.

Maggie nodded affirmation then added, “Not
that it was doing any good, obviously. Her prescriptions more or
less kept her from functioning normally. She couldn’t think
clearly, and all she ever wanted to do was sleep. She hated it.
Caitlin just reached a point where she simply refused to take
them.”

“Given that it was nineteen seventy-two, they
were most likely tranquilizers,” Helen said as she jotted a note
and then looked up. “Was she ever hospitalized?”

“Briefly. That made for its own embarrassment
in the family.”

“Mm-hmm,” Helen hummed with a nod.

“Why would that be embarrassing?” I
asked.

“The culture,” she answered with a shrug.
“Our generation, the way we were raised. Our parents were not
particularly supportive of her for a number of reasons. They felt
she had brought the depression on herself, and that she had
disgraced the family.”

“Because she suffered from depression?” I
asked, unable to fathom such insensitivity from family.

“There were other reasons, Rowan.”

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.”

“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.”